Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Save the Whales! About this episode In the 1970s, conservation groups around the world rose up to protect dwindling whale populations, some on the verge of extinction. They all worked under the same banner: Save the Whales! It turned out to be one of the most successful campaigns ever.
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1:41 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:51 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we are going crunchy, granola even today, talking about Saving the Whales, which Chuck, I don't know about you, but for me, that was like a big, a big part of my childhood. So this is a little bit nostalgic for me.
2:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, if you're insinuating I grew up under a rock in the 1970s, that is not the case.
2:16 Josh Clark? You did live on a gravel road.
2:17 Speaker 02 That's true.
2:18 Josh Clark? Where rocks involved.
2:19 Speaker 02 I lived among rocks, but yeah, I mean, I would go out on a limb and say that, well, this article says, Save the Whales is one of the most successful environmental conservation movements in history, but I'm from my mouth to thine ears, I'm going to say, I think the Save the Whales campaign is one of the most effective marketing campaigns across any genre in history.
2:42 Josh Clark? Wow, wow.
2:44 Speaker 02 It was that ubiquitous.
2:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, it was super ubiquitous. I think you caught more of it than me even like the stuff that I caught was a little bit of the after wash. I don't know.
2:55 Speaker 02 Like remember that thing?
2:57 Josh Clark? You were living, well, no, it was still a thing, but I think the peak, I missed the peak and you were living right through it because the seventies were like when this really started to ramp up big time. And I'm sure plenty of people out there have heard Save the Whales and it is like a pretty ubiquitous slogan. Used to be even more ubiquitous, like we're saying, but despite that, there wasn't like one person or group that you're like, yep, they started Save the Whales. It almost just kind of bubbled up into the collective consciousness and a bunch of different groups kind of started doing the same thing, sometimes working together, other times doing it independently, but the whole goal was
3:38 Josh Clark? to preserve declining whale populations from extinction and they all were kind of under the same banner of Save the Whales.
3:47 Speaker 02 Yeah. And we're going to talk a little bit about the actual saving of the whales. We're going to talk a little bit about that campaign, you know, slogan and how that was a thing. But if you want to talk about just the, the word, Save the Whales, that did not come about in the 1970s. That became a thing. And I mean, the phrase dates back to the 1800s, like the 1880s, but it really became a thing in the 1920s when whale conservation was first a little flicker on the radar of, I mean, what would be early conservationists. But in 1928, there was a mammalogist group that had a Save the Whales meeting in Washington,
4:27 Speaker 02 DC. And that's when it really kicked off as far as like, you know, there were buttons and there was, there was a satirical poem written about how ubiquitous it was in the 1920s and 30s. So it was definitely a big thing early on.
4:42 Josh Clark? Yeah, and in those articles, I think Anna helped us with this one. She dug up some articles from the 20s about those meetings and they were likening saving the whales to the bison populations that almost went extinct, you know, just a few decades before. So the lesson was learned by some and they're like, these whales aren't going to be around much longer either. And it wasn't just the US, it spread around the world, like other countries started kind of their own save the whale initiatives. It was clear that we were over whaling. And yet, despite that, in the 1920s and 30s, whaling was still generally antiquated. It was still the kind of whaling that you think of like New Bedford, Massachusetts, like the
5:24 Josh Clark? salty old sea dog with the peg leg and a spear in his other hand, a pipe, maybe even a parrot, like out there whaling with a harpoon that he's using with his hands. They killed a lot of whales like that, but it was nothing compared to the industrial whaling that started in like the middle of the 20th century.
5:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, they started having, you know, literal cannons mounted on the side of a ship that would shoot exploding harpoons. And by the 60s, they were taking 80,000 whales a year. Blue whales neared extinction, plenty of others in like grave danger. I am taking my first trip to Nantucket this summer, and that is, they have a whaling museum there that I'm gonna go to. I've never even been to that part of the country, really. So I'm eager to go, not to celebrate whaling, but just as a sort of historical museum kind of thing. Emily has already said that she won't be going.
6:22 Josh Clark? No, I can understand that. It would be kind of hard to take for sure.
6:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, but I mean, I imagine it's fairly interesting. It's just a blip in time, but it's not, I doubt if they're trying to sell you on whaling, or at least I hope not.
6:34 Josh Clark? Right, remember when, that's great about Nantucket, that is like to Dirty Limericks, what Enya is the crosswords.
6:42 Speaker 02 Wow.
6:43 Josh Clark? Yeah.
6:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's a nice pull.
6:46 Josh Clark? So a good comparison here is like, like I said, New Bedford, Massachusetts, that area, Nantucket, Cape Cod, I guess.
6:54 Speaker 02 Sure.
6:55 Josh Clark? They, they, this was like the seat of whaling internationally in like the mid 19th century. And over this, basically this decade of American dominance of whaling, they took 100,000 whales. Now, what you're saying is that by the 60s, they're taking almost that amount in one year, not a decade.
7:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:17 Josh Clark? That's how much it had gotten stepped up. And if the people in the 20s and the 30s were worried about whales going extinct before, using the kind of antiquated, original whaling techniques, this new stuff was really a threat to them.
7:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the 70s, it sort of merged with the post 60s crunchiness to really become a big thing. But going back to the 30s, in 1930, on the nose, the League of Nations got together and established the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics, just so they could see if it truly was a bison situation. And a year later, they're like, yep, it's pretty bad. They're declining big time. And so 22 nations signed an agreement at the Geneva Convention that year for the regulation of whaling to put some limits. And that was kind of the first move was in 1931.
8:06 Josh Clark? You know what else I saw too? Something else that saved the whales in the first, I guess, first half of the 20th century was the invention of the light bulb, because people didn't need whale oil for lamps anymore.
8:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I guess we should say that. They whaled because that blubber was oil for lamps and people also ate it. And also, you know, we're not going to not talk about indigenous populations where it's,
8:31 Josh Clark? right.
8:32 Speaker 02 You know, they depended on that stuff for sustenance and some still do. So, yeah, that's why they whaled.
8:39 Josh Clark? Well, also, that's why some of these early, I guess, international agreements on conserving whale stocks were created. Not because they're like, whaling's wrong. They were like, we need to be able to keep whaling in the future, so let's not overdo it now. Let's figure out what is a sustainable amount. That's what the earliest agreements were for.
8:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's stop whaling some so we can keep whaling.
9:04 Josh Clark? Exactly.
9:06 Speaker 02 So that was the first one, 31. 37 came along and 10 nations signed on to another one called the International Agreement for the Regulation of Whaling. Also put some more limits. It banned blue, humpback, fin and sperm whales under certain lengths. But it was still declining. So in 1946, the International Whaling Commission, they just keep starting these commissions and getting member countries on board. And it's really not making much of a difference.
9:33 Josh Clark? Right.
9:34 Speaker 02 And they did that in 46 again with 14 member nations. But the 46 one, you know, aligned, or I guess the 37 aligned with World War II. So they were like, we can't go without this oil like at this time. So it just, it didn't really have any teeth.
9:47 Josh Clark? Yeah, not only that, they needed like meat. So they weren't in a position, the world wasn't in a position after World War II to be like, no, let's not, let's stop taking this meat. Like whale meat fed a lot of people who didn't have access to other kinds of protein from World War II. So yeah, those agreements were kind of like, no, this isn't going to work right now. And then as things started to ramp up, because now there was a much bigger market that hadn't been there before for whale meat, like a global market, that's why it became this industrial, factory farming, like version of whaling, right? So because there was just a lot more money to be made.
10:28 Josh Clark? So the people who finally started the Save the Whales campaign in the 70s had a really huge hill to climb. The biggest hill anyone who was against whaling itself ever had to climb in the history of whaling.
10:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. But it was, like I said, kind of the right time coming out of the 60s. There were a lot more just sort of environmental concerns popping up. The EPA was a little more in the limelight and it was just, there was more awareness of that kind of thing. And there was a big perspective shift that happened that was much, much different from those earlier ones, like you were saying, where it was like, let's conserve so we can keep whaling. Like this was a legitimate, like, hey, these things we're realizing are intelligent. And that started happening in the 1950s, like finding out that whales were smart.
11:12 Josh Clark? Yeah.
11:13 Speaker 02 Thanks to a Navy engineer named Frank Watlington was a really big change.
11:16 Josh Clark? Well, yeah, he liked to, I almost have the sense that it was in his spare time, record with a hydrophone, the underwater sounds of the Navy like shooting off bombs. And he accidentally caught some whale songs of some Baleen whales. And he was like, this is, I've not heard stuff like this before. It seems like there's a pattern to it or a rhythm, or they keep coming back to like a chorus, I don't know. So he gave it to some marine biologists who actually took it and released it as an album in 1970, Songs of the Humpback Whale. And have you listened to it?
11:52 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Like, most of my adult life.
11:55 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's just so mellow, it's so ambient, that you're like, wait, did they add some synth here? And no, it's just nothing but whale songs, right?
12:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, Brian Eno had nothing to do with it.
12:05 Josh Clark? Right. So, I can't imagine, this was released in 1970, I can't imagine between 1970 and 1980, how much acid was dropped, listening to the album Songs of the Humpback Whale, man. It was like made for it.
12:20 Speaker 02 So, maybe, I think, this has got to be fair use, we can just play a short snippet just so people can hear a piece? Yeah?
12:27 Josh Clark? Okay, sure, let's give it a shot.
12:28 Speaker 02 All right, here we go, everybody, with Songs of the Humpback Whale, on S Y S K.
12:41 Speaker 03 Here is part of the same song played at its natural speed and pitch, just the way other whales hear it. All the sounds are made by one whale, both the high squeaky tones and the low rumbly ones.
13:14 Josh Clark? Wow. What an album, right?
13:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it's the only multi-platinum album of animal sounds, which is completely believable.
13:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, I can't imagine there's too many more.
13:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it actually became a huge hit. It's the only multi-platinum album of animal sounds, which I guess now they think about it is completely believable.
13:35 Josh Clark? Right. But if you, if you, just go listen to it. It's only like a half hour or so long. I think it's a, it says Songs of the Humpback Whale. There's so many different songs that I'm like, there's gotta be different species involved. It's just neat. Just go listen.
13:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's super cool. And the whole point of it all was is that it raised awareness. People were all of a sudden like, wait, these, like scientists said, I think they're communicating here. And they're super smart, like Chuck would later say in a podcast. And so Save the Whales campaign all of a sudden had a, had a kind of different rallying cry, which is like, hey, we're, you know, these aren't just big dumb logs floating around in the ocean. These are really super smart animals to be protected.
14:14 Josh Clark? Right. And so in environmental ease, they became ambassador animals for the ocean as a whole.
14:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:22 Josh Clark? This is now an animal that you can make people care about. And now we have to go get the word out. And by saving whales, you're also going to save everything else in the whales ecosystem that you're, you're working to preserve.
14:35 Speaker 02 That's right. Should we take a break?
14:37 Josh Clark? Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. So Jinx, 123456789, you owe me nine cokes.
14:43 Speaker 02 Oh, gosh. All right. I'm gonna go to the store and we'll be right back.
15:01 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we gonna do all this?
15:03 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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15:22 Speaker 04 It was good to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
15:30 Josh Clark? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
15:36 Speaker 05 Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.
15:42 Speaker 02 And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
15:45 Speaker 05 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data's flowing is a beautiful thing.
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15:53 Josh Clark? AT&T, connecting fans to what they love.
15:57 Speaker 06 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
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16:06 Josh Clark? Sure.
16:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.
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17:01 Josh Clark? Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of Vivgart, Vivgart is also known as its generic name, Fgartigamod Alpha F Cab, you'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.
17:25 Speaker 02 Join host Andra Stratten as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection.
17:37 Josh Clark? These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivgart on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
18:04 Speaker 02 All right, we're back, everybody, after a delay that you don't need to even know about, right? It's our business.
18:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, none of you.
18:13 Speaker 02 So Save the Whales is kicked off in the 70s. And I think you mentioned earlier on, it's, you know, sometimes was in parallel with one another. It wasn't like just one group doing this, but everyone got on board with that same, the same three words, because it was a very unifying thing. And this is sort of a loose timeline of how it started. And it kicked off in 1971 when the Animal Welfare Institute got together with the Fund for Animals to officially launch the 1970s version of the Save the Whales campaign.
18:43 Josh Clark? Right.
18:44 Speaker 02 And they started doing things like, you know, going to teachers' conventions, you know, sending out, you know, information and mailers and placing ads and saying like, hey, maybe we should boycott whaling nations, that kind of stuff.
19:00 Josh Clark? Right. Yeah. In just a few years, they started a pretty big boycott, I think in 1974. They said, no Japanese goods, no Russian goods. Yes, we're even talking about vodka. They had to say that a lot.
19:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:13 Josh Clark? And I think 18 other groups signed on and I think 5 million Americans said, yes, no Russian goods, no Japanese goods. Let's save the whales hot damn.
19:23 Speaker 02 For real. They got benefit concerts together. I know David Bowie in 1972 had a very, he headlined a very famous Save the Whales benefit concert. You know, of course, Greenpeace would get on board early on, although they would get on board two years after it started with their Project Ahab, which was a little surprising.
19:43 Josh Clark? They're like, no, wait, what about the panda? I thought we were all doing the panda. They're like, that's later. We'll do the panda next. We're going to save the whales now. Finally, Greenpeace came around.
19:53 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, you know, a lot of this early stuff was very just sort of local roots oriented, like in the mid 70s, the Connecticut Cetacean Society just like literally went from town to town in Connecticut with Save the Whales events and places like Mendocino, California, had the Mendocino Whale Festival and founded the Mendocino Whale War. So it's like, you know, and this is where whaling is taking place mainly in these like sort of little small coastal towns. So it wasn't like, you know, we're going to go to New York City and have this big event. Like they were doing it where it was going on.
20:29 Josh Clark? Yeah. And there were like different ways of doing this. Some were like, we want to go like basically confront whaling ships where they're whaling. Other people are like, let's just, we just need to raise awareness and raise money and all like, it wasn't like this, this thing that I'm doing is the right way to do it. It was like, okay, you're going to do that. I'll handle this over here and all together, we're going to save the whales. Even though there wasn't like necessarily a lot of coordination going on, it was just, you know, you'd kind of look to your left and see somebody like trying to save the whales with you and you just kind of give them like a finger gun and a wink and be like right on.
21:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. I mean, they proposed moratoriums and stuff like that and we'll, we'll get into the weeds about how that actually went down in a little bit. But one of the big things that happened in the 70s was that T-shirt. In 1977, there was a woman named Maris Seidenstecker. Who had been selling these shirts for like three years, like really successfully since I think 1974. And she was 16 years old and in 77 founded, because of the success of these T-shirts, founded her own conservation group called Save the Whales.
21:39 Josh Clark? Yeah, she had a small ad in Rolling Stone, just this recurring ad, and that's how she got the word out about the T-shirts. And then one other thing I saw about her, she was named Maris Seidenstecker the second, because her mother was Maris Seidenstecker the first.
21:53 Speaker 02 No, that's unusual, but pretty cool, huh? Yeah, usually that would be junior.
21:58 Josh Clark? Well, you just don't usually see that with women. It's mostly men, you know?
22:02 Speaker 02 No, it's because men are the only people who think their name means something.
22:06 Josh Clark? Well, sure. The Seidenstecker women stuck their thumb in the eye of the patriarchy is what they did.
22:11 Speaker 02 You put it on this building or on my parking spot.
22:15 Josh Clark? So let's talk about some of the tactics they took. Like I said, you'd look to your left, look to your right. All these people are taking these different approaches to it. It's all about saving the whales. One of the easiest ones is to just kind of go to the kids. Because as we'll see, if you can go to the younger generation, that's like the long game that you're playing, but it's also the one that's more likely to pay off. If you teach little kids that whales are smart, that they live in families, that they care about their babies, just like your mom cares about you, those kids are going to grow up to see whales as not something that you kill for blubber or meat, but something that you need to protect from people who want to kill them for their blubber or meat.
22:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. So that was, you know, that's kind of the starting point, I think, is just educating the children, the children's. We already talked about, obviously, you know, public events like concerts and protests and boycotts. The merchandising, like the T-shirt, like, that's, that's not just like, hey, let me make this shirt. Like bumper stickers and shirts and buttons are a big part of any kind of movement like that.
23:19 Josh Clark? Yeah. One thing, you mentioned that Bowie concert. I saw somebody was writing about it and they said, like, this was the concert that made David Bowie like a superstar. Like he was on the rise and that that concert was where he turned the corner.
23:33 Speaker 02 Hmm. What year was it?
23:35 Josh Clark? Seventy-two.
23:36 Speaker 02 Okay.
23:37 Josh Clark? It was supposedly a pretty good concert. He had Lou Reed onstage and they played Sweet Jane and like two other songs I've never heard of. Um, yeah, it seemed like it probably was pretty cool.
23:48 Speaker 02 I wish I could have been there. That's a big regret for me is Bowie. He's on the shortlist of dudes I never got to see and had a chance to, you know?
23:57 Josh Clark? He's on the time machine list?
23:59 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, like a really regrettable one because he was around and playing shows that, you know, I never was like, no, I'm not going to go to that. Like, but it wasn't like, you know, Queen stopped playing shows. That's another one on my list, but they stopped playing shows in Atlanta when I was, I don't even think they played there after I was like seeing concerts. So, you know?
24:17 Josh Clark? I see. I see. So that's not as regrettable as Bowie?
24:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, because I had the chance to see Bowie and did not take it.
24:24 Josh Clark? I understand.
24:25 Speaker 02 It was like, he's never going to leave us is what I thought.
24:28 Josh Clark? Right. Bowie will never die. Bowie rules. Bowie lives.
24:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, very sad.
24:33 Josh Clark? So, um, one of the tactics that actually kind of emerged from this Greenpeace is like, we need to catch up. We got to come up with our own kind of brand of doing this. And they came up with a term for it. They called it the mind bomb.
24:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:46 Josh Clark? Which is basically like, now, yeah, it is very corny. Nowadays, you're like, well, yeah, that's, of course you're going to do something like that if you're, you're an activist campaigning, you know, to say, save an animal. Um, the mind bomb was basically like showing people, um, unfiltered photographs of what is actually going on.
25:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:06 Josh Clark? And that's what they did. They released a lot of photographs to the press internationally of whaling in action so that people could see how brutal it was. They made it no longer just a concept that people heard about, save the whales, save the whales. Now they could see for themselves why people were saying, save the whales, because they were being brutalized by humans.
25:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. And there was, there was one particular, uh, adventure that they went on that, um, kind of started it all and was in newspapers all over the country. That was in April of 1975, aboard the Phyllis McCormick boat. Twelve activists got on that boat and they spent a couple of months out at sea trying to find some whaling boats. Finally, in June, they caught up with a Russian fleet off the coast of California and just kind of followed it around for a little while, like using bullhorns and loudspeakers to, in Russian, to beg them to stop killing whales, play like blast music at them and stuff. And that wasn't working. So eventually they were like, all right, we need to step it up just a little bit. And so they got on those little rubber speedboats, like the little raft boats, and followed it around like a
26:12 Speaker 02 lot closer that you could do in those boats and like took some pretty horrifying pictures that like made a, like these closer pictures of harpooning whales made a big, big difference in the campaign.
26:24 Josh Clark? Yeah, I saw just like that Bowie concert being where he turned a corner supposedly. This is where the Save the Whales effort really turned a corner, too. Like it was, again, international news. There were plenty of newspapers that put it, some of the pictures on their front page and like, it just really kind of captured people's attention. And so that whole mine bomb idea really kind of took off and spread, not just from Greenpeace, but, you know, to other groups, not just animal conservationists. And Greenpeace continued on. The ship that I grew up with, that they used to do this with was the Rainbow Warrior. Remember that one?
26:58 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. And by the way, for a second there, a minute ago, I thought you were going to say, like the Bowie thing, this is where photography really took off.
27:06 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. In 1975.
27:10 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was like, oh, man, is that what's coming? Yeah, I totally remember the Rainbow Warrior. I didn't know you grew up on that boat, but that's pretty cool.
27:16 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah. My dad was a mate. He was a matey on the Rainbow Warrior for many, many years. We had to basically peel him off of the deck and be like, go get a different job. So he became an HVAC engineer eventually.
27:30 Speaker 02 We need to shout out Australia because they had a Greenpeace affiliate called the Whale and Dolphin Coalition that was, like you said, kind of doing the same thing. They were like, hey, this is a really effective deal. So let's get out there. And, and we didn't say, well, I thought it was corny, mine bomb, it's because they would blow people's minds.
27:46 Josh Clark? Exactly.
27:47 Speaker 02 With their pictures.
27:48 Josh Clark? For sure. And they did. But again, it is a very corny way to put it.
27:52 Speaker 02 That's right. But that would be stepped up even more because, you know, Greenpeace gets a little more aggressive and then there's always one more, like the Brad Pitt group and 12 monkeys. It's like, no, they're not even taking it far enough. We need to actually,
28:09 Speaker 02 well, I guess, sort of engage in sabotage.
28:12 Josh Clark? Yeah, this, this one I associate with the 90s is Sea Shepherd. They were a conservation society founded, I think in 1977 by a guy named Paul Watson, who had been a Greenpeace member. It was like, you guys are corny. I'm out of here. Or I'm going to do something like, like actually significant, not just follow whalers around and take pictures. He followed whalers around and tried to sink their boats by ramming his own boat into them. And he was so successful, Chuck, that I proposed we do a short stuff just on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society itself. They have sunk a lot of boats.
28:46 Speaker 02 Yeah. He said, mine bombs are effective. Real bombs are more effective.
28:51 Josh Clark? Pretty much. I mean, they used at least one bomb on, I think, a ship called the Sierra, right?
28:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. Well, they rammed the Sierra a couple of times with their boat and damaged it. And then a few years later, or no, I guess one year later, that was 79, and 1980 is when they planted an underwater bomb and sank that thing. And like you said, many others.
29:12 Josh Clark? Yeah. And just to be clear, Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Society, they have never injured a single person.
29:18 Speaker 02 Right.
29:19 Josh Clark? They've never been indicted for breaking any law. These are pirate whaling ships. They're operating completely outside of the bounds of international, like agreements.
29:30 Speaker 02 Right.
29:30 Josh Clark? Where they're hunting endangered species that are off the table. They're taking whales that are young, that shouldn't be taken. They're like taking more than they're supposed to. Like, it's a, it's a big deal that these people are out there. And that's, that's why he's targeted them. And he said that in an interview, he's never lost a lawsuit that's been brought against him either. So he's feeling pretty good about what he's doing.
29:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. And they, you know, this wasn't like, hey, we're gonna, I mean, it was definitely awareness, but like, it, it put an actual dent in the whaling industry. Like, they sank two of Spain's five, only five whaling ships.
30:11 Josh Clark? Yeah.
30:11 Speaker 02 And if I had a better math brain, I could figure out the percentage, but it's probably 40 something.
30:17 Josh Clark? So yeah, another thing that he did, he would put out bounties on other pirate whaling ships. There was one called the Astrid and the owner of the Astrid eventually just sold it because he couldn't trust the crew anymore, that they weren't going to sabotage it and take the $25,000 reward. Cause he definitely wasn't paying them $25,000, right? And then there was one other thing that, that had this direct impact on whaling as an industry. Just him being out there sinking ships made whaling ships insurance rates go sky high. So there were some there like, I can't afford the insurance anymore. I'm going to stop doing illegal whaling.
30:54 Speaker 02 That's right. And he also, he had that great line about mind bombs not being as effective as real bombs. He also had one about loose lips and I think you can just fill in the rest.
31:03 Josh Clark? That's right.
31:04 Speaker 02 So they're, they're making a lot of headway, uh, you know, sinking these ships and raising awareness. But, you know, we mentioned early on, like just how big of a ubiquitous thing this was in the seventies. And it was like a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. I mean, it was, it was right up there with like, where's the beef in the 1980s? Ironically, um, as far as like slogans that people knew and wore on shirts and put in songs like, Judy Collins and Kate Bush both sampled that Songs of the Humpback Whale as, you know, awareness and cause it sounded cool. There was a Save the Whales board game in 1978 and we can tell you firsthand, if you have made it to board game territory, then you're part of pop culture.
31:46 Josh Clark? Yeah. Apparently I was reading about the rules, um, players are, um, they cooperate rather than compete with one another to save the whales.
31:53 Speaker 02 I like cooperative games.
31:55 Josh Clark? I mean, that's definitely like difficult gameplay to come up with, I would guess.
32:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, they couldn't be like, all right, who's going to play the whaler?
32:04 Josh Clark? Exactly. Everybody hates me.
32:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:07 Josh Clark? What was the pinnacle of the whole thing though, Chuck? It came in 1986.
32:10 Speaker 02 Oh yeah. Uh, as everyone who's listened to the show knows, I know nothing of Star Trek, but I did know the plot at least of Star Trek, uh, what is that four, the voyage home, which is when the, the crew, Captain Kirk and his crew went back to save the whales.
32:28 Josh Clark? Yeah, so that's, I mean, yeah.
32:31 Speaker 02 A little late.
32:32 Josh Clark? A board game and a Star Trek, not a Star Trek episode, an entire Star Trek movie dedicated to saving a whale, saving the whales. That was a pretty big deal. So yes, this thing spread, grew, metastasized, became part of just the regular culture. There were comic strips that mentioned it. Just the casual mentions of it, the way it came up. When you look back at it, you're like, yeah, this was everywhere. I remember there's a Simpsons where Lisa develops a crush on Nelson Muntz, and she goes to visit him at his house, and he has a poster on the wall that says, "Nuke the whales."
33:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:08 Josh Clark? And she goes, "Nuke the whales?" He's like, "Gotta nuke something."
33:11 Speaker 02 Save the nukes.
33:12 Josh Clark? She says, "Touche."
33:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, I remember wearing, we had hippie day in high school once a year where you, you know, pretty self-explanatory. And there was a picture of me, I believe, in the yearbook, wearing my little hippie outfit, and my prop was a little "Save the whales" sign. So it was, you know, I wasn't stepping out and trying something original by any means. It was like, super, and this was the mid to late 1980s at this point.
33:40 Josh Clark? Right. Underneath it said, "Charles W. Bryant shows off his hippie outfit. Also, he's the best all-around boy."
33:48 Speaker 02 It probably said something like that, except for the last part.
33:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, that was a big, that was a big surprise for you.
33:55 Speaker 02 Man, those yearbook captions.
33:57 Josh Clark? They were pretty bad. I remember, we had a yearbook in high school where they misspelled "tomorrow" on the cover.
34:04 Speaker 02 Did it say "tomari?"
34:05 Josh Clark? It said, "T-O-M-M-O-R-R-O-W."
34:10 Speaker 02 It said, "Too many Ms."
34:13 Josh Clark? Too many, yes, too many Ms. I have my hands over my eyes right now because I'm just cringing thinking about it. Like, they were, this was printed, distributed before anybody noticed. Like, they were done.
34:24 Speaker 02 That is on the editor in chief.
34:27 Josh Clark? And on the, um, the, um, teacher advisor.
34:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, the school sponsor.
34:33 Josh Clark? So, okay, so I think we've established Save the Whales, it it's spread throughout pop culture. People's sympathies like definitely started to go toward the whales. But where the rubber meets the road, is whaling going to stop? You need to go to the people who oversee stuff like this, like entire governments and national bodies. And just like they did in the 30s, they went back to the International Whaling Commission and said, hey, guys, what do you think about just stopping this? And the UN said, great idea. And the IWC said, no.
35:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I think the first trial was they proposed a 10 year moratorium on whaling. What year was that? I don't have that in front of me.
35:13 Josh Clark? It was 1972.
35:15 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah, so that was 72. The next year in 73, the UN Conference on Human Environment basically said, yeah, 10 year moratorium. The IWC rejected it. And then the next year in 74, the AWI called for a boycott of Japanese and Russian goods. And that same year, 18 other conservation groups got on board with that boycott. But again, it would take, I think, until 1982 before they got back to real like voting on moratoriums.
35:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, so basically in 19, yeah, 1982, the IWC, the International Whaling Commission, basically said, let's take up this vote again. I could not find what prompted this. So I just have to assume it was just the general awareness of saving the whales. So they voted again on a moratorium and it actually passed this time. And so they said, well, we'll give everybody four years to get ready. But in the 1986 season, the quote was that the catch limits for the killing for commercial purposes of whales from all stocks, any kind of whale, that's just me adding that parenthetical, shall be zero. No whales going to be killed in the 1986 whaling season. And it passed.
36:29 Josh Clark? 25 nations said yay, seven said nay. And it came into effect in 1986. And the thing was, Chuck, it was originally just going to be a temporary measure. And just like in the tradition of the IWC and other whaling commissions, the point was to allow the whale stocks to replenish themselves so you could get back to whaling. But they never lifted the moratorium. It's just continued indefinitely.
36:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Should we talk about some of these stats and then take our second break?
36:59 Josh Clark? Oh my gosh, we haven't taken our second break?
37:01 Speaker 02 We have not.
37:02 Josh Clark? Okay, yeah, definitely.
37:03 Speaker 02 All right, so it had a big impact, obviously, these moratoriums. At its peak in the 1960s, I think I mentioned they were killing about 80,000 whales a year. In 2023, the IWC estimated that 825 whales, down from 80,000, were killed by, you know, obviously only nations that objected to the moratorium, and we'll get to those after the break. And also, we should point out, this doesn't include sort of the indigenous subsistence whaling that continues, or I think kind of leaving that alone, right?
37:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, I mean, that only totaled 368 across four different indigenous groups in three different countries that year. So all told, there was about 1,200 whales killed, and like you said, down from 80,000.
37:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, and since 1978, blue whale populations have increased about 8.2% per year. Bowhead, about 3.7% per year. Humpbacks, I mentioned in Act One, were close to extinction. I think in the 1960s, there might have been as few as 5,000, and those babies are back over 80,000 now.
38:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, so let's take our break, Chuck, and we'll come back and talk about how whaling still continues, unfortunately.
38:13 Speaker 02 All right, we'll be right back.
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41:02 Josh Clark? All right. We're back. And I think we've kind of alluded to it a couple of times, but we are not. Indigenous whaling using traditional methods for subsistence is in no way in the crosshairs of basically anybody who is opposed to whaling, right?
41:17 Speaker 02 They don't even have crosshairs.
41:18 Josh Clark? Like, people actually use the whales that they kill to feed themselves throughout the winter and stuff like that, right? Nobody's really got problems with that. It's commercial whaling, that industrial whaling, that's what everyone has a problem with, and it's still going on. Some stocks that actually did come back have started to become depleted again. And the way that it's going on is because some countries said, "We're lodging in objection, and we aren't going to comply with the whaling moratorium." Those countries were Iceland, Norway, and Japan. I should say "are" because they're all still doing that. And rather than Japan saying, "We're just gonna whale for commercial purposes",
41:59 Josh Clark? they, for some reason, hid behind this one exception that was made in the moratorium, that you could kill whales for scientific purposes ostensibly to study them to help preserve the whales, basically, right? And Japan's like, "Yeah, every whale we kill, using all of our commercial fleet, we're just studying that for science." And that's just not what they've been doing.
42:22 Speaker 02 No, which is super shameful. And here's the other thing, is there's two big points we're gonna kind of hammer home here, is in 2026, not many people at all are eating whale meat, and they aren't making a lot of money doing this. So, they've done studies, only 2% of Norwegians reported eating whale meat at least once a month.
42:45 Speaker 02 Consumption of whale meat in Japan is 1% of what it was from its peak in the 1960s. And so, in 2006, Greenpeace was like, "We need to get some independent research together." So, they commissioned, from the independent Nippon Research Center, a study that found that 95% of Japanese people very rarely or never eat whale meat, and their stockpile, they have a stockpile of uneaten frozen whale meat, and it doubled between 2002 and 2012. So, like, it's this old, it seems like it's this older generation of nostalgia.
43:22 Speaker 02 Kind of digging in and all of this younger generation is just like, just, you know, once they die out, like, no one's eating this stuff anymore.
43:30 Josh Clark? Yeah, there probably won't be whaling in 20 years is, is one way to look at it. Unless there's some weird revival of a taste for whale meat among younger generations, which doesn't seem likely, there's, there's really the younger people are not into whale meat. The older people are because it's nostalgia food that takes them back to their childhood and, you know, post World War II, when people ate a lot of whale meat. Norway's basically the same way. Norway, so few people eat whale in Norway that basically 100% of Norway's whale catch is exported to Japan.
44:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they're not even really eating it.
44:10 Josh Clark? Right, and Japan is, like, they have that stockpile. The reason they have a stockpile is because the Japanese government subsidizes its whaling industry to the tune of $50 million a year. So that means that if you whale, you have a total guarantee that the Japanese government will buy the whale meat that you come and sell them, and the Japanese government just basically puts it in a freezer. So those whales died for nothing, except for a handful of people to make some money. And like you said, the amount of money that we're talking about is relatively paltry when you're talking about an entire global industry.
44:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, there was, in 2018, the US Naval Institute put out an article that said the global revenue, like, the entire world whaling industry revenue is about 31 million bucks. And in 2012, and this is gonna, this is really gonna drive it home, Norway's largest whaling company made a gross revenue of $1.3 million, and they, along with the lobby and the government, spent about four times as much on campaigns to try to get people to eat whale meat than they even netted with their nation's largest whaling company.
45:21 Josh Clark? Right. So, and it's not like, if they were making 31 billion, that'd be a different thing. Forget the whales, they're making a bunch of money. But like, this should be so easily overcome. Any reasonable person, it seems like, who cares about animal life would be like, guys, what are you doing? You're killing whales for 31 million dollars a year? Just stop. We can't find anything else to do.
45:43 Speaker 02 Right.
45:44 Josh Clark? And Japan seems to oppose it because they resent the international pressure that's been put on them over the years.
45:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:51 Josh Clark? Norway seems to oppose it because they have some non-indigenous coastal communities who have a tradition of whaling, that they're just basically trying to keep this custom alive for this, these small coastal communities. And again, like, I understand, some people make their living like this. But it's not like, like, this is an amount of money that could be subsidized in other ways by the government that could spare the whales' lives, while also employing people at the same rates that they're being employed by the whaling industry.
46:20 Speaker 02 Yeah. And, and Japan, spite is not a good reason to keep whaling.
46:26 Josh Clark? It's true.
46:27 Speaker 02 Like, oh, we don't like this international pressure. Everyone's trying to get us to stop that. So we're not gonna stop it, just because you want us to. I know Norway, I think they eventually stopped in recent years subsidizing the whaling industry.
46:41 Speaker 02 And I think in past years, that was about half the entire value of the annual catch. So it's gonna definitely be going down in Norway. And, you know, you got enough in your freezer, Japan. So like, if you want to eat it, eat that.
46:56 Josh Clark? Right. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's bizarre. And it doesn't seem like the Japanese, it doesn't seem like something they would do, but...
47:04 Speaker 02 It is an interesting conundrum, from what, everything I know about Japanese culture and people. But, you know, I guess this is, you know, a small part of that culture, you know?
47:13 Josh Clark? Yeah. Everybody's got a little spite to them, right?
47:15 Speaker 02 I mean, I know I do.
47:17 Josh Clark? So unfortunately, even if we just completely eradicate whaling, which again, I predict is gonna happen in 20 years, within 20 years. God, I hope I'm right. There are other threats to whales that have become like even bigger, like global warming is a big one. Buy catch. So like a lot of whales die because they end up in nets that are meant to catch other stuff like tuna.
47:41 Josh Clark? So that I think a lot of them die that way, more than are hunted. And then ghost fishing. Remember, we did an episode on ghost fishing?
47:49 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
47:50 Josh Clark? That's a big problem for whales as well.
47:53 Speaker 02 You know, ordinarily in the past, Joshua would have said, well, in 20 years, we'll let you know. But if I'm still doing this show at 75 years old, then I'm not gonna say something has gone really right. That means something has gone really wrong.
48:04 Josh Clark? Okay.
48:05 Speaker 02 Officially.
48:06 Josh Clark? Fair enough. I'm with you on that one.
48:08 Speaker 02 I'm not announcing my retirement, but I'm not gonna do this till I'm 75.
48:13 Josh Clark? Okay. All right, I'll hold you to that. 72, 73.
48:16 Speaker 02 No, no one wants to hear Abe Simpson.
48:21 Josh Clark? So I guess that's it. One, one challenge for conservationists now, Chuck, I have to say is,
48:28 Josh Clark? like, you can't just say, stop global warming, stop buy catch, stop ghost fishing. There's all these different things with, before it was stop whaling. And it was very successful, like you said. It's often compared to the ozone layer being tackled. The whales were definitely saved, but there's still now other problems that we have to work on too.
48:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, if you had, you'd have to have a T-shirt collection about buy catch and global warming and everything else. Save the whales really just encapsulated everything nicely.
48:58 Josh Clark? Or yeah, or you could put it all on one T-shirt, but you just walk around with a magnifying glass to hand to people so they could read your T-shirt.
49:04 Speaker 02 Yeah. Or maybe it just says equals and then on the back, save the whales.
49:09 Josh Clark? Nice. Nice. I think that's it. Chuck just kind of dropped his mic. You couldn't hear it because Jerry edited it out, but I heard it. And that means it's time for listener mail.
49:23 Speaker 02 All right. We also took another break while I reattached my mic.
49:27 Speaker 02 And I'm going to read this one. Hey, guys. Near the end of your recent middle class episode, you discussed green washed recycling programs. And Chuck, I'm sad to say and confirm that your instincts regarding car battery recycling are correct.
49:41 Josh Clark? No.
49:41 Speaker 02 I've sent you an investigative piece by the New York Times, which uncovered the reality of the recycling of batteries, namely that they are collected, shipped on freighters to another continent, and then manually broken down by an exploited workforce. Rather than tree recycling, it seems more of a resource harvesting where many of the components are smelted down in ways that pollute the surrounding area and cause a lot of illness. Sadly, I'm not sure where this leaves any of us as to a better alternative when replacing our batteries. That is from Gabby, who says, thanks for many years of learnings and companionship.
50:13 Josh Clark? Man, why is everything so evil?
50:16 Speaker 02 I know. It's sort of, sort of not a great time to be alive.
50:21 Josh Clark? You know, I've kind of come to the same conclusion, Chuck. Very interesting time to be alive, but I think I would trade interesting for stable and calm and happy and not so evil.
50:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's, that's the T-shirt.
50:36 Josh Clark? Equals save the Josh.
50:37 Speaker 02 That's right.
50:39 Josh Clark? Well, if you want to be like Gabby, thanks a lot, Gabby. If you want to be like Gabby and send us an email that's a total downer, we're open to those kinds of things. You can send it off to [email protected] .
50:54 Speaker 00 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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51:52 Josh Clark? Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's play a quick game. When I say Carnival Cruise, what comes to mind? Maybe a buffet, maybe a lively Lido deck, or maybe you've already decided cruising isn't for you. But we can assure you, a Carnival Cruise isn't what you think. From casual bites to five-star dining, laugh-out-loud comedy, a relaxing spa, and unforgettable shore excursions, Carnival has everything you want in a vacation.
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