Voices in the Ocean by Susan Casey

Author:Susan Casey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

Just after dawn the next morning I drove to Honokohau Harbor, watching the sky turn from navy pink to apricot blue to lavender gold. At the docks, we split into two groups. Most people boarded a double-decker boat that could comfortably hold everyone, but Ocean waved me onto a smaller vessel, a powerboat that only took eight. On deck I could see Jan, a lithe diver and skipper, casting off the ropes, and Celeste, her silver hair in a sporty braid, storing her gear like a pro. It was Day 4 and Ocean, I could tell, was angling for a respite, a morning of restoration among the spinners, without having to answer dolphin or UFO questions every ten seconds. While the other boat loaded its heap of snorkeling gear, our captain, an easygoing, ample-bellied man named Kit, suggested that we shove off immediately, because fishing boats had radioed a sighting of a pod of pilot whales cruising five miles offshore.

Without much notice to the others, we headed out. Searching for a pod of pilot whales on the move is a long-shot proposition, but Kit ventured west with purpose. Somehow, I knew we would find them. I was thinking about what else we might encounter this far out, and watching the profound blue of the deep ocean overtake us as we sped away from land, when the radio squawked again: another sighting, closer. We drove about a mile in that direction and stopped, rocking on a light swell. Everything was quiet, the ocean luffing against the hull.

“Whooooofff!” A pilot whale surfaced with a sudden gust of air, a hundred yards away from us. “Pooooooshhh!” Another whale came up right beside him. Their black backs rolled and dived; we could see their bulbous heads, their swept-back dorsal fins and missile-thick bodies. Then, more fins, all around. These animals were three times the size of the average spinner. “There are at least forty in the pod,” Ocean counted, doing a 360-degree scan. “And they have some calves with them.”

Kit drove ahead; he would position us far in front of the pod so we could jump in and swim with them as they passed. I fiddled with my mask, feeling a steady adrenaline drip. I’d never been frightened around dolphins, but at twenty-feet long and tipping in at three tons, these were more like orcas. Also, I was aware of pilot whales’ reputation as stubborn, rather sulky animals who’ve been known to express their displeasure in creative ways. I thought back to one unpleasant incident that occurred in these waters, under more or less these exact circumstances, when a pilot whale had snatched a swimmer by the ankle and yanked her forty feet down. The woman barely escaped drowning.

Still, I knew I couldn’t miss the chance to observe them underwater. Compared to the spinners, the pilots had an air of gravitas. These were short-finned pilot whales, but there are also long-finned pilot whales, the two species closely resembling one another. Both were members—along with

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