In 1850, the Honolulu Friend published an unusual editorial from an unexpected source. Whalers who scoured the seas for the giant aquatic mammals knew well that large whales were beginning to become scarce, but this was the first time one of the whales decided to speak up in print about the plight of its kind. A bowhead whale from the Arctic who went under the simple moniker the “POLAR WHALE”,  the concerned cetacean wished to report on a meeting recently held by “the knowing old inhabitants of this sea” in efforts “to avert the doom that seems to await all of the whale Genus throughout the world, including the Sperm, Right, and Polar whales.” The whale continued:

Our enemies have wondered