Whales in Great Lakes?

Subject: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Just Amy
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 02:50 PM

I saw this on CNN.com and thought it was really funny. I just thought there should be a song about the whales of Lake Michigan.

MUSKEGON, Michigan (AP) -- Teacher Deb Harris could hardly believe what she was reading to her fourth-grade class. Whales in Lake Michigan?

But that's what it said in her "Michigan Studies Weekly," a newspaper distributed to 462 teachers statewide.

Harris called Utah-based Studies Weekly Inc., which puts out the teaching aid, but she said an editor stood behind the story.

"I've lived here all my life -- there are no whales in Lake Michigan," Harris recalled telling the editor.

A retraction was later posted on the company's Web site with an explanation that the false information came from a different Internet site intended as a joke.

"We at Studies Weekly want this to be a lesson to you," the apology said. "Not all Web sites are true, and you cannot always believe them. When researching, you should always look for a reliable site that has credentials (proof of truthfulness)."

Studies Weekly publications have a circulation of 1.2 million readers in third through sixth grades nationwide.

The article read: "Every spring, the freshwater whales and freshwater dolphins begin their 1,300-mile migration from Hudson Bay to the warmer waters of Lake Michigan."

In reality, the closest whales get to Michigan is the salty estuary at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, which is home to beluga whales.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: MMario
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 02:55 PM

Seneca Lake in Upstate NY has an annual Whale Watch festival. Several locals claim to have seen "Sennie" - a alledged freshwater whale.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Naemanson
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:15 PM

Where's Charley Noble? He has a song about hunting the great freshwater whales.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: irishajo
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:17 PM

I grew up a few miles away from the lake myself. All these years I could've been whale watching! Who'da thunk it.

Nice save by the newspaper. "Let this be a lesson to you..."

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:28 PM

Ah, but see http://superiorpublicmuseums.org/ssmeteor/NewMETEORMAIN.htm

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:29 PM

Many years ago, when younger and without a private personal abode, I used to take friends to the hill overlooking Raritan Bay in Perth Amboy to watch the submarine races.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:42 PM

They aren't whales. They're Iraqi submarines.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: gwonya
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:51 PM

I've been able to look out the window of my house
at Lake Ontario just down the road for many years now
- I've never seen a whale there ....Hang on a minute....
nope, still no whales....WAIT!!...no it's okay.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:01 PM

Iroquoi submarines?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: MMario
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:03 PM

You mean from the "lost" tribes of the Iroquois that moved underneath the Great Lakes and became aquatic in order to avoid the encroachment of the "white man"?

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: PeteBoom
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:05 PM

Rapaire - Those are precisely the "whales" I thought of when I saw the topic.

For YEARS there was a whaleback visible off the breakwater at the Muskegon (MI) harbor entrance in Lake Michigan. I've forgotten which one, but she missed the entrance in a storm - caught by a freak wave and thrown onto the breakwater. That holed her hull, broke her back and the next large wave lifted her off and down she went. If I remember right all her crew but one was saved.

Cheers-

Pete

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: GUEST,Martin Ryan
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:05 PM

I'm tempted to guess U911 - but that would be poor taste, wouldn't it?

Regards

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:38 PM

There was a proposal some years ago to bring some freshwater dolphins into the Great Lakes. yours, Peter T.

Subject: Lyr Add: FRESH-WATER WHALING
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 04:54 PM

Back by popular demand!

Original concept by Scott Alarik in the late 1970's; lyrics by Si Kahn. Mark Cohen learned this from sea music singer Mary Benson in Portland, Oregon.

"Recalls those halcyon days when the St. Lawrence was deeper and broader; whales made their way into the Great Lakes to sport and play only to be later hunted to extinction."

Adapted by Charlie Ipcar in 2001
Tune: after Jez Lowe's "Black Diamonds"
Key: G

FRESH-WATER WHALING

Now when I was a tiny lad, no bigger than a youth,
I'd walk along the seawall where the waters meet Duluth;
The whaling boats were a-coming in, the wind would fill their sails,
And I'd dream of going hunting for them fierce fresh-water whales.

The first ship that I signed on was called The Great St. Paul;
Her old sod sides were sturdy and her cornstalk masts were tall;
Her captain was an older man, but well preserved with rum,
Which he'd only started drinking when a perch bit off his thumb.

Chorus:

Oh, the wailing of the women, I can still recall,
As they watched our sails grow smaller, from the old seawall;
We young men were determined to heed our fathers' call,
We'd go fresh-water whaling, or not come back at all.

That night we heard the barking of them Apostle Island seals;
For our passage round the Keweenaw, our ship we put on wheels;
We polished all our decoys with bowling alley wax,
And lined our trusty whaling clubs with extra rows of tacks.

Now the wind it was a-rising, our decks were swept with spray,
When we launched our wooden decoys in the waters of Green Bay;
We didn't want to scare the whales, so we muffled oars with care,
Rowed out to the horizon and dropped our anchors there. (CHO)

After forty days and thirty nights our hunger pangs grew rough,
The last whale had been hunted down -- God hadn't made enough;
The decoys were our only hope, we were a desperate bunch,
So we sawed them into plank steaks, and broiled them up for lunch.

Now when we limped back to Duluth, they all did stand and stare,
We looked so thin and ragged, our lives they did despair;
But unlike the Flying Dutchman, whose story you'll recall,
We resettled in Minneapolis, do our whaling at the Mall. (CHO)

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 06:49 PM

There ARE fresh water dolphins in the St. Lawrence -- as far inland as Montreal.

Hey, thanks, Charley -- I didn't have that last verse!

Linn who was born between Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Just Amy
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 06:50 PM

Charley - you are the best. Thanks.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: boab d
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 07:46 PM

As a residend in Jockland it could be that people have been mistaken and seena relative of the great Nessie. I would say that stranger things have happened but then I doubt it

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Big Mick
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 08:53 PM

These folks are nuts, sayin' that there aren't any freshwater whales. Between the years of 1966 and 1969 I used to see them regularly while I was sitting on the top of the dunes...........I guess you had to be there..........hehehehehehe. But then again if you remember the '60s...

Mick

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:46 PM

Da man himself, old friend and folksinger extraordianaire, SCOTT ALARIK gets all the credit and at least fifty percent of the blame for this entire concept. Si Kahn gets the other 50% of the blame for writing that song. But SCOTT ALARIK is the originator of the stage rap that Si took and turned into da ballit.

Scott is also the folk critic for the Boston Globe. As such he wrote about a third of my press packet over the years. (It's not what ya know, but who !!!)

But we've discussed this in other threads I'm pretty sure.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: GUEST,paddymac
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 10:03 PM

Ya just gotta love a "whale of a tale." Factuality is irrelavent, or summpin like that. EBarnacle - I've heard it said that folks sometimes got torpedoed on that hill, especially on moonlight nights.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 03:20 AM

I don't know about the Great Lakes but there are certainly whales in the Big Brown (Lake Winnipeg): there's even a poem about it, titled "The Ghost Whaler of Gimli" by Brian Richardson. In Canada Folk Bulletin, Sept-Dec 1980, Vol 3, Nos. 5/6.
Jon Bartlett

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 03:32 AM

For another song angle, 1966 a beluga traveled up the Rhine as far as Bonn, many many miles from the Northern sea (click for article with picture). The nation went wild with exitement and did sing:

Was will der weiße Wal im Rhein
Er hat gehört im Rhein soll Wein statt Wasser sein.
Was will der weiße Wal?
Das wissen wir genau:
Der weiße Wal wär gern einmal
so richtig blau

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 08:50 AM

Big Mick-

You should always let "Sleeping Bears" lie!;~)

Art, I did reference Scott and Si Kahn in what I posted, but I do confess to tampering with the geography of their original creation, moving the whaling grounds from a remote and smaller inland MN lake to the great Green Bay.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 08:53 AM

There are indeed some great lakes in Wales. Not as big as the American ones but Bala is pleasant enough to sail a Mirror Dingy on...

Cheers

Dave the Gnome

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Big Mick
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 09:02 AM

Charley...........that was reeeeeaaaaaalllllyyyyy, reeeeeeaaaaaallllly, bad. I loved it! I didn't think anyone caught the reference................LOL.

Mick

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: PeteBoom
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 09:47 AM

"I didn't think anyone caught the reference"... I did as soon as I read it this morning.

Cheers - Pete

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 11:34 AM

Once, at a wedding reception in DC, I was talking with another guest about the availability of fresh seafood in South Bend, Indiana (where I lived at the time -- it was readily available, flown in or frozen). Anyway, she said that we probably didn't get much, I was replying with stories about the oysters, squid, crabs and lobsters we got from Lake Michigan when my wife showed up and confused reality (mine) with facts.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: MMario
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 11:43 AM

The freshwater dolphin populations of the Great Lakes, quite possibly (like those of New England) were decimated as part of the harvest of their wool - naturally water resistant, it was the prime choice for knitting of fishermen's sweaters. Glouchester alone is reported to have consumed the fleece of over 1200 freshwater dolphins annually during the heyday of the fishing fleets.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 12:54 PM

MMario, I was drinking coffee when I read the first sentence of your message.
The results were disastrous.
-Joe Offer, mopping things up a bit-

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Schantieman
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 01:02 PM

Presumably though, if it's the fleece, it's shorn annually and sustainably, like sheep. This is clearly why you never actually see a freshwater dolphin with its fleece on.

Steve

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: MMario
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 01:10 PM

In this enlightened age, of course! However in earlier days the delpherders would slaughter their charges, being reluctant to shear while waist deep in water.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: artbrooks
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 01:10 PM

Are those the same dolphins that were drafted during WWII...to escort the North Atlantic convoys and rescue torpedoed sailors?

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Barbara
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 01:20 PM

Actually, Charley, as you may be in a position to know, I misspent significant portions of my college years at the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes Park on Lake Michigan, and EJ, we watched the submarine races at night in the Red Cedar River (or else we went down there to get fresh mud for our turtles), rather than drive all the way to Lake Michigan, tho the sand is softer, as I recall...
Mick is right, Charley, that was REALLY BAD...
Blessings,
Barbara

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 05:38 PM

It's nice to be appreciated!

Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes Park may have been where you and Mick spent significant parts of your youth, Tehquamenon was my downfall. ;~)

Cheerily,
Charley Noble, who has several hundred Michigan place name puns to unload

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: ballpienhammer
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 09:30 PM

aren't they somewhere on the evolutionary tree near the Jackelopes?

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Bert
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 01:24 AM

Of course, they are not REALLY fresh water whales. They spend most of their lives at sea and just swim up The St. Lawrence to spawn once every 27 years. It's really quite a sight to watch them jump up Niagara.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 08:38 AM

Very nice image, Bert!

I seem to have vague memories of another fresh-water whaling song from Chicago, sung by The Privateers.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: GUEST,The O'Meara
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 01:05 PM

I have an ancient 8-track tape bootlegged for me by a friend in St. Paul MN, of an old Prarie Home Companion broadcast before the program was national. It contains the Song of the Freshwater Whalers, and explains some of the mysteries about the song. For instance rowing out to "The Horizon" refers to a supper club in Two Harbors just north of Duluth on Lake Superior. And in fact, the freshwater whaling expedition was on Lake Superior, where they hunted the Superior Sperm.The story remained unknown for so long because of the tragic end of the expedition, when Captain Ingemar Thorvaldsen was struck down in his youth when a decoy fell on him.

(Your grandparents can explain about 8-track tapes.

O'Meara

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 02:37 PM

O'Meara-

"Superior Sperm" was the original title for the song but some of us thought that might be too much for the audience to swallow.

Glad to get some additional notes on this song, such as the significance of "rowing out to the horizon."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Naemanson
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 02:46 PM

Oh God, Charley, Superior sperm was "... too much for the audience to swallow"! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: open mike
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 04:06 PM

10-15 years ago a mis-guided whale came up the sacramento
river delta and was turned back by squads of whale
lovers with recordings of whale songs. I believe he got
named Harvey th Hump-backed Whale, and there is a children's
book about this by Ernest Callenbach, who also wrote Ecotopia ,
which is about CA, OR and WA succeeding from the union and
fornming n ecologically correct society with mass transit,
recycling, organic lifestyle, natural living, etc.
I have some friends who yused to publish a magazine
called Seriatim, a journal of ecotopia...
the correct title of the book is:
Humphrey The Wayward Whale

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: MMario
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 04:10 PM

There was a whale frolicking in the Cape Cod Canal this summer - I suspect that this behavior is the remnents of spawning behavior. (the canal follows for a large part the track of fresh water streams that almost met...herring still approach their spawning grounds only from the original direction)

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: GUEST,dex
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 11:09 PM

That Tehquamenon pun doesn't hold much water, now does it?

Subject: ADD: The Seafood Shop Shantyman Song
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 11:58 PM

This beauty from Greg Trafidlo & Neal Phillips speaks very movingly of the Midwestern deep sea-fisherman, I think.

THE SEAFOOD SHOP CHANTYMAN'S SONG
(Greg Trafidlo & Neal Phillips)

In the city of Lincoln, Nebraska,
A frustrated sailor was born;
He read about ships that rolled out of the slips,
And went sailin' for years round the horn.
He learned all the hornpipes and chanties,
Still he's twelve hundred miles from the shore;
Instead of sea-farin', he sells pickled herrin'
At the IGA grocery store.

Chorus:
And it's way, hey, rig out the sails,
We're off for the catch of the day!
He sings, "Yo, ho! Rig out the sails,
To broil, to bake or fumé;
There's roughy and schrod, catfish and cod,
And we're runnin' a special on prawns,
He sings straight from the heart
To your shopping-cart,
It's the seafood shop chantyman's song.

He bellows his tunes o'er the speakers,
Like the chantyman sings to the crew:
"Set sail for the seafood department,
There's plenty of oysters for stew.
There's turbot and trout,
And you'll knock yourself out,
On the salmon from Frobisher Bay,
There's swordfish and shrimp,
We never skimp on the salad made fresh every day.

Chorus:
To broil, to bake or flambé.

With his gaze on a bottle of Old Spice,
Halfway down on the right in aisle ten,
He longs for the days of the tall ships.
And he dreams they're returnin' again.
And he sees himself out on the watchdeck,
Singin' cadence off Prince William sound,
While he's manning his station,
It's no imitation like those crab legs for two bucks a pound.

Chorus:
To broil, to bake, or étouffé.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LH4DsFS5OA

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 09:43 AM

Some old friend of mine used to live out in Manhattan, Kansas, and used to regale me with stories of the daily tide reports for the local lake.

THE SEAFOOD SHOP CHANTYMAN'S SONG is certainly a keeper. Maybe we'll work it up for the next time we're singing at Sea Food Festival Day at Portland's Public Market. That is to say if they'll invite us back again after our rendition of "Dramamine" last spring...

"Tehquamenon" by the way is the name of a scenic waterfalls in the Upper Pininsular (UP) of Michigan. I was looking for it one year, when I was led astray in Paradise.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: GUEST,dex
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 10:20 AM

Charlie Noble,

Huron a roll with your location puns; they are superior to any.

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 21 Nov 02 - 04:59 PM

Dex-

With towns like Bad Ax, Climax, Shaftsburg - Hell, how could I miss?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 26 Mar 25 - 10:37 AM

I seem to have not mentioned above that I actually heard Si Kahn lead "Freshwater Whaling/Superior Sperm" one foggy morning at the Wheatland Folk Festival in Michigan back in the 1970s. The image of the whalers rowing out to the horizon to set their whale decoys somehow lodged in my brain and I eventually had to learn the entire song, and add a bit to it in the process.

Cheerily,
Charlie Ipcar

Subject: RE: Whales in Great Lakes?
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Mar 25 - 07:12 PM

And I remember Humphrey the humpback whale!