ENHS Nature Trails October 2003 Article 3

Unusual Summer Vacation
By Reida Kimmel

Chuck and I enjoyed a very unusual summer vacation, indulging a long held dream of mine to visit Iceland and Greenland. The latter place is not easy to visit, and so we chose to go on our first ever "tour," on a remodeled Russian research vessel which regularly travels the North Atlantic and the North and South Polar Regions. Our companions were all either Sierra Club members or members of various scientific organizations. After two days of visiting Iceland's amazing geological "hot spots," including geysers and the Mid Atlantic Ridge, which actually transverses the country, we boarded the Professor Molchanov for the two day sail through force ten and eleven gales and rough seas to East Greenland. As we were only making two to four knots an hour, there was plenty of time for lectures from our tour leaders, a glaciologist, a polar historian and two naturalists. There was also lots of time to "ride the waves" on the bridge. It was glorious. With only two villages, East Greenland is practically uninhabited, a mountainous arctic desert, which in September is as ice free as it ever is and blazing with the fall reds, golds, and bronzes of its dominant vegetation, dwarf willows, birches and blueberries. Our entire visit in East Greenland took place in Scoresby Sund, the largest fjord system on the world's largest Island. Zodiacs took us ashore for hikes and close to a glacier and a "city" of icebergs. I cannot describe how beautiful and peaceful were the land and water, how amazing it was to see mountains, as tall as 6,000 feet, rising from the dark water where giant icebergs floated. We went so far into the myriad of fjords that the ship came to uncharted waters. We walked at Frederiksdal in Nordvestfjord where no tourists had been before, and saw a family of musk oxen who could only have reached that place by traveling a long way over sea ice in the winter. Journeying back to Iceland we were lucky to have a calm passage to Iceland's Northwest Banks where the upwelling of the ocean currents make the waters rich in cod and plankton. There we stopped amidst a pod of approximately 40 humpback whales spouting and rolling about us. They came so close to the boat that you could hear them breathe. One even came right up to the bow before diving under. The white fins of the whales showed pale green in the water as they swam, and tails flashed as they dived, only to come up again, almost as close. This went on for almost an hour and a half, but it seemed like minutes, even to us who kept running out on the deck in our shirtsleeves to get a closer look.

If the weather is good, the whales can be counted on to be there to thrill passengers on any boat that goes by. But for how long? Morten, one of the naturalists on the ship, charged each and every one of us to come home and spread this important message: The whales of the world are in terrible trouble and they are being hunted heavily. People just do not know the extent of the carnage. On the beach at Syd Kap we saw a narwhal, one species we had so greatly hoped to see. It was a skeleton, beheaded. Apparently those wonderful 'horns' (really a tooth) still have value. The natives hunt very effectively with modern weapons and equipment. They have exterminated the Scoresby Sund walrus population. The skin of beluga whales is a delicacy. They are hunted so effectively that they will be extinct in West Greenland in 10 or 15 years. Pilot whales are hunted in the Faroes, where they are run up on to the beaches and their throats are cut. This year Iceland resumed whaling after a 25 year self- imposed moratorium. The whalers brought back 32 minke whales and the meat was sold in the supermarkets, as it is considered a great delicacy. Iceland does not need the meat. It's farmers produce an abundance of lamb, some beef and reindeer as well, not to mention that the economy's mainstay is fish. Icelanders justify whaling as "a cultural thing,'" as do the Japanese who hunt for meat and call it "research." Norwegians take over 400 whales a year! This take includes the very rare blue whale, the earth's largest mammal.

The report of an international committee studying whales is soon to be published. Morten, who served on the committee, says its findings will be even more devastating than conservationists could have expected. Iceland knew about the impending report, but its conservative government decided to permit the resumption of whaling anyway. I do not know what we can do to help stop this whale hunting which is threatening the continued existence of species already challenged by pollution and diminished food supplies. Letters to the governments involved, including Denmark, which oversees Greenland, are a first step. One hears occasionally that the gray whales that migrate off our coast are doing "so well" that it would be OK to resume hunting them. I'll never believe such off-the-cuff remarks again. A healthy ocean needs all of its species. We have meddled too much managing this and that. I think we should beware of the word "manage" when it is used in conjunction with the concept of "harvest."

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