"I brought you a pastrami on rye," she said.
Poynter took the paper bag from her as if he were accepting the Holy Grail.
Nate and Amy scrambled up the cargo net and stood at the bow as the whale drifted away from the bow.
"Thank you, Nate," the Old Broad said, waving. "Thank you, Clay."
Nate smiled. "We'll see you soon, Elizabeth."
"We will, you know," Amy said as the whale ship closed and sank back into the waves.
"I know."
"I have to come back here every few months, you know."
"I know."
"Forever."
"Yeah, I know."
"I'm the new colonel now. I'm sort of in charge down there, you know, since I'm sort of the daughter of their god. So we'll have to spend time down there."
"Do I have to call you 'Colonel'?"
"What, you have a problem with that?"
"No, I'm okay with that."
"You realize that the Goo really could decide to wipe out the human species at any minute."
"Yep. Same as it's always been."
"And you know if I live out here, I'm not always going to, you know, look like this?"
"I know."
"But I will always be luscious, and you — you will always be a hopeless nerd."
"Action nerd," Nate corrected.
"Ha!" Amy said.
AUTHOR NOTES
Science and Magic
"The science you don't know looks like magic," Kona says in Chapter 30. I have generally come down on the side of magic, simply because it involves less math, but with Fluke it was necessary to learn a little science. Because so much of Fluke does fall into the realm of magic, though, I thought it only fair to give you, gentle reader, some idea of what's fact and what's not.
The body of knowledge on cetacean biology, especially as it relates to behavior, is growing at such a staggering rate that it's hard to be sure of what you know from one day to the next. (This happens to be exactly the way I live my life, so that worked out nicely.) Scientists have been studying humpback song for fewer than forty years, and it's only in the last decade that studies have been undertaken to try to relate the song to social behavior and interaction. (And a challenging question there: What constitutes interaction in an animal whose voice can carry a thousand miles?) As I write this, September 2002, much about the humpback song is still unknown. (Although scientists do know that it tends to be found in the New Age music section, as well as in tropical waters. There is no reasonable explanation for this, but as of yet no tagged humpbacks have been tracked to the New Age section at Sam Goody's.)
At this point no one has ever seen or filmed the mating of humpbacks, so while it would appear that the song has something to do with mating, because it is performed only by males and because it is sung only during the mating season, no one has drawn a direct correlation between the song and mating. Theories abound: The males are marking territory sonically, they are showing their fitness and size by singing, they are calling mates, they are just saying «howdy» — all of the above, none of the above. The fact remains that, regardless of its purpose, the humpback-whale song is the most complex piece of nonhuman composition on earth. Whether it's art, prayer, or a booty call, the humpback song is an amazing thing to experience firsthand, and I suspect that even once the science of it is put to bed, it will remain, as long as they sing, magic.
Beyond the song, much of the whale behavior and biology described in Fluke is accurate, or as accurate as I could keep it and not overburden the story. (Excepting the whale ships, the whaley boys, and every killer whale's being named Kevin, all of which I made up. Killer whales are actually all named Sam. Duh.) The acoustic data, and the analysis thereof, is generally balderdash. While scientists do indeed collect data in the manner described, much of the analysis process came from my imagination. For the record, though, low-frequency whale calls can and do travel thousands of miles under the sea.
While the Lahaina Harbor is indeed inundated with whale researchers every winter, and while there are indeed lectures given periodically at the Whale Sanctuary visitor center, the acrimony, competition, and tension described among the researchers is completely of my own creation, as are the individual descriptions and personalities of the characters. Tension among a bunch of neurotics is just more interesting for a story than is a description of dedicated professionals doing their work and getting along, which is the case in reality. When in doubt, assume I made it up.
CONSERVATION
The reason we shouldn't kill whales is because they fire the imagination.
— JAMES DARLING, PH.D.
Hey, I thought they were saved already! No one likes the "We're glad you enjoyed this story about the rainforest with all its cute little animals and charming native people, BECAUSE IT WILL ALL BE A CHARRED DESERT NEXT WEEK!" approach, and I hate to do it to you, but you should know that much of the conservation information in Fluke is accurate. They aren't quite saved.
The Japanese and the Norwegians continue to practice whaling, each taking up to five hundred minke whales a year under "scientific research" permits (the meat ends up in markets in Europe and Asia). Despite "free market" arguments to the contrary, whaling is not a profitable business in Japan. It is subsidized by the government, and, to bolster consumer demand, they have introduced whale meat into the school lunch program so children will develop a taste for it. (Good thinking there. Don't we all crave the cafeteria cuisine of our youth? Mmmm, mashed peas.) Biologists working undercover in Japanese markets (spy nerds), by running DNA tests, have found endangered whale species (including blue whale) in cans of whale meat labeled as "minke whale meat." (So someone is still killing them.)
Except for scientific whaling, the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on hunting great whales is still in effect, but several whaling nations are rallying hard to have the moratorium lifted and finance survey studies to prove that great-whale populations, including humpbacks and grays, have recovered enough for them to resume hunting. The U.S. antiwhaling position in the IWC is severely compromised by the fact that they support aboriginal whaling — that is, subsistence hunting by indigenous people. The argument for aboriginal whaling by the actual indigenous people is seldom made on a basis of subsistence, but more often because hunting whales is a "cultural tradition of their people that must be preserved." This, of course, is utter bullshit. It's a tradition of Americans of European descent to commit genocide on indigenous people, but that doesn't mean we ought to start doing it again. Even some old ideas are still bad ideas.
While it is true that many whale species seem to be recovering, like the gray and the humpback, other populations still struggle, and some, like the North Atlantic right whale, may yet disappear from the planet. (Not due to hunting, but as one researcher, whom I won't name, said, "because they're stupid as shit and won't get out of the way when they hear a ship coming." Hell, I almost wreck when a squirrel runs in front of my car, and there're millions of them. I can't imagine trying to keep a supertanker from going in the ditch while swerving to avoid one of the last remaining right whales.) Recent surveys estimate (and they can only estimate, because scientists can't find enough of the animals to actually count — I guess when you find one, you just have to count the bejeezus out of him, then extrapolate with algorithms and computer projections) that there may be fewer than three hundred North Atlantic right whales left in the world.
But on a happier note, some of the populations are recovering, and although the Japanese government appears to be a bunch of nimrods (and who are we to talk?), the Japanese people seem more interested in watching whales than eating them, so the pressure to extend the hunt may relent.
The kicker to all this is probably that habitat loss and pollution, not hunting, present the greatest threat to marine mammals. (Wha…? Habitat loss, don't they have the whole ocean?) For the most part our oceans are great, wet deserts, with millions of square miles in which life is very sparse. Predictably, hum
an populations have started to compete with marine mammals for the food sources, and, under increased demand and improved fishing methods, many once rich fishing grounds are becoming as barren as a clear-cut forest. Hydroelectric dams that restrict the migration of salmon and other species to their freshwater breeding grounds are already having an impact on the populations of marine mammals that feed on the adult salmon.
As industrial pollution and agricultural runoff take toxic chemicals to the ocean, it would seem that the enormous volume of seawater would dilute these chemicals to harmless levels, and that's what happens until the chemicals are gathered up by a mechanism called the food chain. Recent studies of tissue samples of some toothed whales (killer whales and dolphins, who feed fairly high up on the food chain) show levels of man-made toxins so high that the animal's blubber actually qualifies as toxic waste. Studies are now going on to determine if declining marine mammal populations on the west coast of North America may not be caused by the lower birth rates and the compromised immune systems of animals who feed on toxic fish. (Oh yeah, guess who else is at the top of the seafood chain?)
You want to help? Pay attention. Caring about the condition of our oceans does not make you a psycho, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart liberal, it just makes you smart. The health of all life on this planet depends on the health of the oceans. It's just good business. (Even a supply-sider has to admit that if you fish a population to extinction, there will be no supply, so there will be no demand. It's bad economics from the right or the left.) So watch what you eat, and don't eat fish that are being over-fished (like Chilean sea bass, for instance). And don't pour the used oil from your oil change down the storm drain unless you want your next shrimp platter to taste like Quaker State and you sort of like the idea of having your own children born with flippers.
And go look at some whales. Not captive ones, wild ones. It all comes down to economics, and as long as it's more profitable to have whales around to look at, we'll have them around to look at. If you don't live near water and can't get to any, rent a whale video. It all comes around.
Barring that, just yell at people randomly to stop killing whales. It could catch on. Really.
("Would you like fries with that?"
"Shut up and stop killing whales!"
"Thank you. Drive through, please.")
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, my thanks to the home team: to Charlie Rodgers, as usual, for thoughtful reads and cogent comments; to my editor, Jennifer Brehl; and to my agent, Nicholas Ellison, who a couple of years ago said, "Hey, how about a book about whale song? I don't know — like there's meaning in it or something. You figure it out." Blame or credit goes to Nick for that. As always, thanks to Dee Dee Leichtfuss for being my "reader without an agenda." Thanks, too, to Galen and Lynn Rathbun, for taking time away from studying the hose-nose shrew to fill me in on the home life of the field biologist and for putting me in touch with the people at NOAA.
My thanks also to Kurt Preston for geological information, to Dr. David Kirkpatrick for information on genetics, to Mark Joseph for my "Introduction to Sonar" phone lecture, and to Bret Huffman for Rasta-Pidgin tutoring.
Much of the background on genes, evolution, and memes came from the work of Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The Extended Phenotype, and others; also from Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea and from Susan Blakemore's excellent book The Meme Machine. I recommend them all for further reading, but when you're finished, you may have to read several of my books and watch a lot of TV just to get stupid enough again to function in the modern world again. Fortunately I am gifted in this respect and have recovered nicely, thank you.
The laser-measurement algorithm described in Chapter 1 was formulated by Dr. John Calambokidis of the Cascadia Research Collective. He should get credit for that as well as for many other contributions to the field.
Many of the research anecdotes I used in Fluke were fashioned out of stories told to me by the researchers themselves. The story of the Japanese whalers being affected by seeing a mother sperm whale and her calf (Chapter 30) was told to me by Bob Pittman of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center. The story of the Pacific Biological Research Project, where the military funded a feasibility study to use seabirds as a biological-warfare vector, was told to me by Lisa Ballance, Bob's wife, who also works at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
Thanks, too, to Dr. Wayne Ferryman, also from NOAA, who shared many hours of stories, providing me with information about the lifestyles of researchers. My thanks to Dr. Ferryman as well for inviting me to observe the California gray whale survey in person and not insisting that I always bring the pizza.
Thanks to Jay Barlow from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center for information on navy research projects and the relationship between researchers and the navy. Much of which I blew off so I could put Captain Tarwater in Maui, but still, thanks, Jay.
My thanks, too, to Carol DeLancey of Oregon State University's Marine Mammal Program, who told me the great story of the female right whale using a researcher's Zodiac as a diaphragm while the researchers were assaulted by a pair of prehensile whale willies (Chapter 8) — something that happened directly to Dr. Bruce Mate, but which I embellished in that I don't believe that the whales ejaculated in the boat, and Dr. Mate did not become a lesbian.
For information on underwater acoustics and the nature and range of blue-whale calls, much of which I totally ignored, many thanks to Dr. Christopher G. Fox of the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Oregon. It was Chris's description of an unidentified, persistent throbbing noise coming from deep under the Pacific Ocean, somewhere off the coast of Chile, that first inspired the undersea city of Gooville.
For the inside story on harbor life in Lahaina and the dating life of the female researcher, my thanks to Rachel Cartwright and Captain Amy Miller, who study humpback cow/calf behavior and biology in Maui in the winter and Alaska in the summer.
My thanks, too, to Kevin Keyes for whale and dolphin stories, as well as for his infinite patience in teaching me ocean kayaking and providing the "cold-water discipline" safety training that probably kept me from drowning while trying to get out among the animals.
Finally, my deepest thanks to Dr. Jim Darling, Flip Nicklin, and Meagan Jones, who for two seasons allowed me to ride along and observe their research in Maui, as well as for giving generously of their time to answer my questions both in person and by e-mail. While most of the information about humpbacks and humpback song in Fluke came out of these trips, the inaccuracies and liberties taken with the information are my own. The anecdotes and science I learned from these folks, all of whom have spent their lives working in the field, were enough to fill two books, and were certainly too voluminous to list here. Simply put, this book would not have been possible without their help. Kinder, more intelligent, more dedicated people than these do not the face of this earth walk.
To support their ongoing research on humpback song and behavior, send your tax-deductible donations to:
Whale Trust
300 Paani Place
Paia, HI 96779
CHRISTOPHER MOORE is the author of Lamb, Practical Demonkeeping, Coyote Blue, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. He invites readers to E-mail him at [email protected].
Notes
1
Marijuana buds of the finest quality
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Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Page 31
