Whale Song by Nadia Kamrath

The sun shines on the water casting an eerie glow on the blue horizon. The morning air is crisp and I step in the ocean causing the sand to billow around my toes. My heart thumps as I climb up the steep stairs and onto the boat.

Splash. I look back to see the white catamaran drifting farther away from me. I grab my mom's hand and swim as fast as my small body can manage. The water is deep and an effervescent hue. I use all my strength to follow the looming figures in front of me.

We swim for what feels like forever until we come to an abrupt stop in the open ocean. My eyes trace the underwater landscape, looking for something. My gaze is interrupted by a faint speck of white, standing out in the surrounding blue. Upon seeing it, it isn’t hard to catch the dark body it belongs to …  a huge whale, looming in the depths. Behind it? An even bigger one, the size a school bus, suspended in the void meters below us.

In that moment I feel tiny, like an ant in a field full of grass. As it floats to the surface, it feels like a submarine emerging beneath me. I don't know why there are two of them until I see them rising to the surface together – a mom and a calf. They come up side by side so close it seems as though they might hit us by accident. My breath catches and my snorkel slides out of my mouth. I look over at my own mother. We are almost the same size; she would've left me by now, that is, if we were whales. Then my eyes meet the calf’s. Only a baby, it towers beside me in the endless deep.

Morning rises again bringing a new day, and a new adventure. I sit on the side of the speeding boat, my feet hanging over the water, so low the ocean spray caresses my toes. The sea is calm and for the first time I find myself relaxing. The sun has just risen enough to cast a warm glow over the island. As we pull farther away from the break, I wait with anticipation, itching to get back in the water.

The boat stops abruptly and I swing my head to see if our captain, Maire, has spotted something. He quickly drops a microphone by a string into the water. Then I hear it. It sounds like moaning, a longing cry, mixed with so many tones I have never before heard. There seems to be an entire orchestra under the sea. The engine turns back on as we speed farther away from the island, determined to find this singing whale.

Again, I make a small splash as I enter the water. I eagerly pull my mask over my eyes and swim as hard as I can, head down, not stopping until I catch up with Maire. My breath slows as I my body pauses. The sound is loud now, vibrant and filled with color. It seems impossible for this symphony to be coming from one creature, but I know it is.

Hearing his song and seeing the being who's making it is mesmerizing. It seems inconceivable for all of those tones to come from one source. I have never heard anything like it.

To see such majestic creatures and experience their song has changed my life. At one point in history people killed these mammals without a second thought, for their meat, oil and blubber. They never saw them as the beautiful, breathtaking creatures they are. Instead, they simply used them to make money. Many believe that there is one key reason that much of this killing stopped … they heard their song.