Rowing After the White Whale

by James Adair

  49 The Dark Boat

  ‘The most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach, that however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigates he can make; nevertheless by the continual repetition of these impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Day 76 was a dark day, both meteorologically and metaphorically. Ben fell in before lunch while balancing on the gunwales to take a leak. Unsurprisingly, this didn’t help his mood. Fatigue and silence governed. At lunch, things went further downhill. We switched on the satellite phone and there was a message from Tony warning us not to go too far south. We had told him what had happened, so were expecting him to give us a bit of leeway as we got used to navigating without the GPS on all the time. In addition, he’d been telling us for the last two months not to get pushed too far north by the prevailing trade winds. We thought the plan was to bank some south when the wind was coming from north of east as it was now. Tony was fantastically reliable and we liked him a lot, but his messages could frustrate us at times.

  The next two messages didn’t help either. One from Ben’s mum and the next from his girlfriend saying they were worried about him and asking what was going on.

  ‘Did you write about what happened yesterday in the blog?’ he asked, obviously angered.

  Oh dear. I had automatically detailed the Independence Day wave, with plenty of colourful detail, in the daily blog which I texted from the satellite phone. Now my instinct to record, document and report had once again got me into trouble.

  ‘Of course, I mean it happened, didn’t it?’ That old journalistic chestnut: I’m only reporting a fact.

  ‘That’s not the point; you should have known it would worry them.’

  I may have suspected that it would, but it was a good story that made a change from my usually humdrum daily updates. Still, maybe discretion would have been the better part of valour on this occasion.

  As I rowed my afternoon shift the oars went through the water and the boat went forward, but all of a sudden she seemed a very different beast. When the GPS was working it had felt like a high-tech vessel, a purpose-built ocean rowing boat kitted out to a high specification with all the latest navigation kit, fully self-righting and with a watertight cabin. Now it seemed like a tiny rowing boat with no extras and a wet cabin. I still believed in her, that she could stand up to big weather and waves, even more so after the events of the day before, but suddenly she seemed plain and old fashioned.

  People have crossed oceans on tiny rafts with no computer technology; didn’t the Polynesians crisscross the Pacific in fairly basic boats? I thought. But then again, more must have died trying. How many had disappeared without a trace, trying to make land?

  As I was thinking this, a large, grey dorsal fin appeared behind the boat. They say that sharks can smell fear and the appearance of this shark, refusing to show much of himself, seemed uncanny at best. The unwavering dorsal fin made straight for us then, a couple of feet off the stern, slunk under the surface of the sea. I peered over the side but saw nothing.

  The atmosphere didn’t improve in the night. Attempting to sleep on the waterlogged mattress was soul destroying, while rowing in the dark with only the compass still felt unnatural. On one night change-over I tried to make light of the situation but Ben was having none of it and was unconvinced when I said we’d be enjoying ourselves again in a few days’ time.

  Later that night we saw the light of a ship approaching. With no GPS to give us warning we’d have to keep our eyes peeled, especially with our backs turned to the way we were heading. It soon became clear that this ship would pass at a safe distance and we decided not to communicate with it. As she neared we could see they were sweeping the water with a searchlight. Clearly our AIS, a device which gave ships warning of our presence, was still giving off a signal and they were trying to work out what kind of a vessel was invisible at night. We flicked on the navigation light and called them up on the VHF radio. ‘Are you okay?’ they kindly wanted to know. ‘Yes, we are fine,’ we replied, but for the first time we weren’t interested in prolonging the conversation.

  50 Recovering Under a Bright Sun

  ‘The sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the brightest.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  On the morning of Day 77 the sun shone brightly, burning off the cloud and bringing new hope, so after breakfast I got everything out of the cabin to dry it out. It took hours but when it was done the cabin was once again the most comfortable place in the world, and everything else started to look up too. Ben was in good spirits again and we resumed reading Moby Dick, which we’d stopped doing while we struggled to survive the last few days. When we turned on the satellite phone we discovered the forecast was poor, but it didn’t matter because now we could lie down on a dry, sun-warmed mattress and sleep. News also came through that the four-man crew had finished. They hadn’t got the record they’d so badly wanted but they’d finished all the same and were no doubt eating vast amounts of fresh, delicious food. We decided to try not to think about it and to put Mauritius out of our minds because we still had one thousand miles of open ocean to row and we would have to do it without the GPS.

  However, there were some upsides to the whole GPS incident. It felt liberating not to have to look at the little blinking screen every few minutes. That evening we were treated to an incredible night sky full of stars, which was even more spectacular now that there was no light from the GPS to interfere.

  The morning of Day 78 heralded the longest our boat had ever been at sea; it had done 77 days on the Atlantic with its previous owners. And, of course, it was the longest we’d been at sea for by about 77 days.

  The next day we saw an extraordinary sight. As I rowed the first morning shift a city seemed to appear on the horizon. It was a sunny day and puffy white clouds skipped across the sky. I peered at the horizon, convinced I was hallucinating, as the tall spires of the floating town grew bigger and bigger. I woke Ben up and he came and watched on deck as the behemoth loomed into view. As it got closer we could see that it was a gigantic oil-drilling platform being towed across the ocean by a tug boat. We tried contacting them on the radio but got no reply. I filmed the surreal sight of the massive structure being tugged past us less than a mile away. It was visible for another half-hour before it shrank to a speck and disappeared.

  Later that night we decided to have a longer sleep in the cabin to give our bodies a rest, as they were suffering badly from the salt sores. In the cabin we read Moby Dick, pausing to joke that perhaps we could get the record for the first rowing pair to drift across the Indian Ocean while reading.

  51 ‘The Most Wondrous Phenomenon’

  ‘We now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Although we felt much better for our rest the next day, the oars moved heavily through the water and it felt like we were rowing through sludgy cement. When we turned on the handheld GPS it confirmed that we had made little progress. There was nothing to do, though, but keep going.

  The next day, Day 81, there was a thick grey cloud cover, which seemed to press down on us. With the clouds oppressively low, the air was dense and muggy. Day 82 saw the same relentless grey stretched above with not a hint of sky peeping through the bla
nket of gloomy cloud. A fine drizzle fell intermittently throughout the day but it didn’t relieve the stifling atmosphere. With no light from moon or stars, these black nights made for disorientating rowing. Only the dim glow of the compass gave any sense of where we were heading and only the bright, iridescent flashes of bioluminescence gave any visual suggestion of what was happening as the oars went through the water.

  By daybreak on Day 83 we were praying for sun, but as the murky dawn light started to glimmer we could see nothing but the endless bank of cloud. We continued to creep westwards until night fell and again not a hint of light lit up the sky. It was so dark it was impossible to see the difference between the sea and the sky, the horizon lost in a black oblivion. With everything inky and shapeless it was impossible to see our hands, which made rowing seem like an out-of-body experience. Only when we changed over and the torches were switched on could we see anything of the boat, ourselves or our surroundings.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this, there was a giant squid right by the boat,’ Ben said, all excited, as I came out for my second night shift.

  ‘Oh, wow. Is that a bit like the imaginary whales you saw on Day 6, the ones when I happened to be sleeping?’

  ‘Don’t give me that Mr “I-saw-a-full-lunar-eclipse”. I’m completely serious, it was like a ghost in the water.’

  ‘I did see a lunar eclipse, I’ll prove it when we get back. We can look it up on the interweb.’

  ‘Sure you can. Anyway, enjoy the rowing. It’s basically impossible to see anything.’

  ‘Apart from colossal squid, of course. I think you’ve been hallucinating.’

  ‘See you in a couple.’

  ‘Night.’

  Having clambered into the rowing position, I started pulling away at the oars. It was so dark the minuscule flashes of bioluminescence were almost blinding. I had been rowing for barely five minutes when I saw it. Right next to the boat was the shimmering, pale, luminous bulk of a giant squid. I stayed deadly still, transfixed by this ghostly apparition. Its distended shape seemed to billow and contract as it gently rose and fell next to us.

  ‘Ben,’ I hissed in a loud whisper, ‘it’s back.’

  I heard the cabin door creep open.

  ‘I told you so,’ said Ben.

  It was hard to see clearly, but the whole undulating mass of the creature glowed dimly below the surface. It was about the size of a Jeep. Clearly it had come to the surface to feed on account of the absolute darkness. The dorado had certainly disappeared. We watched it for twenty minutes as it drifted in and out of view a few feet from the boat. Maybe it was watching us.

  Later, after it was gone, I woke Ben up again because there were smaller schooling squid near the boat. These were around two or three feet in length but glowed in brilliant neon green and blue. Small groups of three or four appeared to hover in diagonal formation like ships of the line.

  It felt like we were now passing through a sea of squid. A few days later a tiny squid jumped into the boat in broad daylight, no doubt in flight from a fish. Ben was rowing and the pale white creature fell at his feet.

  ‘Ah, a jellyfish!’ cried Ben.

  ‘That’s not a jellyfish, it’s a squid. Amazing. Look at him! Well, shall we chuck him back in?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not touching that, it’ll sting me.’

  ‘Squid can’t sting,’ I said.

  Ben bent down and tried to pick up the squid, but it immediately jetted out a cloud of ink.

  We threw the squid back in and, as I took over the rowing, I wondered whether he was from a species of small squid or whether he was a few-weeks-old giant which would one day grow into one of the eerie monsters we had seen just days before.

  52 On the Cultural and Natural History of the Squid

  ‘Leviathan is not the biggest fish; I have heard of Krakens.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Squid belong to the cephalopod family, members of which are among the earliest complex life forms known to have existed. The first cephalopods appeared 510 million years ago. Having survived various mass extinction events, they had time to evolve before the first dinosaurs appeared 225 million years ago. There are squid fossils from 150 million years ago, although their soft bodies mean that not many of these species of cephalopod survive in the fossil record, unlike the shelled cephalopods such as nautiloids and ammonites which are commonplace. Still, with their complex biology, squid have weathered many traumatic environmental events, including the one that destroyed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

  Squid are ancient and adaptable. They’re certainly older and more adaptable than us. The first human species appeared around six million years ago and modern Homo sapiens have only been around for 200,000 years. We are yet to be tested by a mass extinction event, but I suspect we’ll struggle while the squid will swim on.

  Scientists have successfully investigated smaller squid, octopus and cuttlefish, but the giant squid remain a relative mystery. Occasional sightings, strandings and even reported attacks involving giant squid have served to fuel the widespread legends of the Kraken that have been popular throughout most of recorded history.

  With the explosion of whaling in the eighteenth century, people started to learn something of the giant squid – mainly because sperm whales dive to great depths in order to prey on them. When chased by the whalers, whales sometimes spat out half-eaten bits of squid. And when the crews caught the whales they could see circular marks and large scars all over the whales’ bodies made by the sharp suckers on the tentacles of the squid. When the whales were cut open the men would find squid in their stomachs.

  Then there were the sightings. Accounts describe how sperm whales were at times seen battling squid at the surface of the ocean. The whales would bite into the squid with their sharp teeth while the squid allegedly used their bodies to cover up the whales’ blowholes and so suffocate them.

  The rarity of these encounters between whalers and live squid filled them with meaning. In Moby Dick, Captain Ahab and his crew have just sailed into the Indian Ocean when they encounter a giant squid languishing at the surface. Mistaking it at distance for the white whale, they launch their rowing boats but on nearing discover what Melville describes as ‘an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life’.

  The crew turn back to their ship, afraid and uncertain of the meaning of this latest development in their doomed voyage. As Melville goes on to say, ‘Whatever the superstitions the Sperm whalemen in general have connected with the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it being so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with portentousness.’

  Sperm whales also led modern-day scientists to the giant squid. By monitoring the depths they dive to and the areas they frequent, Japanese scientists were able to capture the first images of a live giant squid in the Pacific in 2005. Extraordinary pictures of the immense, alien-like creature attacking a baited line and losing a tentacle in the process confirmed that the giant squid is a solitary and ferocious hunter.

  So much of the giant squid’s world is still a mystery, but scientists can have learnt something of them from specimens such as ‘Archie’, a 28-foot creature caught off the Falkland Islands, which Tory and I went to see in the vaults of the Natural History Museum on a cold winter’s day.

  We learnt that the giant squid has been documented at up to forty-three feet in length. They have been found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. They have a mantle, or torso, containing their vital organs; eight arms with sharp suction cups; two longer hunting tentacles with large barbs; an exceptionally strong, parrot-like beak for eating; three hearts; a complex brain and nervous system and the largest eyes of any living creature, with the possible exception of the colossal squid.

  Incidentally, the colossal squid lives in the waters of the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica and has been documented to grow up to forty-six feet in length. Remains recovered from these squid show that they eat sharks, too
thed whales and other fish and squid species. At the other end of the spectrum, the pygmy squid grows to a length of one to two centimetres although it too is a ruthless hunter, enveloping shrimp in a ball of tentacles before munching through them with their beaks.

  Cephalopods have an extraordinary biology, which makes them like no other creature. Their eyes have a camera lens like ours, but they have blue, copper-based blood as opposed to ours which is red and iron-based. They can survive in water with very low levels of oxygen, down at depths in which most fish would die. This is perhaps why the giant squid lurks in the deep during the day, a world where only sperm whales, who hold their breath for up to ninety minutes, can briefly visit to prey on them. No doubt their ability to live at these depths is what saw their ancestors through the trauma of the Permian–Triassic extinction event of 250 million years ago which wiped out 90 per cent of marine life.

  The skills of cephalopods are many, varied and, I think, utterly weird. Under pressure they can jet out clouds of ink laced with dopamine, the chemical associated with sex and drug-addiction, which no doubt distracts predators. One species of squid blows out a cloud of phosphorescent colour to bamboozle its predators. Certain octopus can bite off or eat their own arms, should they become infected, and then regenerate new ones. With three-fifths of their brain located outside their central nervous system, in their skin and tentacles, cephalopods have otherworldly abilities. The footage captured by the Japanese scientists shows that the suckers on the tentacles will still sucker even when detached from the body of the squid and the whole tentacle will still move. Severed arms will continue to writhe and grab for hours, while all species show astonishing powers of colour change. These can be iridescent light shows or the more subtle ability to mimic, chameleon-like, their surroundings. They are capable of ‘counter-shading’, a skill in which the skin on the top half of the squid transmits the colour of the ocean below it, while the exact colour of the water above is transmitted by the bottom half of the squid, so as to make it invisible to predators from both below and above.