Green-eyed Monster thoughts
So what about whale watching in Biscay?
For several days now I have walked around in the happy afterglow of a dream day at sea, but I haven’t yet found the right words to describe it (I plunged almost straight back into more mundane writing tasks which I keep putting off, playing too much Sudoku instead). Now, on top of my happy memories, the old bitterness keeps creeping back irrevocably. It is a minor, minor feeling but it has been gnawing at me for so long that it eventually found its way to the fore, just as I woke up yesterday morning. So I might as well write about that instead, perhaps then it will go away and I can return to my dreams.
I found the presentations by the wildlife officer condescending. Of course he is not condescending, he is just doing his job. Of the people attending his talks, 99.9% know precisely nothing about marine mammals—I just happen not to be one of them. So why was I fawning all over the guy like a school girl anyway? Irritated, I scrunched up my questionaire on which I had scribbled that I am a zoologist and that I had enjoyed the trip. I was there as a whalewatcher, not as a failed cetologist.
I was bitter because the guy leads the life I should have led.
Back in 1993 when I last attended a conference by the European Cetacean Society (to present a poster on mercury levels in harbour porpoises), the BDRP did not even exist. Five years earlier, a Cambridge scientist had told me that the cetacean field was getting too crowded. “Go find a species nobody is looking at”, she’d said: “How about beaked whales? We know nothing about the ziphiids!” Back then, few people had seen a ziphiid and knew what it was, let alone where to find one. What she meant, of course, was that I (and my mate Boris) should stay out of her hair. We had been pestering these people since 1985, and she was rather busy. Jilted at 23. And yet, here in Biscay, ironically, we were surrounded by Cuvier’s beaked whales—such an everyday presence that the Spanish call then ‘Zifus comun’. The irony of it all.
I will never get over this. My life at present holds little meaning besides eating, crapping and sleeping and if I have one regret it is the absence of cetaceans in it. But I am now ‘whalewatcher’, here to enjoy them and no longer hanker after lost opportunities. That’s the plan anyway, yet it feels strangely empty to come just as a tourist. The scientists seem rather smug and self-righteous to me. They only ask for a donation which is fair enough. Maybe what grinds is the fact that they emphasise that they are scientists who scientifically gather scientific data with a consistent, scientifically designed effort. Oh, give me a break. I know that we’re just punters! But the BDRP is alright—staffed by volunteers and a few (underpaid) staff who feel passionate about their work. Without the Wildlife Officer’s expert eye, we would have seen little even from the deck, even in mirror-calm seas when we were right on top of Cuvier’s, pilot whales and striped dolphins. And there were only about five of us up there the whole time. It felt like a little brotherhood. It was a good trip. Better than that: it was a magical trip. I will never forget that day at sea. I’ll tell you about it when I find the right words.
First though I’m off to Borth for the weekend. Time for another beach BBQ!
Tags: Whale watching, Tag Index
Denni