Saving Hope
A few weeks ago, a giant whale ended up beached on the Oregon Coast. This would seem like a scene from a Sci Fi movie, an enormous whale, left stranded on the beach, the waves lapping up on the shore of the notoriously moody Oregon Coastline.
I heard about this nothing less than tragic story while I was casually scrolling on my cell-phone. The headline read: “Beached Whale in Yachats”. As I continued to read, the article said that a two year old male humpback whale had been beached in Yachats, on the Oregon Coast. This is was the jist of the unfortunate news. I’m personally not a fan of the word unfortunate.
At just two years old, the whale was really young. Hope, the whale, had somehow gotten tangled up in crab nets, and he ended up washing up on shore as he attempted to free himself from the claws of the nets.
A theme on the social media thread about Hope consisted of a lot of “heartbreak” emojis. It was absolutely a “heartbreak emoji” situation. It’s unsurprising that the internet audience was drawn to use the heartbreak emoji. It is nothing but heartbreaking to witness, either physically or digitally, a whale being washed up on shore.
In the comment section, people reached out from all corners of the pacific northwest, offering help in the form of man power and truck power. It seemed entirely feasible that Hope could be saved and pushed back into the water. As I read the comments, I was almost positive that Hope would end up back in his natural habitat. The good people of Oregon and Washington, the savvy people, the people willing to get their hands dirty, were willing to stay up all night and leave the comfort of their couches and beds, for Hope.
Experts said that pushing the whale back into the ocean waves was close to impossible, and that it was too risky. As I read the comments, it sounded like pushing the whale back into the water was a good idea, because humpback whales are not able to survive when they are beached onshore. The weight of their own internal organs begins crushing them, because their internal organs are supported by the bouyancy in the ocean.
Another hardship that the humpback whale faces when it is beached, is dehydration. The humpback’s natural habitat is the ocean, and when it ended up on shore, it became dehydrated. When a whale is beached it’s nearly impossible for its internal environment to adapt to the external changes that it is experiencing.
Because of liability issues, conservation groups and lawmakers do not allow the public to go near beached whales and discourages the public from pushing a whale back onto shore when it is beached. In the case of Hope the whale, this was a barrier to survival. The public wanted to push the whale back into the water, but conservation groups felt that that was too much of a risk.
To me, it does seem like the most effective way to solve the problem of a beached whale suffocating on dry land, desperately struggling for air, would be to push it back into the ocean as soon as possible. Lots of men showed up to do the job, people were willing to get up in the middle of a Simpsons episode and push the whale back into the ocean. Sadly, conservationsists would rather these kind dudes stay at home on their couches. It is frowned upon to let laymen help out in these sort of “beached whale” situations. Personally, I don’t think that you need a degree in rocket science to push a whale back into the ocean, but hey, I’m not a rocket scientist.
Due to laws and regulation, if you weren’t a licensed conservationist or ocean aficionado, if you didn’t hold a degree in whale rocket science, you were not allowed to have a say in how to save hope. It absolutely does seem like the most effective way to save a beached whale would be to allow ALL willing people with kind hearts to push the whale back into the ocean.
Many environmental problems are like this, they are very simple to solve, yet human laws and tendencies complicate them. In academic terms, a situation such as this on would be referred to as “a wicked problem”. A tragic environmental problem, a problem that is man made, and easy to solve with some basic logic and effort — but it becomes profoundly, frustratingly, and bafflingly unsolvable. Why does it become profoundly, frustratingly, and bafflingly unsolvable? Because a) people are “surviving” on destroying the environment b) laws. A big reason that Hope couldn’t be saved had to do with liability, and the imposition of law on man.
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Wicked problems are normalized, tragically, in our society.
So what happened to Hope?
Because conservation groups used fear an not functionality to guide their whale saving efforts, they would not allow Hope to be towed or pushed back into the ocean. After an attempt to use a rope and pulley system that was “safe” but not strong enough to actually move Hope into the water, the “conservation group” decided to euthanize the whale.
Due to the suffering Hope was experiencing, euthanasia ended up being the only viable solution after 45 hours on land. Hope’s organs couldn’t withstand the atmospheric pressure on land without the buoyant support of the ocean. This begs the question: why does a whale being beached (through no fault of its own) end up with the death penalty? There were plenty of options available in “saving the whale”, yet euthanasia ended up being the outcome.
This is a moment when we can all turn and look at each-other and ask “why are we agreeing to these rules? If Hope had a voice, what would Hope say? If Hope owned a cell-phone, I’m sure Hope would have commented: “Yes, I want someone to push me back into the ocean”. Hope wasn’t given advocacy over himself, though Hope was a sentient being.
The amount of people who offered their services and wanted to help Hope survive was touching. The experts, however, said “no, no” to this idea. The experts went in with their PhDs and “proven methods” of “of free-ing willy, and though I’m sure they could confidently tell you much more about the biology of a whale than a lay person, they failed. Due to the ineffective actions of experts, the animal who could have been saved was transformd to a suffering animal, and the only viable solution that these experts could really offer, within the bounds of the law, was euthanasia.
Did Hope deserve to be euthanized?
Our friend HOPE also brings to light the fact that there is a pretty big problem with ocean pollution, and this is an issue faced on shores all over the world. I don’t think anyone likes to walk on a beach and see a beached mammal. Close to 2,000 whales and dolphins end up stranded on the beach each year. 2,000 mammals, completely stranded!
It’s pretty obvious that poets and environmental activists weren’t involved in law making or in writing the seven pre-ambles, because if they were — one of the pre-ambles would have been “Thou Shalt Not Let a Whale be Beached” or “Thou Shalt Let Hope Swim”. Isn’t that the funny thing about human error? We write the rules, we forget what really matters to us while we are writing the rules, and then we create wicked problems.
Toxic optimism was utilized in this case to express that the whale dying was OK because its carcass was donated to science. “It’s okay that Hope died, it’s body was studied for the good of research”. Future generations will remember Hope, even if they are living in a world without Hope.
Ironic that it’s okay to give a whale the death penalty as long as it’s in service to some researchers in a lab, and society can say that the corporeal form it struggled and suffered in has been donated to science. “It’s for a good cause” — or so we are conditioned to say. Anything to keep the peace.
Hope could have stuck around.
Hope could have been saved.
