Gone Whaling

Book excerpt: In the darkened halls of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Douglas Hand encountered a killer whale with the head of a man emerging from the blowhole. This puzzling and haunting specter was carved on a worn cedar totem pole of the Haida, Native Americans of the Northwest coast. What indigenous wisdom inspired orca and human to be wrought together in wood? Indeed, where does one species begin and the other end? Gone Whaling is the exquisitely rendered account of a journey to the waters of the Pacific Northwest to find answers to those questions as well as to track down the essence of orca, that wildest of animals. The quest takes the author first to the Vancouver Aquarium, where he encounters orcas in tanks and scientists who blur the lines between research and showmanship. Moving out to the San Juan Islands, he locates Ken Balcolm, marine biologist and orca census-taker, who deciphers the familial dynamics of the whales by tracking their far migrations. From there, he is led to the controversial researcher Paul Spong - known as the "patron saint of the whales" - who is mapping the clicks and squeaks the orcas make as they travel by his home on remote Hansen Island. But science can go only so far in providing a real understanding of the mystery of these creatures of the sea, so Douglas Hand turns to the last remaining Haida totem carvers to explain what orca means. In the end, he is inspired to take on the dangerous waters himself in a one-man kayak to encounter his own orca. Gone Whaling is rich with natural history and human stories. The mysterious and deeply complex behavior of orcas is described with crystalline detail and style. The inquiry itself is infusedwith the author's boundless curiosity and tempered with his wry humor. This luminous and confident book appeals to the part of us all that has pondered the deep rift between humans and other creatures, between the modern and the primitive. There is an old Haida belief that a good life is rewarded by death and rebirth as an orca. Therefore, you should treat the orca well that swims close to shore, for it may be your ancestor. This special book probes the boundary that separates and binds humans to killer whales, and humans to the natural order.