Cetus Cause by Asher Jay

Big Baleen Plea:

Weigh our value against our worth
Are we worth more dead than alive?
You have just begun to uncover our story
We deserve a chance, so help us survive

We are the behemoths of the big blue,
We grow up to 100 feet long
We tip the scales over 200 tonnes
And our lung capacity is curiously strong.

Our size distinguishes us,
Our adult heart is the size of a mini car
We communicate in low frequencies
Our whale song can travel 1000 miles far!

We swim beyond your visual scope
Into areas that you cannot reach
We are not like other baleen whales,
We come up for air but we do not breach.

We look like mobile submarines
But we are made of flesh, blood and bone
So when we head to our feeding grounds
We are unfortunately accident prone.

Your shipping routes are many
And in way of our shoals of krill
We come there to eat nature’s plenty
Instead we end up as maritime road kill

Collision courses dwindles our count
But then so does illegal whaling
We are an endangered species, which implies
Our numbers have long been flailing.

We have been forced to dilute our gene pool
There aren’t nearly enough of us to propagate our kind
So we occasionally cross breed with a fin whale
And leave a hybrid blue behind.

This means us true blues will soon go extinct
We wonder when we will run out of time,
We are but collateral damage I guess,
Mere victims of an ecological crime

We’re also distressed by sonar
It propels us to strand
We have tried adapting our vocal chords
But evolution is not ‘on-demand.’

It is up to you to ensure our future
Don’t let your ability to destroy reign supreme
Try factor in our cosmic buoyant bodies
Do not barter us for a capitalistic pipe dream!

AsherJay ©2011

Limited Edition giclees and prints of my works are available on Art for Conservation. A percentage of the sales of the works from Cetus Cause goes toward Great Whale Conservancy, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society.