A female humpback was spotted in December 2005 east of the Farallon Islands, just off the coast of San Francisco. She was entangled in a web of crab-trap lines, hundreds of yards of nylon rope that had become wrapped around her mouth, torso and tail, the weight of the traps causing her to struggle to stay afloat. A rescue team arrived within a few hours and decided that the only way to save her was to dive in and cut her loose.
For an hour they cut at the lines and rope with curved knives, all the while trying to steer clear of a tail they knew could kill them with one swipe. When the whale was finally freed, the divers said, she swam around them for a time in what appeared to be joyous circles. She then came back and visited with each one of them, nudging them all gently, as if in thanks. The divers said it was the most beautiful experience they ever had. As for the diver who cut free the rope that was entangled in the whale’s mouth, her huge eye was following him the entire time, and he said that he will never be the same.
This feature, in the NYT Mag this weekend, was exactly what I have been needing, craving.
New York City, its lofty towers and crushing reality, is my home, but I have sought more and more to escape, physically and mentally, to a wide open, endless meadow I have dreamed of, or the endless, aquamarine sea I idealized as a kid. Not permanently, of course, but whenever the subway ride or job or angry cab drivers gets me down.
I’ve always anthropomorphized, put personalities and preferences and feelings and souls to animals. Of course, this started before I knew any better, but against my better scientific learning, it has continued.
And now, knowing that the gray whale shows gratitude and forgiveness, and that the killer whale mourns its dead, I know that, as an 8-year old at the Camden aquarium, I was right.
