My Kids Have Seen Whales
I live by the shore. I grew up summers by the sea on a white sand beach. We had boats: sail, motor, row. We went boating every weekend. I’ve never seen a whale. At my present house, I have two pairs of powerful Vortex binoculars, one pair on the first floor and one pair on the second floor. Sometimes, I bring Vortex binoculars up to the third floor, 90 feet above the sea. I’ve been watching for whales for over seventy years.
On summer days, I see the whale boats go out twice a day. I hear stories of what people on board see. People are excited about their experiences on whale watch boats. My son went out on a boat out of Portland, out beyond the horizon. He and his mom saw whales. My son went with his high school class to Quebec kayaking on the St Lawrence River. He said in his tent at night, they could hear whales surfacing all through the night just 100 feet away. By day, they paddled out on the river among the whales. His story follows.
Our bracelets have two whale tails at that moment after they have surfaced and have begun to dive. For a second or two, the tail appears above the water, This, as I understand it, is the big deal moment. The two tails are studded with diamonds (each different. That’s how you tell whales apart, by looking at barnacle patterns on the tail) the two tails are attached to a gold spring tube that wraps around the wrist. One size fits 90% of all women.
At night, I could hear the whales
surfacing near my tent.
The son’s story.
When I was 17, I went kayaking with my high school class for several days on the St. Lawrence River, just northeast of Quebec City, Canada. We camped on a grassy slope by the river within a hundred feet of the water. At night, cozy and warm in my sleeping bag, I could hear whales surfacing for breath as they cruised the river highway. Their presence in the dark, such a short distance from where I lay, was a dream-like experience.
Many whale species visit the St. Lawrence River during the summer months to feast on a buffet of cold-water fish and plankton. The world’s largest creature, the blue whale, is one of the summer visitors.
Researchers adventure out in Zodiacs, armed with telephoto cameras, to tag and study these giants of the ocean. I was surprised to learn that much remains a mystery. Even today, we know little about where the blue whales that visit Canada in the summer retreat to come winter. We gather fragments and piece together their lives like a jigsaw puzzle.
The ocean deep is a place of many secrets yet to be revealed. It’s a foreign, alien world. Our visits are brief, restricted by technology and our own biology. When we are lucky, the whales visit us. We catch brief glimpses of them as they surface, kiss the sky, then tuck, tail flip, and dive back into their world. -S.P.
