Narrating Cetacean Conservation: Gray Whale Migration, Histories, and Justice on the North American Pacific Coast

Abstract

This dissertation analyses histories, memories, stories, and issues of environmental justice circulating around the migration and conservation of Eastern North Pacific gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus). Following the pathway of the whales’ migration along the North American Pacific Coast, each chapter of the dissertation focuses on a significant site of gray whale narration. The first substantive chapter examines gray whales’ heritage as ‘Mexican by birth’ in relation to broader topics of tourism, touch, affect, and entanglement in the lagoons of Baja California Sur, Mexico. The next chapter moves to the California coast to examine critically historical encounters with gray whales as ‘devil-fish’ and ‘friendly whales’ (circa 1840 to 1970). The third substantive chapter focuses on scientific and management controversies around a sub-group of gray whales in the Pacific Northwest in relation to Indigenous whale hunting and the politics of ecological residency. The final substantive chapter takes place within and beyond the Arctic, examining how gray whale-human futures are anticipated and narrated in the context of climate change and the Anthropocene(s). Each chapter draws on a wide range of literatures, including: more-than-human geography, historical and cultural geography, environmental history, blue humanities, affect studies, mobility studies, memory studies, history of science, political ecology, conservation social science, anticolonial theory, environmental justice, ecocriticism, and narratology. Through these multimethod interdisciplinary analyses, the dissertation assesses how gray whale histories and contemporary encounters are narrated in different places throughout the whales’ migration and in different historical moments. The dissertation argues that these narrative processes have both discursive and material ramifications for broader issues of knowledge production, cetacean conservation and management, coastal environmental justice, and more-than-human relationships.