438 Days by Jonathan Franklin

Author:Jonathan Franklin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Atria Books

CHAPTER 9

Encounters with a Whale

June 1, 2013

Position: 4,400 miles off the coast of Mexico

N 6° 24' 00.85'' – W 159° 21' 22.34''

Day 196

The rasp of a heavy brush raking the hull awoke Alvarenga. The shaking and scraping continued for ten seconds. It was a unique sound, unlike anything he had previously experienced over the course of half a year adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Had he run aground on an island? Alvarenga slipped out from under the protection of the icebox to investigate. As he emerged, a carpet of gray skin rippled past. A deep-sea creature, so immense he could see neither head nor tail gliding by. It was several times longer than his boat. A monster from the depths had come to swallow him, thought Alvarenga, who described the beast as having “a [dorsal] fin that looked like the wing of an airplane.” On the second pass he saw the beast’s huge eye, an orb as big as his own head. Alvarenga fled to his icebox.

Throughout the night, Alvarenga huddled inside the icebox, his knees tight to his chest, his dangling beard around his arms, wrapped like a shawl. Nervous and confused, he devoured four dried triggerfish as he awaited the security blanket that was daybreak. Would this huge beast upend his tiny panga boat? Was this the kind of monster that attacked? Would it knock him into the water and eat him?

Streaks of pink preceded the first comforting blast of sunshine as Alvarenga exited the icebox to inspect the ocean. Less than thirty feet away, the monster floated. Its gray skin was speckled with white dots. It was the world’s largest fish: the whale shark. Alvarenga had seen whale sharks off the coast of Mexico but never so close or so large. The average whale shark weighs 25,000 pounds, but this one was larger than the coastal whale sharks he had seen, likely weighing more than 30,000 pounds. “My boat rode low in the water so I touched it,” said Alvarenga. “The skin was rough like a metal file or sandpaper. If he had jumped out of the water, the wave would have sunk me.”

During the morning, as the huge animal floated passively beneath Alvarenga’s boat and nuzzled the rail, his fear evolved into curiosity. What did the massive creature want? He studied the fish’s enormous, oval-shaped mouth, which, lacking visible teeth, looked inviting, like an escape hatch. “I can fit in there,” he thought.

On their second day together, Alvarenga discovered, then celebrated, that the whale shark was a food magnet, the epicenter of its own ecosystem. Black and white pilot fish preened the animal’s brushlike mouth. Flat-headed remora stuck to its belly and ate parasites from the skin. Alvarenga’s food chain merged with a new cluster of aquatic life—fishing was better than ever.

The massive whale shark dove out of sight and Alvarenga watched in awe as the shadow melted into the deep. The mighty animal returned as it chased schools of fish to the surface, pinned them against the bottom of Alvarenga’s boat and swept through—mouth agape to swallow the entire pod.

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