Major porn site raising money for Washington nonprofit to save whales

Screen shot of Pornhub's Save the Whales campaign page. Screen shot of Pornhub's Save the Whales campaign page. Image 1 of / 90 Caption Close Major porn site raising money for Washington nonprofit to save whales 1 / 90 Back to Gallery

Would you watch porn in order to save whales? Mega website Pornhub hopes so.

Of course, the company wants to save whales. I mean, who doesn't? Thus, the adult entertainment site's new charitable campaign: "Pornhub Cares' Save the Whales" (a visually SFW link, though the written innuendos are very directly risqué).

The company says it will give one cent for every 2,000 videos played across its entire free website, starting on Monday and running to Feb. 29, to Washington's Moclips Cetological Society in honor of World Whale Day, which is Saturday.

That may not sound like much of a gift until you remember just how popular porn is. As of typing this sentence, Pornhub's video-play counter on its whale page showed more than 532 million video plays. The number goes up a few thousand views about as fast as I can refresh the page. So ... it could turn out to be a significant sum for a nonprofit studying whales out of Puget Sound.

Yeah, but does Moclips know about the, um, colorful fundraising campaign?

To find out, we pinged Kenneth Balcomb, president of Moclips and executive director of the Center for Whale Research, which was started by Moclips in 1986. Here's what he wrote us:

Yes, I am aware of it, and the beneficiary is the reconstituted Moclips Cetological Society, a nonprofit that I originally founded in 1976 with a contribution from the owner of Apple Theater in Seattle (an adult theater).

Well, then.

I thought it a fitting tribute to the charitable role of a segment of society that does not typically receive credit for its activities, or its philanthropy. Given what we have now learned about the sex lives of many species of whales, they would probably chuckle over any eyebrows raised by the humans' concern for how other people live. Humans did not invent sex.

In fact, one bit of trivia on the Moclips site announces under "interesting facts":

A right whale's testicles may weigh up to 1 ton!

A male harbor porpoise in breeding season has testicles approximately 4% of his body weight.

In short, the whale advocacy and research org Moclips was started in 1969 "to document and investigate strandings of cetaceans." Since then, Moclips has expanded to surveying killer whales and in 1979 founded the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor in Washington's San Juan Islands. Then, it kicked off the Center for Whale Research, which is a major organization studying the southern resident killer whale population.

Recently, Moclips "incorporated as an academic and philanthropic organization in 2014 to publish occasional scientific papers and books promoting knowledge of whales, dolphins and porpoises and advocacy for their conservation for future generations," according to the org's website.

Here's some colorful info from Pornhub's news release:

"Humans are not the only mammals that engage in sexual activities for reasons other than procreation," said Ken Balcomb, president of Moclips Cetological Society. "Cetaceans – whales, dolphins and porpoises – are very sexual animals and have evolved a variety of fascinating social life histories beyond simple procreation. Although our primary goal is to ensure effective conservation for cetacean species, our academic goal is to educate the public about their social and biological lifestyles that readers might find very interesting." After nearly a century of commercial whaling and overfishing, there has been a major decline in the population of whales, which play a very important role in the health of our environment and our understanding of marine mammals. This is why it's imperative that the environmental community continue its fight on all levels to help end the destruction, and why Pornhub has jumped in. "Here at Pornhub, we care deeply about the environment and the preservation of wildlife," said Corey Price, VP, Pornhub. "We're now asking our community turn their attention to – and help save – a different type of blowhole, one that belongs to a majestic species that once swelled in numbers throughout the oceans before commercial industries initiated their demise."

Okey dokey, then. I guess you all know what to do ... ;)

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.