War of the Whales (5 page)

For a moment, there was silence on the other end. “Tell me what you know,” said Gisiner.

“Three beaked whales stranded live this morning within a two-mile stretch here on the southwest end of Abaco. Two Cuvier’s, one Blainville’s. We’ve got calls coming in from other islands. Sounds like a pair of minke whales also came ashore.”

“How many animals are involved?”

“A dozen or more, spread across at least three islands.”

“What’s the outlook for specimens?” Gisiner asked.

“So far everything’s stranded live, and we pushed three back out to sea this morning. But those came ashore right on top of us. There are bound to be some specimens on the outer islands. I’ll collect whatever I can.”

Gisiner said he’ d get on the horn to Fisheries and pull together an investigative team. “I want to get Darlene Ketten down there in a hurry,” he said. “I don’t know where she is now, but we’ll track her down.”

When he heard Ketten’s name, Balcomb knew that he had Gisiner’s attention. Though an academic and a civilian, Ketten was the US Navy’s top-gun whale pathologist, the go-to forensics expert for any “unusual mortality event” (UME) that Fisheries or the Navy needed to investigate. Her specialty was hearing, in both whales and humans. She had joint appointments at Harvard Medical School and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, though she spent much of her time flying around the world to investigate unexplained strandings. After the Greek stranding in ’96, Gisiner had dispatched her from Woods Hole to join the NATO scientific investigation—which reached no definitive finding of cause in 1998. She’ d been on-site at most of the atypical whale strandings since.

“Ketten would be great,” said Balcomb. “I’ll make sure she has what she needs on the ground. And I’ll collect all the ear bones I can find.”

“Better to take the whole head,” Gisiner advised. “Darlene’s going to want them whole. Get as many heads as you can, as fast as you can, and keep them on ice.”

It was time for Balcomb to talk to Gisiner about money. Never his strong suit. “I’m going to need a plane to survey the outer islands. And we’ll need to get more boats in the water to check the coastlines and ferry the heads back to our field station.” After some back-and-forth, Gisiner agreed to cover up to $5,000 in expenses. If costs ran higher, Gisiner said, he’ d find more funds.

Before he rang off, Balcomb had to ask the question that had been weighing on his mind all day: “Bob, does the fleet have something going on down here?”

Gisiner said he didn’t know but promised to find out.

“One other thing.” Balcomb paused to figure out how to say it right. “Make sure they save the tapes. From AUTEC. Those tapes will tell the tale.”

There was silence on the other end. Balcomb wondered if he’ d overstepped the line with Gisiner. AUTEC was the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, one of the Navy’s most classified, tightly controlled testing ranges for simulated warfare. Even though it was located just over the horizon offshore from Andros Island, most Bahamians had no notion of what went on there. Even Claridge, who grew up in Nassau, had only a vague idea.
¹

Gisiner said he’ d call over there and see what he could find out. But AUTEC was run out of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, he reminded Balcomb, which wasn’t fond of sharing data.

“They used to keep the tapes for thirty days,” Balcomb said. “I don’t know what their protocol is these days.”

“Stay focused on the whales, Ken, and let me know what you’re able to collect on the ground. In the meantime, I’ll track down Darlene and get her in motion.”

•  •  •

Balcomb emerged from his office to find the Earthlings spread out across the living room. Some were resting, while others were tending to coral cuts on their feet and hands. It was midafternoon, but no one had eaten lunch.

The phone rang in the kitchen, where Claridge was slapping together some peanut butter sandwiches. Someone reported that a dolphin had stranded alive but in bad shape on Powell Cay, a barrier island just east of Abaco. They hoped that Claridge, who was known throughout the islands as the resident dolphin expert, would come try to save it. She grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water, and headed off in the truck toward the Powell Cay ferry.

Moments later, the phone rang again. It was someone at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private Out Island 15 miles offshore from Abaco, reporting that a “huge, funny-looking dolphin” had swum into its mangrove lagoon. It was swimming in circles, and the guests were starting to freak out. Could Balcomb help them get it out of there?

Balcomb suspected it was a beaked whale, which locals often mistook for dolphins, even though beaked whales are significantly larger than dolphins, with rounder bodies and long snouts. He and Ellifrit identified half a dozen Earthlings who could still walk and were game for another rescue operation. They grabbed the blue tarp from the truck and headed out in the motorboat for Castaway Cay.

Before the Disney Company bought Gorda Cay in 1996 and rechristened it Castaway Cay, the three-mile-long island had seen service as a way station for drug runners and as a set for the movie
Splash
. Disney spent $25 million transforming the cay into a private port of call for Disney cruise ships in the Bahamas. The island theme park, where Captain Hook, Peter Pan, and the Lost Boys roamed about in full costume, featured castaway shacks serving piña coladas in coconut shells and a snorkeling lagoon housing two sunken “submarines” retired from the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at the Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. The island’s three beaches had been built atop a coral shelf, using 35,000 truckloads of sand dredged from the ocean floor.

By the time Balcomb’s boat arrived at Castaway Cay, the snorkelers had exited the lagoon and were standing on the beach taking pictures of the “funny-looking dolphin” that lolled near the surface. Balcomb identified it as a dense-beaked Blainville’s whale. He waded into the lagoon and moved quietly toward the animal. Ordinarily, beaked whales are the most skittish of creatures, almost impossible to approach without spooking. This one submitted uncomplainingly to Balcomb’s examination. Like the other stranded whales Balcomb had seen that day, it showed no outward signs of trauma. Luckily, it wasn’t bleeding. Balcomb could just imagine the melee that would ensue on Castaway Cay if a shiver of tiger sharks suddenly entered the lagoon.

In a few minutes, they had secured the tarp beneath the whale and were leading him out to sea. Buoys painted as Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy stood sentinel at the mouth of the lagoon. It was sunset, and daiquiris were being served on the deck of the
Disney Wonder
, which lay at anchor nearby. The cruise passengers clustered at the railings, pointing at the whale and taking pictures of the rescue. A few people rested their daiquiris on the rail and clapped.

Two Castaway employees approached on Jet Skis and offered to escort the whale to deeper water. Spouting water from their tails, the two Jet Skiers steered the dazed and confused Blainville’s toward the setting sun and its canyon home.

•  •  •

Forty miles to the northeast, Claridge stepped off the ferry in Powell Cay to find the beached dolphin in dire condition. It was an Atlantic spotted dolphin, one of 12 species of oceanic dolphins found in the Bahamas. Highly social and usually found in groups of 20 or more, these fast swimmers are ubiquitous in the islands, bow riding speedboats and executing aerial acrobatics wherever they congregate. But this full-grown female lay in the shallows close to death, listless and barely moving. The tourists who had found her on the beach that morning, and had kept her hydrated and shaded all day, were distraught.

A veterinarian named Alan Bater had arrived from Grand Bahama just ahead of Claridge. Bater was in charge of keeping the captive dolphins alive at “the Dolphin Experience” tourist attraction in the capital city of Freeport. He’ d brought a stomach pump with him in hopes of giving the dolphin some nourishment. But after 20 minutes of feeding, she wasn’t showing any signs of revival. They decided to ferry her by boat to Bater’s clinic and treat her there.

On the ride back, Claridge cradled the animal in her arms. The dolphin was five feet long and almost as large as her caregiver. Halfway back across the channel, the dolphin began to convulse, and moments later she died. Her body grew cold, but Claridge kept rocking her in her arms.

Claridge didn’t cry. It wasn’t her style. But she felt overwhelmed by helplessness and confusion. She’ d grown up in these waters, and dolphins were her first love. They were so wild and free. Their beauty took her breath away. She often felt they were too charming for their own good. Since the early 1990s, the tourist trade had turned these fabulous creatures into circus performers. Worse, they’ d been prostituted to tourists who could purchase dolphin “experiences” by the hour. Throughout the Bahamas, “dolphin swim” offerings in captive settings had become a must-have attraction for cruise ships and fly-in tourists.

Dolphin tourism had become big business. The going price for a wild-caught dolphin had risen to $40,000, and worth it at the price. At $100 an “experience,” dolphins could earn back their investor’s money in two years. After that, they were pure profit machines. No one asked where the animals were captured, or how. Since the Bahamas banned dolphin capture in 1995, a black market pipeline had emerged from both the Solomon Islands and Taiji, Japan. As long as the tourists were happy and kept swiping their credit cards, local authorities turned a blind eye. Back in 1994, when dolphins began dying at various dolphin swim venues, local activists made as much noise as they could in the press. Eventually dolphin tourism was debated in Parliament, and the government briefly shut down a facility on Abaco, but not in Freeport or Nassau.

So now one more dolphin had died—for what? The dolphins and beaked whales of the Bahamas had been Claridge’s life and her work for the past ten years. Then overnight, everything had been turned upside down.

They were still traveling back with the dead dolphin when Bater’s cell phone rang. Two whales had stranded and died on the beach outside Freeport in Grand Bahama. Bater decided to call a veterinarian he knew at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center, in Miami. Shouting over the outboard motor noise, he briefed her on the mass stranding and suggested she get some folks over to the Bahamas to help sort it out.

When they came ashore, Claridge declined Bater’s assistance and tried to fireman-carry the dolphin across the parking lot. But it was too heavy, and she finally let him help her hoist the body onto a bed of sponge pads in the back of the red pickup truck. Then she bought three 50-pound bags of ice from the fish store at the dock, and one by one gently poured them over the corpse.

Balcomb was waiting for her at the house, eager to learn how things had gone. “We need to find a place to store the body,” was all she could manage, gesturing to the back of the truck.

He could see that she was hurting, but they both understood what they had to do. “Maybe Les can help us out,” he said. “Let’s drive down to Nancy’s.”

Nancy’s Restaurant was a popular eating and drinking spot in Sandy Point. The owner, Les Adderly, was a black Bahamian lobster fisherman whose daughter cooked and served conch fritters on the deck overlooking the channel. Les was happy to clear the bait out of one of his oversized freezer chests to make room for the dolphin. They could leave it there as long as they needed to, he told them. They placed the dolphin in the chest and closed the lid tight.

When they got back to the house, the Earthlings were full of questions that Balcomb and Claridge couldn’t answer. They didn’t know how many animals had stranded, how many had been pushed back out to sea, or how many of those had found their way back to the safety of the underwater canyon. And they had no idea why so many whales had stranded across so many islands. All they knew was that they had witnessed the largest multispecies whale stranding ever recorded.

3

Taking Heads

The sound of the small plane droned in Balcomb’s head like an alarm that wouldn’t shut off. Finally, it jerked him awake.

His arms and legs ached. He stank. He needed a shower. And a younger body. He needed a strong cup of coffee that he knew he didn’t have time to brew because he had to get up in that plane before the sun rose above the horizon.

Yesterday had been a sprint to rescue the whales from the beach. Any other whales that had stranded would be dead and rotting by now. Today would be a race to collect whatever fresh specimens he could find before the sun and the sharks had their way with them. If he didn’t get their heads on ice by midday, their brains would be cooked to jelly—useless as forensic evidence.

Balcomb knew it was going to be another mad day, following a long night of preparation. After they’ d finished logging all the stranding reports that had come in, he and Claridge had stayed up past midnight poring over a nautical chart of Great Bahama Canyon. They marked the locations of all the reported strandings across 150 miles of shoreline: five along the west coast of Abaco Island, six on the south shore of Grand Bahama, and three along the smaller cays in between. Then they circled the X-marks of the eight whales that they and others had pushed back into the channel. They figured that some of the rescued whales might come back ashore in the night, and that others might have stranded unseen on remote beaches.