The Sunday Read: ‘The Whale Who Went AWOL’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On April 26, 2019, a beluga whale appeared near Tufjord, a village in northern Norway, immediately alarming fishermen in the area. Belugas in that part of the world typically inhabit the remote Arctic and are rarely spotted as far south as the Norwegian mainland. Although they occasionally travel solo, they tend to live and move in groups. This particular whale was entirely alone and unusually comfortable around humans, trailing boats and opening his mouth as though expecting to be fed. News of the friendly white whale spread quickly. In early May, a video of the beluga went viral, eventually earning a spot on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” By midsummer, he had become an international celebrity, drawing large groups of tourists. All the while, marine experts had been speculating about the whale’s origin. Clearly this animal had spent time in captivity — but where? In the years since the whale, publicly named Hvaldimir, first entered the global spotlight, the very qualities that make him so endearing — his intelligence, curiosity and charisma — have put him in perpetual danger. Hvaldimir is now at the center of a dispute over his welfare. Even as he swims freely through the ocean, he is caught in a tangle of conflicting human ambitions, some noble, others misguided, nearly all distorted by inadequate understanding. Whether to intervene, and how to do so, remain contentious subjects among scientists, activists and government officials.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What is it like for a whale to be taken out of the wild and placed in captivity. I think the closest analogy is alien abduction.
0:17.0	Imagine a spaceship tearing you away from your home planet and plopping you down in a completely different world.
0:26.2	Captive cetaceans, that's the scientific name for whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
0:31.7	They're divorced from their native ecology, but also from their native
0:35.2	culture, which we know is passed down from generation to generation, just like in humans.
0:41.6	So trying to put a formerly captive whale back in the wild is an extremely difficult
0:47.1	process. We've all seen that cinematic leap to freedom and free willy. All you have to do is let him go, right? But it's not like that at all.
0:58.8	Captive cetaceans are often traumatized, uniquely in-between creatures, trapped between the worlds of humans and
1:07.2	Wales, stuck somewhere between instinct and compliance.
1:12.8	Even when a captive cetacean manages to escape to the open ocean,
1:17.0	they're often not fully free,
1:19.4	still clinging to human companionship,
1:22.4	unsure of how to be a wild whale.
1:25.0	When that happens, who's responsible for their well-being?
1:30.0	I'm Ferris Japer, and I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times magazine.
1:37.0	I'm often drawn to stories about nature and science, especially anything to do with the living world.
1:43.0	And like many people, I first learned about this Beluga whale named
1:47.0	Voldemir through social media.
1:49.0	To end this videoing it,
1:52.0	viral videos showed Vold showed Voldemort playing fetch with a rugby ball.
1:56.0	That's crazy, yeah.
1:58.0	And retrieving a smartphone someone had dropped in the ocean.
	...

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