Volume 24, Number 12 · July 14, 1977
An Oppressed Group
By Jack Richardson
Dolphins, Whales and Porpoises: An Encyclopedia of Sea Mammals
by David J. Coffey
Macmillan, 223 pp., $17.95
Two years ago, as a reporter, I joined an ocean expedition whose purpose was to find the Soviet Union's Pacific whaling fleet and, through argument or obstruction, end its annual harvest of sperm whales. The ship we sailed on, a chunky Canadian halibut boat festooned with symbols of peace, life, love, earth, and water, was a vessel well suited for its whimsical mission. The crew, all members of an ecological organization called Greenpeace, was made up of scientists, fishermen, environmentalists, musicians, and various hard-core visionaries, many of whom had been on previous Greenpeace voyages to protest atomic tests by the United States and France and the slaughter of infant seals by Norwegians and Newfoundlanders. Now they had all banded together behind the cause of cetaceans, seeing in the whale a symbol of life itself under the threat of extinction.
Review, 2546 words
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