Northwest Tribe Cuts Short Revived Gray Whale Hunt
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NEAH BAY, Wash. — Bad weather, fatigue and the threat of a protest brought the Makah’s whaling crew back to shore on Tuesday with no whale in tow.
Accompanied by a support boat and a small flotilla of media, Coast Guard and protest vessels, the Indian tribe’s crew launched its carved cedar canoe from a Pacific beach early Tuesday in hopes of intercepting a whale migrating from Mexico to the summer feeding grounds off Alaska. However, the seven-member crew turned back after about an hour as the weather began to deteriorate.
The tribe, which lives at the tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, hopes to revive its centuries-old whaling tradition, which ended more than 70 years ago after the gray whale population was decimated by commercial whaling.
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