The whale does not love you.

September 4, 2024 8:14 AM

Sperm whales are extra­ordinarily intelligent animals with deep family traditions and the ability to communicate across oceans with sonic clicks. But when Rowan Jacobsen had a close encounter with one in the Caribbean, he saw a creature far stranger than he'd ever imagined. Rowan Jacobsen at Outside Online.
posted by bq (15 comments total)

Quoting because a lot of this is very funny and this is maybe the high point in a very affecting story:

I’m kicking to catch up and double-checking that the GoPro is recording when I look ahead and, good God, 15 tons of gar­gantuan weirdness is coming at me with purpose. Its head is a wedge for cutting through the deep, its toothy jaw is impossibly underslung, its back half is a colossal tail grooved with deep furrows that make the whole whale look like a 30-foot dill pickle. And there’s no getting out of the way. Call me fishmeal. Just as I’m bracing for collision, a wall of whale shoots past, so close I feel shock waves. The giant eye, the crackle of intelligence, the heft, then it’s gone, and I’m left bobbing in the blue with an urge to find the nearest cave wall so I can paint its image again and again by torchlight.
posted by chavenet at 8:45 AM on September 4 [36 favorites]

I did like the fishmeal line.
I have met Rowan. He lives in my town, a few miles away, and I've read some of his books.
I like his writing, including this piece.
posted by MtDewd at 8:49 AM on September 4 [1 favorite]

Did you love this whale? And did this whale not love you?
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:51 AM on September 4 [2 favorites]

Extremely long and seemingly paid-by-the-word. The last few paragraphs are in fact what the title teased, and justify skimming through the rest. If you like human-interest pieces the rest was probably good too, but you should definitely read the last bit. Quite good.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:56 AM on September 4 [2 favorites]

A nice read, and it sent me on a brief Wiki-session to learn more about sperm whales - and as always, I learned more stuff and came away once again amazed by these creatures. It's kind of hard for me to fully comprehend the size of the larger animals on our planet - sperm whale, blue whale, elephant, polar bear, salties, basking shark, great white, etc. But always fascinating.
posted by davidmsc at 9:07 AM on September 4 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I hate the way Outside manages their cookies, but just shrug. Their articles are usually so worth it. I generally read my couple allotted each month.

This was a good article, not too badly written. No desire to swim with whales here especially the toothed ones, but they are fascinating critters. There's a lot of irony in the story about how the noise pollution is destroying whale habitat and causing stress, and then they fire up the engine to go chase the whales down.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:59 AM on September 4

The article is mostly skimmable, but I did like the part about Gaelin going to see the sperm whale being cared for in captivity in New York when she was a little girl. Here's a Washington Post story from 1981 about Physty the sperm whale and his successful treatment.
posted by briank at 10:03 AM on September 4 [3 favorites]

Mod note: Cookie prompt derail deleted. Also, let's not use "someplace civilized" to refer to places with data privacy laws.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:42 AM on September 4 [3 favorites]

wow! I swam with Whale Sharks recently (shark, not whale). the ones I swam with were about 20ft. I cannot imagine sharing the water with such a vast creature!!!
posted by supermedusa at 11:48 AM on September 4 [2 favorites]

Did you love this whale?
yes

And did this whale not love you?
🐋
posted by HearHere at 1:37 PM on September 4

Possibly has some overlap with the thread about human celebrities getting hassled by fans.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:04 PM on September 4 [4 favorites]

(Spoiler alert for Moby Dick.)
posted by box at 2:24 PM on September 4 [8 favorites]

Evolved to living in an Abyss, there are probably some great life tips the whales can share for staring into one.
posted by nickggully at 4:55 PM on September 4 [3 favorites]

I loved this. Thanks for posting it.
posted by fedward at 5:37 PM on September 5 [1 favorite]

So interesting, especially the matriarchal angle of both whales and the researcher/her mom. Loved the photos and video, super high quality.
posted by j810c at 4:33 AM on September 7