Transcript for The Revenge of the Whales

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The Pacific is pretty big, so let's narrow it down. For close to the equator, 3,000 miles one way, lies Ecuador, 7,000 miles the other way, Papua New Guinea. Your nearest land is a small volcano in what's now French Polynesia. When I say nearest, I'm talking 1,500 miles. You get the idea. We're a very long way from anywhere. Twenty men were on a wooden ship, perched at the top of the mast. One man is scanning the horizon for the tell tales about her water from a whale's blowhole. When he spots one, he'll shout, there she blows. The men will split up into smaller, lighter boats and row towards the whales. Felt through a harpoon kind of barbed spear attached to a rope. The harpooned whale will thrash or die or swim away, dragging the boat behind it. The men will keep hold of the rope until the whale exhausts itself. Then they'll stab the whale to death and take its body back to the ship, where they'll strip it of its blubber. That gets boiled down to make oil, which is youth in lamps. Whaling is big business, one of the largest sectors of the US economy.

Wales, a whole pod of them. The men got into the smaller boats. They rode closer. First mate, Owen Chase, threw his harpoon at one of the Wales. In agony, he later described. The whale threw himself up over towards the boat. The Wales, thrashing tail, knocked a hole in the middle of wooden boats. As water gushed in, Chase quickly cut the road. He didn't want to be dragged away. One man bailed out water as the others rode back to the ship. They climbed on board and hoisted up their damaged boat. Chase and the men were starting to repair it.

The men had never known anything like it. They looked at each other, she said, with perfect amazement. The whale swam away.

The whale turned around and came straight back at them. I'm Tim Hartford and you're listening to caution retails about whales. 1983 of the coast of Iceland. Another boat is hunting whales, though not this time to make oil for lamps. They want to make money from them in another way. The aim is to grab young whales that can be trained to perform for tourists in marine amusement parks. They capture a two-year-old orca, also known as a killer whale, the black and white ones. The captured whale is transported to C-land in Victoria, Canada. He's given the name, Telecom. Telecom's story is told in the 2013 documentary, Blackfish. Marine Park trainers who used to work with Orcas describe how intelligent they are. When you look into their eyes, says one, you know somebody is home. The filmmakers talk to one man who recalls what happened when he was hired to work on a boat that captured orcas like Tinnacle. A plane flew above them, keeping track of the whales and directing the hunt. They used explosives to herd the whales into a bay where they could enclose them in the net. They picked out the baby hawkers and poised them up out of the water. Then they took away the net, so the other whales could leave, but the other whales didn't leave. They stayed, making loud noises. The boatmen had a vivid sense of the almost human pain he witnessed.

At Sealand, the young Orca-Tilicum is paired for training with an older whale who's an experienced performer. If either whale does something wrong, both whales are punished. They don't get fed. The older whale responds by raking telecom with her teeth and telecom learns to perform. You know the kind of performance. Waving at the crowd with a fin, giving a trainer and a wetsuit to ride around the pool, jumping up to make a big splash that soaks all the squealing children sitting at the front. At night, the whale is a shutter way in a small dark steel tank. Twenty-year-old Kelty Lee Burn is a student and championship swimmer who has a part-time job at C-land. After a show, Kelty slips and falls into the pool. The whales grab Kelty by the foot and drag her under the water. They bring her back to the surface. Help me, Kelty else, for the whales drag her down again. And again, I don't want to die. but she does die. The killer whales keep her down for too long, and she drowns. After the death, Sealand closes down. Telecom is sold to SeaWorld, another marine amusement park in Orlando, Florida. When Tillacum arrives at sea world, he's attacked by the other whales, so he has to be kept apart from them. In the movie Blackfish, a former trainer recalls, he was always happy to see you in the morning, maybe because he was alone, maybe because he was hungry, maybe because he just liked you, who knows what was going on in his head. Who knows what was going on in his head? In 2010, Trainer Dawn Brasho is bringing the show to a close. Dawn is 40 years old. She's one of C World's most experienced Orca Handlers. She's lying down at the edge of the pool, giving Telecom a pat on the head. What is going on in Telecom's head? In Blackfish, some former sea-world trainers analyzed the video of Dorn's last show. To start with, they say, all seems well till it comes doing just what Dorn asks him. The rise is out of the water and swirls around. As Dorn standing by the side of the door, Dorn dwells round and synchrony. The audience who and clap until it comes gets his reward, Dorn throws him a fish from a bucket. She asks him to do a perimeter pack wave. Tilakum swims all round the edge of the pool, waving to the audience with his pack-tour fin. The room plays a whistle. He should stop and get his fish. But he doesn't stop. Perhaps because he didn't hear the whistle. He doesn't have another round of the pool, still waving his fin. But because he didn't stop at the whistle, he doesn't get his reward. Instead, he gets what the trainer's call a three second neutral response. That wasn't what we wanted. No fish for you. I believe at this point, he gets frustrated, says one of the trainers. This dawn lies down by the side of the pool at the end of the show. Till the com grabs her and pulls her underwater. He doesn't let go. Soon, the sensational story was all over the network news.

Cragity at SeaWorld. It happened without warning. A killer whale grabbed a trainer who'd always dreamed of working with Orcas and pulled her underwater.

By the time telecoms done with dawn, a body is savaged. It has multiple fractures and dislocations. He's ripped a scalp off. A frustration. A aggression. Did it start as play? Was it revenge for doing two perfect perimeter pack waves and not getting a single fish from a bucket? Who knows what was going on in his head? Perhaps, as animal rights activists argued, the explanation was straightforward.

Had telecom simply gone off the deep end? in the middle of the Pacific in 1819. First mate Owen Chase is standing on a slowly sinking ship. The ship has just been headbotted by an 185 foot whale, it's taking in water. And now the whale is coming back for another go. He came at us, Chase says.

The whales smashed into the ship for a second time. Then, it swam away. Chase tried to gather his wits. The ship was damaged beyond repair. They wouldn't have long before it toppled sidewards. That better salvage what they could. A quadrant, a compass, nortical charts, the captain's tongue. They tossed it all into the smaller boats, then clambered in themselves. The captain himself, George Pollard, was out on a small boat chasing another whale. His voice came floating over the water.

The man in Captain Pollard's boat rode back to join Owen Chase and the others. Together, the crew sat in their little boats and surveyed the remains of their ship, not leaning on its side in the ocean.

We have been stole by a whale. Twenty men. Three small rowing boats. Fifteen hundred miles to the nearest tiny island. cautionary tales will return. After the break.

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In the movie Blackfish, a former trainer at SeaWorld, recalls how one young orker born in captivity was taken away to be transported to a different park. That night, says the trainer. The mother whale stayed in the corner of the pool, like literally just shaking and screaming, screeching, crying. I've never seen her do anything like that. Who knows what was going on in her head? The trainer is in no doubt. There was nothing you could call that, she says. Besides grief, Not so fast, says an article on a website called AwesomeOcean.com. A website set up with funding from C-World. The article complains that blackfish uses and drop a morphism to manipulate viewers. The word anthropomorphism comes from the Greek for human form. It means using human ideas to interpret the behavior of things that aren't human, gods, or cars, or whales. It's long been controversial among scientists to study animal behavior. The article on AwesomeOcean.com points out that the documentary makers are company the trainers' words about grief, with footage of a whale, mouth wide open, looking, well, grief-stricken.

but it seems we find it hard, not to anthropomorphize, even when we're trying. The very same article tries to reassure readers about the welfare of telecom.

Which sounds lovely, but only if we see it to a human lens. It conjures up the pleasing mental image of a contented old man taking a small boy to the park, pushing him on the swings and buying him an ice cream. That tells us nothing, of course, about what life might be like for telecom. We'll come back to the article on AwesomeOcean.com. But what about another human emotion we tend to anthropomorphize? Vengeance. Remember how Owen Chase described the whale that sank his boat?

We seem to love stories about terrifying sea creatures with an apparent thirst for revenge or justice. Think of the scene in the classic movie Jaws, where the shark attacks the hunter's boat and eats him. or the 1850s novel Moby Dick, about the whale and wailing ship captain who pursue each other across the seas. Moby Dick was inspired by a true story, the story told by Owen Chase. But I think there's something more we can take from hearing Chase's tale in the middle of the Pacific. First mate, Owen Chase, and his captain, a contemplating what remains of their wailing ship. They have three small rowing votes, with six or seven men in each. Chase is in one, Captain Pollard, in another with his 18-year-old cousin. Don't worry, Pollard had told the boys' mother back at home, I'll look out for him. These boats are small and light, they're designed for chasing and harpooning whales. They're not built to traverse thousands of miles of open ocean, but that's what they're going to have to do. The ship hasn't yet fully sunk. The men can still clamber aboard the wreckage and see what else they can salvage. They hack off the masks and make smaller masks and sails for their little boats. They find some food that's still above the sea, hard, dried bread, water, some turtles. They're useful, turtles. They survive for a long time without eating, so you can take them on your ship and kill them when you want fresh meat. Still, they only have a few. And how long is it going to take them to meet another ship or get to land? They portion up the food and water between the boats, to turtle's each, and discuss their options. None of them are good. Aim for the south, they decide, and hope to find westerly winds that will blow them towards Chile or Peru. Do some sums. With a fair wind, they might hope to reach land in a couple of months. They sleep, or try to. In the morning, they set their sails for the south. They agreed that each man will have a daily ration of about a pound of bread and half a pint of water. Chase has a pistol. tried to take more than your share, he says to his boatmates, and I'll shoot you. But nobody does. They all know they have to make their food more to last, if they're to have any chance of survival. A day goes by, and another, the wind gets up, the sea swells, away crashes over the boat, and soaks some of the bread. When the sun comes out, it managed to dry it again. They'd better eat that bread first as it'll spoil more quickly now. But it's so salty. The first. Half a pint of water a day there allowed no more. In a storm, they tried to use the sail to catch some rainwater. The sail's absorbed so much salt from being spashed by the sea. It makes the rainwater salty too. It assigned to kill their first turtle and drink its blood. Some of the men find it too revolting to swallow, not Owen Chase. I took it like a medicine.

They light a fire in the turtle shell to cook its flesh. It tastes good. Days pass. They lose the other two boats in a storm, then find them again. A shoal of tiny flying fish saw over the boat. Some knocked themselves out on the mast, and the men eat them whole. Scales, wings, and all. Finally, they finished the salty bread. They're glad to start again on the bread that didn't get a soaking. But then, three weeks in, the weather turns calm. The sky blew. The ocean still.

The heat makes the thirst unbearable again. They try drinking their urine. It doesn't seem to help. They dangle themselves over the edge of the boat to cool their bodies in the sea and, what's this? Clams! On the outside of the boat, who knew they were there? They ripped them off and eat them in half an hour. They're all gone. day after day, the sea is calm. No wind means no progress for the three small boats. They try to row, but they don't have the strength. On Chase's boat, they kill their second turtle. The bread and the water are running out too quickly. They decide to half their rations. What other option is there? And then, four weeks since the whale rammed their ship, a miracle, or so it seems. From one of the boats comes a shout. But what land is it? Chase and the captain look in their nautical charts. It must be one of the pitcans, a tiny island just six miles across. They've sailed 17 hundred miles from where their ship sank. They're still 3,000 miles from South America, but they'll worry about that later. They sail to the shore and land on the beach. There are crabs. They eat them. There are fish. Chase knocks one out with the butter of his gun. But eating just makes them want a drink. Does this island not have any water?

Then they find a spring. Gallons and gallons of water, the men drink and drink. They are tropical birds on this island. They're going to see humans, so they aren't afraid. The men can walk right up and grab them. They make a fire on the beach to roast them. They're delicious. So are the birds eggs. With food and water, they can surely live here and wait for another ship to pass. or can they, after just a couple of days, the men realize they've already eaten every bird on the island and every egg, so there won't be any more birds. You might ask if this is the story of humans and nature in microcoven. But for the crew of the wailing ship, there's a more urgent question. Stay and hope to be rescued or get back in the boat. Three of the men decide to take their chances on the island. The others set sail once more into the vast Pacific.

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But no, it was Wales. One big orca and two little orcas.

The killer whales snap off the champagne's rudder, making a hole at the boat. It sinks. And it's not the only time this has happened. In just a couple of years, the orcas near Gibraltar have slammed into hundreds of passing yachts. This is completely new behavior. What's going on in the heads of those whales? Users of the platform then called Twitter, put forward a theory It's an organised uprising. Socialist Wales attacking the yacht owning classes. They're joking of course, but the joke has an edge. It seems that a lot of us feel so much guilt about what humans have done to nature. We like the idea of killer Wales fighting back. The new scientist felt the need to report with a straight face that experts say there is no evidence they are seeking vengeance. The Atlantic published a think piece titled, Killer Wales are not our friends, stop rooting for the Orca's ramming boats. One popular tweet in response, we deserve to have our boats rammed, frankly. Scientists who study Wales have other theories. Maybe one Orca was hit once by a rudder and fought back. Orcas are social, they learn from each other. They're curious too, maybe they've discovered that radars are fun to play with. Or maybe it's a cultural fad, orcas have them. Years ago, one pod in the Pacific briefly took to carrying around dead salmon on their heads, like a hat. Or are we anthropomorphizing again? Not all scientists think anthropomorphism is always a bad thing. The primatologist, Franz Tawal, says that what we want to avoid is anthropocentric anthropomorphism. That's a bit of a mouthful. What he means is, starting from a human viewpoint, when seeing similarities between ourselves and other animals, that's the kind of thinking that gets us socialist whales attacking the rich. In contrast, says the while, animal centric anthropomorphism can generate useful research ideas. That's when we start with the animal's viewpoint. We try to put ourselves in their position as best we can, and ask ourselves if our human experience is might help us understand what their life is like. We know what it means as humans to be curious and playful. It's reasonable to think that might shed some light on the whales behaviour too, We need to find a balance. Too much anthropomorphizing can lead us astray, but so can it's opposite. Dogmatically refusing to see any commonality between ourselves and other animals. There was no word for that mistake, says Duaal, so he made one up. And Thropo Denile. We've already seen an example. Remember the article in AwesomeOcean.com that criticized the makers of the movie Blackfish for showing footage of an open-mouthed whale. As a former trainer described the grief of a mother whale whose baby had been taken away. That whale wasn't crying through her mouth, says the article, all sound is created to the blowhole. Which is fair enough, as far as it goes, we can't conclude anything from the footage of the whale's mouth. But that doesn't take away the trainer's description. She stayed in the corner of the pool, like literally just shaking and screaming, screeching, crying. There was nothing you could call it, besides grief. The whale's reaction to her baby being taken looks very similar to how a human mother would react. Closing our minds to that parallel seems like anthropodernile. Two weeks after the three boats leave the island, the first man dies. They bring all three boats together, and with solemn words they cast his body into the ocean. They're still very far from learned, the bread's running low, so they agreed to cut their rations again, just an ounce and a half of bread per man per day. The sound is so fierce, says Chase.

Another day. Another. A storm. The boats get separated again. And this time, we can't find each other when the storm clears. Now, our in-chase and his four companions are on their own. One day a shark circles their boat bumping up against it. They try to stab it, but they don't have the strength to pierce its skin. Another day brings a show all of pauposes and frolic around them. You can't stab any of those either. One of Chase's boatmates, calmly says, no bread for me, I've decided to die. And so he does. Quickly. and peacefully. The others solemnly throw his body to the waves.

Then they hear a noise that seems to sharpen their thought, the thrashing of tail, the spouting of low holes. Wales, the men are gripped with fear. As they're vengeful attack us somehow track them down, we must row, they say, to get away, they try, but none can lift it all. When Blackfish aired on CNN in 2013, it caused a sensation. 21 million people viewed it with an a month, an extraordinary figure for a documentary. Three years later, SeaWorld announced that it would no longer breed orcas in captivity. Still, there's no international ban Dozens of workers still perform for tourists in theme parks around the world, including Tillakham's grandson, Trua. Granddad Tillakham himself passed away in 2017 at the age of 35. In science, the debate about anthropomorphism rumbles on. It's clearly hard to resist the kind of lazy thinking that brings us the communist or cousin Gibraltar and the weaker of vengeance, Moby Dick. So, how can we keep our anthropomorphism animal centric? I think Owen Chase's story points us towards the answer. It shows us the power of human empathy. Very few of us have ever experienced anything as extreme as Chase. But when we hear his story, we're there in the boat with him. We get what he went through. We need to try to extend some of the same empathy to intelligent animals such as Wales. But Chase's story also shows us why we find that hard. We can sense that whales are smart. As the former trainer on Blackfish said, when you look into their eyes, you know somebody's home. But their intelligence evolved in the vastness of the ocean, a place that's so utterly inhospitable for us. It may as well be an alien intelligence from another planet. Empathy comes easily with other humans. With other kinds of intelligence, we really have to work it. The passing whales had no interest in Owen Chase's boat, but the next death on board is gruesome. It takes hours. The dying man convulsing and groaning in pain. Just three men left now. And this time, none of them suggest respectfully consigning the newly dead body. The sea.

The next day, the strips of human flesh are turning green. They make a fire and cook it to preserve it. Chase doesn't know it, but elsewhere on the ocean, Captain Polard, his 18-year-old cousin and the other two remaining men on their boat, facing even more wrenching predicament. They're all starving, but all still stubbornly alive. They agree to draw lots to decide who'll be shot. So the others can eat him. Owen Chase survived, of course, to tell his story. Still, hundreds of miles from the coast that tiny boat chants to cross another ship. They must have looked a pittiest sight, says Chase.

Incredibly, the captain's boat also encountered a ship. He got to go back home and test the limits of human empathy by explaining to his family how he'd come to eat his cousin. This episode of cautionary tales was inspired in part by Blackfish, which is currently available on Netflix. Owen Chase's book is called The Narrative of the most extraordinary and stressing shipwreck of the Whaleship Essex. For a full list of our sources, please see the show notes at TimHalford.com. Corsionary tales is written by me, Tim Hartford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Alice Fines, with support from Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Guthridge, Stella Hartford, Gemma Saunders, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cone, Litaumalard, John Shnars, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, and Christina Sullivan. Corsion details as a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardour Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. Tell your friends. And if you want to hear the show add free, sign up for pushkin plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

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