I am six. My memory is flawed but buttressed with pictures. Our community has gathered at the public yet private beach because a whale has fallen and washed ashore. Cars line the road; there is only one parking spot. In my half-remembered space, I feel my neck pitch down out of habit, eyes scanning the sand for glass that was once sharp but has been eroded by sea. We do not come to this beach often, the surrounding estates choking out access. To stand here, then, is a privilege. I hold my best friend’s hands between mine. They are cold. The whale is large, and we are small.
Other children climb on the whale’s back. They jump on its ribs and laugh, buoyant blubber casting them into the air. I am told that I look towards the whale, that my face expresses that similar thoughts might be held. The hand between mine grabs the sleeve of my raincoat, and my mother yells about bacteria and diseases. I am told that dead things become dangerous, become toxic. Touching the whale’s body will make me sick.
Newspaper articles of the time say that the whale was a sei whale. It was 45 feet long and weighed between 20 and 25 tons. The precise measurement is unknown, the article oozes, because they did not measure it when all the pieces were still together. The sei whale has been dead for 10 to 15 days. The Town Administrator is in charge of the remains. His name is Melville, and the newspaper does not make jokes about Ahab and his white whale.
The small town invites scientists from the state’s capitol, and when they approach the whale on the beach, it is not their first time meeting. The whale had died in Boston. It rested at the mouth of the harbor, swaying with the ebb and flow of the tide. The scientists rocked beside it, extracting tissue samples from a small boat. The whale was touched by human hands, skin hiding behind blue latex. The whale was left at the mouth of the harbor.
The scientists suspect foul play was involved in the sei whale’s death. Something had hit it on the back, they say. When they crack it open, the scientists discover that some mid vertebrae are broken. The left front flipper is fractured. There is internal hemorrhaging. The scientists translate: the sei whale was alive when it was struck. It was alive, then wasn’t. They say that the boat must have been very large, that the damage was insurmountable. The sei whale has been endangered since 1970. They are not pressing charges.
It took the sei whale a week to float from Boston harbor to the little town and two more days for it to touch the shore. The state had hoped that it would sink on its travels. It rained the last two days, and they prayed that this would bring it out deeper, that new water would stir old currents, invisible hands ushering the body beyond their jurisdiction. It was, after all, nature’s duty to atone for our mistakes.
When a whale dies in its intended environment, it does not cease to exist. After a handful of sunsets, putrefied gases in the corpse will be released. Air will leech from lungs, and the dense whale will sink. Any remains that descend deeper than 1,000 meters, one third of the average ocean depth, transform into a whale fall. In the bathyal and abyssal zones, the space the sun does not touch, a whale can sustain life for much longer, returning the corpse to the context in which it was created.
At the bottom of the ocean, mobile scavengers are the first to absorb soft tissue. Jawless hagfish thrash against skin, flailing, devouring flesh cemented into teeth. More discerning octopuses caress the whale with suction cupped tentacles, tasting before consuming. The surface of the whale writhes, the insides throbbing with activity, a layer of life over death. The consumption is polite, restrained. Giant isopods crawl between lobsters and shrimp, dance between sea cucumbers and sleeper sharks. It is dark, but they are designed for this environment, understand themselves in the absence of light. The death of the whale brings a different sort of community gathering, an oceanic reunion.
Based on estimations of size, our sei whale would have sustained life at this first level for roughly a year and a half.
Aquatic scavengers bring other types of foragers too. Devoid of flesh, the whale fall is merely bones, still articulated at the bottom of the sea. Bristled and many-legged polychaete worms feast on skeletal structures, dig into to calcium and collagen, rooting themselves to this geography. Scientists forage too, sinking submarines to the right depth and congregating around whale falls to find new species, to discover what has been previously unknown to us but has always existed. In 2005, they find a new type of worm, naming it Osedax mucofloris, or “bone-eating snot-flower,” after its appearance. Five years later, they create a new word and genus, rubyspira, to describe sea snails who solely consume bone. New lexical entries reflect new knowledge, all balanced on the unseen redistribution of life.
The final stage is the longest, persisting for 10 to 50 years. Chemosynthetic bacteria thrive on sulfide, leeching chemicals from bone marrow to the surface. Mussels and tube worms find home on exposed bone and remain until there is nothing left but water and salt and sand. Finally, the whale has been absorbed, energy converted into other things whose primary purpose is life.
The duration of a whale fall surpasses our knowledge of them. That is to say, a whale that died in 1987 is still supporting life somewhere, a legacy defined through predestined ecology.
Our sei whale did not sink, floated from Boston harbor to the little town. In his office, Melville weighed his options. Someone could have dragged it out to sea to let it sink, to let it fall to the ocean floor, to let it support the ecosystem for generations. It was decided that this was too much of a liability. “‘It’s kind of, once you touch it, you own it.’” Legal responsibility is determined through human touch, through documented human action.
No, the whale would not be touched, would not be able to contribute in the way it was designed to. The gas buildup lasted for far too long. The whale did not sink. 10 to 15 days postmortem, the whale carcass emerges into the view of old-moneyed houses. The ocean reclaims coasts that predate everything we know and washes the sei whale onto the private public beach.
There are pictures of the sei whale lying on the sand, sprawling estates cropped out of view. 20 to 25 tons rest above the newspaper article. It is leaning on its side, still intact right flipper carrying all of the weight. Its upper jaw is smaller than the lower. Its mouth is the longest part, the tip curved upwards towards the sky. Pictures of living sei whales indicate this is a mistake, and I look closer. The flesh looks skywards. The bone underneath is straight. The jaw is open, and its baleen is visible, showing what passes for teeth in a species that consumes alternatively. (The sei whale does not need teeth to defend itself. It is unknown if the sei whale has any natural predators.) The sun is shining off the whale’s side, but its eyes are hidden. I wonder when our sei whale saw the sky for the last time. In this different sort of darkness, I hope it was able to see the stars.
In misty daylight, the scientists begin from the end of natural processes, and bones disappear. Vestigial pelvic bones hold secrets, they say. Maybe we can see if all whales are related. (We will decorate with them if we cannot, they do not say. It is implied.) The small town is responsible for the rest. They place the remaining pieces, flesh and organs and muscle, into a shining red dumpster. The newspaper capitalizes the “D.” The sei whale will not continue to support life, an afterlife negated by the wrong type of touch.
