Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we are going crunchy
Speaker 2: granola even today talking about saving the whales, which Chuck,
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but for me, that was
Speaker 2: like a big part of my childhood. So this is
Speaker 2: a little bit nostalgic for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, if you're insinuating I grew up under
Speaker 3: a rock in the nineteen seventies, that it's not the case.
Speaker 2: You did live on a gravel road.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 2: We're rocks involved.
Speaker 4: I lived among rocks.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean I would go out on a
Speaker 3: limb and say that. Well, this article says save the
Speaker 3: Whales is one of the most successful environmental conservation movements
Speaker 3: in history. But I'm from my mouth to thine ears,
Speaker 3: I'm going to say I think the Save the Whales
Speaker 3: campaign is one of the most effective marketing camp pains
Speaker 3: across any genre in history.
Speaker 4: Well, wow, it was that ambiquitous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was super ubiquitous. I think you caught more
Speaker 2: of it than me. Even like the stuff that I
Speaker 2: call was a little bit of the the after wash.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like remember that thing you were living well, no,
Speaker 2: it was still a thing. Yeah, but I think the
Speaker 2: peak I missed the peak and you were living right
Speaker 2: through it because the seventies were like when this really
Speaker 2: started to ramp up big time. And I'm sure plenty
Speaker 2: of people out there have heard save the whales, and
Speaker 2: it is like a pretty ubiquitous slogan used to be
Speaker 2: even more ubiquitous, like we're saying. But despite that, there
Speaker 2: wasn't like one person or group that you're like that
Speaker 2: they started save the whales. It almost just kind of
Speaker 2: bubbled up into the collective consciousness and a bunch of
Speaker 2: different groups kind of started doing the same thing, sometimes
Speaker 2: working together, other times doing it independently. But the whole
Speaker 2: goal was to preserve declining whale populations from extinction, and
Speaker 2: they all were kind of under the same banner of
Speaker 2: save the whales.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: the actual saving of the whales. We're gonna talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about that campaign, you know, slogan, and how
Speaker 3: that was a thing. But if you want to talk
Speaker 3: about just the word save the whales, that did not
Speaker 3: come about in the nineteen seventies that became a thing.
Speaker 3: And I mean the phrase dates back to the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: like the eighteen eighties, but it really became a thing
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties when whale conservation was first a
Speaker 3: little flicker on the radar of I mean, what would
Speaker 3: be early conservationists. But in nineteen twenty eight there was
Speaker 3: a mammalogist group that had to save the whales, meeting
Speaker 3: in Washington, DC. And that's when it really kicked off
Speaker 3: as far as like you know, there were buttons and
Speaker 3: there was a satirical poem written about how ubiquitous it
Speaker 3: was in the nineteen twenties and thirties.
Speaker 4: So it was definitely a big thing early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in those articles, I think Anna helped us
Speaker 2: with this one. She dug up some articles from the
Speaker 2: twenties about those meetings and they were saving the whales
Speaker 2: to the bison populations that almost went extinct, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: just a few decades before. So the lesson was learned
Speaker 2: by some and they're like, these whales aren't going to
Speaker 2: be around much longer either. And it wasn't just the US.
Speaker 2: It spread around the world, like other countries started kind
Speaker 2: of their own save the whale initiatives. It was clear
Speaker 2: that we were over whaling. And yet despite that, in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and thirties, whaling was still generally antiquated.
Speaker 2: It was still the kind of whaling that you think
Speaker 2: of like New Bedford, Massachusetts, like the salty old sea
Speaker 2: dog with a peg leg and a spear in his
Speaker 2: other hand, a pipe, maybe even a parrot like out
Speaker 2: there whaling with a harpoon that he's using with his hands.
Speaker 2: They killed a lot of whales like that, but it
Speaker 2: was nothing compared to the Austrial whaling that started in
Speaker 2: like the middle of the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they started having you know, literal cannons
Speaker 3: mounted on the side of a of a ship that
Speaker 3: would shoot exploding harpoons. And by the sixties they were
Speaker 3: taking eighty thousand whales a year. Blue whales neared extinction,
Speaker 3: plenty of others in like grave danger. I am taking
Speaker 3: my first trip to Nantucket this summer, and that is
Speaker 3: they have a whaling museum there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that I'm going to go to.
Speaker 3: I've never even been to that part of the country really,
Speaker 3: so I'm eager to go, and not to celebrate whaling,
Speaker 3: but just as a sort of historical museum kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Emily has already said that she won't be going.
Speaker 2: No, I can understand that it would be kind of
Speaker 2: hard to take for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean, I imagine it's fairly interesting.
Speaker 3: It's just a blip in time, but it's not I
Speaker 3: doubt if they're trying to sell you on whaling at
Speaker 3: least a.
Speaker 2: Right right, Remember when it's great about Nantucket. That is
Speaker 2: like to thirty limericks, what enya is the crosswords?
Speaker 4: Wow? Yeah, yeah, that's a nice full So a good.
Speaker 2: Comparison here is like, like I said, New Bedford, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: that area Nantucket, Cape Cod. I guess sure they this
Speaker 2: was like the seat of whaling internationally in like the
Speaker 2: mid nineteenth century and over this basically this decade of
Speaker 2: American dominance of whaling, they took one hundred thousand whales.
Speaker 2: Now what you're saying is that by the sixties they're
Speaker 2: taking almost that amount in one year, not a decade. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how much it had gotten stepped up. And if
Speaker 2: the people in the twenties in the thirties were worried
Speaker 2: about whales going extinct before using the kind of antiquated
Speaker 2: original whaling techniques. This new stuff was really a threat
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And you know, the seventies, it sort of merged with
Speaker 3: the post sixties crunchiness to really become a big thing.
Speaker 3: But going back to the thirties and nineteen thirty on
Speaker 3: the nose, the League of Nations got together and established
Speaker 3: the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics just so they could
Speaker 3: see if it truly was a bison situation. And a
Speaker 3: year later they're like, yep, it's pretty bad. They're declining
Speaker 3: big time. And so twenty two nations signed in agreement
Speaker 3: at the Geneva Convention that year for the regulation of
Speaker 3: whaling to put some limits. And that was kind of
Speaker 3: the first move was in nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2: You know what else I saw too, Something else that
Speaker 2: saved the whales in the first way the first half
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century was the invention of the light
Speaker 2: bulb because people didn't need whale oil for lamps anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess we should say that they
Speaker 3: whiled because that blubber was oil for lamps, and people
Speaker 3: also ate it. And also, you know, we're not going
Speaker 3: to not talk about indigenous populations where it's right. You know,
Speaker 3: they depended on that stuff for sustenance and some still do, so, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's why they wailed.
Speaker 2: Well. Also, that's why some of these early I guess
Speaker 2: international agreements on conserving whale stocks were created, not because
Speaker 2: they're like whaling's wrong. They were like, we need to
Speaker 2: be able to keep whaling in the future, so let's
Speaker 2: not overdo it now, let's figure out what is a
Speaker 2: sustainable amount. That's what the earliest agreements were for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's stop whaling some so we can keep whaling exactly.
Speaker 4: So that was the first one.
Speaker 3: Thirty one, thirty seven came along and ten nations signed
Speaker 3: on to another one called the International Agreement for the
Speaker 3: Regulation of Whaling.
Speaker 4: Also put some more limits.
Speaker 3: It banned blue, humpback fin and sperm whales under certain links.
Speaker 3: But it was still declining. So in nineteen forty six
Speaker 3: the International Whaling Commission. They just keep starting these commissions
Speaker 3: and getting member countries on board and it's really not
Speaker 3: making much of a difference. And they did that in
Speaker 3: forty six again with fourteen member nations. But the forty
Speaker 3: six one, you know, aligned I guess at thirty seven
Speaker 3: aligned with World War two, so they were like, we
Speaker 3: can't go without this oil like at this time. So
Speaker 3: it just it didn't really have any teeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not only that they needed like meat, So they
Speaker 2: weren't in a position. The world wasn't in a position
Speaker 2: after World War two to be like no, not let's
Speaker 2: stop taking this meat. Like whale meat fed a lot
Speaker 2: of people who didn't have access to other kinds of
Speaker 2: protein from World War two. So yeah, those agreements were
Speaker 2: kind of like, no, this isn't gonna work right now.
Speaker 2: And then as things started to ramp up, because now
Speaker 2: there was a much bigger market that hadn't been there
Speaker 2: before for whale meat, like a global market. That's why
Speaker 2: it became this industrial factory farming like version of whaling, right, So,
Speaker 2: because there was just a lot more money to be made.
Speaker 2: So the people who finally started to save the whales
Speaker 2: campaign of the seventies had a really huge hill to climb,
Speaker 2: the biggest hill anyone who was against whaling itself ever
Speaker 2: had to climb in the history of whaling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, but it was, like I said, kind
Speaker 3: of the right time. Coming out of the sixties. There
Speaker 3: were a lot more just sort of environmental concerns popping up.
Speaker 3: The EPA was a little more in the limelight, and
Speaker 3: it was just there was more awareness of that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, and there was a big perspective shift that
Speaker 3: happened that was much much different from those earlier ones
Speaker 3: like you were saying, where it was like let's conserve
Speaker 3: so we can keep whaling. Like this was a legitimate
Speaker 3: like hey, these things were realizing are intelligent, and that
Speaker 3: started happening in the nineteen fifties, like finding out that
Speaker 3: whales were smart. Yeah, thanks to a Navy engineer named
Speaker 3: Frank Watlington was a really big change.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he liked to I almost have the sense
Speaker 2: that it was in his spare time record with a
Speaker 2: hydrophone the underwater sounds of the Navy, like shooting off bombs,
Speaker 2: and he accidentally caught some whale songs of some baileing whales,
Speaker 2: and he was like, this is I've not heard stuff
Speaker 2: like this before. It seems like there's a pattern to
Speaker 2: it or a rhythm, or they keep coming back to
Speaker 2: like a chorus. I don't know. So he gave it
Speaker 2: to some marine biologists who actually took it and released
Speaker 2: it as an album in nineteen seventy Songs of the
Speaker 2: Humpback Whale and have you listened to it?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, I like most of my adult life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just so mellow. It's so ambient that you're like, wait,
Speaker 2: did they add some synth here? And no, it's just
Speaker 2: nothing but whale songs.
Speaker 4: Right yeah, Brian, you know had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: Right, So I can't imagine this was released in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine between nineteen seventy and nineteen eighty how
Speaker 2: much acid was dropped listening to the album Songs of
Speaker 2: the Humpback Whale. Man, it was like made for it.
Speaker 3: So maybe I think this has got to be fair.
Speaker 3: Use we can just play a short snippet just so
Speaker 3: people can can hear a piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, sure, let's give it a shot.
Speaker 3: All right, here we go, everybody with Songs of the
Speaker 3: hump Back Whale on s y sk.
Speaker 1: Here is part of the same song played at its
Speaker 1: natural speed and pitch, just the way other whales hear it.
Speaker 1: All the sounds are made by one whale, both the
Speaker 1: high squeaky tones and the low rumbling ones.
Speaker 2: Wow. What an album, right, Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean it's the only multi platinum album of animal Sounds,
Speaker 3: which is completely believable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't imagine there's too many more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it actually became a huge hit. It's
Speaker 3: the only multi platinum album of animal sounds, which I
Speaker 3: guess now they think about it is completely believable.
Speaker 2: Right, But if you just go listen to it's only
Speaker 2: like a half hour so long. I think it's a
Speaker 2: It says songs of the humpback whale. There's so many
Speaker 2: different songs that I'm like, there's got to be different
Speaker 2: species involved. It's just neat. Just go listen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's super cool. And the whole point of it
Speaker 3: all was is that it raised awareness. People were all
Speaker 3: of a sudden like wait, these like scientists said, I
Speaker 3: think they're communicating here, and they're super smart, like Chuck
Speaker 3: would later say in a podcast, And so save the
Speaker 3: Whales campaign all of a sudden had a kind of
Speaker 3: different rallying cry, which is like, hey, we're you know,
Speaker 3: these aren't just big dumb logs floating around in the ocean.
Speaker 3: These are really super smart animals to be protected.
Speaker 2: Right, and so an environmental ease, they became ambassador animals
Speaker 2: for the ocean as a whole. Yeah, this is now
Speaker 2: an animal that you can make people care about, and
Speaker 2: now we have to go get the word out. And
Speaker 2: by saving whales, you're also going to save everything else
Speaker 2: in the whales ecosystem that you're working to preserve.
Speaker 4: That's right. Should we take a break?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was about to say the same thing, so gen one, two, seven, eight,
Speaker 2: not you owe me nine cokes?
Speaker 3: Gosh, all right, I'm going to go to the store
Speaker 3: and we'll be right back. All right, We're back everybody. Uh,
Speaker 3: after a delay that you don't need to even know about, right.
Speaker 4: It's our business.
Speaker 2: Yeah? None.
Speaker 1: Ye.
Speaker 3: So Save the Whales is kicked off in the seventies,
Speaker 3: and I think you mentioned earlier on It's it's you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes it was in parallel with one another. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like just one group doing this, but everyone got on
Speaker 3: board with that same the same three words because it
Speaker 3: was a very unifying thing. And this is sort of
Speaker 3: a loose timeline of how it started. And it kicked
Speaker 3: off in nineteen seventy one when the Animal Welfare Institute
Speaker 3: got together with the Fund for Animals to officially launch
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies version of the Save the Whales campaign, right,
Speaker 3: and they started doing things like, you know, going to
Speaker 3: teachers conventions, you know, sending out you know, information and
Speaker 3: mailers and placing ads and saying like, hey, maybe we
Speaker 3: should boycott whaling nations that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in just a few years they started a pretty
Speaker 2: big boycott. I think in nineteen seventy four they said
Speaker 2: no Japanese goods, no Russian goods. Yes, we're even talking
Speaker 2: about vodka. They had to say that a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I think eighteen other groups signed on, and I
Speaker 2: think five million Americans said yes, no Russian goods, no
Speaker 2: Japanese goods, Let's save the whales hot damn for real.
Speaker 3: They got benefit concerts together. I know, David Bowie in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two had a very headlined, very f famous
Speaker 3: save the Whales benefit concert.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Of course Greenpeace would get on board early on, although
Speaker 3: they would get on board two years after it started
Speaker 3: with their project Ahab, which was a little surprising.
Speaker 2: They're like, no, wait, what about the panda. I thought
Speaker 2: we were all doing the panda. They're like, that's later,
Speaker 2: we'll do the panda next. We're going to save the
Speaker 2: whales now. Finally green Peace came around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, a lot of this early stuff
Speaker 3: was very just sort of local routes oriented, Like in
Speaker 3: the mid seventies, the Connecticut Cetacean Society just like literally
Speaker 3: went from town to town in Connecticut with save the
Speaker 3: Whales events and places like Mendocino, California had the Mendocino
Speaker 3: Whale Festival and founded the Mendocino Whale War. So it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, and this is where whaling is taking place,
Speaker 3: mainly in these like sort of little small coastal towns.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't like, you know, we're going to go
Speaker 3: to New York City and have this big event like
Speaker 3: they were doing it where it was going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were like different ways ways of doing this.
Speaker 2: Some were like we want to go like basically confront
Speaker 2: whaling ships where they're wailing. Other people are like, let's
Speaker 2: just we just need to raise awareness and raise money
Speaker 2: and all.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like this this thing that I'm doing is
Speaker 2: the right way to do it. It was like, okay,
Speaker 2: you're going to do that. I'll handle this over here
Speaker 2: and all together, we're going to save the whales. Even
Speaker 2: though there wasn't like necessarily a lot of coordination going on.
Speaker 2: It was just you know, you kind of look to
Speaker 2: your left and see somebody like trying to save the
Speaker 2: whales with you, and you just kind of give them
Speaker 2: like a finger gun and a wink and be like,
Speaker 2: right on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. I mean they're proposed moratoriums and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. And we'll get into the weeds about how
Speaker 3: that actually went down in a little bit. But one
Speaker 3: of the big things that happened in the seventies was
Speaker 3: that T shirt. In nineteen seventy seven, there was a
Speaker 3: woman named Maris Sidenstecker who had been selling these shirts
Speaker 3: for like three years, like really successfully since I think
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four, and she was sixteen years old old
Speaker 3: and seventy seven founded because of the success of these
Speaker 3: T shirts, founded her own conservation group called Save the Whales.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she had a small ad and Rolling Stone, just
Speaker 2: this recurring ad and that's how she got the word
Speaker 2: out about the T shirts. And then one other thing
Speaker 2: I saw about her. She was named Maris Sidenstecker the
Speaker 2: second because her mother was Maris Side and Stucker. The first. No,
Speaker 2: that's unusual but pretty cool. Huh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, usually that would be junior.
Speaker 2: Well, you just don't usually see that with women. It's
Speaker 2: mostly men.
Speaker 4: You know, Well, it's because men are the only people
Speaker 4: who think their name means something.
Speaker 2: Well, sure, the and Stecker women stuck their thumb in
Speaker 2: the eye of the patriarchy, is what they did.
Speaker 4: Oh, you put it on this building or on my
Speaker 4: parking spot.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about some of the tactics they took.
Speaker 2: Like I said, you'd look to your left, look to
Speaker 2: your right. All these people are taking these different approaches
Speaker 2: to it. It's all about saving the whales. One of
Speaker 2: the easiest ones is to just kind of go to
Speaker 2: the kids, because, as we'll see, if you can go
Speaker 2: to the younger generation, that's like the long game that
Speaker 2: you're playing, But it's also the one that's more likely
Speaker 2: to pay off. If you teach little kids that whales
Speaker 2: are smart, that they live in families, that they care
Speaker 2: about their babies just like your mom cares about you,
Speaker 2: those kids are going to grow up to see whales
Speaker 2: is not something that you kill for blubber or meat,
Speaker 2: but something that you need to protect from people who
Speaker 2: want to kill them for their blubber or meat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, So that was you know, that's kind
Speaker 3: of the starting point. I think is just educating the children.
Speaker 3: The children's we already talked about obviously, you know, public
Speaker 3: events like concerts and protests and boycotts. The merchandising, like
Speaker 3: the T shirt, Like that's not just like hey, let
Speaker 3: me make the shirt, like bumper stickers and shirts and
Speaker 3: buttons are a big part of any kind of movement
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one thing you mentioned, that Bowie concert. I saw
Speaker 2: somebody was writing about it and they said like this
Speaker 2: was the concert that made David Bowie like a superstar,
Speaker 2: like he was on the rise, and that that concert
Speaker 2: was where he turned the corner.
Speaker 4: Hmm, what year was it?
Speaker 2: Seventy two? Okay, it was supposedly a pretty good concert.
Speaker 2: He had lou Reid on stage and they played Sweet
Speaker 2: Jane and like two other songs I've never heard of. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it seemed like it probably was pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I wish I could have been there. That's a big
Speaker 4: regret for me as Bowie.
Speaker 3: He's on the short list of dudes I never got
Speaker 3: to see and had a chance to, you.
Speaker 2: Know, he's on the time Machine list.
Speaker 3: Uh Yeah, like a really regrettable one because he was
Speaker 3: around him playing shows that you know, I never was, like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go to that, Like, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't like, you know, Queen stopped playing shows. That's another
Speaker 3: one on my list. But they could stop playing shows
Speaker 3: in Atlanta when I was I don't even think they
Speaker 3: played there after. I was like seeing concerts, so you know.
Speaker 2: I see, I see. So that's not as regrettable as Bowie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I had the chance to see Bowie and
Speaker 3: did not take it.
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 4: That's like he's never going to leave us, is what
Speaker 4: I thought, right.
Speaker 2: Bowie will never die rules, Bowie lives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very sad.
Speaker 2: So one of the tactics that actually kind of emerge
Speaker 2: from this greenpiece is like, we need to catch up.
Speaker 2: We got to come up with our own kind of
Speaker 2: brand of doing this, and they came up with a
Speaker 2: term for it. They called it the mind bomb, which
Speaker 2: is basically like, now, yeah, it is very corny and
Speaker 2: nowadays you're like, well, yeah, that's of course you're gonna
Speaker 2: do something like that if you're you're an activist campaigning,
Speaker 2: you know, to say, save an animal. The mind bob
Speaker 2: was basically like showing people unfiltered photographs of what is
Speaker 2: actually going on. Yeah, and that's what they did They
Speaker 2: released a lot of photographs to the press internationally of
Speaker 2: whaling in action so that people could see how brutal
Speaker 2: it was. They made it no longer just a concept
Speaker 2: that people heard about save the whales, Save the whales.
Speaker 2: Now they can see for themselves why people were saying
Speaker 2: save the whales, because they were being brutalized by humans.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and those those one particular advance that they went
Speaker 3: on that kind of started it all and was in
Speaker 3: newspapers all over the country.
Speaker 4: I was in April of nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: Five aboard the Phyllis McCormick boat. Twelve activists got on
Speaker 3: the boat and they spent a couple of months out
Speaker 3: at sea trying to find some whaling boats. Finally, in
Speaker 3: June they caught up with a Russian fleet off the
Speaker 3: coast of California and just kind of followed it around
Speaker 3: for a little while, like using bullhorns and loud speakers
Speaker 3: to in Russian to beg them to stop killing whales,
Speaker 3: played like blast music at them and stuff, and that
Speaker 3: wasn't working. So eventually they were like, all right, we
Speaker 3: need to step it up just a little bit, and
Speaker 3: so they got on those little rubber speedboats like the
Speaker 3: little raft boats, and followed it around like a lot
Speaker 3: closer that you could do in those boats, and took
Speaker 3: some pretty horrifying pictures that made a like these close
Speaker 3: up pictures of harpooning whales made a big, big difference
Speaker 3: in the campaign.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw, just like that Bowie concert being where
Speaker 2: he turned to corners. Supposedly, this is where the same
Speaker 2: the whales effort really turned to corner too. Like it
Speaker 2: was again international news. There were plenty of newspapers that
Speaker 2: put it some of the pictures on their front page,
Speaker 2: and like it just really kind of captured people's attention,
Speaker 2: and so that whole mind bomb idea really kind of
Speaker 2: took off and spread not just from Greenpeace, but you
Speaker 2: know to other groups not just animal conservationists, and green
Speaker 2: Peace continued on. The ship that I grew up with
Speaker 2: that they used to do this with was the Rainbow Warrior,
Speaker 2: remember that one.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and by the way, for a second there
Speaker 3: a minute ago, I thought you were going to say,
Speaker 3: like the Bowie thing, this is where photography really.
Speaker 2: Took off, right exactly in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was like, oh, man, is that what's coming? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I totally remember the Rainbow Warrior. I didn't know you
Speaker 3: grew up on that boat, but that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, my dad was a mate. He was a
Speaker 2: Madiyah a Rainbow Warrior for many many years. We had
Speaker 2: to basically peel him off of the deck and be like,
Speaker 2: go get a different job, so he became an HVAC engineer.
Speaker 3: Eventually, we need shout out Australia because they had a
Speaker 3: green Piece affiliate called the Whale and Dolphin Coalition that was,
Speaker 3: like you said, kind of doing the same thing. They
Speaker 3: were like, hey, this is a really effective deal, so
Speaker 3: let's get out there. And we didn't say why. I
Speaker 3: thought it was corny and mind bombs because they would
Speaker 3: blow people's minds.
Speaker 2: Exactly with their pictures, for sure, and they did. But
Speaker 2: again it is a very corny way to put it.
Speaker 3: That's right, But that would be stepped up even more
Speaker 3: because you know, green Peace gets a little more aggressive,
Speaker 3: and then there's always one more like the Brad Pitt
Speaker 3: group in Twelve Monkeys. That's like, nah, they're not even
Speaker 3: taking it far enough. We need to actually, well, I
Speaker 3: guess sort of engage in sabotage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one I associated with the nineties of the
Speaker 2: Sea Shepherd. They were a conservation society founded I think
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven by a guy named Paul Wattson
Speaker 2: you have been a Green Pieace member. It was like,
Speaker 2: you guys are corny, I'm out of here, or I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do something like actually significant, not just follow whalers
Speaker 2: around and take pictures. He followed whalers around and tried
Speaker 2: to sink their boats by ramming his own boat into them.
Speaker 2: And he was so successful, Chuck, that I propose we
Speaker 2: do a short stuff just on the Sea Shepherd Conservation
Speaker 2: Society itself. They have sunk a lot of boats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said, mind bombs are effective. Real bombs are
Speaker 3: more effective.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. I mean they used at least one bomb
Speaker 2: on I think a ship called the Sierra, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, they rammed the Sierra a couple of times
Speaker 3: with their boat and damaged it. And then a few
Speaker 3: years later, no, I guess one year later. That was
Speaker 3: seventy nine, and nineteen eighty is when they planted an
Speaker 3: underwater bomb and sank that thing.
Speaker 4: And like you said, many others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just to be clear, Paul Watson and the
Speaker 2: Sea Shepherd Society, they've never injured a single person. They've
Speaker 2: never been indicted for breaking any law. These are pirate
Speaker 2: whaling ships. They're operating completely outside of the bounds of
Speaker 2: international agreements where they're hunting endangered species that are off
Speaker 2: the table. They're taking whales that are young that shouldn't
Speaker 2: be taken. They're like taking more than they're supposed to.
Speaker 2: Like it's a it's a big deal that these people
Speaker 2: are out there and that's that's why he's targeted them.
Speaker 2: And he said that in an interview. He's never lost
Speaker 2: a lawsuit that's been brought against him either, so he's
Speaker 2: feeling pretty good about what he's doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they you know, this wasn't like, hey, we're
Speaker 3: gonna I mean, it was definitely awareness, but like it
Speaker 3: it put an actual dentt in the whaling industry, Like
Speaker 3: they sank two of Spain's five only five whaling ships. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and if I had a better math brain, I could
Speaker 3: figure out the percentage, but that's probably forty something.
Speaker 2: So Yeah. Another thing that he did he would put
Speaker 2: out bounties on other pirate whaling ships. There was one
Speaker 2: called the Astrod, and the owner of the Astroid eventually
Speaker 2: just sold it because he couldn't trust the crew anymore
Speaker 2: that they weren't gonna sabotage it and take twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars reward because he definitely wasn't paying them twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars, right, And then there was one other
Speaker 2: thing that had this direct impact on whaling as an industry.
Speaker 2: Just him being out there sinking ships made whaling ships
Speaker 2: insurance rates go sky high. So there were some there
Speaker 2: like I can't afford the insurance anymore. I'm gonna stop
Speaker 2: doing illegal whaling.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: And he also he had that great line about mind
Speaker 3: bombs not being as effective as real bombs. He also
Speaker 3: had one about loose lips, and I think you can
Speaker 3: just fill in the.
Speaker 2: Rest, that's right.
Speaker 3: So they're making a lot of headway, you know, sinking
Speaker 3: these ships and raising awareness. But you know, we mentioned
Speaker 3: early on like just how big of a ubiquitous thing
Speaker 3: this was in the seventies, and it was like a
Speaker 3: legitimate pop culture phenomenon. I mean, it was right up
Speaker 3: there with like where's the beef in the nineteen eighties, ironically,
Speaker 3: as far as like slogans that people knew and wore
Speaker 3: on shirts and put in songs like Judy Collins and
Speaker 3: Kate Bush both sampled that songs of the Humpback Whale
Speaker 3: as you know, awareness and because it sounded cool. There
Speaker 3: was a Save the Whales board game in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: and we can tell you firsthand, if you have made
Speaker 3: it to board game territory, then you're part of pop culture. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently I was reading about the rules players are they
Speaker 2: cooperate rather than compete with one another to save the whales?
Speaker 4: Like games?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's definitely like difficult gameplay to come up with.
Speaker 2: I would guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they couldn't be like, all right, he's going to
Speaker 4: play the whaler.
Speaker 2: Right exactly? Everybody hates me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What was the pinnacle of the whole thing? Though, Chuck?
Speaker 2: It came in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, as everyone who's listening to the show knows,
Speaker 3: I know nothing of Star Trek, but I did know
Speaker 3: the plot at least of Star Trek. What is that
Speaker 3: for the voyage home, which is when the crew Captain
Speaker 3: Kirk and his crew went back to save the whales.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's I mean, yeah, a little game and
Speaker 2: a Star Trek, not a Star Trek episode an entire
Speaker 2: Star Trek movie dedicated to saving a whale. Saving the whales.
Speaker 2: That was a pretty big deal. So yes, this thing
Speaker 2: spread grew a tasta size, became part of just the
Speaker 2: regular culture. There are comic strips that mentioned it, just
Speaker 2: the casual mentions of it, the way it came up.
Speaker 2: When you look back at it, you're like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: was everywhere. I remember there's a Simpsons where Lisa develops
Speaker 2: a crush on Nelson Mounts and she goes to visit
Speaker 2: him at his house and he has a poster on
Speaker 2: the wall that says Nuke the whales. Yeah, and she goes,
Speaker 2: nuke the whales. He's like, got a nuke something, save
Speaker 2: the nuke touche.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember wearing We had Hippie Day in high
Speaker 3: school once a year where you you know, pretty self explanatory,
Speaker 3: and there was a picture of me, I believe, in
Speaker 3: the yearbook wearing my little hippie outfit and my prop
Speaker 3: was a little save the whales sign. So it was
Speaker 3: you know, I wasn't stepping out and trying something original
Speaker 3: by any means. It was like super And this was
Speaker 3: the mid to late nineteen eighties at this point.
Speaker 2: Right underneath it said Charles W. Bryant shows off his
Speaker 2: hippie outfit. Also, he's the best all round boy.
Speaker 4: It probably said something like that, except for the last part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big That was a big surprise
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 4: Those yearbook captions.
Speaker 2: They were pretty bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember we had a yearbook in high school where
Speaker 2: they misspelled tomorrow on the cover, say Tomory. It's a
Speaker 2: t MMO r RW too many ms, too many, yes,
Speaker 2: too many ms. I have my hands over my eyes
Speaker 2: right now because I'm just cringing thinking about it. Like
Speaker 2: they were. This was printed distributed before anybody noticed, like
Speaker 2: they were done.
Speaker 4: That is on the editor in chief.
Speaker 2: And on the the teacher.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the school sponsor.
Speaker 2: So okay, so I think we've established save the whales.
Speaker 2: It spread throughout pop culture. People's sympathies like definitely started
Speaker 2: to go toward the whales. But where the rubber meets
Speaker 2: the road is whaling going to stop. You need to
Speaker 2: go to the people who oversee stuff like this, like
Speaker 2: entire governments and national bodies. And just like they did
Speaker 2: in the thirties, they went back to the International Whaling
Speaker 2: Commission and said, hey, guys, what do you think about
Speaker 2: just stopping this, and the UNS a great idea in
Speaker 2: the IWC said no.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think the first try was they
Speaker 3: proposed a ten year moratorium on whaling.
Speaker 4: What year was that, I don't have that in front
Speaker 4: of me.
Speaker 2: It was nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, so that was seventy two.
Speaker 3: The next year, in seventy three, the UN Conference on
Speaker 3: Human Environment basically said, yeah, ten year moratorium. The IWC
Speaker 3: rejected it, and then the next year, in seventy four,
Speaker 3: the AWI called for a boycott of Japanese and Russian goods,
Speaker 3: and that same year eighteen other conservation groups got on
Speaker 3: board with that boycott. But again it would take I
Speaker 3: think until nineteen eighty two before they got back to
Speaker 3: real like voting on moratoriums.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So basically in nineteen yeah, nineteen eighty two, the IWC,
Speaker 2: the International Whaling Commission basically said let's tick up this
Speaker 2: vote again. I could not find what prompted this, so
Speaker 2: I just have to assume it was just a general
Speaker 2: awareness of saving the whales. So they voted again on
Speaker 2: a moratorium and it actually passed this time, and so
Speaker 2: they said, well, we'll give everybody four years to get
Speaker 2: ready but in the nineteen eighty six season, the quote
Speaker 2: was that the catch limits for the killing for commercial
Speaker 2: purposes of whales from all stocks any kind of whale.
Speaker 2: That's just me adding that parenthetical shall be zero. No
Speaker 2: whales going to be killed in the nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: whaling season, and it passed. Twenty five nations said yeah,
Speaker 2: seven said nay, yeah, And it came into effect in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, and the thing was chuck. It was
Speaker 2: originally just going to be a temporary measure, and just
Speaker 2: like in the tradition of the IWC and other whaling commissions,
Speaker 2: the point was to allow the whale stocks to replenish
Speaker 2: themselves so you could get back to whaling. But they
Speaker 2: never lifted the moratorium. It's just continued indefinitely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for sure. Should we talk about some of these
Speaker 4: stats and then take our second break.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we haven't taken our second break. We
Speaker 2: have not Okay, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4: All right. So it had a big impact.
Speaker 3: Obviously, these moratoriums at its peak in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: I think I mentioned they were killing about eighty thousand
Speaker 3: whales a year.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Three, the IWC estimated that eight hundred and twenty five whales,
Speaker 3: down from eighty thousand, were killed by you know, obviously
Speaker 3: only nations that object to the moratorium, and we'll get
Speaker 3: to those after the break. And also this we should
Speaker 3: point out, this doesn't include sort of the indigenous subsistence
Speaker 3: whaling that continues, or I think kind of leaving that alone, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that only total three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: eight across four different indigenous groups in three different countries
Speaker 2: that year. So all told, there was about twelve hundred
Speaker 2: whales killed, and like you said, down from eighty thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and since nineteen seventy eight, blue whale populations have
Speaker 3: increased about eight point two percent per year, bowhead about
Speaker 3: three point seven per year. Humpbacks I mentioned in Act
Speaker 3: one were close to extinction. I think in the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties there might have been as few as five thousand,
Speaker 3: and those babies are back over eighty thousand.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's take our breakschalk, and we'll come back
Speaker 2: and talk about how whaling still continues unfortunately.
Speaker 4: All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back, and I think we kind of
Speaker 2: alluded to it a couple of times, but we are
Speaker 2: not indigenous whaling using traditional methods for subsistence is in
Speaker 2: no way in the crosshairs of basically anybody who is
Speaker 2: opposed to whaling. Right, they don't even have crosshairs, Like
Speaker 2: people actually use the whales that they kill to feed
Speaker 2: themselves throughout the winter and stuff like that. Right, nobody's
Speaker 2: really got problems with that. It's commercial whaling, that industrial whaling.
Speaker 2: That's what everyone has a problem with, and it's still
Speaker 2: going on. Some stocks that actually did come back have
Speaker 2: started to become depleted again. And the way that it's
Speaker 2: going on is because some countries said, we're lodging an
Speaker 2: objection and we aren't going to comply with the whaling moratorium.
Speaker 2: Those countries were Iceland, Norway, and Japan, I should say
Speaker 2: are because they're all still doing that. And rather than
Speaker 2: Japan saying we're just going to whale for commercial purposes,
Speaker 2: they for some reason hid behind this one exception that
Speaker 2: was made in the moratorium that you could kill whales
Speaker 2: for scientific purposes, ostensibly to study them to help preserve
Speaker 2: the whales, basically, right, And Japan's like, yeah, every whale
Speaker 2: we kill using all of our commercial fleet, we're just
Speaker 2: studying that for science and that's just not what they've
Speaker 2: been doing.
Speaker 3: No, which is super shameful. And here's the other thing
Speaker 3: is there's two big points we're going to kind of
Speaker 3: hammer home. Here is in twenty twenty six, not many
Speaker 3: people at all are eating whale meat, and they aren't
Speaker 3: making a lot of money doing this.
Speaker 4: So they've done studies.
Speaker 3: Only two percent of Norwegians reported eating whale meat at
Speaker 3: least once a month. Consumption of whale meat in Japan
Speaker 3: is one percent of what it was from its peak
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties. And so in two six, Green
Speaker 3: pieces like, we need to get some independent research together.
Speaker 3: So they commissioned from the independent Nippon Research Center a
Speaker 3: study that found that ninety five percent of Japanese people
Speaker 3: very rarely or never eat whale meat, and they're stockpile
Speaker 3: they have a stockpile of uneaten frozen whale meat, and
Speaker 3: it doubled between two thousand and two and twoenty twelve.
Speaker 3: So like it's this old it seems like it's this
Speaker 3: older generation of nostalgia kind of digging in and all
Speaker 3: of this younger generation is just like just you know,
Speaker 3: once they die out, like no one's eating this stuff.
Speaker 4: Anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, theyre probably won't be whaling in twenty years, is
Speaker 2: one way to look at it. Unless there's some weird
Speaker 2: revival of a taste for whale meat among younger generations,
Speaker 2: doesn't seem likely. There's really the younger people are not
Speaker 2: into whale meat. The older people are because it's nostalgia
Speaker 2: food that takes them back to their childhood. And you know,
Speaker 2: post World War or two, when people ate a lot
Speaker 2: of whale meat. Norway's basically the same way Norway, so
Speaker 2: few people eat whale in Norway that basically one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of Norway's whale catch is exported to Japan. And
Speaker 2: yet you said, right, and Japan is like they have
Speaker 2: that stockpile. The reason they have a stockpile is because
Speaker 2: the Japanese government subsidizes its whaling industry to the tune
Speaker 2: of fifty million dollars a year. So that means that
Speaker 2: if you whale, you have a total guarantee that the
Speaker 2: Japanese government will buy the whale meat that you come
Speaker 2: and sell them, and the Japanese government just basically puts
Speaker 2: it in a freezer. So those whales died for nothing
Speaker 2: except for a handful of people that make some money.
Speaker 2: And like you said, the amount of money that we're
Speaker 2: talking about is relatively paltry when you're talking about an
Speaker 2: entire global industry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was.
Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, the US Naval Institute put out an
Speaker 3: article that said, the global revenue, like the entire world
Speaker 3: whaling industry revenue is about thirty one million bucks in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, And this is going, this is really going
Speaker 3: to drive it home. Norway's largest whaling company made a
Speaker 3: gross revenue of one point three million dollars, and they,
Speaker 3: along with the lobby and the government, spent about four
Speaker 3: times as much on campaigns to try to get people
Speaker 3: to eat whale meat. Then they even netted with their
Speaker 3: nation's largest whaling company.
Speaker 2: Right, So, and it's not like if they were making
Speaker 2: thirty one billion, that'd be a different thing. Forget the whales.
Speaker 2: They're making a bunch of money. But like this should
Speaker 2: be so easily overcome. Any reasonable person that seems like
Speaker 2: who cares about animal life would be like, guys, what
Speaker 2: are you doing. You're killing whales for thirty one million
Speaker 2: dollars a year. Just stop. We can't find anything else
Speaker 2: to do, right, And Japan seems to oppose it because
Speaker 2: they resent the international pressure that's been put on them
Speaker 2: over the years. Yeah, Norway seems to oppose it because
Speaker 2: they have some non indigenous coastal communities who have a
Speaker 2: tradition of whaling that they're just basically trying to keep
Speaker 2: this custom alive for these small coastal communities. And again,
Speaker 2: like I understand some people make their living like this,
Speaker 2: but it's not like this is an amount of money
Speaker 2: that could be subsidized in other ways by the government
Speaker 2: that could spare the whales lives while also employing people
Speaker 2: at the same rates that they're being employed by the
Speaker 2: whaling industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Japan spite is not a good reason to
Speaker 3: keep whaling. It's true, like we don't like this international pressure.
Speaker 3: Everyone's trying to get us to stop that. So we're
Speaker 3: not gonna stop it because just because you want us to.
Speaker 3: I know, Norway, I think they eventually stopped in recent
Speaker 3: years subsidizing the whaling industry, and I think in past
Speaker 3: years that was about half the entire value of the
Speaker 3: annual catch. So it's gonna definitely be going down in Norway.
Speaker 3: And you know you got enough in your freeze, are Japan?
Speaker 3: So like if you want to eat it, eat.
Speaker 2: That, right, Yeah. I mean, it's just it's bizarre, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem like the Japanese. It doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: something that would do.
Speaker 3: But it is an interesting conundrum from what everything I
Speaker 3: know about Japanese culture and people. But you know, I
Speaker 3: guess this is you know, a small part of that culture.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody's got a little spie to them.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, I know I do.
Speaker 2: So. Unfortunately, even if we just completely eradicate whaling, which
Speaker 2: again I predict is gonna happen in twenty years, within
Speaker 2: twenty years, God, I hope I'm right, there are other
Speaker 2: threats to whales that have become like even bigger, Like
Speaker 2: global warming is a big one. By catch, so like
Speaker 2: a lot of whales die because they end up in
Speaker 2: nets that are meant to catch other stuff like tuna,
Speaker 2: so that I think a lot of them die that
Speaker 2: way more than are hunted. And then ghost fishing. Remember
Speaker 2: we did an episode on ghost fishing. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 2: big problem for whales as well.
Speaker 3: You know, Ordinarily, in the past, Josh I would have said, well,
Speaker 3: in twenty years, we'll let you know. But if I'm
Speaker 3: still doing the show at seventy five years old. That
Speaker 3: I'm not going to say something has gone really right.
Speaker 3: That means something has gone really wrong. Okay, officially, fair enough,
Speaker 3: I'm with you on that one. I'm not announcing my retirement,
Speaker 3: but I'm not gonna do this till I'm seventy five.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'll hold you to that. Seventy two,
Speaker 2: seventy three.
Speaker 4: No one wants to hear Abe Simpson.
Speaker 2: So I guess that's it. One challenge for conservationist now, Chuck,
Speaker 2: I have to say is like you can't just say
Speaker 2: stop global warming, stop by catch, stop ghost fishing. There's
Speaker 2: all these different things. Before it was stop whaling, and
Speaker 2: it was very successful. Like you said, it's often compared
Speaker 2: to the ozone layer being tackled. The whales were definitely saved,
Speaker 2: but there's still now other problems that we have to
Speaker 2: work on too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you had, you'd have to have a
Speaker 3: T shirt collection about bycatch and global warming and everything else.
Speaker 3: Save the whales really just encapsulated everything nicely.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, or you could put it all on one
Speaker 2: T shirt, but you just walk around with a magnifying
Speaker 2: glass to hand to people. So they could read your
Speaker 2: T shirt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or maybe it just says equals and then on
Speaker 3: the back save the whales.
Speaker 2: Nice. Nice. I think that's it. Chuck just kind of
Speaker 2: dropped his mike. You couldn't hear it because Jerry edited
Speaker 2: it out, but I heard it, and that means it's
Speaker 2: time for listener, ma'am.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: We also took another break while I reattached my mic
Speaker 3: and I'm going to read this one. Hey, guys, near
Speaker 3: the end of your recent Middle Class episode, you discuss
Speaker 3: greenwashed recycling programs, and Chuck, I'm sad to say and
Speaker 3: confirm that your instincts regarding car battery recycling are correct.
Speaker 3: I've sent you an investigative piece by The New York
Speaker 3: Times which uncovered the reality of the recycling of batteries,
Speaker 3: namely that they are collected, shipped on freighters to another continent,
Speaker 3: and then gnually broken down by an exploited workforce. Rather
Speaker 3: than true recycling, it seems more of a resource harvesting,
Speaker 3: where many of the components are smelted down in ways
Speaker 3: that pollute the surrounding area and cause a lot of illness. Sadly,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure where this leaves any of us as
Speaker 3: to a better alternative when replacing our batteries.
Speaker 4: That is from Gabby, who says thanks for many years
Speaker 4: of learnings and companionship man.
Speaker 2: Why is everything so evil?
Speaker 4: I know it's sort of sort of not a great
Speaker 4: time to be alive.
Speaker 2: You know, I've kind of come to the same conclusion, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Very interesting time to be alive, But I think I
Speaker 2: would trade interesting for stable and calm and happy and
Speaker 2: yeah so evil.
Speaker 4: Yeah that's the T shirt.
Speaker 2: Equals save the Josh.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to be like Gabby, thanks a lot, Gabby.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Gabby and send us
Speaker 2: an email, that's a total downer. We're open to those
Speaker 2: kind of things. You can send it off to stuff
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 2: a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.