Richard Wheeler: What a Long-Gone Bird Tells Us About Today

Richard Wheeler wants to tell you a story about a bird–a fine but flightless bird that lived a long time ago in the North Atlantic. “A magnificent creature,” he calls the great auk, “an extraordinary paddler and swimmer.” Sitting on the deck of a Wareham, Mass., home adorned by portraits and a sculpture of the 2-ft.-tall black-and-white bird, the shaggy-maned Wheeler scowls when he thinks about the great auk’s fate. During the 18th and 19th centuries, commercial fishing vessels scoured the waters off North America for cod. Since the all but defenseless great auk provided a source of meat and oil, fishermen clubbed the birds to death by the millions on the rookeries off Newfoundland. The last two known members of the species, a nesting pair, were killed on June 3, 1844, strangled by Icelandic fishermen recruited by a merchant who hoped to sell the skins to collectors.

To Wheeler, the lost bird was a herald of humanity’s continuing plunder of the seas. Having devastated the cod population, Atlantic fishing boats are exhausting the haddock, herring and flounder. “How do you make people see that we are strip-mining the oceans?” Wheeler, once a commercial fisherman himself, asks, his voice edged with puzzlement. “I find myself depressed. Our relationship with the planet is terribly flawed.”

In 1991 at the age of 60, Wheeler decided to use the story of the great auk to dramatize what was happening. A former U.S. Navy deep-sea diver and a veteran kayaker, he set out on a solo 1,500-mile kayak trip from Newfoundland to Buzzards Bay, Mass., following the seasonal migration route of the great auk–as much a feat for a man with a paddle as for a bird that could not fly. He hoped the attention the perilous journey would receive would send a clear message: “What we did to the auk, we are now doing to other species.”

For four months he fought head winds and towering swells, sometimes discovering that after hours of struggle, he had not moved an inch, and always knowing that capsizing in the 45[degree]F water would mean “starting to die within minutes.” By landing triumphantly in Buzzards Bay, Wheeler brought the great auk back from extinction, at least in the human imagination. PBS featured his trip on its Nova science show; a recounting of the voyage by professional storyteller Jay O’Callahan continues to delight and move thousands of listeners each year; schoolchildren from Nova Scotia to Fiji retrace Wheeler’s journey in their classrooms.

Now Wheeler is working on a curriculum package for middle schoolers to help instill respect for marine life. When feeling discouraged, he remembers the first day on his voyage, when he had 40 miles to paddle through rough seas before nightfall. “I felt the ocean was testing my sincerity.” Having passed that trial, Wheeler can’t let the ocean down now.

–By Christopher Hallowell/Wareham