‘There's No Coming Back From This'

Ten years after the release of her seminal book Sea Sick, Alanna Mitchell again plumbs the depths of the latest research on the health of the world’s oceans — and comes up gasping

- Alanna Mitchell

WE ARE HUNTING WHALES in Antarctica and time is running out. Unlike the harpooners of old, our goal is not to butcher them for blubber. Instead, it’s to get close enough to slap satellite-linked tracking tags on them. And rather than kill them, the point is to figure out how to make sure they survive.

It’s humpbacks, among the biggest mammals on Earth, we’re looking for. After three days, the team I’m following, led by Ari Friedlaender, an ecologist who is director of research at the California Ocean Alliance, hasn’t succeeded in tagging one yet. Bundled up in heavy-duty snow pants and fire-engine-red coats, we have seen scores of them. And we’ve gotten near enough to several to shoot hollow-tipped crossbow arrows into them to retrieve wormsized samples of black skin and pink fat that will tell us whether they’re pregnant or stressed or contaminated with pollutants.

But no luck so far with the tags. And we know that we have only a few more days before storms will force us back to the ship that brought us to Antarctica — One Ocean Expeditions’ adventure expedition vessel RCGS Resolute — and back to Argentina. This is the last scientific expedition of the season. And it’s almost over.

So, this morning we’re riding low to the water in three inflatable Zodiacs, bumping through chunks of brilliant white ice in Wilhelmina Bay near the top of the Antarctic peninsula. It’s one of the whales’ favourite feeding spots. The air is crisp. The sea is the colour of a storm cloud. We are alert for any sign of action: the spurt of a blowhole, the fishy smell of their breath, a fin, a tail fluke, the sleepy top of a humped back suspended in the water.

Again and again, the boat carrying Friedlaender and the taggers tries to sneak up on a whale. Again and again, the humpbacks sense the approach and, with seconds to spare, dive beyond reach.