Letters

Any reasonably thoughtful essayist would conclude, upon reading Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick,” that the great white whale is a symbol, or allegory, of a larger concept. So, when the rotting carcass of a 40-ton humpback whale drifted, unprecedentedly, onto the shores of Quogue last week [“Dead Humpback Whale Floats Into Shinnecock Bay; Blunt Force Trauma Is the Likely Cause of Death,” 27east.com, June 2], my first response was: What does this all mean?

The experts said it was blunt force trauma, presumably caused by a collision with a ship. I have no reason to doubt their professional veterinarian judgment. But the larger question has to be asked: Why did this creature collide with a marine vessel? Or, more generally, why are 40 percent of all whale deaths attributable to collisions with marine vessels?

“Whale strikes” are not like bird strikes or deer accidents. Birds collide with airplanes flying 200 mph; deer collide with automobiles traveling 50 mph or higher. Large container ships travel at a mere 20 to 24 mph, and while there are defined shipping lanes, those might be miles wide, as opposed to a narrow country highway or air traffic control lane. The density of traffic in these oceanic lanes is 1/1,000th of land-based traffic. And, remember, these are not stupid creatures; whales, dolphins, orcas, etc., have some of the largest brain-to-body ratios of any mammal, including homo sapiens. Something doesn’t add up.

Recall, sound travels much better in the oceanic depths than does light. One reasonable theory is that the increase in oceanic “noise” caused by offshore wind farms, seismic-related ocean floor mapping and other activities have jammed the sensitive echolocation faculties of these creatures, thereby effectively “blinding” them.

But the “experts,” many affiliated in some way with the true “Leviathan,” which is the alternative-energy business-run-amok (ever drive by those fields of solar panels on the North Fork?), say that there is no solid evidence that the catastrophic death rate of whales along the East Coast has anything to do with noise caused by their activities.

Well, Darwin had no solid evidence, either, when he proposed his radical theory. But he did have substantial empirical evidence that was unexplained by current conventional wisdom. Same with Copernicus. The point is that the empirical data has produced a reasonable theory that someone in authority must study, in depth and in a hurry. The stakes are high.

Preservation of elephants, the world’s largest land mammal, has been ongoing for decades, is run by individual countries and has an identifiable villain: the poacher. Whales are less fortunate — they are the mammal-without-a-country with no easily identifiable villain. Actually, it’s worse than that: Those who ought to be protecting whales now operate a national energy conversion program that they neither understand nor execute correctly, which could be killing them.

Mark J. Schulte

Quogue