Orignially posted 11/26/2012
Why do we love whales? What is it that draws our attention? When we see whales we are entranced and cannot turn away. Some of us sit for hours and count them as they go by. I have done this many times. I found a pattern. They blow a few times. I see the pod, or a cow and calf, here, then there, then once again 200 yards to the south. They blow again. Then it is flukes, tails skyward, and they sound, swim down deep into the ocean home with their preposterous load of oxygen to swim under water for ¾ of a mile. If I am attentive, if the light is right, if the sea is not too choppy, if I am lucky, I will see them blow again. Far away.
I have heard that the spinal column to brain weight ratio of a whale is close to that of man. Do we somehow believe that they are like us? Admittedly they are not us. We have found no poetry written by whales, but there is their music. Hear it and it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Are they so different that they communicate in a watery way and we do so in air? But they are an alien race. Can we pretend to understand them?
If you have an opportunity to get close to whales do so. I have had this privilege. There is a beach in Baja where the whales come right to the shore. They hover there, or swim lazily back and forth. Something attracts them. There is fresh water sifting through the beach sand from a lagoon. Perhaps it attracts them. The beach is steep there as well. Some say that they scrape against the sand to remove barnacles. This is not their destination. They are going to the Sea of Cortez to birth their young or are on the way back to cold water in the far North towing a calf.
A friend of mine suggested that we swim with them. At 1st this seemed extreme. What if one hits us with a tail fluke. The flukes as well as their graceful bodies are covered with barnacles. They could do some damage. But this friend and her husband are all courage. So, they went in. If they would, so would I. Several others felt the same. We all waded in with fins and masks to see what we could see. The whales stayed away for a while. They were eerily missing, listening to us perhaps, feeling who we are. Then they began spy hopping from a distance to look at us. Spy hopping is when the whale goes vertical, treading water, their heads stick up out of the water and they cock an eye at the item of curiosity, which was us. We watched them back. Theirs are not the nervous dog eyes of the seal but knowing eyes. The need not be wary of us and they seem to know this.
Then someone started singing Stairway to Heaven, and though I was done with Led Zeppelin, I joined in. All 6 of us sang. We were a little nervous. But the whales woke up, started coming toward us. They are apparently not burned out on this song. No classic rock under the sea. I felt a sense of panic and calm at the same tame. A feeling similar to taking off a wave a little too big for me knowing that I would make the drop.
Someone shouted, “One going under us”. Against my best judgment I turned over and started swimming down toward the whale. The females are the biggest, so I will call her a She, and She was big, right below me by about 6’, long as a school bus but much slimmer. The shape of an organic underwater locomotive. A streamliner. I reached my hand out to touch Her but could not. She kicked here tale with broad movements and was gone. I felt as though I had tried to touch a star or that the passing whale had shown me an aura of the genetic code of all biology. An impression of our continuity.
These are Grey Whales. When I was a young surfer on the northern California coast they were consider on the road to extinction. Now, 40 years later, they are migrating from north to south and back every year in large numbers. And the world is better for it