TWO YEARS ago your reviewer stood in an office overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California. Outside, giant pelicans sliced through the sea air. Inside, the walls and windows were shaken by a below-bass note that boomed out of huge speakers. This, said John Ryan, an oceanographer, was the moan of a humpback whale, the darling of whale-watchers, known for its impressive fin-and tail-slapping displays and haunting "song". Most recordings of humpbacks seem almost violin-like, but this was much, much deeper-barely a sound, more a vibration that was felt rather than heard. In the opening scene of "Fathoms", Rebecca Giggs describes a very different kind of encounter with a humpback: on a beach in Perth, Australia, where a young giant had found itself stranded. For three days, she witnessed its enormous mass crushing its vital organs; the blubber that evolved over millions of years to keep the species alive in the frigid abyss now had the opposite effect. The humpback, she says, "was boiling alive in the kettle of itself".
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