I found this article called "Whales Worth More Alive: Uphold the Moratorium Against Whale Hunting," which I believe that we all agree with in this group, but what was fascinating to me was the story of the friendly whale syndrome:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brenda-peterson/whales-worth-more-alive-u_b_609431.htmlsnip-
For many years, I've witnessed an interspecies kinship between gray whales seeking human interaction in Baja birthing lagoons -- what scientists call "The Friendly Whale Syndrome." Why do gray whales in lagoons of this Mexican Biosphere, seek to be touched by the same species that has twice brought them near extinction? A species that now wants to sanction a return to commercial whale hunting?
In the nineteenth century, in these very lagoons, Yankee whaling ships slaughtered the North Pacific Gray Whales, just a few thousand short of extinction. (The North Atlantic Gray Whale population was hunted to extinction in the 1800s.) Since the whaling moratorium, the gray whales have rebounded, becoming one of the 20th century's most vital conservation successes.
Now, in these protected lagoons the cry again goes out -- "Thar she bloooooows!" But we are not here to harpoon. We are here to reach out with our hopeful hands in friendship.
"Coming up!" shouts our expedition leader, Doug Thompson, author of Whales: Touching the Mystery. He has been studying gray whales in these lagoons since the 1970s.
The newborn rises up first, her baleen gleaming, her silver snout speckled with baby whiskers, her brown eye wide. We may be the very first humans this baby has ever seen. She lets out a whoosh of air and the blast from her double blowholes sends a geyser of salt and mist over us like a baptism. We reach way out and touch the calf's snout; it feels like smooth rubber.
"They trust us," explains Lupita Murillo, a naturalist and resident of San Ignacio lagoon.
Then the mother whale submerges slightly, and with a deep inhalation, she turns over underwater and the calf rolls atop her belly. Stretching a pectoral fin out like a wide wing, the mother lifts her newborn way up to us, at eye-level, in the boat. This belly-up cradling of her calf is usually only done when the mother is trying to save her calf from predators like orcas. With her last breath, the mother will lift her calf up and away from all harm.
"Trina is giving her baby to us," Lupita says. She recognizes this whale because of three, distinct white markings on the whale's right side. "Maybe Trina knows we are the only ones who can keep her baby safe."
We are all stunned by the offering, the gift.
"Las ballenas . . . the whales," Lupita says softly, "I think maybe God put them here to teach us humans to forgive -- to open our eyes and see."
There is also a great video at the link above.
ADDED: At the end of the YouTube video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1EYxG7cJxE , there is a woman from Japan that is singing:
“Let’s sing a Japanese song,” someone said, in honor of Yoshiko and Masumi’s ”First Contact.”
Yoshiko, a lively woman in her mid-fifties, smiled at her daughter, who is a flight attendant for Japanese Airways, and they both nodded and together suggested, “Sakura!”
“This is our Japanese song of the cherry blossom festival that comes every spring,” Yoshiko explained to us as she taught us the words and haunting melody of the song. “It’s also a lullaby a mother might sing to her child.”
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Brenda-Peterson/2364Wow. How beautiful is that? :)
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