Commentary: What We Can Learn from Whales

Earlier this week, I listened to an episode of “On Point,” on WJCT called “The Intelligence of Orcas.” The marine scientist, Dr. Naomi Rose, spoke about the huge increase in incidents of orcas interacting with marine craft in the area around the Straits of Gibraltar since 2020. These “killer whales” have been following craft and breaking off their rudders. Needless to say, mariners were unhappy and frightened. Even scientists wondered what was going on.

You may wonder why I found this interesting and what relevance it has to us in Fernandina Beach. I hope I can show you.

I won’t try to relay everything in the podcast. Besides, there are people in this community far more knowledgeable about marine biology than I am. I will mention the parts that stood out to me.

Orcas are really intelligent! Their brain-to-body mass ratio is similar to humans.

They live in matriarchal pods and each pod has its own social structure. They are smart enough to remember patterns and dialects of orca talk, and to plan ahead, meaning they have some capacity for logic.

In the Strait of Gibraltar area, there is only one social group left of about 40 whales. They were highly endangered because their main food source had dried up. With some positive human intervention around 2020, the food source replenished. The orcas no longer had to spend all their time searching for food. Their interaction with the boats was playing! Not just any play. The orcas were juvenile and adolescent males. They were doing what young guys do. They were horsing around and getting into trouble. They broke off pieces of rudders and put them on their heads. They bumped the boats. Fun for orcas, not for humans in boats.

Scientists noticed larger orcas swimming nearby. They were the adult moms watching their boys. Male orcas live with their moms all of their lives. If the mom dies, they live and travel with an aunt or sister. I wonder if the women have the equivalent of basement apartments for these guys?

Here’s the part that knocked my socks off. Dr. Rose said that, with just a few species on earth, women have value beyond reproduction capacity. In most species, females bear young, then they die. Humans and orcas are different because their women are the ones who carry the archive of memory for their whole group. They teach others where and how to hunt, what food is best and how to get from place to place. Female orcas live so long, they go through menopause! I sympathized.

In the 50 years since I came of age in the 1970s, I never thought I would again hear language from men in leadership in the church and in politics saying that a woman's place in society is in a traditional home, raising children. We are created to have value beyond reproductive capacity. We have crucial value to the society as a whole.

This week, I looked around a room of women writing postcards to voters. What a wealth of experience and knowledge, just in this one group of women on our island. There were women who had been in law, in medicine, in social work, in education, in business and in my case, in pastoral ministry. There were women who played instruments, did research and wrote books. Many of the nonprofits on the island run on woman power. One of the women with the quickest wit in the room is well into her 90s and drove herself there. Thank you very much.

Shouldn’t women who contribute high value by embodying societal knowledge get to make their own medical decisions? You can have something to say about that for women in the general election in November.

As Dr. Rose was concluding the podcast, she mentioned North Atlantic right whales. They are special for us because this highly endangered species comes to our waters to bear their young. We watch for them, count them, celebrate their births and mourn their deaths.

She said the main threats to the survival of orcas, and to our whales, are vessel strikes and entanglements. She urged everyone to act with respect, remembering that when we are on or in the water, we are in THEIR home, not the other way around.

We have to flip that script so that they and we can have a home in which to live, thrive and yes, get into mischief, like adolescent orcas.