Move like water, p.7
Move Like Water, page 7
Dr. Earle, also American, is an oceanographer, explorer, diver, and ocean advocate, sometimes referred to as “Her Deepness” as a result of her exploratory endeavours below the surface. She is the founder of the organisation Mission Blue, holds a PhD in her own right, and through the course of her career has been awarded twenty-two honorary degrees in recognition of her contribution to the exploration and conservation of the world’s oceans. Dr. Earle was National Geographic’s first female Explorer in Residence, has been named Time magazine’s first Hero for the Planet, and was the first female chief scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She speaks with conviction and passion about the ocean and the damage we are causing, and for many her words have served as a rallying cry, a call for action on an individual level, within the community, and at a political level, globally.
What has always drawn me to her work is her sound iteration that the health of the world’s oceans is the health of all of us. That nature does not exist in a vacuum, and the damage we do to nature in turn damages the fabric on which we construct our lives, the fabric of biodiversity. Her own journey started in the Florida Keys, where she would spend hours as a child in the seagrass meadows exploring the life she found there, only to see those meadows “reclaimed” from the sea as they were drained and turned into car parks. When asked in an interview with the Natural History Museum in London exactly what one should do to preserve the oceans, Earle answered that we need to examine where our strengths and talents lie. She said that conservation action can be taken through science, through exploration, through government and policy, but also through art and literature and poetry. That we must all examine where our contribution is strongest, and, once this is identified, we must get to work. She advocates for nature-based solutions, and highlights the fact that we can help the oceans, even if we live in the most landlocked reaches, by starting to respect, protect, and restore the natural world around us, which in turn will feed into global biodiversity. She talks of the power and influence that is in each and every one of us to affect the world around us, whether positively or detrimentally.
Earle is a pioneer, a scientist who rightly assumed that she should be a part of a male-dominated conversation. In documentary interviews, I have heard her asked why at eighteen years old in the 1950s she was pursuing a career in marine science instead of dating and getting married. When working on her doctorate, she was invited on an expedition to the Indian Ocean to collect data on what marine life we could find in the ocean; the Mombasa Times ran the headline “Sylvia Sails Away with Seventy Men, but She Expects No Problems.” When she saw a flyer at Harvard asking for divers for the Tektite Project to spend two weeks in an underwater habitat in the US Virgin Islands, she applied instantly, not considering that the organisers did not expect to receive female applicants. Although she was rejected from Tektite 1, when the project was repeated, Earle earned a spot, along with four other women. The documentary Mission Blue, depicting some of the life and work of Dr. Earle, flashes a newspaper headline that appeared at the time: “Five Gal Pals Plunge with One Hairdryer!” Although women in science still face many more hurdles than their male counterparts, and their treatment by the press and social media can still be absurd, or worse, much has changed since Earle’s early career. She herself has been instrumental in changing the perception of women in science. When faced with frivolous interview questions, Earle used them to turn the conversation around and to masterfully bring the dialogue back to marine issues. Her interests and range of knowledge are far-reaching, from an understanding of individual species to broad oceanographic processes. Along with the impact she has made in marine studies, her presence in this field has inspired many more women to follow in her wake.
On the quiet nights aboard Balaena, when the sails were set and the wind steady, I found myself thinking back to Earle’s research trips on the surface of the oceans, wondering afresh at how intimate and independent an experience of the sea I was able to have. Earle carried out her research aboard large steel motor vessels, where she had no part in steering the boat, or indeed in any of the day-to-day maintenance. Balaena, our small sailing boat turned floating laboratory, was an entirely different set-up. We all took turns helming the boat, setting sails, keeping the boat’s log. While all of the acoustic data from the hydrophone was being recorded on to hard drives for later analysis, we had to monitor the electricity supply very carefully. While we were sailing, the recording software continued to draw power, as did the navigational equipment for the boat, and we had no back-up generator or solar power. All of the visual sightings data, along with environmental recordings of sea state and sea surface temperature, were logged by hand, onto waterproof paper, carefully attached to clipboards to prevent the wind snatching it away. We cooked, we navigated, we hoisted and lowered sails, reefed when we needed to, all the while conducting observations. We worked through each and every night. If something broke, there was nobody else to fix it save for the five of us on the boat. It was hard work, but it felt good to be involved at every level. Neither way of researching is better or worse, just a different experience.
The voyage was coming to an end, and I felt a mixture of emotions. I was dreaming of a long, hot shower, of finally peeling off the layers of thermals that seemed at that stage to be more firmly attached to me than my own skin. I was eagerly anticipating a full night’s sleep, yet I knew I would miss the crew, the closeness, the idiosyncrasies that had developed during the voyage. And I would miss the companionship of the whales we could hear in the depths, engaged in a conversation we could not understand. I wanted to smell gorse and heather, to dig my fingers into the soil and absorb the smell of the earth, yet I knew I would miss the silky hours sailing under moonlight, when I felt like the world was mine and mine alone, the ocean whispering stories. Summer was coming to an end, and the autumn would bring changes. I was for the first time to enrol in full-time study. I wondered how it would feel to sit in a lecture hall full of students, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds trying to navigate life away from home, likely for the first time, as we learned about whales instead of sharing space with them, out on the sea. I wondered if I would still have the time to watch every sunrise, every sunset. I knew I needed to learn in this more structured way, but I was worried I would feel out of place on land again. As we continued to sail the track, I started to find myself willing the miles to stretch, the hours to slow. Besides, our mission felt unfinished.
On that voyage, we had been following a 1,000-metre-depth contour line, where the seabed dropped away a kilometre underneath us, approximately 300 nautical miles off the Newfoundland coast. The whole area was considered a suitable habitat for northern bottlenose whales, a member of the beaked whale family, but they had never been recorded there. For weeks we had been sailing, towing the hydrophone and listening every fifteen minutes round the clock, day and night, to see if we could detect their vocalisations. Dr. Feyrer told me that the analysis of the data in the lab showed that we had actually encountered the whales, but either we had failed to identify their calls, or they hadn’t coincided with our listening periods. One thing for certain was that we hadn’t seen them at the surface. With just a few days left, we headed to the Gully, a submarine canyon off the coast of Nova Scotia. Previous research had identified a population of northern bottlenose whales there that have shown high site fidelity since they were first studied in the late 1980s. After tracing these elusive creatures through the Atlantic all summer long, I was longing to catch a glimpse of them. As we sailed south, the days were growing warmer and warmer, and I, more and more conscious of the distinctly human smell I must be emanating, was reluctant to shed my layers. Those final sunsets of the voyage were so vivid, the colours stained in my mind as the water was painted blush and gold in illuminating strokes at the dying of the light. We would fix our eyes on the horizon while we ate dinner, waiting for the fabled green flash, the brief burst of colour that occurs on occasion at the moment of sunset. Each meal was increasingly just a variation on the small amount of fresh produce that was still holding out—you would be surprised how many concoctions you can sneak celery into.
It was around midday when someone aboard called out, “Beaked whales!” I don’t remember who saw them first, only my incredible excitement. Beaked whales, classified under the family Ziphiidae, are treasures to find. They are the most under-studied family of whales, known to be the deepest divers, venturing further into the depths than even the sperm whale. They are typically hard to discover in offshore habitats and can be extremely elusive and unapproachable at the surface, often diving before you even know they are there. Most of my encounters with beaked whales have been entirely unexpected, when they have breached out of the water with a joyful vigour on days when it has been so rough that it seemed hardly worth conducting visual observations at all, only to disappear again into a swirling cacophony of wind and wave. The northern bottlenose are the exception, as they can be gregarious and are known to approach boats. Although this makes them slightly easier to study, they are also more vulnerable to whaling. I squirrelled my way up the mast to get a better look. At first, I saw a light grey shadow moving under the surface, over half the boat’s length in size. My view was lurching, from the movement of my platform and from excitement, as I leaned out from the crow’s nest. Holding on to a halyard to keep my perch, I watched as the animal surfaced, its head breaking the water first. Pale grey in colour, skin glistening in the sun. It had a beak of a nose, akin to a dolphin, and a bulging melon of a head, the jut of the forehead angled at almost ninety degrees to the beak. Then came the blow—quiet, a light puff—followed by the elegant curve of its back to the dorsal fin. The tail, sickle-shaped, stayed in the water as it continued to swim with ease ahead of the boat. There were three more animals converging in front of us, milling together before turning to approach us. We watched the whales and the whales watched us back, a moment of mammalian recognition.
And then the work began. The rest of the day was a blur as we helped Dr. Feyrer to gather as much data as possible: ID shots of the animals and samples for genetic analysis, to be put into liquid nitrogen immediately in order to be transported back to a lab. There is always a fine balance between gathering data on the animals and the level of disturbance, so Dr. Feyrer was filming the entirety of our interactions with them to help maintain a minimal acceptable level, and we constantly monitored their behaviour, looking for signs indicating disturbance, such a tail slapping.
As I lay in my bunk in Balaena for the last time, I was aware of how much work lay ahead, of how much time I needed to spend at sea to develop the casual fluency of seamanship I admired in more seasoned sailors, but I felt my course was set. It was time to return to shore, to gain a fresh perspective on the oceans. My time on Balaena was over, but for Dr. Feyrer this was just the beginning: during four summers spent afloat, she would finally locate and study the population of northern bottlenose whales in the waters north-east of Newfoundland, which had been reported anecdotally by fishermen but which had eluded us. The year after our research trip, during her fieldwork, she went back to the same location where we had had the acoustic detections. This time, she had visual sightings of the whales and was able to take samples. In 2017 she returned again and concentrated her survey in this area, concluding from the continued presence of the animals, both adult and calf, that it was an important habitat for the northern bottlenose whales. Her work will contribute towards future protection of the species in this area.
I recently spoke to Dr. Feyrer, reminiscing over the shared experiences we had on Balaena, and talking through her thesis and publications. She mentioned that she had dedicated her thesis to her daughter Ione, and spoke of the shared responsibility and family support that had enabled her to conduct field studies while also bringing up her child. I thought again of the clans of female sperm whales, of the community effort involved in raising calves. And I thought of the support I had felt from my own family, the line between my grandmother, my mother, and me, of the inspiration I had found in the women scientists who had gone before me. Aside from Dr. Feyrer’s academic achievements, what struck me from the conversation and continues to resonate is how she talked about the time spent with the whales. She talks of her delight in the element of the unknown, and how rare it is to encounter this in twenty-first-century life. When you set out on a voyage to study wild animals, particularly marine mammals in their natural habitat, you never really know what you are going to get, the interactions that will follow. She spoke of the endorphin rush we experience as humans when in the presence of large mammals, and the deep laughter and sheer joy that accompany time spent with whales. It is a privilege to be, for a short time, in their element.
3
HUMAN
There was sunlight streaming through the windscreen of the camper van, dust motes dancing in the rays. The gentle rhythm of a rolling swell filled my ears, setting the tone for a blue-sky day. There was warmth in the air, the touch of spring sun breaking beyond the resounding depth of winter. There was celebration in that light. Renewal. My collie dog sighed and stretched as I slipped out of bed. There was no need to kindle a fire in my tiny log burner that morning, so I started to whisk batter for pancakes. Hot coffee, blueberries, their skins bursting to soft insides, maple syrup poured over everything, the sweetness a mirror of the sunshine. I pushed open the sliding door with a practised little kick where it always got stuck on the rail and sat on the step, the collie beside me.
Our view was the beach. The sand was divided into sections with rotting wooden groynes to limit the movement of the sediment, cross shore drift. They jutted out of the sand, then out of the water, until little by little they were swallowed by the North Sea. Blue sky into blue sea, two orange tankers anchored on the horizon, a splash of colour. Our backs were to the ugly complex that makes up the modern part of the Aberdeen waterfront: apartment blocks, a drive-through, pound shops, and a supermarket. Looking seawards, you could almost forget that they were there. We lived here, my collie and I, in a camper van by the beach, in north-east Scotland. I was studying at the university—old stone, stained-glass windows, ivy creeping—learning the sea by numbers, statistics, studying the anatomy of the creatures that fascinated me.
When the voyage on Balaena came to an end, I had struggled to adapt to this new environment, the shift from days and nights dictated by the weather to a timetabled schedule of lectures and labs. I often felt tired and crowded when surrounded by people, and life was full to the edges—trying to find my place in academia and fund my course. There were times when I had to run straight from dissecting fish in the lab to the yoga class I was teaching in the evenings, hoping I did not have fish scales lodged anywhere and that I hadn’t carried the smell out of the lab with me. But it was also a relief to be in one place, focused on one thing. Living out here on the fringes of the city, I had my space, and there was freedom to the way I could spend my time. Gradually, I began to find my way.
Every morning my day would start by or in the ocean, a swim or surf, before cycling to university to study. Most Fridays I would take off with the dog to explore the Cairngorms or the Scottish islands, discovering a landscape that was simultaneously new and wonderfully familiar. The previous weekend we’d gone to Skye. We were by the sea, before the scar that is the Cuillin Ridge reaching into the sky like the dark teeth of the earth, when I stumbled across a minke whale, dead and washed ashore. This creature was in an entirely different stage of decomposition from the pilot whale I had seen when I was nine. Flesh still clung to its giant vertebrae, stringy and sinuous, hanging off the spinous processes. Most of its throat had gone, and its stomach was split open. The fresh breeze carried the worst of the smell away, so I could bear to get close, to discern the majestic animal in the parts that formed it. Over the coming months, the rest of the flesh would fall from its bones, picked over by birds and detritivores until only the skeleton remained, a white sculpture on that isolated beach. Perhaps it would be washed back out to sea, to rest once more in a world of water. Perhaps I would follow, go back to sea—but not yet. I was still buoyed by my time with the whales in the North Atlantic: the shower of sperm whale spray in the night; the dark, dominant fins of orca as they cut through the water; the small curved dorsals of Cuvier’s beaked whales as they surfaced against a rose-tinged sea.
Every night I would light the tiny log burner in the van, close the doors, and curl up with my collie, her soft snores as soothing as the sound of the water. The van was the first space that ever really felt like my own beyond the walls of the cottage, perhaps because I had taken so many pieces of it with me, physically as well as mentally. My kitchen counter and cupboards were modified from an old Welsh dresser that used to stand in our kitchen, my table the lid of an old pine chest where we used to keep our winter jumpers in the hallway. All of my worldly belongings at the time fit into that small space: paints in one drawer, a short shelf of books, surfboards tied to the roof. I didn’t have much, but I didn’t need much. The tiny wood burner would only fit logs that had been split thrice, but they kept us warm all through the Scottish winter, took the chill away after morning dips and made the nights feel ensconced.
That morning, after breakfast, I climbed up on to the roof of the van. One foot on the passenger seat, a pull up with a swing. Careful not to tread on the solar panel that provided my electricity, I untied a surfboard and lowered it to the ground. I tugged myself into my wetsuit, which was still unpleasantly damp and cold from the day before, and squeezed my feet into neoprene boots. I left off the gloves and the hood for the first time that year, enjoying the feel of the sun on my face and the sound of the water without the muffle of the hood. I headed to the south end of the beach, right where the North Pier hooked around for the entrance of the port. I’d walked here with my collie the first day I got to the city, astonished to see the fluke of a humpback whale, dappled grey and white, which had taken up residence around the harbour apparently undeterred by the shipping traffic. It had felt like an omen, a sign that I was in the right place. Although the humpback left just over a fortnight ago, more often than not I would see bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) around the harbour entrance, their fins and backs breaking the water, or large shadows flitting just under the surface.
