From The Deep
A lighting and text work of light boxes scattered along the shoreline like stranded whales. The work explores facts, stories, myths and environmental concerns about whale strandings from throughout history to today.
Presented in The Performance Arcade 2019.
From The Deep
(Written in January 2019)
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47 million years ago the common ancestor of all whales moved from the land to the sea. She was a dog-like thing with legs, fur and teeth. She moved in slowly—as you do when the water is cold and you’re hesitant, looking over your shoulder at your pile of clothes, wondering if you shouldn’t just turn back, shake the sand out of your fur, put your paws on and go about your day. But over the eons all signs pointed to the water being the better place to be, so, ever so slowly, she got in and stayed in. It’s never that bad once you’re in.
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She changed to fit her new environment. Her hair thinned until she was almost smooth, her legs receded, and the tip of her tail spread. But her blood stayed warm. She morphed and multiplied into dolphin, porpoise and whale, and they multiplied. They swam around the planet, into every part of the sea. They swam through waterways that closed behind them when land masses shifted. They swam into the mouths of megalodons and into river systems where they forgot the taste of salt.
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Eventually they came swimming into human consciousness, into stories and myths. They carried Paikea, swallowed Jonah, were slain by Perseus and sunk the Pequod. They were the severed fingers of Sedna and swam into the sky as Cetus. They became puppets in children’s theatre and got satirical Twitter accounts. They were personally responsible for delaying the fireworks. And, sometimes, they swam back onto the land.
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"When fell disease and fatal draws nigh to them, they fail not to know it but are aware of the end of life. Then they flee the sea and the wide waters of the deep and come aground on the shallow shores. And there they give up their breath and receive their doom upon the land...Excellence and majesty attend them even when they perish, nor do they shame their glory even when they die."
–Oppian, Halieutica, c.200 AD.
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The largest recorded stranding in the world took place on Long Beach in the Chatham Islands in 1918, when over 1,000 pilot whales beached. Although there is no record of the specific reactions to this stranding, it can be assume it was greeted with joy, because, at that time, strandings meant free oil. Commercial whaling was in full swing in New Zealand. Blubber was boiled down into oil for leather, soap, cosmetics, candle wax and lamp light.
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Several Polynesian cultures have a version of the following myth: Tinirau is the guardian of fish. To thank him for blessing his child Tinirau lends the priest Kae his whale, Tutu-nui, to carry Kae home. But Kae forces Tutu-nui into shallow water and strands him there. Tutu-nui is killed and eaten by Kae and his people. In revenge, Tinirau sends his wife Hinauri with a party of women to capture Kae. The women sing Kae to sleep. When he wakes he is in Tinirau’s house again and about to die.
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A 2003 study on the link between sonar and whale deaths led to Spain banning sonar in naval exercises around the Canary Islands. The deadliest episode was in 2002, when 17 goose-beaked whales stranded over a 36-hour period while a naval exercise was occurring. Within a few hours of the sonar being deployed, the whales started showing up on the beach. They showed no signs of disease or damage on the outside.
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Bowhead whales aren’t endangered, but when the sea ice in the Arctic goes so will they. As the longest-lived mammals with a possible lifespan of hundreds of years, some bowheads survived the entire modern whaling era deep under the ice, where the whale ships couldn’t find them. A bowhead taken in 2013 had stone lances and a Victorian harpoon head embedded in its blubber.
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February 2017, Norway: 1 goose-beaked whale. 30 plastic bags found in stomach.
April 2018, Spain: 1 sperm whale. 29kg rubbish found in stomach, incl. rubbish bags, polypropylene sacks, ropes, net segments, a drum.
June 2018, Thailand: 1 pilot whale. 80 plastic bags found in stomach.
November 2018, Indonesia: 1 sperm whale. 6kg plastic waste found in stomach, incl. 115 plastic cups, 4 plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, 2 flip flops.
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January 2019, Masonboro Island, North Carolina: 1 sei whale. Emaciated. Single black plastic rubbish bag found in mouth.
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In Aotearoa in 2018:
12 sperm whales, South Taranaki.
2 sperm whales, Kaikoura.
1 sperm whale, Marlborough.
1 sperm whale, Karikari Peninsula.
1 sperm whale, Ohiwa.
10 pygmy whales, 90 Mile Beach.
145 pilot whales, Stewart Island.
51 pilot whales, Chatham Islands.
These whales were returned to tangata whenua. To Māori, whales are taonga. They are ancestors, they are whānau. When they strand, they are coming home.
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In Māori mythology, Tohorā and Kauri were brothers and lived on land. Tohorā loved his little brother and wanted to them go together to the whare of their father Tangaroa, the god of the sea. But Kauri refused to leave Papatūānuku, their mother earth. Tohorā went to sea alone but left Kauri his skin as a cloak to protect him. This is why Kauri’s bark is thin and full of oily resin.
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In 2018 Northland’s Ngāti Wai began investigating the connection between the dieback disease killing kauri trees—including the great 2000-year-old Tāne Mahuta—and the increase in whale strandings across the country.
Source: ‘What is the sea telling us?’ Māori tribes fearful over whale strandings, The Guardian, 3 January 2019
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"It's not just the whales but the whole of the marine life, and not only the marine life but the birds that feed on the small fishes, they've been affected, too. It gets us too in the longer term—humans—and it's humans that have caused it in the first place."
–Robert Urlich, Ngāti Kahu.
Source: Karikari, Far North whale stranding raises ocean plastic fears, NZ Herald, 25 November 2018
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It gets us too.
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