Abstract
Long-term studies of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (the cetaceans) in nature abruptly began about 50 yr ago, preceded by several decades of terrestrial animal studies, often of charismatic large mammals. Fifty years ago, intensive whaling was still occurring, and arguments against whaling largely centered around impending extinctions due to over-hunting, not the idea that cetaceans should not be killed due to natural or inherent goodness. In the 1970s, several USA and other government agencies promulgated rules to help control pollution and other insults to nature, often effective in the short term but not in stopping an overall decline in the health of nature. While there appeared a general societal awakening towards greater appreciation of nature and intrinsic animal rights, researchers largely stayed focused on their research, with little attention to using knowledge to increase ecosystem and animal health. Attitudes of direct scientific involvement in calling for environmental action have changed, as it is becoming increasingly (but not universally) appreciated that researchers who know the problems are well-suited to alert governments, industry, and society to them, and loudly call for action. I have no good answers for how to accomplish large-scale rapid reversals of environmental declines. One laudable action is to be an active vocal part of appropriate web-based conservation advocacy groups. Involving the young of all genders and races for a groundswell of support is likely most effective in generating a new world view of so much respect for nature that we radically alter our present ways of subjugating and diminishing it in the name of supposed human progress. Above all, we scientists must no longer dither with opinions on environmental problems and urgent needs for action; we must proclaim them intelligently, forcefully, and as broadly as possible.
Highlights
Most literature was of behavior in aquaria, as well as some physiological studies and aspects of taxonomy and systematics from largely bone, especially
Ethics Sci Environ Polit 20: 25–32, 2020 ology (Payne 1995). Their prescience proved correct, for we know more about the lives of baleen and other whales and dolphins than could ever have been imagined in the early 1970s
Most of the great whales were gone at the hands and explosives of humans, and plastics had replaced the use of baleen plates that hang as sieves from the roof of the mouth of live whales, petroleum products had replaced whale oil, and a chemical compound from a Salvia plant was beginning to replace ambergris as a perfume base
Summary
Our present view is not perfect, is largely still anthropocentric (i.e. human exceptionalist), and is not universally helping individuals, populations, or species of most mammals of seas, near shores, and in several mighty rivers. Studies of whales and dolphins in nature lagged a bit behind the beginnings of long-term work on land, and their ‘flowering’ did not hit full stride until the late 1970s−early 1980s.
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