In the Sea of Okhotsk, the views clash in a classic industrial development battle between the needs of man and mammal. Along the Eastern grays' migration path, indigenous cultures contend with environmentalists, each side energized by the certitude that their knowledge is not just scientifically but morally superior. The quandary is not merely academic. Gray whales are dying, in unusual numbers, and we don't know why. Their birth rates are down.
Survivors appear undernourished.
Today, if nature's advocates are not always triumphant, no one questions their right to a place at the political table. It is guaranteed by popular insistence and legislative mandate, enforced by courts of law, chanted by our schoolchildren who fear for the rain forest and endangered creatures. The recovery of the Eastern Pacific gray whale population is the single greatest turnaround in history of a marine mammal, according to the people who make such startling declarations. Known as devil fish in the 19th century because of their fierce attacks on whaling boats, the Eastern grays have twice been hunted to the brink of extinction in the last 150 years by industrialized fisheries. They were removed from the endangered species count in 1994, one of the first creatures to be downlisted.