MonsterQuest wants you to know something: Whales are jerks. Such is the message behind an episode I just watched, "The Real Moby Dick." The show goes in search of a super-aggressive white sperm whale. And just because they can't find one, that doesn't hold them back.

The idea which germinated into Herman Melville's Moby Dick is the tale of a whaling ship which was rammed by a sperm whale. And indeed, MonsterQuest is able to dig up two other stories of sperm whales attacking ships.

But let me stop you right there and point out that THESE WHALES HAD ALL BEEN HARPOONED.

All three stories start out with, "So this whaling team harpooned a sperm whale…" Now, I myself am a very peaceful person. When presented with a conflict, I like to talk it out like rational adults.

BUT IF YOU STICK A SPEAR IN ME, I WILL TRY TO HURT YOU.

That's just how it goes, you know? If you drove up to my house and jabbed me with a harpoon - I wish you wouldn't - but if you did, I would probably do something kind of violent. Because I am not stupid, and I would be in pain, and afraid.

I think we can safely say the same about sperm whales.

In fact, this episode is resolutely pro-whaler throughout. The sperm whale is presented as an "aggressive monster." Despite the fact that we have three recorded instances of a sperm whale attacking a ship, versus the estimated 970,000 sperm whales which have been killed by the commercial whaling industry since the 1800s.

NINE HUNDRED SEVENTY THOUSAND.

What we see before us is the relic population, the endangered remains of a once-powerful species. There are a few hundred thousand sperm whales alive in the world today. Before the commercial whaling industry basically made a profit by using the bodies of whales for firewood, there were an estimated 1.1 million whales.

No surprise that these animals are shy.

And in fact, when MonsterQuest's team goes out to try and film a white one, they are repeatedly skunked. Time after time, the whales spot them coming and dive, fleeing the approaching ships. However, the MonsterQuest team members describe this as an act of disrespect, a dismissive gesture just this side of open aggression.

The show describes albino sperm whales as "aggressive." However, there is absolutely no basis for this belief. One albino sperm whale in the 1800s was known for having frequently evaded slaughter. That's not aggressive! And given that there are, by one expert's guess, several hundred albino sperm whales alive in the wild at any given time, I would expect that if they really were aggressive WE WOULD HAVE NOTICED BY NOW.

The explanation the show trots out (for this phenomena which it basically invented out of whole cloth) is that a white sperm whale has to be tougher, because it stands out more against the ocean, and it will therefore attract more attention from predators. This would be an interesting theory, were it not for the fact that the sperm whale has only one predator: humans.

And sadly, the color of the whale has no bearing on their slaughter. Just ask the Japanese "scientists" who continue to harvest whales "for science" and then, hey, no point wasting the meat, we might as well sell it on the whale meat market.

Photo credit: Flickr/threefishsleeping