One June day about ten years ago on Martha’s Vineyard, I kayaked over Chilmark Salt Pond to the barrier beach on the Atlantic. I could see dozens of gulls wheeling over the high dunes.
"Māori traditionally treasured stranded whales for their jawbones, which were used for carving. When three sperm whales beached and died at Paekakariki in March 1996, Māori from the region removed the jawbones from two of the three. The third whale…
"In his _Life_ of the abbot Philibert of Jumièges (c. 608–684), Ermantarius of Noirmoutier recounts that the abbot had prayed for oil for lamps and that 'a monk came and announced that the sea had left a dead fish . . . on the shore; from its flesh…
The _Gulaþing_ was an annual parliament held at Gulen on the west coast of Norway from c. 900-1300 C.E. The _Gulaþinglova_ (law), legislation compiled over the centuries and extant in the _Codex Ranzovianus_ (1250), contains this: