How automatic transmission almost made sperm whales extinct

Sperm whales are incredibly interesting animals. Amongst their multiple records is their ability to dive deep, fast and long.<p>They are the deepest diving warm blooded animal, they go close to 25 times deeper than their other equally famous and endangered cousin the blue whale. To give an idea of how deep they dive, here is an infographic <a href="http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/ESp2j.jpg</a> The jpg needs to be magnified to get the perspective. From the biological point view what is interesting is not only how they manage to hold their breath for so long but also how they manage to avoid/survive the bends (decompression sickness).

I expect we'll see a similar process with using animals for food. As our scientific knowledge increases, and as our needs increase, synthetic meats will become more and more attractive, eventually leaving us all meat-eaters who do not harvest animals.<p>Complex systems remind me of a theater set up for a complex play. Hundreds of ropes hang down from the ceiling. Somebody is always pleading us with us to pull rope A to make B happen.<p>Very rarely does pulling rope A actually make B happen (and nothing else) But we still like thinking things are simple like that.

Sadly science can't beat the stupidity of Traditional Chinese Medicine: <a href="http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/wildlifetrade/traditionalchinesemedicine.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.worldwildlife.org/what/globalmarkets/wildlifetrad...</a>

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, candles made from spermaceti were used as standard photometric illuminants. They burned more brightly than even today’s paraffin candles, and could be made in a reproducible way [1].<p>NASA used spermaceti as a binder for joining iron particles to acetate for longer-lasting data storage tapes [2], and one author indicates that it was used more recently as a lubricant on the Voyager probe and the Hubble Space Telescope[3].<p>It's a sad story about our (over) exploitation of the seas, but very interesting history.<p>I wonder if any research has been done on producing cetyl palmitate via recombinant DNA synthesis. Imagine having a vat of E. coli or yeast producing it.<p>As the article mentions, jojoba oil is a decent substitute. I use jojoba around the house to fix squeaky hinges, etc.<p>1. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=DI4AAAAAMAAJ&#38;pg=PA183&#38;lpg=PA183&#38;dq=spermaceti+candle+of+photometric&#38;source=bl&#38;ots=yiUz8ijAo5&#38;sig=BykhaviaR_BKIMKhMXwZC_q4GH4&#38;hl=en&#38;ei=qMi9Tq_qFYHb0QH25dS2BA&#38;sa=X&#38;oi=book_result&#38;ct=result&#38;resnum=1&#38;ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&#38;q=spermaceti%20candle%20of%20photometric&#38;f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=DI4AAAAAMAAJ&#38;pg=PA183&#...</a><p>2. <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5971/1322.full" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5971/1322.full</a><p>3. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=y2zXTivayCQC&#38;pg=PA344#v=onepage&#38;q&#38;f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=y2zXTivayCQC&#38;pg=PA344#v...</a>

Conclusion:<p>"The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100 years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays."<p>"A chemist who saved the whales has not merited a Wikipedia entry. His name was P. S. Landis and he was a researcher at Mobile Oil."<p>A really interesting piece IMO.

Whale-oil related trivia: A huge number of recordings have been lost due to the whale oil ban. Magnetic audio tape was made using whale oil as a binder, to help adhere the magnetisable oxide particles to the tape. The first non-whale binders turned out to have very poor long-term durability, causing the oxide to fall off in clumps. Most archivists 'bake' these tapes at low temperatures, to improve the oxide adhesion for just long enough to make a copy.

Great piece of history. I think the author's conclusions are flawed though. He writes:<p>&#62; Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays.<p>That may be true for the whales themselves, but there were indeed regulations passed on automobiles in the 1970s due to the oil shock:<p>&#62; In the 1970s, the car companies were required to develop engines working at higher temperatures to comply with lower emissions and improved efficiency and that changed the regime for the tranny fluids. Suddenly, the car companies did not need to lobby any more.<p>So it was government action regarding auto emissions that wound up propagating into saving the whales. Perhaps that was not among the intended consequences, but we also can't claim that the change was simply due to "market forces."

Nixon's bold stance(?!) predates P.S. Lang's invention of a synthetic replacement by a number of years.<p><a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3731" rel="nofollow">http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=3731</a><p>Of course, he could never use the term "sperm whale". But this is what led to the Endangered Species Act that granted the whales a reprieve. Lang's invention was only a reaction to this. It's still a good read.

In case you didn't, spare a few minutes and read through the comments on the original article. Excellent stuff in there, particularly from the OP.

Interesting, but gives <i>too</i> little credit to the anti-whaling campaigns: it certainly was no accident that whaling was forbidden as soon as that became economically feasible.

Someone should create a wikipedia entry for P. S. Landis as "inventor and the man who saved Sperm Whales"

That's a sharp irony, to think the anti-whaling community of the 60's and 70's was driving around with whale oil in their cars! I wonder if they had any idea?

<i>by the 1950s automatics were the preferred transmission</i><p>Feh. Never owned one of the contraptions, myself.

It boggles the mind why the car companies lobbied to keep whale hunting when their numbers were already so low. They wanted a few more years of automatic transmission working at then-current levels, and then what? The same mass transmission failures that happened, only without anymore whales left. Poachers are similarly mind boggling. Instead of leaving a viable population to harvest more animal parts (not saying it's OK, just for the sake of argument), they hunt down every last animal then move on to other animals.<p>Oh, and if automatic transmission had never been invented, maybe people would actually know how to drive.

Sad how there's no discussion of the economy that enables stuff like this to happen. "Why were people so cruel and evil?" is a stupid question; it's not about cruelty or being "evil". It's about money. Don't expect people to be moral in this economic system. Morality is a weakness in a capitalist society, and you'll go out of business if you bring morality into a competitive business ecosystem. This is why we need to change the rules of our economic system, if you care about morality.<p>Moreover, sure P. S. Landis "saved the whales", but he didn't do it to save the whales, he did it to generate an enormous amount of profit for Mobile Oil, and was paid for it handsomely.

The automatic transmission does not cause a species' extinction. People's actions cause extinctions. The title is perhaps revealing about how we think and how we rationalise or justify our actions.

tl;dr<p>The reason why so many whales were killed in the 20th century was the distant ramifications of replacement of whale oil by petroleum. It took another 100 years to find solutions to these ramifications, and only then it became possible to save the whales. Ecological activism did not play significant role in all of these developments; neither did the numerous well-meaning international treaties, moratoriums, and other chest beating displays.

This is humiliating to us as a race of sentient species.<p>If we still badly need sperm oil, why don't we work to inject the relevant genes into some bacteria and get our oil in any quantities we want to? Or reproduce the process in any other way (synthesis, cell culture).

Whaling needs to be brought back. Sperm whales are prevalent once again, so controlled harvesting of them should be possible just like hunting deer or anything else. This creates jobs, and contributes to finding renewable energy sources. Furthermore, because without whaling sperm whales have no predators they are getting abundant and taking up too much of the marine ecosystem's food supply. We need to limit their numbers for our own survival. Jobs. Energy. Marine food supply. For all these reasons we need to restore whaling, and we need to do it now.