Whale vs. dolphin for state's marine mammal

It's not easy to budge a right whale — they can weigh as much as 140,000 pounds. But local state legislators are determined to do it.

Sens. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, and Paul Campbell, R-Goose Creek, defend their move to name the bottlenose dolphin the state marine mammal — instead of the right whale — as the right thing to do. Campsen introduced the bill to counter legislation designating the whale that was submitted by students at a Sumter school as a project.

The students at Alice Drive Elementary School wanted to call attention to the critically endangered species that winters in the Southeast Atlantic. The State Ports Authority balked at the idea of the designation. Campbell is a co-sponsor of Campsen's bill. Both bills are before a Senate subcommittee where both senators sit.

The intent of the state symbol designations is to highlight popular, indigenous species, Campsen said. The ubiquitous dolphin is both. He would no sooner vote to name the whale than he would the migratory bluefin tuna, even though both can be found offshore.

"I'm not trying to be a bad guy and neither is Sen. Campsen," Campbell said. "I sympathize with (the students). I'm glad they learned about the right whale." But there's no logic to selecting the creature, he said. "If you're going to the trouble of printing something on state literature, it ought to be a mammal that's indigenous to our waters."

Campbell also defended an e-mail he is sending in reply to people expressing support for naming the right whale; the reply says the whale is known to be aggressive to humans. He pointed out two Web articles that reference the whale's trait of slapping its powerful tail flukes at the water, and a zoo Web site that says right whales tend to be docile and don't attack humans "unless they feel threatened."

Well, not quite, said Scott Landry, whale rescue director of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. The whales "lobtail," or tail slap in any number of circumstances, singly or in groups. Nobody really knows why. They will do it on occasion when rescuers are trying to disentangle lines from them, and there are historic reports of them turning on harpooning whalers.

But "under no circumstances have we had a whale come after us actively. Under duress these animals can be defensive, but you can get a pigeon to peck at you if you harass it enough," Landry said.

Campsen said he was not asked by the SPA to introduce his bill. Ports officials expressed concern about naming the right whale, he said. He came up with dolphin bill on his own.

The SPA is struggling to repair an image in the shipping world battered by recent management problems. Container ships that use the port now must slow down near the coast during the whale's winter calving season, under a new federal regulation.