Bringing down Leviathan
2016; Wiley; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1002/fee.1220
ISSN1540-9309
Autores ResumoWhat human culture is without its ancient myths of heroes who do epic battle with monsters? Monsters that come to destroy order, to sow turmoil with their barbaric acts of pointless cruelty. In Egyptian legend, Seth clashed with the chaos-monster Apophis; in ancient Scandinavia, Beowulf fought bestial fiends and trolls; in Greece, Bellerophon slew the Chimera; and in China, Huang Di destroyed the one-legged abomination, Kui, who created storms by diving into the sea. The slaughter of these behemoths – capable of limitless evil, unequivocally reflected in their size and brute power – was unquestionably just. In these ancient explanations of our condition, only thus could order be protected. Yet vestiges of such thinking were still common not so long ago. Even in the 20th century, manta rays were treated as monsters. Accused under the name of devil fish, they were killed for possessing enormous size and strength, while their destroyers were accorded the status of champions, sometimes even in the scientific literature. No bringer of chaos. On the 26th of August, 1933, Captain AL Kahn was fishing from his boat, the Miss Pensacola II, off the coast of Brielle, New Jersey, when a giant manta ray somehow entangled itself in the anchor rope. Using the vocabulary of heroic literature, the April 1934 issue of the popular magazine Modern Mechanix (http://blog.modernmechanix.com/5000-pound-devil-fish-is-caught/#more) described how the boat almost capsized, “until a Coast Guard vessel came to the rescue, and killed the 5000-pound monster with 22 shots from a high-powered rifle”. Kahn preserved the fish and took to the road, exhibiting it at 15 cents a ticket. A flyer for the show (http://bit.ly/1NVkqnN) presents him as the heroic captor of “this unusual denizen of the deep”, this “strange monster”, “the only one of its kind ever captured”. Hero or not, Kahn's lattermost claim was hardly true. On October 19, 1929, the Florida newspaper, The Sarasota Herald, ran a similar story written in identical style: “5000 Pound Devil Fish Landed by Local Anglers – Hard Fight Put Up By Deep Sea Denizen Before It Is Brought to Submission; a half dozen men battled the devil fish for six hours; [they] injected two dozen 30-30's and 38's and three harpoons in the big thing before it seemed to care; they sighted one of the huge rays coming straight at the prow [with] barrel mouth wide open, [and] with full steam ahead they rammed [it, the boat stopping as if it] had struck solid rock.” A hundred years before, the scientific literature – still in its infancy – was also in awe of the manta's power, and of the men who could subdue it. In the July 1824 issue of the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (XI: 113–18), JA Lamont relates several tales (plus a few scraps of scientific observation) of combat with mantas. He speaks of how courageous men set out after them, of how spray rose 30 feet into the air as the “vast alated fins of the monster lashed the sea”, of how boats were pulled along for hours, of the many weapons required in the killing, and of how, when one such deed was done, “three pair of oxen, one horse, and twenty-two men, all pulling together, with the surge of the Atlantic wave to help, could not convey it far to the dry beach”. A century later, similar tales were still appearing. In his 1933 book, Fishes and fishing in Louisiana, published by the Department of Conservation of that same state, James Gowanloch recorded the exploits of one Captain Jay Gould, “who first hooked this monster on rod and reel”. All those on board are named, even an 8-year-old boy, and presented in heroic light. Gowanloch tells of how “Captain Gould drove a hastily rigged harpoon deeply into the fish – but the fish snapped the inch-thick rope like a thread”, of how the “great Sea Devil” dragged the boat backwards against the engine, of how even the 8-year-old lad “lent his fullest powers” in the struggle, and of how the boat nearly capsized as “the monster” dived, after being shot. These stories are, of course, things of their time, and we should not judge their writers by today's sentiments. They would, however, be harder to publish today, now that we understand that chaos is promoted by the needless killing of wildlife, that our ancient hero epics do not explain how we fit into the biological world, and that the monsters have so often been us. Yet, a place for heroes does remain. Not for those who kill mantas, lions, or rhinos for some outdated sense of glory or selfish personal gain, but for those who would preserve them, who help enforce their protection, who battle to maintain the order threatened by vanishing biodiversity. Centuries from now, will we recount their feats around our hearths? Or will the Earth be silent, with no one to remember either monster or hero?
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