[sopchi]

Melville's got your back:

- "Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me."

- "To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail."

He even notes right there that he knows about Linnaeus' work (a century old at this point) that concludes that whales are not fish. He simply decides not to care. Looks like Walrus is where he draws his line.

[1]: Moby Dick, Chapter 32: Cetology