CHAPTER 18
Gentle waves lapped the sugary-white beach beneath the coconut palms. Offshore, above the distant horizon, the orange rays of the morning sun backlit a long cloud bearing a flat bottom and jagged top, a heavenly, upside-down saw blade cleaving sea from sky. Even the air smelled clean.
It would have been a beautiful scene, if not for the dying whales.
Over the past week, Val had been diving under her uncle’s tutelage, mainly in a single, well-explored, shallower blue hole. While Eric tinkered with his ROV and practiced piloting it out of their way, Mack was showing her the ins and outs of cave diving—how to dive with a lot of extra equipment and multiple tanks, how to maneuver without stirring up sediment in caverns, how to feel your route, how to manage lines.
Safety lines were critical in cave diving. She had learned to lay and follow a spooled nylon line, to use secondary lines whenever leaving the main line, and to retrace those lines back to the thicker main if needing to turn around. And they worked on proper line laying, to avoid entanglement, and what to do if you did snag one. Even for Val, a highly experienced scuba diver by anyone’s standards, it was all very new, very different, and even very intimidating. The added gear alone, from tanks to spools to lights, highlighted the risk.
Mack had blindfolded her yesterday, and made her find her way to a main line using a series of short excursions in different directions, until she found the main line and followed it out safely by feel alone, using plastic arrows affixed to it that pointed in the right direction. The drill was designed to mimic the conditions in a cave if all lights were lost or so much sediment was stirred up that visibility became nil. After that drill, she decided to take a day off. She’d risen early and gone running, and after just the first mile ran into the commotion on the beach.
Still trying to catch her breath, Val knelt by one of the smallest ones in the pod, likely a calf. Next to Val were several others who had joined in to help, including a young woman who, like her, appeared to be out for an early morning run.
The group had gravitated to this particular whale for its small size—and the fact that it was still visibly alive. Each time a wave had climbed up the beach to meet it, they had tried to roll it back into the water. Without success. And the tide was going out.
Time was running out.
Four larger whales, small by whale standards but each probably fifteen feet long and weighing a ton or more, dotted the beach nearby, where they had apparently stranded themselves overnight. Groups were gathered around a few of those animals as well. They appeared to be having no better luck moving them back into the sea.
“Heads-up, everyone!” the other runner shouted. She was an attractive Bahamian, tall with an athletic build. She seemed to know what she was doing, and Val had allowed her to take charge. She seemed to know some of the others in the water with them. Even an older man with gray-speckled hair who looked like he might be a banker followed her lead, as did a plump woman who panted beside him.
“Ready, everyone . . .” the runner said.
A long wave rolled up the beach, washing around the ten-foot whale and splashing Val’s bare legs below her running shorts.
“Now!” the woman shouted. They heaved against the animal’s smooth body.
It moved.
The calf inched down the beach, following the wave back toward the sea, before settling into the sand.
As the next wave hit, Val leaned her shoulder against the whale, soaking her tank top and shorts, hoping the momentum they generated wouldn’t stop this time. These were the biggest waves they’d seen in ten minutes, but she knew how hard it was to try to free even a beached dolphin. With the others pushing beside her, the semi-buoyant, thousand-pound animal began to lift off the sand in the slightly deeper water. The group splashed behind it as they managed to float it out past the shore break. Cheers began to erupt from other people on the beach.
Val was up to her waist in the water now, her drenched white top flattened against her chest. She whipped the wet tip of her long ponytail out of her face and helped the others turn the whale’s body, directing its head out toward the sea. And then they stepped back and waited.
The whale began to roll over onto its back.
The Bahamian runner lunged forward, Val behind her, and they tried to grip its smooth skin, to prevent its body from rotating.
“We can’t let this girl roll over,” the woman said. “Her breathing hole needs to stay above the water.”
“I know,” Val said.
Near her face the whale’s small, cow-like eye met hers. It hardly appeared to be seeing her. Only she and the other runner were still struggling with the whale. She glanced behind her. The others simply stood back, resigned to the whale’s fate as the two women struggled against the slow turn of the calf’s body. They didn’t understand the situation, or didn’t care enough.
“Help us, Jeffrey! Please!” the runner shouted at the older man and a woman who might have been his wife.
The others slowly stepped in again beside them, starting with the older couple. Together, they all managed to keep the small whale’s blowhole above water for a few minutes. But it didn’t respond. The animal simply refused to move. To fight for its life.
One by one, the people began to step away.
They stood in the shallow water, panting, too exhausted to continue. The calf remained rolled onto its back. The waves were pushing it back toward the beach. Only the tall Bahamian woman remained by its side, trying to roll it upright with each wave.
Val finally placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s too late for this one,” she said.
The runner shrugged off Val’s hand, then glared at the others. “Don’t you all understand? If we don’t help her, she’s going to die!”
Val squatted beside her. “Look. What you’re doing is admirable. But I know what I’m talking about. There’s nothing we can do now.”
The runner turned away, moved her hand soothingly over the whale. After a few moments, she stood, and Val followed. They stepped back, watching as a wave carried the animal gently back toward the beach.
Val knew what was going to happen. She had seen this before. But she didn’t want to watch it die on the sand. It, and its family.
She looked out past the whales, over the ocean. Under the saw-blade cloud, dark splotches of sea grass growing on the shallow bottom broke up the shimmering expanse of aquamarine water, which farther out yielded to the deep ocean beneath. There, visible from shore where the water turned a profound blue, the Great Bahama Bank abruptly ended and deep water began.
“The Tongue of the Ocean,” the runner said, as if reading her thoughts. “That’s where a lot of these whales live.”
“Yes. I’ve read about it,” Val said.
The undersea feature—a mile-deep trench off the east coast of Andros Island and wedged between the shallow banks of the Bahamas islands—was like nothing else on earth. Its beautiful, protected waters offered unique and magnificent sea life, like these beaked whales, and drew the scuba divers and other tourists here that fueled the economy.
“It’s their undoing,” the runner said.
“What do you mean?”
“The trench. These whales wouldn’t be here without it. But it serves other interests, you know. Interests that are bad for the whales.”
“You mean the Navy? Its sonar research?”
The woman nodded.
“I thought they had stopped all that, though,” Val said. “After all the bad publicity. You think it may have affected these whales?”
“I know it did.” The runner looked down at her. “How do you know about the naval research here?”
Val smiled. “I read a lot.”
For decades, US Navy warships and research vessels had apparently plied the waters over the Tongue of the Ocean, stationed out of the base at Fresh Creek, farther up the coast. It wasn’t those ships themselves that were of concern, although Val knew all about shipping vessels ramming into and killing full-grown whales in other parts of the world. It wasn’t the Navy’s weaponry either. It was something else. Something you couldn’t see.
Sonar.
The Tongue of the Ocean concealed a broad, U-shaped undersea depression 150 miles long and almost completely protected from the open ocean. Hundreds of islands and reefs, and the banks that provided a platform for them, apparently sheltered it from background noises carried across the Atlantic that could complicate undersea testing. And the submarines and listening devices of other governments would not be able to easily detect the sound waves generated by the Navy’s own research activities.
The woman said, “The first time the whales washed up dead was the fall of 2000. I was just a young girl.” Her accent had faded now, and she spoke in very American English.
“Beaked whales, right?”
“A lotta people speculated about the cause, but it was years before the Navy finally admitted its testing probably disrupted the whales’ behavior. But we too thought they’d stopped.”
“Don’t they have to disclose any testing now?”
The runner shook her head. “When I was a teenager, they started allowing researchers to come to the base in Fresh Creek. They said the goal was to learn more about the effects of sonar on Blainville’s whales, like these. The Navy still says they let them offer input, to prevent more accidents. And they’ve promised to stop using whatever caused the other strandings. But there have been more dead whales.”
“Maybe it’s something else,” Val said.
“Maybe.” The woman smiled at Val. “I’m sorry I was rude before. It’s just that—”
“No need to apologize.”
“No, really. I just get passionate about this. It’s happened before.” She reached out her hand. “I’m Ashley. Ashley Campbell.”
“Valerie Martell.”
“You here on vacation?”
“Not really. I’m here for work.”
“How do you know so much about Andros? About these whales?”
“It’s related to my own work. I’m a marine scientist. Do you want to grab a cup of coffee? I’ll fill you in, and maybe you can help me out too.”
Ashley glanced at her watch. “Maybe if we hurry. I have to be at Oceanus by nine. I work there. Are you staying with us?”
“No. A guesthouse called the Twin Palms.”
Ashley nodded. “You’re a diver, then.”
“Yes. I do research.”
The cloud offshore, which now resembled a long battleship, hovered indifferently over the ocean. Ashley turned away from the water and the whales, and smiled at Valerie.
“Let’s go get that coffee,” Ashley said “So we can get warm. And you can tell me about what you’re doing here.”
The women turned and walked back toward the road. They didn’t look back at the whales.