YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories – A group of Alaskan and Canadian natives announced plans to form a co-operative and go into the aquaculture business by farm-raising sperm whales. Chief Wahoo Whippitout of the Hinkidinki Band of Pequod Inuit said, “People all over the world have been successfully fish-farming for a long time. We’re taking aquaculture upscale by an order of magnitude.
“We have identified several bays and inlets on our coastline suitable for farming. All we’ll need are some really big, strong nets to put across the bay entrances once we’ve lured in some whales. Oh, and about 10,000 tons of squid each year to feed them. We had to guilt-trip those hosers in Ottawa and Washington into cancelling a bunch of oil and gas leases in the area that would have gotten in the way. We’ve got them so buffaloed that we didn’t even have to play the ‘sacred land’ card and we can ignore any international whaling treaties.”
Processing of the mature sperm whales will be in a land-based facility built and operated under contract by the Ahab Corporation of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Ishmael Starbuck, CEO of Ahab, said, “We were founded 150 years ago on the principle that the only good sperm whale is a dead sperm whale. It will be our pleasure to chop them up into little pieces. Of course, we’ll recruit as many local workers as possible, and we have some real experts on our staff to do the training.”
When asked why sperm whales were selected for farming rather than another species, Chief Whippit replied,
“Do you know how big those things are? We won’t have to raise very many of them to have enough whale oil and blubber to last us forever with plenty left over to sell to the Japanese. Our deal with Ahab was contingent on our raising sperm whales and no other type. If we get an albino, for some reason Ahab will pay us a huge bonus. Besides, don’t you think the name ‘sperm’ whale is hilarious?”
Professor Prestam Koldkut of the Canadian Institute for Wasting Money on the Arctic said, “It’s gratifying to know that the Inuit can be just as stupid as the rest of us. Do they really think they can confine a bunch of 50-ton whales with a net? I mean, these beasts have sunk ships!” Continents away, early objections to the project were voiced by the Israeli Knesset, but then it was explained to them that the project concerned “whaling” and not “wailing.”
