The Eye of the Whale

Fin Whale – Stellwagon Bank, Massachusetts 2014.

It was 43 years ago that I was a whale researcher in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Quebec, Canada. After 6 months of living and breathing whales for 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, I crossed over into dreaming about them. I had the following dream three times that summer.
I was standing at the estuary’s edge,
A fin whale swam right up to me
And lifted part of its head out of the water.
All I could see was its eye.

 This did not feel like an ordinary dream, but more like a vision. It was not so much about the eye, but more about the intensity that pierced the veil into another world. I had the feeling the whale was calling to me.

Blue Whale Eastern Tropical Pacific 1976.

I continued working at sea for another four years. Then I started an educational organization called “Whales in the Classroom. To learn more about the Whales in the Classroom project go to:
http://oldnaturalist.com/?page_id=3045

In order to stay connected to the oceans, I started sharing my oceanographic experiences with children in 1985. Nine years later after teaching all day and writing at night, I finished my two books, Getting to Know the Whales and Oceanography. I interviewed renowned whale biologist, Dr. Roger Payne, and one thing he said, I really connected with:

“….down deeper, whales are moving
with slow drifting currents
whales that are great, gentle, cloudlike beings”.

The whales were still with me, even though I was landlocked.

In 2013, I started saving to go to Antarctica. About a month before I left, I had the following dream:
The setting was before the whalers ever came to Antarctica.  I was a whale and the interconnection between all the whales was unlike anything I have ever known as a human. I was not only connected to other whales, but to all living things in the ocean. There was a real beauty in the flow between all the sea life. The movement of the currents and whale sounds were part of my daily life. I could feel the currents moving inside of me as well as in the ocean itself.

Antarctica is calling…..

Whale try pots where whale oil was rendered.

January 2016, I actually went to Antarctica with a group of close friends. During the trip, we visited two shore-based whaling stations established in the 1920’s or 1930’s. At Deception Island there were eight rusted ovens where the whale blubber was rendered into oil. When I realized with horror what I was seeing, my reaction was visceral and beyond words. It was like walking through a World War II German death camp.

Whale bones at Whaler’s Cove

At Whaler’s Cove, we found a pile of large whale bones (probably blue, humpback or fin whales). One of the goals of our group was to “listen” to the land. For most of us it wasn’t hard to hear what the land was saying. From my perspective, there was agony on that beach. The agony of so many whale’s lives cut short. On the day of a whale kill, the beach and water around that cove must have been red with whale blood.

Whale bones litter the beach
Reminders of the genocide
So long ago.
Still, the air smells of agony
Humans breath in the pain
Breath out hope and caring
Tears fall to the sand
Removing the stain on the land
Healing
For whales and humans

 Since the 1970’s I have been aware of the Antarctic whalers who decimated the blue whale population in the early 20^th century (over 200,00 blues were killed).

Sometimes, it is hard to be a human.
So much ripping apart of the whale tribes

I have carried this burden with me for 40 years, and I am finally free of it. Also, I feel that I had completed a cycle that began many years ago with the dream of the “Eye of the Whale”.

Humpback “blows” at Sunset, Antarctic Peninsula, 2016.

Lastly, that very evening, there were over 50 humpbacks within a half-mile of the ship. Many were right in front of the ship: bubble cloud feeding, tail lobbing, and fluking-up. It was a great celebration of life for whales and humans.

Humpback “fluke-up” Antarctic Peninsula, 2016.