My name is Dr. Elena Berg and I’m an environmental science professor at the American University of Paris. And I wanted to relay a little story of a whale I saw off the coast of Cape cod, Massachusetts.
I have seen whales in the wild many times. I’ve been very, very fortunate to travel a lot in the world. I was a field biologist for about 20 years and it’s been absolutely a joy to be able to experience so many different habitats, ecosystems, places. I don’t study whales. I study primates and birds. But again, I’ve had lucky opportunities to,beyond the ocean a lot as well, and sea whales.
So this was a special time in my life too. I was visiting my oldest, dearest friend in the world, whom I’ve known since I was 5 years old. And I’m 52 now. So we’ve been, really close for many decades, and I had been missing her. And I made a special visit, which I rarely have time to do these days with a busy life and family. But I made a special visit just to see her, on my way to another meeting that I had. And we spent a few days together, including this kind of magical weekend in Cape Cod.
That day we met up with some of her close friends who really feel like family to me after all these years. And we took a little hike, down to this gorgeous beach, Race Point, which is a really special place because it has a really deep drop off right offshore. And what that means is when whales migrate through that area, which, you know, several species do, you can see them really up close, even just sitting on the beach because the drop off is so sudden there.
And we had hiked down and I didn’t have high expectations that we were going to magically see whales. We were there the right time of year, but you never know. But right when we arrived, we saw, you know, there had been people on that beach all day waiting for what we saw. Boom. Right in front of us in that moment that we arrived. And it was this beautiful Right Whale. You could see its tail flipping up into the distance. But it was just such a magical moment, of being able to see this enormous creature just doing its thing.
Some of the emotions that I feel when I see whales, I think it’s always bittersweet because on the one hand it’s just so awe inspiring to see these giant creatures in their native habitat, minding their business, being part of this world. They’re so important to the kind of community ecology of the oceans. And, you know, the bitter part of it or the bittersweetness is the concern I always carry about human impacts on the environment and on what we’re doing to all of our global natural spaces.
We don’t really know much about the oceans. The world is covered in oceans, but we know kind of the least about these ocean habitats relative to other spaces on the planet. So I always feel concerned that we’ll drive species to extinction before we really even know they exist. And that will kind of irreparably damage our planet.
So, yes, lofty, sad, big. But it’s always that mix of emotions, the, kind of joy, just pure joy in seeing these animals moving through the world, but also a concern I feel about how much longer we’re gonna have, especially these sort of bigger species on this planet.
-Elena
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