Stranded

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER ONE: FOLLOWING FLUKEPRINTS

[...]

Over many years, led by curiosity and dedication, my research team and I have had countless encounters with the wild and mysterious marine mammals off the teeming City of Angels.

We saw Pacific white-sided dolphins close off Malibu, showing off the natural beauty of their two-tone physiques in astounding midair somersaults. With a languid mood, bottlenose dolphins traveled and foraged up and down the coast in almost perpetual motion. They were constantly changing group composition in their fluid fission-fusion societies, much like people shifting from one social cluster to another at a party. On occasion, transient, mammal-eating orcas, with their monochrome black fins and cultural traditions passed from generation to generation, roamed in pursuit of a meal: a baby gray whale, a sea lion, an occasional seabird. Pacific harbor seals slept on sun-kissed rocks or relaxed in kelp beds just shouting distance from Hollywood celebrities' garish and well-guarded mansions. Offshore, shadowy Dall's porpoises dashed with gravity-defying leaps, their dorsal fins carving through the surface with such swiftness a watery "rooster tail" was all one could see. Standoffish and bulky Risso's dolphins, oddly dissimilar in temper from the affable ones I met in the Tyrrhenian Sea, made brief appearances before fading into the depths in search of squiddy buffets. We tailed gargantuan blue whales, with blowholes so big a baby could fit inside them, and humpback whales, with their endlessly evolving, haunting and beautiful songs. I learned as much as I could about their otherworldly complex and magical existence, especially that of the whales and dolphins, who captivated me the most. And I started to understand how much they share with us, the striking resemblances, and the linkages among different species and their collective habitat—those invisible ties that exist in the intertwining web of marine life. I saw firsthand how every living organism at sea plays a part; how every being is essential for the survival of others in a delicate balance.

Life in LA revolved around the work Charlie and I do for and with the ocean. Then all of a sudden, on a seemingly ordinary morning at the outset of spring, that life vanished.

The flowers in my garden were blooming; the sky was its usual intense California blue; the dog next door was barking with his high-pitched voice. On my desk lay the airplane ticket for Europe, where it had been sitting for over a week.

My iPhone squawked, showing another incoming text from my mom: "Don't come!!! It’s a mess here!!!!!" I remember scrolling down to read the rest of my mother's exclamation point-filled dispatch reaching me from the other side of the planet, sadly learning how Italy was already strangled in the grip of the Coronavirus.

That day changed everything for me. And for everyone else on Earth.

With no other choice on the horizon, we did what other nonhuman animals on Earth do: we adapted. We stayed home, we avoided crowds, we wore masks and reduced activities to the purely essential. And then there was the awkwardness of social distancing and Zoom meetups, swapping our natural contact with others for sterile face-to-face conversations on computer screens. It was a new domain, an unfamiliar creek to navigate with no paddles or easy instructions. Confusion, panic, and fear were everywhere. 

As a field marine biologist accustomed to spending most of the time outside and in the wild, I found this new regime stifling. For so many scientists whose jobs depend on being out in the world searching to further understand nature beyond human borders, our lives’ purpose was upended. You can’t work from home when your work is the ocean. Not that I had any right to complain. I was living in my house with a loving husband, a dog, a backyard, and everything I needed, toilet paper included. But I still couldn’t circumvent the caged feeling of being closed inside four walls.

With my research shuttered because of the unforeseen, meteor-like impact of a pandemic, unable to be at sea with my team due to social distancing, I could only revisit in my mind that vivid day when the anchovies arrived, that simple act of feeding, interacting, living. I was sequestered, stopped in my tracks and blocked from being on the water, where I have spent much of my life. I yearned for the ocean and that lost, almost spiritual connection with the dolphins.