Leigh Calvez - The Breath of a Whale
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![Copyright 2019 by Leigh Calvez All rights reserved No portion of this book may - photo 1](/uploads/posts/book/161528/images/9781632171870_cover.jpg)
![Copyright 2019 by Leigh Calvez All rights reserved No portion of this book may - photo 2](/uploads/posts/book/161528/images/9781632171870_title_page.jpg)
Copyright 2019 by Leigh Calvez
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by Sasquatch Books
SASQUATCH BOOKS with colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC
Editor: Gary Luke
Production editor: Rachelle Long McGhee
Design: Tony Ong
Copyeditor: Elizabeth Johnson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Calvez, Leigh, author.
Title: The breath of a whale : the science and spirit of Pacific Ocean giants / Leigh Calvez.
Description: Seattle : Sasquatch Books, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018028008 | ISBN 9781632171863 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: WhalesPacific Ocean.
Classification: LCC QL737.C4 C248 2019 | DDC 599.5dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028008
ISBN:9781632171863
Ebook ISBN9781632171870
Sasquatch Books
1904 Third Avenue, Suite 710
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 467-4300
SasquatchBooks.com
| Alena Fayankova
COLOR INSERT PHOTOGRAPHS: Pg. 1: istock.com | kevindickinson; pg. 2 top: istock.com | PaulWolf; pg. 2 bottom: istock.com | ANDREYGUDKOV; pg. 3 top: shutterstock.com | Chase Dekker; pg. 3 bottom: Leigh Calvez; pg. 4: Mark Kelley; pg. 5: Deron Verbeck; pg. 6: istock.com | roclwyr; pg. 7: istock.com | PeakMystique; pg. 8: Deron Verbeck
![v54 a For my daughter Ellie Authors Note This is not a guidebook This book - photo 3](/uploads/posts/book/161528/images/9781632171870_Page_v_Image_0001.jpg)
v5.4
a
For my daughter, Ellie
Authors Note
This is not a guidebook. This book does contain information on the largest mammals in the world, including some of their stories as witnessed through my own experience. It is, therefore, my story as well. I hope you will enjoy reading The Breath of a Whale.
DOLPHIN LESSONS
I swam through the warm, clear water out to the middle of Kealakekua Bay, on the leeward side of the Big Island of Hawaii. Filtered sunlight danced in rainbows on the rippled patterns in the sand below me. Dolphin sounds bounced around me, and I grew more excited as I swam farther out. I wanted something from them. I wanted to understand how it feels to be a dolphin, living in the sea. But I did not want to burden them with my human desires in the one place where they could rest peacefully. Would I interpret their actions correctly? And was this an appropriate time to be swimming with them? I found myself apologizing again for being human. We have caused them so many problems, from ensnaring them in fishing nets as bycatch, to depleting their food sources, to producing marine debris and pollutionboth toxic and noise pollution. I considered swimming back to the beach. And then, I saw them.
I dont remember how many were there; I remember only the mother and calftwo beautiful tricolored dolphins. The mother was slender in body, with a slate-gray cape coloring her top, from the tip of her long, narrow snout to her tail. A pale-gray stripe graced her side, from forehead to fluke, while her white belly gleamed. Across her eyes, a dark-gray mask colored her face from flipper to flipper. And she wore a gentle, enigmatic smile, like a Madonna of the sea. The calf, a miniature version of its mother, was still a little pudgy from baby fat. When the mother allowed the calf to swim between us, I felt certain she was not threatened by me.
As my distress shifted to wonder, the mother slowly moved closer to me, calf in tow. The rest of the pod had moved away, and I was alone with the pair. She looked me in the eye and began to circle me, her calf still between us. I moved slowly in the water, careful not to startle her, and turned to swim on my side to watch the mother and calf. You have a beautiful baby, I said silently, suppressing a smile to avoid filling my mask with seawater. Was she showing her calf to me, or was she showing me to him? I felt the tension that comes when it seems as if the heart can hold no more. I blinked away the tears filling my eyes.
I reminded myself to breathe. With deep inhalations and exhalations, my body calmed, and I floated alongside the dolphins suspended in the sea. My mind ceased its persistent thought, growing quiet, as if in meditation. Then I felt a voice in my heart say, Dont feel guilty for being human. You are the guardians.
Startled, I continued my deep breaths. This was not a thought I had ever had on my own. I sensed the warm ocean swells sweeping over my back. The mother continued her steady gaze while I remained transfixed by her gentle, knowing smile. It was as if she had every confidence that I would do the right thingas a steward. And in some primal space within, I allowed myself to accept my humanness and my place in the world.
Mother and calf circled me once more, and we swam along, side by side, while I watched the chubby calf fall into traveling position just behind the mothers flipper. Then as quickly as she had initiated contact, our encounter was over. I watched the pair vanish into the gray-blue mist of the sea.
Since that interaction, I have often wondered about the message You are the guardians. For years, Ive considered its meaning for myself and for other humans. At one point, I realized that as a scientist studying dolphins, I was their representative. I studied them to help protect them. As a steward, I felt a responsibility to share what I have learned about their lives and culture. But I never really considered the first part of the messageDont feel guilty for being humanuntil now.
HUMPBACK WHALES
(Megaptera novaeangliae)
The life of the humpback whale is one of extremes. As one of the largest mammals in the ocean, its massive slate-gray to black body can grow to more than fifty feet, longer than a city bus. One humpback whale at about forty-five tons, or ninety thousand pounds, weighs the same as seven African elephants, the largest animals on land. With fifteen-foot-long pectoral flippers that outstretch like bird wings, humpback whales glide through the seas. These fins are the longest of any cetaceanthe scientific order that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. The humpbacks scientific genus and species name, Megaptera novaeangliae, means big-winged New Englander. Around New England, these long wings are white, and they glow green in the plankton-filled waters of the North Atlantic. But in the Pacific Ocean, these flippers are more often the same slate-gray color of the humpbacks body on top, and white underneath. A humpback-whale tail fluke is about as wide as a small car is long, while the underside shows a unique black-and-white pattern, which allows easy individual identification, like a fingerprint.
Humpbacks are baleen whales, meaning that in place of teeth, they have 270 to 400 three-foot-long plates of keratin, the same substance fingernails are made of. Hanging from either side of the roof of a humpbacks mouth, each baleen plate has a fringe on the inside, like the decoration on a kitschy lampshade, to help the whale ensnare the fish it eats. As a member of the rorqual family of baleen whales (from a Norwegian word meaning folded whale), its throat expands like an accordion to engulf its prey, from as many as thirty-six pleats in its throat. Humpback whales feed by gulping mouthfuls of fish and water. The mouth of the humpback was once thought to hold as much as sixteen thousand gallons, as estimated from the carcass of a bloated whale on a beach. However, now it is generally believed to hold about five thousand gallons. The humpback uses its powerful tongue to press the water through the baleen plates, catching some of the smallest creatures in the sea. Dense swarms of tiny krill, about the size of a standard paper clip, or schools of salmon smolt, sand lance, herring, and anchovies provide the one ton per day of needed sustenance for the whales.
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