Whalecome to the future – Emotions as a route towards change
‘Here we have the right whale, so called because it was considered to be the correct whale to hunt.’ This is part of the guided tour I gave this morning at the museum I work for in Iceland. The North Atlantic Right Whale: a slow moving, easy target for whalers in the 19th and 20th centuries – ‘they float when they are killed due to a high fat content (fat which would have made them even more worthwhile to hunt, since it was the most useful and lucrative part).’ Luckily, this whale, like many others, is now protected (too little too late perhaps since there are fewer than 500 of them left in the wild at this point). You’d think that by now, we would have learnt our lesson – only a few minutes later in the tour: ‘There are only three countries that still hunt whales commercially: Iceland, Norway and Japan.’
Museums play a key role in educating the public and raising awareness of environmental issues – in tourist heavy economies such as Iceland, educating visitors is just as important as educating Icelanders: many tourists go on whale watching trips as part of their vacations, and are often shocked, surprised and saddened by the news that whale hunting still takes place here. On the tour, I urge tourists to avoid restaurants that serve whale meat, and to avoid buying whale meat – the only way to stop the industry is to boycott it altogether. I tell people about the campaign Meet Us Don’t Eat Us: after whaling resumed in 2003, IceWhale (an association for Icelandic Whale Watching) and IFAW (the international fund for animal welfare), began raising awareness of the fact that whale hunting was not a historic Icelandic tradition – the demand for whale meat was tourism driven, not part of the cultural heritage of Iceland.
This was made apparent during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, with whaling being stopped altogether until 2023. Upon the recommencement of whaling, there was outrage – campaigners came from all over the world in order to protest the decision, with marches, and concerts and petitions. The atmosphere on the day that the government announced whaling needed to stop over the summer due to inhumane methods of hunting was one of overwhelming joy, excitement and hope.
What makes museums and galleries so good at educating the public then? I believe it is the immersion, interaction and the emotion they can nurture when given the opportunity. Facts and figures can only go so far in moving people towards change, it is the emotion that people feel that can really help maintain momentum in the right direction. This was beautifully demonstrated in August 2023: at the end of the summer, with the government about to make a decision regarding the future of whaling, the museum played host to the Hvala Gala (Whale Gala), organized by Hvalavinir, an anti-whaling group in Iceland. What struck me most at this event was the sense of direction and hope – everyone there had the same goal, the same hopes for the future – it was a celebration of nature, with dancing, and live music, food, and art.
This highlighted to me that it is by loving and celebrating what we have that we can help to save it, and connecting with people emotionally can do far more than bombarding them with statistics – in the 1970s, Roger Payne released an album of whale sounds, in the same decade Greenpeace began an anti-whaling campaign, and Save the Whales was founded. I do not believe that this was a coincidence – by 1986 commercial whaling was banned almost worldwide, only 16 years after Payne’s Humpback vocalizations were made public. People were able to connect with the songs of the whales on a more emotional level – being able to connect with animals and the environment makes us so much more likely to want to save it.
Culture, heritage and the arts can make a world of difference when it comes to helping people feel emotionally connected to a cause. We show a film at Whales of Iceland called Sonic Sea. It is a moving, and in places, heartrending documentary explaining the impacts of noise pollution on cetaceans. One of the most frequent comments I receive from visitors to the museum is how powerful the film is. However, the documentary is about the effects of industrial noise pollution, something that I know very few of our visitors will ever be able to have any impact upon as individuals. Being able to celebrate nature instead of mourn its loss helps foster hope for the future and promotes positive change. The first step of this journey is education – learning about the world we live in, about the environment around us, and what it is we do that impacts it.
Since moving from the United Kingdom to Iceland nearly three years ago I have felt much closer to nature. As I write this now it is the shortest day of the year, with only a couple of hours sunlight, the sidewalks are paved with ice, and I can hear the wind blowing outside over the sounds inside the museum. I live near the sea here, and day trips out of the city are to waterfalls, glaciers, and lava fields. I have never felt more like a guest on this planet than I do here, and the damage society as a whole is doing to the world is also far more obvious to me here than it ever was in England. There is no possibility here of ‘out of sight out of mind’ when it comes to environmental issues, as the environment is everywhere. I hope that this is the case for many of the tourists here, and that they can bring this sense of proximity to the environment with them wherever they go, fostering a sense of environmental responsibility.
