For the first time in more than 70 years, Makah Indians seeking to re-establish their whale-hunting tradition harpooned and killed a gray whale off the Pacific coast this week. The whaling crew, in a traditional, hand-carved cedar canoe, struck the whale at 6:55 a.m. on Tuesday, May 18, under gray and misty skies.
Support crews in motorized boats moved in with guns and fired at least two shots to try to make the kill as the wounded whale towed the canoe through choppy seas about one-eighth of a mile offshore near Point of the Arches. According to published reports, the water turned red as the whalers then stuck the giant mammal with two more harpoons.
After the later strikes, the canoe was no longer being dragged, but the whale was not visible on the surface. A kill was not immediately confirmed, but television pictures shot from helicopters showed crew members hauling on the harpoon lines and moving slowly toward shore. Large amounts of blood could be seen around the 32-foot canoe.
Tribal members then beached the whale and cut it up, sharing the meat and oil.
The hunt climaxed months of training by the canoe's crew and tense confrontations with anti-whaling protesters. For centuries, the tribe at the tip of Washington's Olympic Peninsula had hunted the huge grays that migrate along the Pacific Coast between Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.
"We're obviously very upset that the Makah went ahead with killing an innocent, sentient creature in such a bloody and untraditional way," said Jake Conroy of Sea Defense Alliance. "We find if very hurtful and despicable that they did destroy that whale's life."
The crew rested Sunday, a day after spending 10 1/2 hours paddling around the Pacific. They threw a harpoon twice Saturday, but the whales escaped apparently unharmed. The Coast Guard seized three boats from whaling protesters Saturday. Protesters had vowed to maintain their presence, but no protesters interfered during this morning's hunt.
``I think the tradeoff -- boats for a whale -- is pretty fair,'' Paul Watson, skipper of the Sirenian and head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, had said earlier. ``I'm pretty sure they would have taken a whale if it wasn't for those small boats.'' On the Makah reservation at Neah Bay, about 8 miles north of the hunting grounds, published reports depicted locals reacting to the taking of the whale with a mix of reverence and jubilation.
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