The Whale Warriors by Peter Heller: An Account of Audacity

What better way to end a literary heartbreak than finishing a book about audacity, the audacity to stand up for what one believes in and in this case wage war on a group’s twisted reasoning, individuals unabashedly violating international laws. Clearly, this writing of Peter Heller was shaped to inform and educate, a bold attempt to let the public know about the pitiful plight of these endangered animals.

Recently, I realized that writing should be more than impressing a few credentialed people or striving for accolades that are corrupted with patronage, or hitting millions of hits in a blog, writing should also move people and ignite them into action. This piece may not be rimmed with high-falutin prose but these words, paragraphs are forged with passion. It is my contribution to a cause that is dear to me, the ocean and the animals in it.

I love the ocean.  I love its vastness, its mystery, it unpredictability. But I hate the way people are corrupting it and killing thousands of helpless animals who have no way defending themselves. We are stewards of nature not its destroyer.

And this is why this book appealed to me. It is a book about a group of foolhardy individuals, volunteers, chasing after Japanese whalers in the cold ocean of Antartica. This book informs us on the state of our oceans and the sea animals being killed mercilessly.

This book was probably written before the Whale Wars series on cable, where a television crew films the Sea Shepherd ship as it goes after Japanese whalers. It is the account of Peter Heller, a journalist on board of Sea Shepherd’s Conservation Society's flagship  in 2005, the Farley Mowat. Here, he talks about the life in the ship as they searched for whalers like the Nisshin Mahru and their bristling relationship with Greenpeace and the press.

The lead character on the ship, Farley Mowat is its captain, Paul Watson, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace. He is an avid environmentalist and reputed to have sunk whaling ships in different countries. He is not afraid to ram his puny but feisty ship on a bigger ship like the Japanese Nisshin Maru. Heller even witnessed that it wasn’t all talk.  

On Christmas Day, 2005, Watson was poised in ramming the Nisshin Mahru, good thing the Japanese whaler turned. Heller called it Antartic chicken. Watson didn’t even blink. Farley Mowat could have broken in half if they collided with the monstrous ship. But despite this almost foolhardy stunt, this group generally don't use weapons to stop the whalers. They only use prop foulers to disable the ships and throw foul gas to disorient the crew so the Japanese can leave the whales alone. No guns, no armed machinery, just simple water hose in an ocean battle and a seven foot blade in its bow to damage the hull of another ship.

The ocean with its beauty can be dangerous and playing cat and mouse game in the vastness of it is quite a gamble, and playing it in the ocean of Antartica sounds almost insane.  The author talked about the constant seasickness, the gales that buffered the ship, the tenacity and creativity of the members of Farley Mowat and the intense focus of its captain, Paul Watson in saving these animals.

And I like this story of audacity. In a world where everyone wants to be part of the horde, having this kind of bravado is refreshing. The audacity that asks, questions, spurs debate and pursues change. With the world consisting mainly of ocean, why does a limited number of people act to protect the ocean like the Sea Shepherd who rides out storms and actively hunts these illegal whalers? Why does some environmental groups bring out only banners or paint the whaler ships while the whales are being killed in their midst? As witnesses of these ongoing atrocity, why don't they stop it?

While I don’t condone the ramming of whaler ships, I do believe that one has the responsibility to defend those who can’t protect themselves, in this case, the whales. They may not be part the human race but they are part of the ecosystem we live in. We are all interdependent. If they become extinct, it may throw off the balance of nature that may result to dire natural consequences. Why the need to decimate them? Why does the Japanese need to hunt and kill them? And why do the Japanese need to defy international laws prohibiting commercial whaling and use smaller countries to further their cause by bribing them to vote in lifting the moratorium on commercial whaling. That’s just sick.

This book has been a real eye-opener to me and I hope it would open your eyes too. Here are some excerpts:

“How can they kill these creatures? She asked. The earth is 75 percent ocean. Why is this the only ship out on the ocean enforcing environmental laws? One ship protecting the ocean?”

“Casson believed, along with many of his marine biologist colleagues, that the oceans are on the verge of total ecosystem collapse…The World Wildlife Fund recently announced that the world’s fish stocks are on the verge of extinction. All of the world’s fish. Right now, half of the world’s coral reefs are dead or dying.”

“If the oceans die, we die too…much of the destruction is caused by bottom trawlers, the industrial dragnets that scour and scrape wide swaths of sea floor, taking everything-the octupuses, the sea turtles, the mammals, the crabs, the urchins- and damaging the reefs…nets are dragged in and the target species are thrown into the hold, while all the rest are chucked overboard, dead or dying. Wasted”

“…Fourth shot hits her in the flank. Explosion and fountain of blood. Whale thrashing. Cable winch engaged, thrashing, screaming whale reeled in, gushing blood, turning the sea red…Electrocution current now coursing through the new spear. Whale in bloody agony…Finally hauled tail up, suspended so they can hold her breathing hole under. She drowns after fifteen more minutes in a sea of her own blood”

Heller also witnessed the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. He worked with crew of the Oscar award winner documentary, The Cove. I will be writing about the documentary on my next post. 

Heartbreak and Rogue magazine April 2012 (Katrina Stuart Santiago's article)

I am heartbroken. It’s over. He doesn’t love me anymore. After all we've been through, he decides he wants to move on. After leaving me dangling for a while he finally decides to leave. Okay, it’s not a guy I’m talking here. But it feels the same. It’s about a story that was rejected by an editor for an anthology.

It ended with a sugarcoated e-mail. I was tempted to answer with, “Though I was saddened that I wasn’t picked,...” . I didn’t. I decided to do a Karylle when Dingdong dumped him for someone. I tried to reply with class and exude nonchalance, so I wrote a polite thank you and wished them well, even if I was silently devastated.

I had stories rejected in the past and I had some essays published. But I don’t remember the published ones anymore. I only remember the silence that followed after laboring on my first piece of short story that I courageously submitted in the only remaining literary magazine in the country that is still in print. I browsed in the bookstore every week to see if my story was published but few weeks passed but nothing came up. Then I scrutinized every story that made the cut, observed their impressive eloquence and mind-rending descriptions and I knew my pitiful story won’t see the light of day.

Just the fact that I deeply labored  on it and was rejected was crushing. I didn’t cry copious tears and tore my hair out but I slipped to a melancholy phase like what I’m doing now. I was heartbroken, I just wanted to sleep, stare at the ceiling, mope and tell myself that the next time would be better, for now I have to pick myself and write another one.

I have tried to polish my craft, read books on writing and even attended one short story workshop where the facilitator, an award winning writer who was always late didn’t contribute much to give us tips on writing. He just told us to read the classics and watch Italian or French films to learn how to write descriptively. He was a little full of himself too. And I paid P4,000 to listen to this self-centered nerd.

My husband asks me, why do I waste my time writing for a literary magazine that has low readership, one the  so called “educated” intellectual snobs patronize. I don’t care. You’re not a writer if these literary gods don’t publish you, I tell him. I want that validation as a writer. Yeah, even if almost nobody reads it, he scoffs.

Well, if an actress in Hollywood salivates for an Oscar, I want a Palanca for myself. Why not? Can’t I dream? But I guess my gift for erudition is not as wide as the other Palanca winners, maybe I’m more of a genre writer whatever that is.

So here I am, telling myself to write as I am, emotional, sarcastic, did I say emotional again..to write as I want to not someone else’s idea how I should write. Maybe that’s not the best way to write short stories though because the “right” way according to experts is to show it, not say it, put forth nuances for effect. Duh, I don’t write that way, I’ll tell it as I see it. Well, I guess that doesn’t work for this medium. I don’t have to tell how the character is feeling, let the reader decipher between the lines, let them find their way in the story. Maybe I was wrong. Wow, that feels awful, thank you. The urge to mope is at it again.

And even if I write the way I want to, the dream of having a writing award someday will still haunt me.  Argh! But maybe being read by more people and appreciated for it will compensate for that. And the question I grapple with is, do I push myself in a medium that doesn’t accept me or do I stick to one that accepts me for me, one that I can be myself ? Should I give up my dream of writing a great story or push forward despite the rejections?  

That’s hard. As a writer, you want to think that you can not only write your thoughts on certain topics but you can tell a story too. I want to read my words on an effin paper not just on a computer or tablet screen. Maybe I’m being stubborn, sentimental but I want my name on paper, to be kept and held on to. That’s why I’ll keep on submitting these stories and reading on ways how to tell effectively it. It is a dream, my dream, but is it like a man I love that doesn’t love me back after I tried so hard?

Then like a balm to my broken heart, I came across this article from Rogue magazine(April 2012 issue) titled, “Burn after Reading” by Katrina Stuart Santiago about her take on the Philippine Literary scene.  I was wandering and moping in National Bookstore when I saw it on the cover and she writes:

“ There is much to be said about the probability that the writer who has not done any of the writing workshops, has not come out with a book with any of the commercial and academic publishing houses, has not taught at one of the four major Manila universities in the past five years, has not won any major writing prize…would be brushed off as a non-writer. Or just a not-one-of-us, the ”us” being the writing community-the literati-in the third-world Philippines”

Ouch. Okay, my prose may be far from seamless and still needs work but having a literary “mafia” as an added obstacle for publication is a bit too much. How can I ever find myself in the hallowed land of literary distinction, now I’m more depressed.

“The years have taught me that right here what operates is an unspoken/unconscious/unexplained set of rules that have nothing to do with writing skill or literary merit. Right here, what operates is a togetherness premised on friendships…a fascinating  display of parochialism and patronage”

Great. Maybe my work isn’t that bad, hmm…

“It is in these instances that it becomes clear that you’re not one of “them” and it takes a while before your realize that there is much freedom in being away-far far away-..from the house that literature built. …Because  it means that you dare grow up, you dare stand by writing with which not many might agree, but for which you do find readers.”

Maybe my realization during my moping moments was right, I should write the way I want to. Be myself even if others like it or not and if they do, if they do like it, it will both be a privilege and a pleasure to write for these people.

“This is why the Pinoy reading public doesn’t care about the literati. It’s because the literati doesn’t care about these readers. And that’s you, the Harry Potter, Hunger-Games reading public, you.”

Wow. My husband was right. Why should I whine and pine about these snobs who don’t care what the public wants to read. For these people, they define what the public should read. Talk about being high and mighty.

But I don’t want to solely blame this literati obstacle for the non-publication of my stories. I know I still need improvement.And knowing about this big literati opposition makes me want to become a better writer. Because being good is not good enough, it should be the best I can craft in, meaning more work, more time spent polishing my stories. And at the same time, I should also find other venues like websites that might be interested in my stories. I should not close my doors on internet publishing because I’ve also read in Rogue that Amazon’s ebook sales have surpassed the sales of traditional paperbacks. That’ something I should ponder on as well. Hmm…