One Whale's Story

"It must be five yards long!"

"I say eight!"

"Shut up and take a picture--it's spouting!"

The crowd on the shore gesticulated animatedly, their eyes fixed on the creature in the water, a false killer whale. (False killer whales are true whales which resemble killer whales.)

Heedless of their remarks, the vast animal swam leisurely in the deep, spraying a sparkling jet of water into the air whenever it surfaced.

"I saw it first," Lin Hsien-tsung of the Taichung Harbor Bureau's Public Relations Office claims. Lin recalls that he was giving a tour of the harbor to some personnel from a machinery company on the afternoon of January 11 when he spotted a "big fish" in the channel by pier 12. But because of the distance, he couldn't make out what kind it was.

Not until it decided two days later to swim in closer and reveal its true identity was the "fish," from its huge size, regular surfacing, and frequent blowing of spray, finally determined to be a whale.

The news spread quickly. Over 8000 vessels had entered Taichung harbor since it was opened up nine years ago, but this was the first whale.

Previously, whales that showed up around Taiwan often met with premature demises. A 7.5-meter blue whale was caught and killed last May by fishermen off the north coast of Taiwan.

As a result, when harbor bureau director Shen Lin learned of the arrival of their "special guest," he immediately ordered harbor personnel to protect the whale and bring in an expert who could send it back to sea.

But cetology is not a popular subject in Taiwan, and whale experts are not easy to find. Neither the harbor bureau itself nor the branch station of the Provincial Water Conservancy Bureau in Lukang could produce one. The Water Conservancy Bureau's headquarters in Keelung finally held a meeting on the 14th and decided the right men for the job were Yung Hung-chia, a researcher at the bureau's Kao-hsiung branch, and his assistant, Cheng Shou-jen. Yang had studied under a world-renowned cetologist at Tokyo University and was one of the few whale experts in the country.

Just as harbor and water conservancy bureau authorities were busy mobilizing personnel, the media rushed into the act. The United Daily News and the China Times first broke the story, complete with pictures, and the rest of the media soon followed suit.

"After that, the phone never stopped ringing. Everyone wanted to know about the whale. Reporters were posted on it day and night," says Wei Nien-hwa, the harbor's public relations chief. "And people who just wanted to get a look at it swarmed in, too. Now Taichung Harbor is not supposed to be open to the public, but with people coming all the way from Miaoli and Chunghsing Hsintsun, how could you turn them down?"

By this time, both out-of-towners and locals were streaming in and out of the harbor area. Two or three hundred were on hand at any one time. Most watched for half an hour or more before calling it quits. But still no one knew what kind of whale it was or what to do about it.

On the morning of the 15th, Yang Hung-chia, who had just had a molar pulled, and his assistant left Kaohsiung and arrived in Taichung that evening.

Early on the 16th, Yang, surrounded by television cameras and crowds of spectators, first met up with "it." One glance told him "it" was in fact a "false killer whale."

Now that the whale had a name, the next questions were--Where had it come from? And why had it entered the harbor? "It may have been carried to the coastal waters off Taichung by a cold current from Agincourt Island, which has the most whales in the Taiwan area. It may then have followed the familiar sounds of ship propellers into the harbor," Yang speculated.

After careful deliberation, Yang came up with a "whale escort plan" to get the whale out. "The ideal would have been to entice it back out with sounds it likes to hear. But we don't have that kind of tape recording here, and even if we borrowed one from overseas, we don't have the equipment to broadcast it. So we opted for a more primitive method--beating metal rods together," Yang says. The plan was to box the whale in on three sides with bamboo rafts and then, beating and pounding the rods together, to drive the whale in the direction of the open side toward the sea. "Just don't beat too hard and break his eardrums," Yang cautioned the recruits.

By the evening of the 16th, everything was ready and the crew just waiting for dawn for a chance to go into action. But the whale had disappeared. As boats were frantically searching the harbor for its whereabouts, the Coast Guard at Ta-An, nine miles north, reported that they had found a whale there grounded near the shore.

In fact, the whale had slipped out of the harbor that night but, mistaking its directions, had wound up stuck in the shallows. Some fishermen who had seen it, not ones to look a gift "whale" in the mouth, had brought out their nets and tried to drag it ashore, but the Coast Guard had come by just in time and stopped them.

Soon thereafter, Yang, his assistant, and harbor personnel rushed to the scene, where they found the whale helplessly flopping its tail and struggling to get free. Bystanders had rolled up their trousers and waded out, trying to push it back out to sea on the tide. Although they managed by strenuous efforts to free it several times, the whale each time washed back in again a few minutes later.

As the tide withdrew inch by inch that afternoon, so did the life of the whale. That evening at 7:30, the whale finally "left" the crowd of people who were so concerned for it.

During the seven days since it entered Taichung Harbor up until that last night, "it" had brought us a wealth of excitement and more than a passing touch of sadness at its parting.

[Picture Caption]

All eyes are concentrated on the sight below.

The whale's crystalline spray.

The plan is all in order, only it won't have a chance to be used.

(Above) Watching the tide and pushing the whale out.

(Below) Goodbye, little whale! (Photo by Lin Hsien-tzung.)

All eyes are concentrated on the sight below.

The plan is all in order, only it won't have a chance to be used.

（Above） Watching the tide and pushing the whale out.

（Below） Goodbye, little whale! （Photo by Lin Hsien-tzung.）