Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas

234 Pages·2013·1.55 MB·English

by  Eva Saulitis

into great silence
A MEMOIR OF DISCOVERY AND LOSS AMONG VANISHING ORCAS
Eva Saulitis
Beacon Press, Boston
For Eyak, for the last ones, and for Wilderness
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
—Dylan Thomas
Allison Gaylord /Nuna Technologies 2012
Contents
A Note about Names
Prologue: The Last One
Part 1. Place of First Permission
1. By Beaver, by Bear
2. Lucky Star
3. Whale Camp
4. First Encounter
5. Cut Loose
6. Into the Labyrinth
7. Memorize These Things
8. The Survival Value of Exuberance
9. Boys in Blueberry Season
10. No Passage Out
11. Vegans and Carnivores
Part 2. Season of Dead Water
12. Refugia
13. When It Happens
14. Where the Whales Are
15. Part of the Darkness
16. Into the Ice, into the Oil
17. Groundings
18. Beast and Beauty
19. Quiet Sounds
20. Scientific Magic
21. The Whale Called Eyak
22. On Being Hushed and Silent
23. Tallying Icebergs
24. Wild Horses, Green Skies
25. Mercifully Untranslatable
Part 3. Survivors
26. A Human Silence
27. In Named and Unnamed Coves
28. The Smallest Island
29. It Barely Makes a Sound
30. Breathing in Never-Night
31. Transients Outside the Box
32. Uncommon Language
33. The Poetry of Predation
34. Nine Silences
Part 4. Into Great Silence
35. Hunger
36. More Than We Understand
37. What the Numbers Say
38. What the Silence Says
39. Spaces Between Facts
40. Silence as Survival
41. The Story Inside the Flesh
42. Snippets and Transparencies
43. The Other World
44. Where the Seals Are
45. Book of Changes
46. Lament for Eyak
47. In a Language Lost to Us, Eyak Is Singing
48. The Spirit Line
Acknowledgments
Further Reading about the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
Chart
Chugach Transient Family Tree
A Note about Names
Some names in this book have been changed to protect vulnerable habitats and
human histories.
While the book is true to the data I collected, and conveys all that is known
scientifically of the Chugach transients, it is principally a memoir, a work of
contemplation, not science or reportage. It abides by naturalist William Beebe’s
call for “softening facts with quiet meditation, leavening science with thoughts
of the sheer joy of existence,” and in this case, the sheer pain of loss as well. My
use of names reflects that intention. In the scientific literature, the Chugach
transients are called the “AT1 transient population.” My friend David Grimes
pointed out that I might read their scientific moniker metaphysically as “At
One,” and yet I decided that for the purposes of this book, the whales needed a
familiar name, a family name. They belong to a specific place once called
Chugach Sound. They are linked to specific indigenous cultures—the
Chugachmiut and the Eyak—through oral tradition. Hence, the Chugach
transients. Hence, Eyak, a central whale in the narrative. Individual Chugach
transients in our identification catalog, and in scientific papers, go by
alphanumeric names (for example, Eyak is AT1; Chenega is AT9). As is
common in long-term field studies, those names have, over the years, been
supplanted by familiar names, and the latter are the ones I use here.
Finally, I use the common name “orca,” at the risk of annoying my scientific
colleagues, who prefer “killer whale.” They argue that “orca” sugarcoats the
predatory nature of the animal, invoking the captive hand-fed version,
performing tricks in tanks for crowds. I see their point, but decided that the
essence of the Chugach transients, which are no more, no less killers than any
other carnivore, is better reflected by “orca,” derived from the name of a Roman
god of the underworld.