DEAD or alive, we cannot resist the allure of the whale.

Whether it’s Jonah being swallowed by one, Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, or David Attenborough shouting for joy as he encounters a blue whale, it seems that apart from the Japanese and assorted Scandinavians, we are hard-wired to adore, be fascinated by, and want to protect these magnificent creatures.

Images of the Greenpeace fast boats and Sea Shepherd campaigners intercepting the harpoons of the Japanese whalers are etched into the minds of a generation.

Yet how much do we really know about these giant, mysterious creatures?

Scientists may know that a blue whale’s heart is as big as a Mini car. And that a child could crawl through its veins.

Yet they can’t say for certain whether whales can smell or not.

We know a sperm whale can withstand the pressure of water at 10,000 feet. But we’re not sure if their closest land-based relative really is the hippopotamus because we’ve never actually found out.

Whales are wreathed in legend and folklore. The narwhal, with its long, spiralled horn, is said to have been the inspiration for the Unicorn.

Ancestors in many lands believed that whales posed as islands, awaiting a visit from the unwary so they could eat them.

When a large whale was washed up at Boscombe in 1897, the incident not only led to a mini-tourism boom but a series of bizarre incidents.

The 340-tonne creature became an impromptu slide for boys as more than 300 people bought train tickets from Christchurch alone to travel to see the sight.

One farm labourer came all the way from Somerset. “I’ve come 40 miles to see this creature and I’m going to walk on him from his head to his tail,” he declared.

Very quickly he started to sink through the rotting flesh and had to be rescued.

The carcass was sold to a Dr Spencer Simpson, who decided to have the bones stripped of the flesh, to become a paid attraction on the pier.

Unfortunately the whale smelt so awful that few of those paid to do the job had the stomach for it.

That didn’t put off the visitors and Dr Simpson had to pay for a police officer to keep people away from his prize.

The corporation decided to start burying the putrid body but this caused a row with Dr Simpson over their right to do this.

The incident ended with a stand-off between the doctor and the corporation’s chief sanitary inspector in which a sword-stick was pulled and threats made to the inspector’s life.

All those who have been watching Gilbert must be hoping he will not suffer this fate.

According to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society’s science director, Mark Simmonds, there is hope for him as northern bottlenose whales have been seen in shallow waters in the past, and then happily swum away.

He believes our fascination with whales can be attributed to three things.

Firstly, their size: “They are the largest creatures to have ever existed. Even Gilbert could be up to nine metres long.”

Secondly, they interest us because they are still mysterious.

“There’s so much we don’t know – we don’t know where Gilbert would feed, where he would breed.

“You can’t exactly follow them where they go and you can’t study them at very close quarters.”

The third strain of interest must lie, he says, in the fact that we are a maritime nation and carry an affinity with the sea.

He believes whales are interested in humans and possess a special intelligence that we have been unable to tap into.

“When you see a grey whale looking up at you with such interest in his eye, you have to wonder what it is they’re thinking.”

Gilbert is of enormous interest to the WDCS because he is a very rare visitor to these parts, although our coastal waters are home to a recorded 24 species of dolphin, porpoise and whale.

Mark hopes Gilbert will soon return to the deep sea and urges all those who have been interested in him to contact their MP and MEP to ask them to lobby for continued protection for whales.

They are a protected species in our waters but are still hunted by Japan, Iceland, the Danish Faroe Islanders and Norway.