Threats
to cetaceans are almost exclusively from human impacts
It
seems our large-brained brethren – the whales,
dolphins,
and
porpoises
may have had their day at last
We
almost wiped them out with our primitive harpoon hunting methods from
wooden ships, long ago
Then
came the military artillery firepower and those factory rendering
ships
But,
at last, seeing the error of our ways thru their loss of
profit
potential to us, we ceased the slaughter
But
now we have unleashed a more lethal arsenal with which to treat them
to:
They
drown struggling, entangled in our factory fishing nets and are
treated as unwanted, wasted bycatch
Our
dribbled toxic chemicals accumulate in their blubber for they lack
the enzymes to break them down
Plastics,
both micro and macro are consumed in ever-increasing quantities by
our ocean-dwelling kin
Though
whales help reduce CO2, warming oceans disrupt migration patterns and
destroy their polar habitats
Our
military and commercial underwater noise pollution confuses them and
often leads to mass strandings
Confused
by the cacocphony, many whales suffer ship strikes which maim or kill
them
They
also suffer quietly as our oil, sewage and litter foul the homes
they’ve known for thousands
of years
And
we even still hunt them for their meat!
But,
wait, we are not rushing about making savage war upon these supreme
creatures of the deep...
It’s
just that our frenetic ordained
progress to support an unsustainable
population has blindly doomed them
When
they’re all gone forever, we’ll never grasp the mystery of their
large brains, but we won’t have
to care
Sadly
tho, once we’ve extinguished them, visiting aliens won’t have
rational creatures to communicate with
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