Since we have concluded our misadventures on the high seas among the crew of the Pequod, I have felt a whale-sized hole within myself. As one does, I tried to fill this hole with interesting facts about whales! In doing so, I have found out how dangerous aquatic vehicles can be to our sea-life, and whales in particular. There is that famous photo of the whale’s eye, such a detailed and close look of such a mythical and legendary creature, captured by Rachel Moore who called this whale “Sweet Girl”, on account of the whale’s youth. While this whale is a humpback and not a sperm whale as Moby-Dick is, the damage caused to her by a boat is all the same. Unfortunately, only days after that photo was taken, she was killed by a boat, which tore her jaw apart. For the past few weeks, those sounds, those images, they play in my mind incessantly; whenever a moment is quiet or before I fall asleep, I only hear her. To think that we humans, through our evolution as a society, were able to create such a vehicle that can transport us from one side of the world to the other, from old worlds to new ones, wreak such havoc to the creatures just below our feet.

I have decided to go with this photo because my friend works on these types of boats, a ferry and a whale watching vessel. These vessels allow us to move through the bodies of water, to allow those without land-based automobiles to go to Coronado, to view these creatures we hardly understand, to gain new experiences to follow us for the rest of our lives. And yet, it is with these machines that we harm these creatures we seek to ‘watch’, as these journeys promise. Beforehand, I used to be wary of these sorts of excursions because I was worried—fearful even!—of these creatures landing atop of us as they leap from the seas in which they reside. Now I cannot help but think of how dangerous this could be for the whale in which we pay to watch; how many of these journeys have directly resulted in harming, or even killing the very same whales they hope to observe?

I am left with these questions by the end of it all, confused at how stories like these are not larger stories, are of no concern to many people. I feel this class has given me the building blocks to only just begin to answer these questions. Perhaps it is our terrestrial based society that causes these rifts between us and the happenings at sea. Maybe it is our insistence on separating humans and animals, society and nature. I think about my friend and how little he cares about it all, how it’s just another day, another dollar, no thoughts outside of the immediate; “Can’t wait for lunch!”; “Wonder if I can pick up another shift before next week”; “Time to move the chairs again”. This mundanity of his everyday life and job has seemed to suck out any of his remaining empathy for the wildlife in which he guides his paying customers to on the daily. Could it be that our society is one that is far too selfish and busy with the immediate thoughts and concerns that we lack the empathy to feel for these animals until it is far too late? When is it that we will care enough to put forth ideas to end such preventable deaths?