There is no mention of whales in the bible, at least not in the most faithful translation from the Hebrew. There is a creature called Leviathan named in several Older Testament books and the King James Version calls this mysterious being the "great whale" but in Jewish tradition it is more of a sea serpent or dragon.
Of course, lots of critters go unmentioned in scripture but they are all part of what we hope will be the teeming diversity of Creation, as God the Creator intends it to be. Some whale species were nearly hunted into extinction during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries even though this grim reality was thought to be impossible. Humans became more and more efficient at killing them as the demand for whale oil and other whale products grew.
Now watching and admiring whales has become a far more lucrative industry, not without a different set of concerns for the well-being of these breath-taking mammals. While some species have rebounded to healthy populations we'll never have an accurate picture of their former abundance. A species such as the North Atlantic Right Whale is in a precarious place with so few remaining it may not survive. These were "right" for whalers because they move slowly and float when killed. While they are no longer hunted, they seem to be prone to collisions from ships which results in their demise.
When I heard last week that not a single Right Whale has been found dead in Atlantic waters through this season I was encouraged. We saw a mother Right Whale and calf off Grand Manan Island years ago and since then I have been particularly interested in the fate of this endangered population, Some years the statistics have been so gloomy I've wondered whether we'd witnessed something akin to the Great Auk, a once abundant bird, now extinct.
Researchers wonder whether new rules for ships in the Bay of Fundy, along with changes to fishing gear, and reduced shipping traffic because of the pandemic has resulted in this moderately hopeful news. They figure its going to take a number of similar years and the birth of lots of calves before there is cause for celebration.
Just the same, I'm offering up prayers of gratitude for what feels like good news in the midst of so much that is discouraging. It's possible to change our destructive ways for the well-being of creatures great and small.
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