Derek Turner

Living with Leviathan

The deeply traditional Lamalerans leap fearlessly from the platforms of small boats to harpoon the great sea beasts, just as their ancestors have done for centuries

issue 27 April 2019

  • The Last Whalers: The Life of an Endangered Tribe in a Land Left Behind

    Doug Bock Clark

    John Murray, pp. 347

Our relations with cetaceans have always been charged with danger and delight, represented by the extremes of the Book of Revelation’s ‘beast out of the sea’, and the frescoed dolphin-riders of Pompeii. Rare, huge, and unknowable, whales have traditionally been omens, or metaphors for improbability — ‘very like a whale’, Hamlet chaffs the cloud-watching Polonius.

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