The Whale Who Will Come Soon
The beachfront narrows to an ocherous ribbon, belted by blue, above and below. After a while, a handful of shearwaters appear in the air above the Cat Balou. The birds flash around us; like knife-thrower tricks at a circus. Diving through the water, each is crowned in a diadem of bubbles. The shearwaters come from Antarctica, like the humpbacks, and also Siberia, South America, and Japan; they arrive in Australia, where they often die in large numbers from exhaustion. Such bird deaths, en masse, are known as “wreck events.” A single wreck event used to happen every 10 years or so—the result of irregular, rough weather overtaxing the birds’ reserves—but flock-wide collapses occur almost biennially now, the feathered bodies washing up on the tideline, emaciated with hunger. Their prey are vanishing from the migration route as oceans warm. These shearwaters fly away, to where? I wish I could write: These birds leave in the direction of exquisite fortune, to live long, robust lives.
From the cutwater, and either side of the boat, the watchers squint in all directions, and still there are no whales. A few people have given up, withdrawing to the lower deck for a rallying snack. I nurse a cup of instant soup, freckled with rehydrated corn and carrot, warming my hands.
