After finally getting to a point where I feel settled into my new apartment, I spent an hour this afternoon surfing the 10 or so digital TV channels I and everyone else who lives in Japan gets for free. On NHK there was a program titled クジラ対対シャチ Killer Whales vs. Whales, showing incredible video of a group of “shamu” looking killer whales going after another species of whale and its baby. It was somewhat disturbing to watch meticulous way the killer whales got their prey, but it is also one amazing act in a chain of events that really shows the interconnection and the sustainability inherent in nature.
When I flipped on the channel, a group of 4 killer whales had surrounded a bigger whale and her child in a region off the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The mother was trying to protect the baby by keeping it along her side. While 3 killer whales bothered the mother whale (there was no way the 4 killer whales would take down the enormous mother), the 4th killer whale swam under the mother and pushed its nose into the baby whale, dislodging it from the protective embrace of its parent. The other 3 killer whales then quickly helped distance the child from its mother until the mother was out of the picture. With only a few minutes of breath available to the baby whale, the killer whales took turns laying over the baby whale so that it could not surface to catch a breath. Two other killer whales flanked it on both sides, boxing it in and eventually drowning it. Once the unmoving baby whale floated to the surface, the killer whales fed. Why were the bigger whales up in an area known to be dangerous for them? The answer lies in an example of nature’s interconnectedness. It happens that melting arctic ice in the spring and summer releases tons of nutrients. These nutrients are carried south until they hit another current that pushes them north and east until they run up against an underwater ridge near the Aleutians, which forces the nutrients to the surface. Sunlight then sets to work, resulting in an explosive increase of phytoplankton that in turn triggers a chain reaction in massive increase of krill and herring, which brings the whales. This then brings the killer whales that wind up eating the baby whale mentioned earlier. But the interaction doesn’t end there. The uneaten portion of the baby whale’s carcass floats ashore where a brown bear finds it, thus becoming an important meal that sustains the bear in a season where food is sparse. The fact that the baby whale is food for a second, unrelated animal also helps to take some of the sadness out of the baby whale’s death. Nature doesn’t waste.
The program and pictures – including scenes of 10 million seabirds scuttling across the ocean – do more justice than the description I have written above. Think about the incredible interplay of systems and interactions that takes place between so many of nature’s creatures over thousands of miles. There is a flow and reason, and give and take. Humans fit in this larger give and take as well, though we often think of ourselves as above it or outside of it.
I suppose I am now to bring this post to an end and tie in some statement about sustainability and how we have to protect nature. Well, if what the videos captured and the chain of life and interconnectedness I described doesn’t hold some significance in and of itself, then more words from me won’t help.
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