June 16, 2011

I arrived at the Marine Mammal Conservancy in Key Largo for the 4am shift. They gave me a long wetsuit and marked my hand with purple, listing off bacterial diseases that they are not responsible for. I haven’t put on a wetsuit in a long, long time. I lived in them as well as bikinis for about ten years of my life. We were lead down to a quiet little area where the whales are kept and went in to relieve the last shift of volunteers one by one, arms up in the air, quiet voices, slow walk into the water. The moon shone above the three pilot whales, which look like very big, black dolphins, in this small, closed-off area between mangroves, 3-4 people holding them in place so that they don’t have to exert too much energy and also so they don’t get water into their blow-holes. They are very sick- pneumonia, respiratory problems, infections, jammed up tails from thrashing- the one I had, a bent tail in the shape of a C. Around 25 of them beached back in May and about half were torn apart by sharks, their bodies are all scarred up. Pilot whales migrate very far distances, the ladies I held the whale with were telling me the whales travel all the way from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and no one really knows the real reason for the beachings. It could be that they hear a call of distress from one family member and the rest follow the call to go help them and then they get stranded. They stick together as a family, traveling in pods. That’s why it is important to keep them together when they are in recovery. Some died already, but they released two back into the ocean, and the three that are left are fighters, one feisty teenager. Other theories are sickness, military sonar, or the environment, and they actually don’t know that much about the whales because they are wild. So they tag them and track where they go, and the two they released are still together and up in the Carolinas now. My whale felt warm, the water was warm, too, and I could feel her heartbeat. First I held her pectoral fin with my left hand and then her dorsal fin with my right hand and then we switched positions, because your arms get tired in the same position, and I put my whole arm around her behind her fin, holding it up above the surface so the lungs wouldn’t get filled with mucus. There were snappers swimming under us, rubbing against us, and we were up to our shoulders in water. The whale was having a horrible time breathing, and was gasping for air, you could tell she was in a lot of pain. Two marine scientists came over to do physical therapy to the tail, and they had to really use all their muscles to get the tail straight, they did that for about an hour, massaging the tail and moving it around, but the tail is so jammed up, and that is what they use for balance, so if you let go of her, she would just fall to the side. Then they put medicine in this air machine thing over her blow-hole, and she would resist and resist, and thrash, and then finally gasp for air, sucking in the cloudy air of medicine. We also took her heart-rate and counted breaths once every hour. The other ladies were animal people, so they were two peas in a pod. It was really nice being with two people I would never normally meet, and listening in on their quiet discussions about working with animals. Volunteering in general is a pretty cool way to meet people with heart and soul. And this large mammal I met was so sweet and beautiful. The poor thing came from being wild and free, swimming endless oceans, and now is in a shallow bit of water with these humans on all sides, prodding and feeding them liquid diets. I think it would break my heart to see one die- their mass, their energetic life force is big. I held my breath a few times when she was choking and gasping and then silent with her blow-hole shut tight for so long, and then realized I needed to breathe, maybe we could all breathe for her. But they said she was a fighter and would hold on. The San Diego Zoo is going to take her when she’s better. They will put her in a big Publix truck and then into a plane and off she will go. But it feels bittersweet because she won’t be with her family and never let back into the wild, but she will be taken care of. The humans have taken over her life. I can see why. They are too precious to be left to die on a beach. Anyways, the animal trainers and scientists travel around the world to help save stranded marine mammals. It’s a pretty amazing operation, a lot of care and professionalism.