Learning how to deal with dead whales

Friday, 1 June 2018

GRAPHIC IMAGES: Deep in the pit, Dinah King is the only woman among the workers cutting the flesh from the bones of whales.

It's gruelling, visceral work. 

The pit is the roped off area around the whales which washed up along the South Taranaki coast last week, and the workers are clad in protective coats and gloves to keep away the blood and stink while they harvest the parts of the whales that can be used. 

King, a trustee of Waiokura Marae at Manaia, sees her hands-on involvement as a way of gathering knowledge to pass on to others, as well as to her teenage sons who are there with her.

On Monday, a savage southerly wind blowing sand into everybody's eyes made the bloody, smelly task even harder.

**READ MORE:

* Harsh conditions for workers as another dead whale washes up**

* **Unprecedented whale strandings reaches 11 in total on Taranaki beach

* Eight sperm whales found dead on South Taranaki beach

* Massive blue whale population found in proposed seabed mining area**

Laughter has bolstered the crew amid the atrocious conditions.

'I looked up and they were all getting blasted. I said 'do you like our exfoliation programme?' They all looked blank, but that humour helped us,' she said.

The process runs like a military campaign, although everyone involved is there as a volunteer, King says.

Safety is paramount to avoid anyone being injured, amid sharp knives and slippery decaying flesh full of pathogens.

Workers are fed by others from outside the cordon, sips of hot soup and bite-sized pieces of food placed in their mouths to avoid contamination.

The weather improved as the week progressed and the team had begun work on their third whale by Wednesday. 

They'll move on to others along the coast in the next few days, depending on the tides, accessibility and how the whales are positioned.

They hope to be finished by the end of the weekend.

Altogether, 12 sperm whales washed up on a 5 kilometre stretch of the rough South Taranaki coast at Kaupokonui. 

Before the iwi, which has guardianship over the whales under the Marine and Coastal Area Act, and the Department of Conservation had even agreed on how they would tackle the whales, four teeth were discovered hacked off one of the dead mammals by someone wielding an axe. 

Security guards, DOC staff and hapu volunteers have been on the beach guarding the whales since.

But for iwi, who regard the whales as an ancestor, their value isn't in just the teeth, bones or even the rare and valuable ambergris they sometimes contain.

It's knowledge - reforging a connection to a past way of life, and a small step towards healing the hurts caused by 180 years of colonisation.

The work is being led by New Zealand's acknowledged expert on whale recovery, Hori Parata, who is in his 70s. 

Although whale strandings on the Taranaki coast happen occasionally, they're rare and nobody in the hapu knew how to deal with them.

Parata and his team from Ngātiwai in Whangarei were in Tokomaru Bay helping with a blue whale, when Ngāti Tu called for help.

They packed up their equipment and arrived at Waiokura Marae in Manaia on Sunday.

Parata learned about processing whales as a boy growing up by going out with his uncles. 

'We were still practising Māori ways with our gardens, going out to get kai, traditional harvesting of resources in the environment,' he says.

His team, some of whom bring along their families, travel to help when they are called.

'We are always happy when there are no strandings, and sometimes we won't get a stranding for at least two years. '

He blames man's activities in the ocean for the deaths. Sometimes, he finds rubbish inside the whales he deals with, something that didn't happen in his uncles' time. 

'It is always like a tangihanga for us when whales strand. The difference for us compared to the western paradigm is that it sees a whale as just a thing or it, we don't see it like that.

'We see man as the youngest child from Papatuanuku and Ranginui, he's not the oldest child, he's the youngest, so when we look at whales or at insects, we see them as an older relative.'

Another of his team, Ngātiwai kaitiakitanga Buchanan Cullen, says a seal came to watch while they were working on the third whale, something that reminded him of home.

'We have a thing back home for the whales, it's the spirituality and mana they have when they come into our harbour, the Kaipara. When the whales come through they're seen with the seal, they swim in the bay and play in the bay. Its a memory to go back to the old times with the seal and the whale living side by side.'

He says dealing with the whales is a spiritual experience.

'Every time we get in to flense the whales and clean the bones, we carry the elders and those ancestors of ours from way back, so as we go in there and do this type of mahi, the flensing and taking away the meat, we're pretty much in the spiritual and physical at the same time, so every cut is like a karakia, or a prayer, then we're talking to each other and sharing that knowledge in the pit.

'These are things that we instil into those who are game enough to get into the pit. Its beautiful to have some of the rangitahi here, and some of the whanau of Ngāti Tu to be a part of that process and learn some of that lore around Tohora [the whale],' Cullen says.

The whole process with the whales is part of a bigger picture, Ngāti Tu hapu member Bonita Bigham says.

'This is succession planning in action. I'm so proud of my cousin [Dinah] and her whanau, seeing her there with her boys is the future of our people, our hapu. They're going to be talking about this together for the rest of their lives and they'll be able to share their experiences inside the cordon with others.'

Tears flow as both women talk about the week, which has been a mix of sadness, joy, laughter, sombre mood, and exhaustion.

'This is a story for our documentary makers, for our writers, for our composers of music, for our carvers, for our weavers, our storytellers, this is now going to become an integral part of our identity. For years I was always jealous of the people on the East Coast because they had all their awesome whale stories. Now we have our stories too. I never had the any idea of the depth of love and emotion that comes with that until now.'

'We know from a different world view it's about resources and commercialisation and value and dollars, but there are no dollars we can put on the gifts that this opportunity had presented us, its going to be an intergenerational thing.'

The hapu was grateful for the support they have received from the Department of Conservation, she says.

'We have developed a really trusting relationship with the DOC team working with us. We have heard them sticking up for our cultural rights, we've heard them trying to explain to people why its important for tangata whenua to have this opportunity. They're our whanau now.'

Contemporary Māori artist Rangi Kipa, who is from Taranaki, said the whale bone was valuable to carvers both as an outstanding material for carving, and because of the mana and significance of the animals themselves.

Before commercial whaling decimated the populations of the huge mammals, strandings would have been more common, and iwi would have known how to deal with them.

'Our people had a close relationship with the sea. You can imagine in those days when our people were sailing around the Pacific, these whales would have dwarfed our ocean-going canoes.'

The bone and the teeth were revered as a material for carvers, and were but about half of the work he did in whale bone was gifted to people, he said.

'All Pacific cultures celebrate whales' teeth as a special material, reserved for the chiefly classes.'

He said the bones being retrieved this week need to be cleaned and prepared before any decisions were made on how they might be used.

'There is plenty of time to be having those conversations.'