The most heartbreaking scene in "Avatar" is a real bloody history on Earth

With rapid breathing and spray of water, the giant beast was floating up and down on the sea in panic. Behind it, the pursuing fleet was getting closer and closer. The harpoon shot it! In addition to the unbearable pain, the float dragged by the harpoon made it difficult to swim. Soon, a heavier harpoon was embedded in its body , and after a violent explosion, its pain finally came to an end...

This text may remind people of commercial whaling, but if you have watched " Avatar: The Way of Water " recently, you may know that what I am trying to describe is the scene in the film where humans capture tukun in the ocean .

Tukun is a large marine creature on the planet Pandora. Its prototype should be the whale on Earth｜Avatar: The Way of Water

It is not pleasing to reproduce real scenes in a science fiction movie. Movies are the art of dreaming, especially science fiction movies. Transcending reality can often bring a sense of freshness. In "Avatar" 13 years ago, Cameron constructed a Pandora planet that is very different from the Earth : the rocks here can float, people and animals can communicate with each other, and even Pandora itself is an intelligent life form...

Why did Cameron, who should be well versed in this, use a nearly realistic approach this time to replicate a "Kun Hunting" from a full-scale perspective, from the operating procedures, equipment on the scene, and even slaughtering details?

The scene of the capture of Tukun in the movie is almost a replica of the real whaling | au.whales.org

I think this is because in the history of human beings’ coexistence with nature, whaling - the prototype of “hunting Kun”, is a heavy and bloody topic that is difficult to avoid.

When did humans start hunting whales?

It is impossible to verify when humans began to hunt whales. However, images of whales have appeared in large numbers on the rock carvings of Bangudae in Busan, South Korea, which were carved 6,000 years ago. Most of them are baleen whales.

Through the wrinkled details of the head and abdomen depicted in several pictures showing whales flipping sideways and upside down, we can even judge that most of them are baleen whales.

Since other animals in the rock paintings are shown being hunted with bows and spears, and there are frequent figures of people standing on small boats and unidentified objects floating near the whales, these all indicate that the indigenous people at that time may have had the ability to hunt large baleen whales - driving a small boat close to the baleen whale and then killing it with a bow and spear was the main method, and using driftwood or other floating objects tied to a rope to prevent the whale from diving and escaping should also be a commonly used method.

So far, the rock carvings at Panguitai are the earliest evidence of human whaling that we can find . However, whether it is the hunting techniques or the characteristics of targeting large baleen whales, it is hard for us to believe that this is an "entry-level attempt" by humans to hunt whales - some less difficult whaling methods, such as driving small whales into the bay, are likely to have appeared earlier. Ancient humans in coastal areas may have engaged in whaling , so we have excavated whale bones in coastal cultural sites such as Hemudu, and there is still a whaling culture in the Arctic and Pacific island communities.

The whaling methods used by the Inuit today are not fundamentally different from those used by the Panguitai people 6,000 years ago｜Bill Hess / burnmagazine.org

In the era of fishing, hunting and gathering, obtaining resources directly from nature was a necessary way to survive. The coastal people hunting whales was no different from the hunting of deer and sheep by the land culture of the same period. Many of our views on whaling today are not suitable for applying to primitive whaling activities - after all, whaling at that time was only to meet the needs of self-sufficiency, and the limited scale of whaling had little impact on whales and the environment .

However, things changed radically when whaling became a commercial activity and increasingly profitable.

When Whaling Became a Business

The Basques living in southwestern Europe today are very knowledgeable about managing the oceans. In the Atlantic Ocean in the 16th century, they monopolized the cod in the Newfoundland fishing grounds and were the first to develop whaling into a lucrative business.

A North Atlantic right whale and her calf | Wikimedia Commons

In their eyes, whales are full of treasures - whale meat can be used as a substitute for beef; whale baleen, when cut into thin strips, is a good material for making umbrella ribs and linings for women's tutu skirts; and the most promising whale product is whale oil refined from fat.

In that era, animal and plant oils were not only used to make soap and other daily necessities, but also as lighting fuel . Compared with other lighting fuels, whale oil did not produce annoying ash and odor after burning like soybean oil, and it was cheaper than olive oil. With these advantages, whale oil quickly gained market recognition. In addition to household use, some cities also used this fuel to achieve nighttime lighting, and the nighttime crime rate in London even dropped.

The strong demand attracted more countries to form whaling fleets and start operations. In the early days of commercial whaling, whaling ships' favorite targets were right whales and bowhead whales. These huge whales swam slowly, and even the oldest ships could easily chase them. In addition, in order to adapt to the cold water temperature of the North Atlantic, these whales grew a thick layer of fat, which was the raw material for refining whale oil. Under the huge fishing pressure, the population of these whales shrank significantly . By the early 18th century, it was difficult to see groups of right whales even in the heart of the Atlantic.

Print depicting Dutch whalers hunting bowhead whales in Arctic waters | Ellis, R. / Monsters of the Sea

In 1712, a group of whaling ships from Nantucket Island in North America encountered a group of sperm whales while searching for right whales. Before that, people rarely hunted sperm whales - sperm whales swim fast, their fat layer is not that thick, and adult male sperm whales are very aggressive. It is not uncommon for whaling ships to be damaged by collisions, so the risk of hunting is not worth the risk. However, since right whales are difficult to find, it is better to try to kill a sperm whale than to return empty-handed.

No one would have thought that this unplanned killing would eventually push the already hot whaling activity to its "peak" . In the process of dismembering the sperm whale, the hunters reaped an unexpected surprise: although the sperm whale did not have much fat, it actually had another liquid in its head - spermaceti.

Sperm whale and calf | Gabriel Barathieu / Wikimedia Commons

Harpooning a sperm whale

Unlike many slender whales, sperm whales have an unusually large head, and most of the space in the head is occupied by a huge brain oil organ and brain oil tanks divided into small pieces by connective tissue, in which spermaceti is located. Sperm oil is unique to sperm whales , and its melting point is close to the body temperature of whales. Sperm whales control the melting or solidification of sperm oil by increasing local blood flow or inhaling cold seawater, thereby changing the specific gravity and completing diving and buoyancy; some people also believe that sperm oil helps sperm whales echolocate.

Sperm whale head structure｜Carrier DR et al. (2002) Journal of Experimental Biology. 205: 1755-1763

An adult sperm whale stores more than a thousand liters of spermaceti in its head. Spermaceti does not need to be refined and has a lower odor than blubber, which alone makes it worth a better price. The spermaceti candle, which was introduced in 1743, further catalyzed this demand. Soon, spermaceti replaced blubber and became the main fuel for indoor lighting.

Whaling fleets from various countries quickly turned their attention to sperm whales, and within a few decades, the production of spermaceti increased fourfold. The Nantucketers, who first discovered spermaceti, took the lead in this wealth feast. Nantucket Island is located in southern Massachusetts, USA. It quickly became the center of the global whaling industry. The whaling ship in the novel "Moby Dick" set out from here . By the first half of the 19th century, 735 of the world's 900 whaling ships were from the United States, and whaling even became one of the five pillar industries of this new country.

The spermaceti candles that were once popular are now antiques | Nina Hellman Marine Antiques

In 1859, petroleum was introduced to the market. Kerosene refined from petroleum was superior to whale blubber and spermaceti in terms of cleanliness, lighting brightness and output. Logically, the whaling industry that had lasted for 300 years should have come to an end; but the fact was just the opposite - the petrochemical industry gave rise to the development of the machinery industry, and the demand for lubricants in the machinery industry was increasing day by day, and spermaceti was just the ideal raw material for lubricants; spermaceti could be processed into an additive with good wettability, used in automotive transmission shift oil, hydraulic oil and metalworking oil.

At the same time, the development of the mechanical industry also upgraded whaling equipment. In 1863, the Norwegians combined traditional whale harpoons with firearms to develop a whale cannon with a longer range and an explosive device. It was also during this period that large internal combustion-powered whaling ships became popular , allowing people to travel to the Antarctic waters, which are rich in whale resources, and even hunt faster large whales (such as blue whales).

The invention of the whaling gun was the most important technological innovation in the history of commercial whaling. It greatly improved the efficiency of whaling. The harpoon embedded with high explosives could kill large baleen whales with one blow. | Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, Université de Washington, 1909

The global whaling industry has not only not shrunk, but has grown even more fiercely...

No resource can be taken endlessly

However, no resource can withstand endless exploitation, and the same is true for whales in the vast ocean.

Like the bowhead whales and right whales that were first targeted for fishing, sperm whale populations are gradually becoming depleted . According to estimates, between 1946 and 1980 alone, 770,000 sperm whales were killed by various countries; and before people began fishing sperm whales more than 200 years ago, the total sperm whale population in the world was only about 1.1 million.

The blue whale population is declining even more rapidly. Since the beginning of Antarctic whaling in the early 20th century, 330,000 blue whales have been killed in the Antarctic waters in just a few decades. In the 1930-1931 fishing season alone, 29,400 blue whales were lost in Antarctica . Compared with the historical high of the blue whale population, the blue whale population in the 1970s had shrunk by 99%.

Abandoned whale oil tanks and refinery on South Georgia Island | Ingo Arndt

Because whale stocks have reached a very dangerous level, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) introduced a whaling ban in 1982. The ban is still in effect today, but the game around the ban and the news of whaling around the ban still appear frequently in our field of vision. Can the story of large-scale commercial whaling come to an end? Can the severely damaged whales slowly recover? We still have a hard time to draw a conclusion on these issues.

Whaling is just one example of the many ecological problems we encounter in the process of using natural resources. Today, we are still facing more problems such as habitat destruction, biodiversity decline, climate change, etc. The impact of these problems on the ecology is significant and widespread, so much so that even in science fiction works such as "Avatar" and "Dune", which are supposed to transcend reality, they still present serious ecological problems in reality.

Such beautiful scenery exists not only on Pandora, but also on Earth｜Avatar: The Way of Water

Artistic presentation may bring more attention to ecological issues, but we need more than just art and imagination, we need more practical and urgent actions. After all, for the fictional Avatar universe, there is still the option of colonizing other planets after the earth's environment is destroyed, but for us living on earth, our only home is this lonely blue planet .

Author: A man is wandering

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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