REDISCOVERING A SUPPOSEDLY EXTINCT WHALE
Half a century ago, on the Pacific coast of America, each year a whale
appeared as regularly as the season itself; first in December, traveling
steadily southward to the warm California lagoons, and again in May
heading northward for the ice-filled waters of the Arctic Ocean. It came
close inshore, nosing about among the tentacle-like ropes of kelp and
sometimes wallowing in the surf which broke among the rocks.
The Siwash Indians along the coast awaited the coming of this whale with
the same eagerness with which the Egyptians hail the rising of the Nile,
for to them it meant a time of feasting and of “potlatch.” In their
frail dug-out canoes they hung about the kelp fields, sending harpoon
after harpoon into its great gray body as the animal rose to breathe,
until it finally turned belly up and sank. It was a matter of only a day
or so then before the barnacle-studded carcass, distended with the gases
of decomposition, floated to the surface and was towed to the beach by
the watchful natives.
As the years went by, however, the whales became more wary, fewer and
fewer coming into the kelp fields, until finally they ceased altogether
and passed up and down the coast on their annual migrations far out at
sea where they were safe from the deadly harpoons of the hunters.
But the whales, for all their astuteness, were not free from
persecution. During the winter, when they came into the shallow water of
the California lagoons to bring forth their young, the American whaling
ships came also, and the animals, held by mother love, were killed by
hundreds.
However, they were not always slaughtered without making a fight to save
their babies, and because they frequently wrecked the boats and killed
the crews they gained the title of “devilfish,” and as such are
generally known throughout the Pacific rather than by the more formal
name of California gray whale, which was bestowed upon them in 1868 by
Professor Cope.
The American fishery did not last long for continual slaughter on their
breeding grounds soon so depleted the numbers of the gray whales that
the hunt was no longer profitable, and the shore stations which had been
established at various points along the coast finally ceased operations
altogether. For over twenty years the species had been lost to science
and naturalists believed it to be extinct.
In 1910, while in Japan, I learned from the whaling company of the
existence of an animal known as the _koku kujira_, or “devilfish,” which
formed the basis of their winter fishery upon the southeastern coast of
Korea.
[Illustration:
The side view of a model of a gray whale in the American Museum of
Natural History prepared under the direction of the author from
studies made in Korea.
]
[Illustration:
A ventral view of the gray whale model. Note the three furrows in the
throat.
]
The descriptions indicated that the _koku kujira_ would prove to be none
other than the lost California gray whale, and I determined to
investigate it at the earliest opportunity. Consequently during the
winter of 1911–12, I returned to the Orient and spent the months of
January and February at the station of the Toyo Hogei Kaisha at Ulsan, a
small village on the southeastern coast of Korea.
[Illustration:
The whaling station at Ulsan, Korea.
]
I shall never forget my introduction to Korea by way of the Japan Sea.
We left Hakata on the night of January 4, in a little transport
chartered by the whaling company to carry meat and blubber to the
markets. The vessel had a tiny, very dirty cabin aft, just large enough
for three persons, into which five Japanese and myself were packed. It
was bitterly cold outside and such a tremendous sea was running that the
cabin deck was flooded every few moments, keeping us wet to the skin.
After a twenty-three-hour trip, late in the afternoon we ran up the bay
which cuts deeply into the peninsula of Korea forty miles north of
Fusan.
[Illustration:
“At the port bow hung the dark flukes of a whale, the sight of which
made me breathe hard with excitement.”
]
As we pulled up to the long wharf at the whaling station I could see
numbers of white-robed figures running about like goats on the hills
behind the houses or standing in limp, silent groups gazing in my
direction. The audience, however, regarded me with no greater curiosity
than I looked at them, for the Korean is at all times peculiar in
appearance and especially so when in full dress.
He wears a long white coat with flaring skirts, enormous baggy trousers
gathered at the ankle with a green or purple band, and atop his head is
perched a ridiculous little hat made of horsehair with a sugar-loaf
crown and a straight brim. The hat must be tied under his chin to keep
it in place, but at times it slips over one ear and gives its wearer a
singular resemblance to “Happy Hooligan.” His hair is gathered in a knot
on the top of his head, and the few straggling wisps of mustache or
beard which he manages to grow are as carefully tended as a rare flower.
He is never seen without his long-stemmed pipe, and a tobacco pouch
always dangles at his belt.
The natives of Ulsan appeared to derive never ending amusement from me
and my work. They were living an utterly lazy, aimless life and although
they never seemed to know where the next meal was coming from they
looked content and well enough fed. Numbers were always hanging about
the station waiting to pick up any scraps of whale meat left by the
cutters, and all day long the children, each with a little basket, poked
about among the cracks in the wharf, now and then gleaning a handful of
flesh and blubber, which would help to keep life within their bodies.
After I had secured the skeleton of a gray whale and had piled the
bones, partially cleaned, in the station yard, the Koreans descended
upon them like a flock of vultures. With a knife or a bit of stone they
scraped each bone, cleaning it of every ounce of meat. At first this
seemed to me a splendid arrangement, but suddenly I discovered that some
of the smaller bones themselves were disappearing and realized that my
skeleton was slowly but surely being boiled for soup.
[Illustration:
Cutting in a gray whale. The head is lying on the wharf and two
Koreans are standing beside it. They wear long white coats, enormous
baggy trousers and a horsehair hat.
]
It did not take long to issue an edict against all Koreans in reference
to my whale, but the matter did not end there. The pile of toothsome
bones was too great a temptation and whenever I happened to be out of
sight some white-gowned native was sure to steal up and leave with a
bone under his coat.
I finally discovered a very effective, and I think highly original, way
to stop the stealing. In my equipment there was a 22-caliber rifle and
several hundred B. B. caps, the bullets from which would just about
penetrate the thick, wadded trousers of a Korean.
[Illustration:
“When the winch began slowly to lift the huge black body out of the
water, a very short examination told me that the _koku kujira_
really was the long-lost gray whale.”
]
I made a hole in the _shojo_, the paper screen of the Japanese house
where I was living, and sat down to watch. In a short time a Korean
stole up to the pile of bones and bent over to pick out one which he
could carry. I drew a fine bead on the lower portion of his anatomy and
when the rifle cracked the native made a jump which would have brought
him fame and fortune could it have been duplicated at the New York
Hippodrome. It is hardly necessary to say that he dropped the bone. In a
very short time every Korean in the village knew that a visit to that
skeleton generally entailed difficulty in sitting down for several days
afterward and the whale was left unmolested.
On the day of my arrival at Ulsan the four whaling ships which hunted
from the station were all lying in the harbor, for the gale had made
cruising outside impossible. As soon as we landed I met my friend,
Captain H. G. Melsom of the _S. S. Main_, one of the best gunners who
has ever hunted in the East. Captain Melsom was the first man to learn
how to take the devilfish in Korean waters, because for many years the
habit of the animals of keeping close inshore among the rocks baffled
the whalers. He learned how to trick the clever whales and hang about
just outside the breakers ready for a shot when they rose to blow. From
Captain Melsom I learned much of the devilfish lore and many evenings on
his ship, the _Main_, did I listen to his stories of whales and their
ways.
I shall never forget the intense interest with which I waited for my
first sight of a gray whale. On the next day after my arrival at Ulsan I
had started across the bay in a sampan to have a look at the village
with Mr. Matsumoto, the station paymaster. We had hardly left the shore,
when the siren whistle of a whale ship sounded far down the bay and soon
the vessel swept around the point into view. At the port bow hung the
dark flukes of a whale, the sight of which made me breathe hard with
excitement, for one of two things must happen—either I was to find that
here was an entirely new species, or else was to rediscover one which
had been lost to science for thirty years. Either prospect was alluring
enough and as the vessel slowly swung in toward the wharf and a pair of
great flukes, the like of which I had never seen before, waved in front
of me, I realized that here at last was what I had come half around the
world to see.
When the winch began slowly to lift the huge black body out of the
water, a very short examination told me that the _koku kujira_ really
was the long-lost gray whale and not a species new to science. But it
was not the gray whale of Scammon’s description, for this white-circled,
gray-washed body was very little like the figure he had published in his
book, “The Marine Mammalia.”
Many new things were learned during the succeeding months of studying
this strange animal, but chief among them were the facts that the gray
whale differs so strongly from all others that it must be placed in a
family of its own; also that it is the most primitive of all existing
large cetaceans and is virtually a _living fossil_.