A while back Walmart started running commercials in Canada that attempted to draw a different face on their business than the generally held opinion that they are undercutting bastards who devastate local businesses. The characterization of Walmart as an undercutting retail predator is of course totally accurate, and most people making decisions at Walmart couldn't possibly say otherwise. But even though they aren't nice they are successful because consumers want to save their money. Who can blame them?
I guess in the end we will all have no one to blame but ourselves, which is an irony that most likely won't be too comforting when we all work for Walmart.
But that's old news, what I found funny is their recent advertising campaign where they try to show the gentle side of Walmart. They show how Walmart actually benefits small businesses by offering them cheap goods that they need for supplies. The businesses they use as examples are a husband and wife that run dog sled tours in the Canadian Rockies and a guy who runs Whale watching tours in Newfoundland. Surprisingly they don't have any examples of small family run retail store businesses that they benefit. And you can fuckin bet if they got into the dog sled tour business the dog sled couple would be singing a different tune.
Apparently Walmart is quite a boon to the tourism industry however. Thank god for that. So Walmart uses these examples of small businesses they aren't destroying yet to make them look not bad. The examples they use even seem to be kind of positive and nice little businesses. Who could dislike a guy who uses a dog sled? Or a guy who takes people to look at whales? Dogs are our useful friends, and whales are as intriguing as they are delicious.
Who wouldn't support those businesses? They don't pollute, they don't use Sudanese slave children, who could object to that?
Me.
I was thinking about it and these tour businesses are kind of parasites. Their purpose is to invade the few remaining refuges of wild animals that mankind hasn't ruined and sell it off like some sideshow. They are basically the carny's of the wilderness.
You may not be aware of this but human incursion into wild animal habitat has a serious effect on their behaviour. In the Rockies the mountain lions have taken to eating a few humans each year and the bear population is in danger because humans are forced to kill them when their bear wandering brings them too close to soft, killable people.
I find wild animals very interesting, so interesting that I think most people should leave them alone if it interferes with their lives. I think scientists should study them, film them, and tell the rest of us all about them. I don't know if it is such a great idea to pack wagons with chubby families and barge around their habitats.
Whale watching is probably the worst of them. Not only do the gas powered boats pollute the water, but from what I have read actual noise pollution may be harmful to the whales. Whales, like dolphins have very sensitive ears. Humpback whales make little murmurry songs to communicate with each other and to locate a mate. These songs amongst other things get disrupted by boat engines. How's a whale brother expected to get his swerve on with all this commotion?
According to science, water conducts light badly and sound well. Logically whales and dolphins rely less on vision and more on hearing. Dolphins use echolocation (sonar) to hunt fish. There is also a school of thought that whales and dolphins use sound to create an acoustic map of the ocean around them. It is also thought that whales can communicate with other whales across the huge ocean basins with very deep vocal booms.
Of course none of that is very easy with a boat engine on your head. Whale watching seems alright, but to the whales it might be painful. They don't want to be bothered, all they want is the kelpy bounty of the sea. I suspect it's probably not all that terrible for them really, but hey.
I am simpatico with the notion of whale watching, it builds an appreciation of the beauty and majesty of the natural world and all the delightful animals from cobras to smurfs. This hopefully will lead to respect for it. But if you respect it you should probably not wreck it for them. So its a catch 22. Ignore the whales and then not care if we kill them, or take tours to ogle them and hope that doesn't make their life suck.
I guess if whale watchers did it in sailboats that would be fabulous since those aren't noisy, but they don't. But they should.