Balcomb wasn’t used to reaching out for help. He always fixed his own cars and boats when they broke. Money was chronically tight, but he managed to keep his boats gassed up and in the water. A couple of wealthy donors had helped along the way with the gift of a survey boat and a down payment loan on his house, which doubled as the research headquarters back in Smugglers Cove, Washington. Otherwise he was proudly, stubbornly self-sufficient, and over the years, he’ d managed to scrape together what he needed to continue his research.
But now he needed help, and he knew it. The elation he’ d first felt on seeing and touching a live Cuvier’s had given way to dismay at the multiple strandings, then to anxiety that something catastrophic had befallen the whales they’ d been studying for the past decade. What could have happened out there to send them streaming out of the canyon and into the dangerous shallows? He tried to clear his head of exhaustion and confusion, so he could sort it out. Something extraordinary had happened in the canyon that morning. Of that much he was certain.
He’ d heard that Disney Cruise Line had been dynamiting offshore of Castaway Cay as part of a new pier construction. But that was 15 miles from Sandy Point. An undersea earthquake, or some other seismic event, could produce intense pressure waves that could drive whales ashore. But that would have also created unusually high surf, and he hadn’t seen the kind of driftwood or debris that would have washed ashore after a tidal storm.
His thoughts kept circling back to the US Navy, which maintained an underwater testing range 100 miles to the southeast, off Andros Island. If the Navy had something going on anywhere near Abaco, Bob Gisiner would know about it. Or he could call someone who would know. In the meantime, Gisiner had the resources to jump-start an investigation here on the ground. There was no way Balcomb and his team could manage forensics on a multispecies mass stranding. He didn’t have the manpower or the labs. And he sure didn’t have the money.
Gisiner had been Balcomb’s graduate school classmate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, back in the early 1970s. In those days, UC Santa Cruz was the leading—really, the only—university offering a marine mammal program. Marine mammalogy had barely been named, much less codified, and the prior generation of pioneering researchers had emerged from disciplines as disparate as neurology, marine biology veterinary medicine, zoology and ichthyology. The graduate program was tiny, and the students who collaborated on field research along the California coast worked at such close quarters that no one had any secrets. By the end of the semester, they knew one another the way a submariner knows his bunkmate: by smell. That first generation of university-trained marine mammal scientists remained a tight-knit, mostly male fraternity for decades afterward, even if they were conducting research on opposite ends of the globe and only crossed paths at annual conferences.
Balcomb and Gisiner hadn’t been close friends at Santa Cruz. Gisiner studied seals and sea lions—the “pinniped” branch of the marine mammal family tree—while Balcomb was focused exclusively on whales. With his droopy mustache and wizened eyes, Gisiner had eventually come to resemble his research subjects, in much the way some dog owners seem to morph into their pet’s particular breed. Gisiner was smart, like everyone else in the PhD program. But he’ d also been ambitious and shrewd in a way that made him stand out among the laid-back California students of the day.
After grad school, Balcomb’s and Gisiner’s careers went in opposite directions. Balcomb left Santa Cruz for Japan, where he studied the local Baird’s beaked whales. Then he moved to the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest to begin a photo census of the resident killer-whale population that he continued every summer for decades. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he subsisted on donations from local donors and grants from small foundations, plus the trickle of money he netted from hosting the Earthwatch program. Balcomb didn’t publish very often in the peer-reviewed journals, and when he did, he was always happy to give first-author credit to his collaborators. His highest-profile publication had been the Baird’s beaked whale chapter in the Handbook of Marine Mammals. Balcomb was proud to be included among the PhDs and career academic contributors to that multivolume textbook. But unlike most of his classmates from Santa Cruz, Balcomb never established any institutional affiliation. And because he didn’t complete his PhD coursework, the plum jobs inside academia, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Office of Naval Research remained out of Balcomb’s reach. Not that he could ever have navigated the institutional politics that seemed like Gisiner’s natural habitat. Truth be told, Balcomb couldn’t bear to be indoors for long, much less work at a desk or sit in meetings.
Gisiner had always been more of an organization man. With so few university-based marine mammal programs nationwide, he didn’t see much of a future in academics. So he went to work for the Navy as a civilian researcher—first training pigeons to locate downed pilots in the Pacific Ocean, and then working with seals in Hawaii and with pilot whales and dolphins at the Navy’s marine mammal training and research center in San Diego. Gisiner’s big promotion came in the midnineties when he was transferred to Washington, DC, to run the marine mammal division at the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
ONR is the Navy’s great hall of academe. When most people think of the Navy, they conjure images of battleships, aircraft carriers, and submarines. But the combat arm of the Navy—the operating fleet of ships, submarines, and planes—is simply one branch of a massive organizational tree whose roots traverse the uniform and civilian worlds. One of the biggest civilian-staffed branches of the Navy is the Office of Naval Research, a billion-dollar agency spread over naval labs and academic research centers across the country and around the globe.
The Navy took pride in having been the first of the armed services to establish a world-class research program. By the time World War II ended, it had become clear that knowledge of the oceans was the key to dominating the high seas. US naval strategists understood that the Soviet Union would soon be vying for control of the borderless oceans, and that antisubmarine warfare would become the most critical battle space of the Cold War. To compete in the underwater arena, they embarked on an intensive campaign to recruit the best and brightest marine scientists to the Cold War effort. In 1946 President Harry Truman established ONR to coordinate the nation’s investment in underwater research. Flush with Navy money, small oceanographic institutes such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts metamorphosed from sleepy academic centers into well-funded research labs.
During the second half of the twentieth century, ONR became the world’s leading funder of oceanographic research, as well as a college catalogue of other scientific disciplines including meteorology, medicine, aeronautics, communications, logistics, engineering, satellite surveillance, nuclear propulsion, ballistics, hydrodynamics, sonar, acoustics, and marine mammal biology—the last being Gisiner’s niche. The Navy had been active in marine mammal research for decades, but during Gisiner’s tenure ONR’s budget in this area tripled. By 2000, he had become the funding czar for marine mammal researchers from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and every latitude in between.
Somehow Balcomb never found himself downstream from any of ONR’s grants. Not even in the past few years, when ONR felt obliged to fund beaked whale research following a 1996 mass stranding of beaked whales in Greece during NATO naval exercises. When they ran into each other at the recent marine mammal conference in Hawaii, Gisiner gave Balcomb his card, and they agreed to stay in closer touch.
Balcomb finally found the card paper-clipped inside the conference program guide. When Gisiner picked up after the first ring, Balcomb didn’t pause for pleasantries. “Bob, this is Ken Balcomb. On Abaco Island. I’m standing in the middle of a mass stranding down here. Two, probably three or more species.”
For a moment, there was silence on the other end. “Tell me what you know,” said Gisiner.
“Three beaked whal
es stranded live this morning within a two-mile stretch here on the southwest end of Abaco. Two Cuvier’s, one Blainville’s. We’ve got calls coming in from other islands. Sounds like a pair of minke whales also came ashore.”
“How many animals are involved?”
“A dozen or more, spread across at least three islands.”
“What’s the outlook for specimens?” Gisiner asked.
“So far everything’s stranded live, and we pushed three back out to sea this morning. But those came ashore right on top of us. There are bound to be some specimens on the outer islands. I’ll collect whatever I can.”
Gisiner said he’ d get on the horn to Fisheries and pull together an investigative team. “I want to get Darlene Ketten down there in a hurry,” he said. “I don’t know where she is now, but we’ll track her down.”
When he heard Ketten’s name, Balcomb knew that he had Gisiner’s attention. Though an academic and a civilian, Ketten was the US Navy’s top-gun whale pathologist, the go-to forensics expert for any “unusual mortality event” (UME) that Fisheries or the Navy needed to investigate. Her specialty was hearing, in both whales and humans. She had joint appointments at Harvard Medical School and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, though she spent much of her time flying around the world to investigate unexplained strandings. After the Greek stranding in ’96, Gisiner had dispatched her from Woods Hole to join the NATO scientific investigation—which reached no definitive finding of cause in 1998. She’ d been on-site at most of the atypical whale strandings since.
“Ketten would be great,” said Balcomb. “I’ll make sure she has what she needs on the ground. And I’ll collect all the ear bones I can find.”
“Better to take the whole head,” Gisiner advised. “Darlene’s going to want them whole. Get as many heads as you can, as fast as you can, and keep them on ice.”
It was time for Balcomb to talk to Gisiner about money. Never his strong suit. “I’m going to need a plane to survey the outer islands. And we’ll need to get more boats in the water to check the coastlines and ferry the heads back to our field station.” After some back-and-forth, Gisiner agreed to cover up to $5,000 in expenses. If costs ran higher, Gisiner said, he’ d find more funds.
Before he rang off, Balcomb had to ask the question that had been weighing on his mind all day: “Bob, does the fleet have something going on down here?”
Gisiner said he didn’t know but promised to find out.
“One other thing.” Balcomb paused to figure out how to say it right. “Make sure they save the tapes. From AUTEC. Those tapes will tell the tale.”
There was silence on the other end. Balcomb wondered if he’ d overstepped the line with Gisiner. AUTEC was the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, one of the Navy’s most classified, tightly controlled testing ranges for simulated warfare. Even though it was located just over the horizon offshore from Andros Island, most Bahamians had no notion of what went on there. Even Claridge, who grew up in Nassau, had only a vague idea.1
Gisiner said he’ d call over there and see what he could find out. But AUTEC was run out of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, he reminded Balcomb, which wasn’t fond of sharing data.
“They used to keep the tapes for thirty days,” Balcomb said. “I don’t know what their protocol is these days.”
“Stay focused on the whales, Ken, and let me know what you’re able to collect on the ground. In the meantime, I’ll track down Darlene and get her in motion.”
• • •
Balcomb emerged from his office to find the Earthlings spread out across the living room. Some were resting, while others were tending to coral cuts on their feet and hands. It was midafternoon, but no one had eaten lunch.
The phone rang in the kitchen, where Claridge was slapping together some peanut butter sandwiches. Someone reported that a dolphin had stranded alive but in bad shape on Powell Cay, a barrier island just east of Abaco. They hoped that Claridge, who was known throughout the islands as the resident dolphin expert, would come try to save it. She grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water, and headed off in the truck toward the Powell Cay ferry.
Moments later, the phone rang again. It was someone at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private Out Island 15 miles offshore from Abaco, reporting that a “huge, funny-looking dolphin” had swum into its mangrove lagoon. It was swimming in circles, and the guests were starting to freak out. Could Balcomb help them get it out of there?
Balcomb suspected it was a beaked whale, which locals often mistook for dolphins, even though beaked whales are significantly larger than dolphins, with rounder bodies and long snouts. He and Ellifrit identified half a dozen Earthlings who could still walk and were game for another rescue operation. They grabbed the blue tarp from the truck and headed out in the motorboat for Castaway Cay.
Before the Disney Company bought Gorda Cay in 1996 and rechristened it Castaway Cay, the three-mile-long island had seen service as a way station for drug runners and as a set for the movie Splash. Disney spent $25 million transforming the cay into a private port of call for Disney cruise ships in the Bahamas. The island theme park, where Captain Hook, Peter Pan, and the Lost Boys roamed about in full costume, featured castaway shacks serving piña coladas in coconut shells and a snorkeling lagoon housing two sunken “submarines” retired from the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. The island’s three beaches had been built atop a coral shelf, using 35,000 truckloads of sand dredged from the ocean floor.
By the time Balcomb’s boat arrived at Castaway Cay, the snorkelers had exited the lagoon and were standing on the beach taking pictures of the “funny-looking dolphin” that lolled near the surface. Balcomb identified it as a dense-beaked Blainville’s whale. He waded into the lagoon and moved quietly toward the animal. Ordinarily, beaked whales are the most skittish of creatures, almost impossible to approach without spooking. This one submitted uncomplainingly to Balcomb’s examination. Like the other stranded whales Balcomb had seen that day, it showed no outward signs of trauma. Luckily, it wasn’t bleeding. Balcomb could just imagine the melee that would ensue on Castaway Cay if a shiver of tiger sharks suddenly entered the lagoon.
In a few minutes, they had secured the tarp beneath the whale and were leading him out to sea. Buoys painted as Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy stood sentinel at the mouth of the lagoon. It was sunset, and daiquiris were being served on the deck of the Disney Wonder, which lay at anchor nearby. The cruise passengers clustered at the railings, pointing at the whale and taking pictures of the rescue. A few people rested their daiquiris on the rail and clapped.
Two Castaway employees approached on Jet Skis and offered to escort the whale to deeper water. Spouting water from their tails, the two Jet Skiers steered the dazed and confused Blainville’s toward the setting sun and its canyon home.
• • •
Forty miles to the northeast, Claridge stepped off the ferry in Powell Cay to find the beached dolphin in dire condition. It was an Atlantic spotted dolphin, one of 12 species of oceanic dolphins found in the Bahamas. Highly social and usually found in groups of 20 or more, these fast swimmers are ubiquitous in the islands, bow riding speedboats and executing aerial acrobatics wherever they congregate. But this full-grown female lay in the shallows close to death, listless and barely moving. The tourists who had found her on the beach that morning, and had kept her hydrated and shaded all day, were distraught.
A veterinarian named Alan Bater had arrived from Grand Bahama just ahead of Claridge. Bater was in charge of keeping the captive dolphins alive at “the Dolphin Experience” tourist attraction in the capital city of Freeport. He’ d brought a stomach pump with him in hopes of giving the dolphin some nourishment. But after 20 minutes of feeding, she wasn’t showing any signs of revival. They decided to ferry her by boat to Bater’s clinic and treat her there.
On the ride back, Claridge cradled the animal in her arms. The dolphin was five feet long and almost as la
rge as her caregiver. Halfway back across the channel, the dolphin began to convulse, and moments later she died. Her body grew cold, but Claridge kept rocking her in her arms.
Claridge didn’t cry. It wasn’t her style. But she felt overwhelmed by helplessness and confusion. She’ d grown up in these waters, and dolphins were her first love. They were so wild and free. Their beauty took her breath away. She often felt they were too charming for their own good. Since the early 1990s, the tourist trade had turned these fabulous creatures into circus performers. Worse, they’ d been prostituted to tourists who could purchase dolphin “experiences” by the hour. Throughout the Bahamas, “dolphin swim” offerings in captive settings had become a must-have attraction for cruise ships and fly-in tourists.
Dolphin tourism had become big business. The going price for a wild-caught dolphin had risen to $40,000, and worth it at the price. At $100 an “experience,” dolphins could earn back their investor’s money in two years. After that, they were pure profit machines. No one asked where the animals were captured, or how. Since the Bahamas banned dolphin capture in 1995, a black market pipeline had emerged from both the Solomon Islands and Taiji, Japan. As long as the tourists were happy and kept swiping their credit cards, local authorities turned a blind eye. Back in 1994, when dolphins began dying at various dolphin swim venues, local activists made as much noise as they could in the press. Eventually dolphin tourism was debated in Parliament, and the government briefly shut down a facility on Abaco, but not in Freeport or Nassau.
So now one more dolphin had died—for what? The dolphins and beaked whales of the Bahamas had been Claridge’s life and her work for the past ten years. Then overnight, everything had been turned upside down.
They were still traveling back with the dead dolphin when Bater’s cell phone rang. Two whales had stranded and died on the beach outside Freeport in Grand Bahama. Bater decided to call a veterinarian he knew at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center, in Miami. Shouting over the outboard motor noise, he briefed her on the mass stranding and suggested she get some folks over to the Bahamas to help sort it out.
War of the Whales: A True Story Page 3
