[This column was written just before the recent International Whaling Commission meeting in London. Thanks to Japan’s vote-buying, the two new proposed sanctuaries were defeated. The global moratorium on commercial whaling remains in effect, but one wonders how long it can be sustained]. In this time of globalization Nature is more threatened than ever. The […]
Month: July 2001
Critical Days for the Earth
[This column was written just before the recent International Whaling Commission meeting in London. Thanks to Japan’s vote-buying, the two new proposed sanctuaries were defeated. The global moratorium on commercial whaling remains in effect, but one wonders how long it can be sustained]. In this time of globalization Nature is more threatened than ever. The […]
Thar He Blows
Dick Russell has produced a long-winded, albeit important, portrait of gray whales — and us©The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego, Calif. Jul 15, 2001 – Neal Matthews Eye of the Whale: Epic Passage From Baja to Siberia by Dick Russell Simon and Schuster, 688 pages, $30 Anybody who has made the trek to Baja’s remote […]
Eye of the Whale – Epilogue
AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE “Nature is loved by what is best in us….And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking until the landscape has human figures that are as good as itself.” –”Nature,” Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “What happens to beasts can happen to man. All things are connected. If the […]
Eye of the Whale – Chapter Ten
ORCAS AND GRAYS ALONG THE SHORES OF MONTEREY “We love being out there with the whales and after our time at Neah Bay, we were desperate to infuse people with a sense of stewardship for the ocean and its creatures. What better way than by taking them out there? To transport people into this other […]
Eye of the Whale – Chapter Nine
SOUND CHECK: ECHOES FROM MAGDALENA BAY “Magdalena Bay is probably more generally known than any other on the Lower California coast, and by many regarded not only as a spacious and safe harbor that might generally shelter the navies of the world, but the adjacent country toward the gulf is generally capable of producing abundantly, […]
Eye of the Whale – Chapter Two
THE WHALER WHO BECAME A NATURALIST “…the large bays and lagoons, where these animals once congregated, brought forth and nurtured their young, are already nearly deserted. The mammoth bones of the California gray lie bleaching on the shores of those silvery waters, and are scattered among the broken coasts from Siberia to the Gulf […]
Eye of the Whale – Chapter One
CLOSE ENCOUNTER AT SAN IGNACIO LAGOON “The holy hangs undisturbed over the whales’ huge cradle.” —Loren Eiseley. It is early January. Beyond the Mexican border, the pregnant Gray Whale picks up her pace down the Pacific coast of Baja California, past Tijuana and Ensenada, San Quintín and El Rosario, into the Bahía de Sebastian Vizcaíno. […]
Eye of the Whale – Prologue
WHALES OF PASSAGE “As the whale is great, so to cherish it can be proof of our greatness. Meanwhile, and for a little longer, the great whale glides through the sea, feeling its vibrations and reading its meaning by senses it has gained through eons of time. Had the whale been created only to […]