"He roams the seas in freedom, with no enemies save man."
My first encounter with a whale.
Imagine a small coastal town on the South Island of New Zealand. Picture its cool waters of arctic blue and an idyllic mountain backdrop. A peninsula paradise. A haven of wildlife. A picturesque and pristine faraway land. A self-titled ‘coast with the most’. This is Kaikoura.
Kaikoura is a hotspot for whale watching in New Zealand due to the unusual land formation of submarine canyons so close to the land. This makes it ideal for sperm whales to take a deep dive, so we didn’t have to sail far from the shore before we were in the company of giants.
Whales journey thousands of miles across the ocean to eat, to breed and to give birth. I too had travelled halfway across the world to be here. One would think having grown up on a northern coast of England and spending much of my childhood in or near water, that I’d feel more connected to the big blue, but it’s probably where I feel most uncomfortable.
Fear of missing out hasn’t kept me from the waves, but as a child I paid a little too much attention to the television when Deep Blue Sea was playing. Though I cowered in fear behind the sofa for most of it, I couldn’t help but take a peek every now and then. The film portrays sharks as bloodthirsty, intelligent and oh so evil. I’ve come to learn that intelligent though they are, bloodthirsty and evil they most certainly are not. At seven years old the exaggerated inaccuracies of the plot were lost on me, so I believed this extremely warped version of how sharks behave, and have since developed a (mostly) irrational fear of them. A common and ill-informed phobia thanks to the ominous music of Jaws, rows of razor blade teeth, and lifeless eyes led to my aversion of nearly everything that lives under the sea, just by association. I became nervous of dolphins, jellyfish, octopus, fish, open water - even seaweed when it touched my leg.
Yet I’ve never been afraid of whales. The gentle and calm nature of these mighty beings set them apart in my mind to every other fish, cetacean, algae, or whatever critters they share their home with. I had no personal experiences or encounters with any species of whales, and I knew little about them. Still, an inexplicable fondness grew.
This was until as a young adult I decided to travel to New Zealand and booked myself onto a whale watching experience where I suddenly gained a reason for my attachment. Before reaching Kaikoura, I was wandering around a shipping-container-bookshop in Christchurch, and I picked up ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ by Nathaniel Philbrick. It tells the true story of Moby Dick, when in 1820 the whaleship Essex was sunk by a sperm whale.
A few pages in and with mentions of a violent and unusual occurrence of the sperm whale ramming the boat until it sank (it’s actually highly unusual for sperm whales to display such aggression, but perhaps understandable because the local sperm whale population off Nantucket were incessantly hunted), I put the book aside to continue after my safe return (hopefully) from the whale watching tour.
Late-morning on a mild November day, as the sun hid itself away behind the fabled long white clouds of New Zealand, we left dry land. Almost immediately we were surrounded by dusky dolphins as though they had been waiting by the shore for us to come out and play. Squeaking and leaping from the water they never strayed too far from the boat and made for the most delightful warm-up act. An albatross soared above while we stayed alert for any signs of a sperm whale hump that might appear among the gentle waves.
While sperm whales can breach, they’re better known for their ability to deep dive, holding their breath for up to 90 minutes, so although there was little above-the-water-action, the great back of a sperm whale finally came into view. A breach is when a whale will pick up speed as it nears the surface so it can spring up and out of the water almost entirely. It is not known exactly why whales do this but scientists have speculated that it could be to remove parasites, to impress a partner during mating season, or they might just be playing.
As it surfaced for air, I saw the top of its elongated head (full of the spermaceti that gives the whale its name) and the knobbly and pruney skin across its slate-grey back. Spermaceti is a waxy substance found in the head cavities of sperm whales. Once used in cosmetics, textiles and candles, they were hunted to near extinction for it. The small hump of a dorsal fin gives nothing away of the ginormous lengths these cetaceans can grow to. Cutting the boats engines we kept as quiet as possible, bobbing around on the water. A tranquil air descended as we watched the whale draw great, deep breaths before eventually diving thousands of feet below in search of some squid to eat.
I readied my camera for the perfect tail shot, as when sperm whales dive their whole back and flukes (tail lobes) emerge from the water. And as this whale slipped away, disappearing beneath the waves in a grand exit, in a moment so uplifting and yet poignant but all in all just a few simple breaths, I thought of the delicate nature of life. I thought of the connections made in fleeting moments and of the wonder that makes life worth living and why we must embrace this wholeheartedly while we can. This moment will pass, like all moments, the whale will slip away and all we’ll have to remind us is the perfect tail shot.
Nothing has given me a moment of such joie de vivre as seeing a whale in its natural environment. I felt total enrapture with whales, and having no other avenue for reconnection, I picked up In the Heart of the Sea and barely put it down until I was finished. This passage has stayed with me ever since:
“It is painful to witness the death of the smallest of God’s created beings, much more, one in which life is so vigorously maintained as the Whale! And when I saw this, the largest and most terrible of all created animals bleeding, quivering, dying a victim to the cunning of man, my feelings were indeed peculiar!”
Unfortunately, this passage resonates with whales’ plight today. Although the whaling industry is not quite what it once was, whales still face crippling threats from entanglement in fishing gear, shipping vessel collisions, ocean pollution, and climate change.
I believe my fondness for whales is because life is so vigorously maintained within them, an intelligent mammal with strong familial bonds and excellent communication skills, yet so enigmatic. We still know so little about them. Despite being terrified of the sea for so long, my love of whales has brought me full circle and I now feel a sense of obligation and determination to do something on behalf of the whale, and all marine life. Sharks included.
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Amie 🐋