Move like water, p.14
Move Like Water, page 14
The wandering albatross has fascinated me since I discovered Coleridge’s poem at the age of fifteen. Later it was part of the opioid dreams of my recovery from surgery, a strange link to the addiction that consumed Coleridge’s life. For me, it became a totem, a symbol of hope for those who find within themselves a ranging nature. In many cultures, the bird also has symbolic significance: it is associated with freedom, strength, and wanderlust. For seafarers, the sight of an albatross was thought to bring good luck. In Coleridge’s poem, the nature of the luck brought by the bird changes in response to human behaviour, turning from good to bad. For the Ancient Mariner, when the albatross was destroyed by an arrow from his bow, the natural world itself immediately rebelled. The wind stopped blowing. No rain fell to provide drinking water. For us, the harm we bestow on these ocean birds through our consumption happens out of sight, and the repercussions of our abuse of nature are not as immediately obvious. And yet the slow, careless destruction of this noble species is a burden of shame that hangs around humanity’s neck. Like the mariner, we still have time to repent, to recognise that these birds share with us an instinctive curiosity about what is over the horizon, a desire to wander, and a compulsion to return.
5
HUMPBACK WHALE
Summer had brought its usual haze and hustle to the shores of Pembrokeshire. Despite having bought Brave, after the long sail home from Cornwall my time on the water was fairly restricted. I took her out whenever I could, often in the evenings, sailing down the Cleddau to Dale, where you could drop anchor and swim. I always chose a certain area I knew was free from sea grass to drop my anchor, so that it didn’t claw through the marine vegetation. I had two university exams to catch up on. My memory had always been sharp, but since my prolonged drug use, the surgery, the recovery, I was struggling with retaining information, and had to rework all my study methods. While trying to memorise my notes, my mind would suddenly flash back to the more unpleasant points of the previous year, the marine information far too entwined with my health struggles. I would have to stop, sitting in the saloon on Brave, my breath short, a clammy sweat breaking out all over me, until I could will myself towards calm. I was also planning my dissertation project, the fieldwork which I needed to complete before the next term. I wanted to take Brave out into the waters off the Pembrokeshire coast, to sail transects as we had on Balaena. Except this would be a visual survey, without the acoustic survey of a hydrophone, which seemed a step too far for me at this stage. I knew from working as a tour guide that there were minke whales, fin whales, humpbacks, common dolphin, and Risso’s dolphin in these waters, but all of these previous encounters had been in noisy motorboats on day trips. I wanted to sail out, away from the land, and record the encounters while moving quietly with the wind.
Even without the acoustic element, this was an ambitious idea. The waters off the Pembrokeshire coast are extremely tidal, and there are many a rock and reef to run you afoul if you don’t know how to find your way. There aren’t many safe harbours, safe anchorages, if you need to retreat from the weather. However, I had been learning these waters for years; they were my home. They were the waters I loved most, and I wanted to find more empirical data on how and where cetaceans inhabited them. I had a particular fascination with the Risso’s dolphin. Although they were a little trickier to find than common dolphin, who often approach to bow ride, I had seen them while I was a guide, and my friends who still worked in that industry told me that the sightings were becoming more regular. I had read studies that had focused on using photo ID for the Risso’s, which can be identified individually by their scarring patterns. As they had recorded thirty-two sightings of mothers with small calves present off the Pembrokeshire coast, it seemed that these waters could be important calving or rearing grounds for these dolphins. I wanted to add data that could help support this.
First, though, I had to make good on a promise I had made to my mother the previous year: to take my Yachtmaster exam. The Yachtmaster is needed to gain a “certificate of competence” in the UK, although it is recognised internationally. It is split into levels—coastal, offshore, and ocean. You can take the exam purely for your own confidence and education, but you also need it if you want to work commercially beyond a certain level.
When my mother asked me to do it, I felt a little hurt. I wondered why she didn’t think I could sail, why she needed someone else to sign an expensive piece of paper to confirm what I could tell her. Her retort was so calm and convincing. She explained that she simply didn’t know what it was like when I went to sea. Sailing at all, let alone sailing offshore, was so far from her experience, just as the world of art had been far from her own mother’s. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust me, for she did, but, just in case anything ever went wrong, she wanted to know she had done everything she could to see that I was safe.
The female wandering albatross does not fledge with her chick to show it the ocean. She provides provisions, meal after meal brought to the chick, so that it can grow strong enough to fly, so that it can explore the Southern Ocean by itself. I also appreciated that part of the beauty of the sea, the adventure of sailing, lay in the fact that it was dangerous. Dangerous, and to be respected. With this in mind, I booked the exam for offshore sailing. I had been building the requisite miles and experience for years, and although I had taken the theory part of the exam, I still hadn’t done the practical.
Two days before the preparation for the practical began, while I was scrambling to renew my sea-survival and first-aid certificates and get a private medical exam, I received a phone call. It was Richard McLanaghan, one of the co-directors of Marine Conservation Research, the non-profit organisation that runs Song of the Whale. Song of the Whale is a custom twenty-one-metre sailing boat, built to conduct sailing cetacean surveys anywhere in any ocean. The project has been running since 1987; the current vessel is actually Song of the Whale II. The first boat and crew played a crucial part in helping the Azores transform from whaling islands to whale-watching islands, demonstrating that these creatures have greater value alive than dead. Some years ago I had made contact with Richard, and I had gone aboard Song of the Whale to meet him and talk about the possibility of gaining experience on the boat. Now it seemed that my name had come up again. Song of the Whale had been conducting a cetacean survey spanning the entirety of the Mediterranean for the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans of the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Contiguous Atlantic Area, or ACCOBAMS. The survey was made up of acoustic transects and distance sampling to determine the abundance and distribution of cetaceans in the Mediterranean. The crew from Song of the Whale had been joined by scientists and conservation workers from the countries that bordered the survey areas, from both the Mediterranean and North African coasts. And now they were looking for temporary crew for the final stage of the survey.
Richard asked if I would like a position on the boat, and I immediately said yes. There wasn’t really anything to consider. Between buying Brave and booking the Yachtmaster, my bank account was almost empty. I didn’t have enough money to cover my next term at university. My reasons weren’t just financial, but the need for money did help me to put imposter syndrome to the side. For years, I had considered Song of the Whale my dream job, and I had also doubted I would ever get there. She is a lot bigger than Balaena, 68 feet to Balaena’s 40 or Brave’s 32. She’s category 0, designed to be able to sail anywhere, from the balmy Mediterranean, to Greenland, or the Southern Ocean, where the wandering albatross make their flight. She has four cabins, a huge saloon, a fully equipped galley, a workshop in the lazarette, and—the real novelty for me—two fresh-water showers on board. Not only is she designed to go anywhere, but she is made to be at sea researching for extended periods of time, without the need to call ashore. Getting to spend time at sea, sailing commercially, and studying cetaceans meant I would be exploring and giving back to the sea simultaneously. It seemed like the ultimate privilege. Richard seemed happy, but before he hung up the phone he had one final question. My Yachtmaster. Did I have it?
“I am starting it in two days’ time,” I said. “I should have it by the thirty-first.”
Should have it by 31 August. From there, I would fly out to Crete to meet the boat on 2 September.
On 27 August, two days after my twenty-fourth birthday, I began my prep. There was only one other person on the course taking the exam with me, a man in his forties, but the crew was fleshed out with two women who were learning to sail. All of the prep, and my exam, took place in Plymouth Sound and the surrounding rivers, so I went from sitting my catch-up university exams straight on to the water. The first three days were a blur of drills, night navigation practices, and passage planning. On the fourth day, when the examiner stepped on the boat, my hands were shaking, and I had to force myself to take deep breaths. It was time. The minute the exam started my nerves dissipated somewhat, as I began to see it as a series of challenges to overcome, one at a time. We had to sail without the use of GPS. Although these days it is rare that you will be in a situation without GPS, it is important to be able to navigate without it. Since the weather was light, most of my tasks were manoeuvres under sail and navigating up the Tamar in the dark on a falling tide. The Tamar River, flowing from its source at Woolley Moor out into Plymouth Sound, is tidal, with large swathes of water drying to mudflats on the ebb. In the early 1800s, river barges were built specifically for moving goods up and down the waterway. They were designed with a shallow draught, so that they could travel as far as possible, even while the water fell. I know of one such barge that is still sailing, the Lyhner, named after a tributary of the Tamar. These days, she carries charter guests rather than goods. Unlike the Lyhner, the boat I was sailing in had a reasonably deep keel.
I had to be careful not to run aground, checking my tidal calculations, constantly looking at the time to make sure I had enough water. The night was very dark, the hour late, as we had had to wait for the late-summer sun to set. Large stretches upriver are buoyed but not lit, so I couldn’t rely on the flashing navigational lights to guide me. I could make out the riverbank, but only just. I could hear curlews, small cries in the dark. I could picture them, waiting as the water fell away to silty mud to begin to feed on the invertebrates they dig from this intertidal zone. I used another sound to find my way, beyond the call of the waders. A depth sounder on the bottom of the boat was sending out a signal, and as it was returned, the depth of the water was relayed to me. The navigational charts I had been given showed a five-metre contour line, running up the Devonshire side of the river. The depths on the chart show datum, the lowest astronomical tide. I had calculated how much deeper the water should be above datum, for the specific date and time of our navigation, and I used that line to find my way. If the readings from the depth sounder started to become shallower, I was getting too close to the bank; if they became deeper, in the middle of the river, I could adjust my course. Once I found the requested point, I was then asked to go below decks, to repeat the navigation back to the mouth of the Tamar totally blind. Seeing as it was sound that had helped me, rather than sight, it wasn’t much more of a challenge, beyond the need to be extremely clear in communicating with my crew, who remained on deck while I was at the chart table. As we wiggled our way back down the dark river, I was constantly calculating, using our speed and the time to work out how far we had travelled. I had been asked to stop just before we reached the chain ferries that crossed the river. I told my examiner, who was sitting in the saloon across from me, watching my every move, that we were there. He asked if I was sure, and I said I was. He asked if I wanted to check my calculations again. I didn’t. It was sound that had given it away, rather than my fluency with numbers. When I heard the familiar clink of the chain, pulling the ferry across the river, the noise carrying easily through the quiet night, I knew exactly where we were. By the time we docked, it was 3 a.m.
The next afternoon, after some time spent manoeuvring in a marina, I went to the office of the sailing school for some final questions and to hear my verdict. I had passed. The examiner asked me how I had found the experience, and I didn’t quite know what to say. It had been intense. For the past fortnight I had exhausted myself, constantly running over potential scenarios that would occur in the exam, and how I could solve them. I had worried that I would be exposed for trying to be something I wasn’t and sent home. But then, once the exam had started, I had loved every minute of it. Of course it had been challenging, but I had found my mantra once again. It was a hard thing, but I had done hard things before. On hearing my pensive answer, the examiner told me that he had just given me the most rigorous exam he had ever done. He said he had been intrigued by my response to stress, and had thought that he would be able to push me beyond what I believed I could do. I have thought about what happened a lot. He may have taken a risk, but it was exactly what I needed. For a stranger to have seen and understood my capability was a compliment that has given me confidence in challenging situations I’ve faced since.
I shared a final drink with my crew before heading back to Pembrokeshire to tell my mum the good news and make sure that Brave was tied up as safely as possible, my father checking on her in the weeks I was to be away.
Two nights later, I was walking through the hot night air in Chania, Crete, to join Song of the Whale. In a few days, we would set sail for the Libyan part of the survey. While we waited for the rest of the crew to join us, I started getting myself acquainted with the inner workings of the boat. As I familiarised myself with the decks, a seal swam into the harbour, inquisitive eyes watching me as I went about my work. I asked someone on the boat next to us, a wildlife trip boat, what sort of seal it was, and they excitedly said it was a monk seal. It was light in colour, silvery, more like the young Atlantic greys I knew from home. Its face was much shorter, rounder. I didn’t know much about this phocid, and having grown up in Pembrokeshire, where seal sightings are common, I didn’t realise how unusual this one was.
Later, I learned that the Mediterranean monk seal is the most vulnerable marine mammal in Europe. Just like the Atlantic greys, the Mediterranean monk seals are vulnerable to by-catch—they get tangled and drowned in nets—but the fishing pressures here in the Mediterranean are far greater, decimating the population. Fishermen have also killed the seals so as to not have to compete with them for fish. The pressures of tourism in these waters are higher. Although sometimes Pembrokeshire can seem full to bursting in the summer, there are still secluded bays and nature reserves where the mothers can pup in peace. Here, people are encroaching on every aspect of the monk seals’ lives, from what they eat, how they hunt, to where they can give birth to their young.
In the afternoons, when the temperature reached sweltering, I would take a break, climb over the harbour wall and go for a swim. It was the first time in my life that I had swum in warm water. As a child, I had imagined how it would feel to slip into water that did not have the bite of the Celtic Sea. It was blissful and relaxing to swim in this balmy warmth, fish flitting over the rocks beneath me, and yet it also made me glad I came from somewhere where the sea held more challenge, where comfort was found by expanding your limits.
When we set sail from Chania, passing out beyond the harbour wall and the stratified cliffs that make up the island, the winds were strong, blowing hot salt air across our faces. The first period of time with a new crew is always a little odd, as everyone takes a while to adjust to a new rhythm. Later in the survey, when everyone was familiar with the timetable of the watches, it would be rare to find everyone on deck all at once except during dinner time. For now, though, the cockpit was crowded, everyone preferring to be above deck to counter the early nausea.
The days were hot. So hot in the afternoons that I would often have to pour water over myself, which quickly dried to white salt crystals on my skin. My small bunk soon felt like home, and although I was still not sleeping very easily, I would plug in my headphones and listen to stories while I rested. For the first time in months, my mind was no longer trying to work three steps ahead. I was content to just be where I was, present on the boat, all thoughts of the shore behind me. I shared an hour of my night watch with the skipper, and an hour with one of the Libyan crew members. As we sailed towards his home waters, we would talk to each other, him enquiring about my life, me equally curious about his in Libya. I had at that point only lived in the UK; I was a woman in my early twenties who, for the most part, lived alone. I travelled, I studied at university, and here I was, at home on the sea, working in an environment that was familiar to me. During my lifetime, he had experienced the first Libyan civil war, and was currently living through the second. He had never been on a sailing boat before and asked the most wonderfully inquisitive questions about how sailing worked. He told me how he had loved to dance as a boy, but now he was grown, and there wasn’t time for dancing. Somewhere between the Mediterranean and North African coasts, under the night stars, we decided that there was no time like the present, and he moon-walked up and down the cockpit. The crew was made up of people from Wales, England, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and Libya. We all had entirely different backgrounds, and yet we were all brought there in one way or another by a love of the sea.
