A Total Fluke in Hawaii, a Whale Named After Me, and a Front Page Photo
Have I got a whale of a tale for you! (All companies and organizations will be linked at the end of the post!)
After coming close to losing my mind, hubby and I escaped to Hawaii for a week in the middle of January. The sun, the fresh air, the salt water, the break from the monotony of the lock down, it was so needed and so refreshing and felt so indulgent. It turns out we hit Hawaii just right - while things were starting to reopen, and tourism hadn’t fully bounced back yet. We paid far less than usual rates for our week away, and it felt like we had the island to ourselves. Now there are stories of rental car shortages, home rentals and hotel prices are higher than normal, airfare is skyrocketing… I feel like we really got lucky in a lot of ways.
Body Glove Tour Boat, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
But there was more kismet in our week away than I realized, and it has all unfolded in the past month. One of our afternoons on Hawaii, we took a whale watching cruise out of Kailua-Kona on the Body Glove tour. We had a really fabulous afternoon on the water, cold drinks and snacks, their on-board scientist had the mic handy to educate us all and play some trivia, and answer questions, and we saw SO many whales and so much cool whale behavior. I had seen humpbacks frolicking on our flight in, and had watched spouts and splashes from our condo lanai, but having these massive creatures so effortlessly launch out of the ocean not too far from our boat, and crash with such fury in a spray of ocean water was truly stunning.
while seeing a humpback breaching is amazing, it’s not really a useful photo for scientists…
We were told that as awesome the breaching is, it doesn’t help scientists much in their research - the important identifier of a whale is their fluke (the underside of their tail) which has a distinct pattern, like a giant fingerprint. (PS - the Christopher Moore book Fluke is a comedy about this very fact.) With a good number of photographers on board, we were told if we had any clear images of a fluke, to upload them to the website happywhale, where we could browse through other photos and try to match our whale. And this citizen-science page had experts who would would also try to make the match. I put this in the back of my mind, though I didn’t think I had any really great images.
Whales, I should point out, while giant and awesome, aren’t like other wildlife. They come up out of the water in unexpected places, they don’t always do what you think they’ll do, they don’t pose for the camera, they don’t care that you’re standing on a boat 100 yards away with expensive camera gear - they are very much NOT interested in us. While I’ve had curious monkeys approach me in the jungle, and coatimundis sniff my feet…whales? Whales can’t be bothered with your whims. They truly don’t care that your boat is bobbing up and down in the waves and you’re holding a VERY long and VERY heavy lens. But they were truly no less amazing to watch, even if trying to photograph them left me feeling like it was amateur hour.
a close up of a distinctive mark on the fluke
After sorting and processing vacation photos, and tossing hundreds and hundreds of useless whale photos, I had a handful I was pleased with and one fluke I thought was identifiable. I visited happywhale’s website, registered, uploaded my images and info, and spent the rest of the evening clicking through sightings from the same area in the weeks before and after my sighting, hoping to see who my whale was. I couldn’t find a match, but I wasn’t concerned, as it’s not like it’s my day job. I figured I was just looking the in the wrong place. Life marched on, and I slowly stopped checking the site neurotically to see if I had a match.
A few weeks ago I see an email pop up on my phone from happywhale, and I excitedly read that my whale could not be identified - it was a “new” whale! As a tantalizing carrot on a stick, the email explained that for a minimum donation of $500-1000 to their conservation partner, Whales of Guerrero, I could name my whale. The wheels started turning, and I knew I had to make this happen.
Every summer around my birthday I hold a fundraiser on facebook, the proceeds go to a favorite local shelter. For my 40th birthday, my amazing friends helped me raise over $1500. I knew, I just knew, that my friends would support this crazy idea, which just happened to benefit a wonderful organization at the same time. I needed a place that would hold all the money for me in one account until I was ready to shut down the effort, and used GoFundMe. I put in $200 of my own, and told my friends, “When I hit $1,000, I will make a donation to whale conservation, and will get to name my whale,” and within two days I had hit my goal! One old friend I haven’t seen in over 20 years sent me $42 in honor of my 42nd birthday, for example. Strangers threw in $10. It went quickly - my friends were enthusiastic about my latest fundraising scheme.
The Columbian’s homepage from June 10th, 2021
I initiated the transfer to my bank account, and made my way over to the Whales of Guerrero, and sent off $1,000 to this good cause with a whiff of ego, as of course, I was going to name this whale. The next couple of days were a flurry of funny emails, and officially naming my whale. (That poor thing has no idea.) But that wasn’t all. A PR person from GoFundMe saw my successful fundraiser, and craftily realized we were coming up on World Ocean Day, and immediately emailed my local paper that this might make a good story. Imagine my surprise to give a phone interview to a local journalist! I sent some follow up emails, included some photos, and waited for my story to hit.
On Thursday morning, June 10th, I excitedly fired up my phone and went to the website for the Columbian, the paper based here in Clark County, Washington. And there, amid all the headlines, was “Hazel Dell photographer spots whale, gets to name it for herself” - with a photo of my whale, breaching. (Hazel Dell is the community I live in, just outside Vancouver WA city limits, and 10 miles north of downtown Portland, OR.) It was so fun to see my photos and my story in the local paper. But the REAL stunner came that afternoon; I had been planning on picking up a couple of copies of the paper anyway, and got a message on instagram from a friend with a photo of the newspaper in the kitchen of her office - there was my photo, large, full color, and my story. I was not expecting it to be such a feature! I’ll be sending copies to friends and family in NH, NJ - and my in laws in Corvallis, OR.
As my birthday looms the end of this week, 42, it turns out, IS the answer to everything. It has been a pleasure exchanging emails with so many interesting people around the world as this unfolded. What a ride!
Oh wait. What did I name this majestic creature? Somewhere out there, swimming along, a distinctive “+” sign on the right side of her fluke, is a beauty of a whale with the absurd name:
Van Whalen.
I was STUNNED to get the banner photo on the FRONT PAGE!!!