A Whale Of A Time

Charlie knows not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, they’ll go to it laughing

Call me Charlie. Some months ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no self-respect on my person, and nothing to interest me in Reykjavík, I checked the news to find that former prime minister Bjarni Benediktsson gave out a bunch of whaling permits. I want to get in on this action. I have white whales to kill. Where’s my permit? So come with me, on my journey to kill a whale. How unethical could it actually be?

Whaling is first and foremost an artform. These majestic creatures of the deep must be executed with the respect, dignity and reverence that they deserve… Get me my explosive tipped harpoon, I’m gonna blow the fucker sky high! Thankfully whale hunters patented the perfect whale slaughtering device in 1844. A bomb strapped to a fucking harpoon. And this premise has not changed… again, since 1844. The bombs are bombier and the harpoons are harpoonier, but there have been no advances in whale killing otherwise.

Loaded with explosives, I snuck aboard a schooner headed out into the cold. The conditions were rough, the rain beat against the bow of the ship almost as ferociously as the waves. The wind pierced my adorable little fishing outfit. And there, in the storm! “THAR SHE BLOWS!”

Aiming a harpoon for a lethal shot at a moving whale while on a moving ship is much harder than you’d think. Yet, she would not escape me, not this time. I let loose my harpoon and heard the crackle of the gunpowder. BOOM! The internal organs of the whale were scattered and scrambled as a ragged hole was ripped along its side. I got it! It was dead! What do you mean it isn’t dead?

Oh… well apparently, it takes roughly a slow 5 to 25 minutes for a whale to die in extreme agony. Her body is reeled in, painting the side of the schooner a deep red. As she is hoisted by hooks and nets, up unto a platform her blood and guts roil with the water. She’s trying to get air through a blowhole that is now frothing with blood, you can’t hear her gasping for breath. Whales do not make sound. They die silently. Maybe if she could scream, I’d have been able to tell she was begging for death.

This isn’t as fun as I’d hoped it would be.

Whaling is not fishing. It’s easy to kill a fish, it doesn’t require mass amounts of explosives to slowly bleed them out.

Whales are no small part of the global ecosystem. We could talk about whether or not it’s okay to hunt and kill whales just as much as you could about any animal you consume. But we know that whales die in pain. And for what? Why do we do this?

Whale meat isn’t really eaten in Iceland. Whale beer… tastes like shit. Companies promise untested and unfounded medicinal supplements made from whale, while others hold onto whaling because it’s a long-established (but not really) tradition. “It’s cultural!” But there are a plethora of things we did in the past that we have since grown out of.

There are few countries left that still engage in this outdated and frankly cruel practice, and Iceland is one of them. This was meant to stop. But Teflon Bjarni had to pull one more fast one before fucking off to obscurity. Like a shitty phoenix, rest assured he will rise from the ashes. I can only hope Icelanders wise up to the cruelty of whaling before then.

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