Free Whale Pot Bay by Des Hunt Page B

glanced around the group, finally letting hiseyes rest on Stephanie. ‘But I have to inform you that she’s pregnant.’
    Stephanie gave a gasp, covering her mouth with her hand. The rest of us kept quiet, processing Colin’s comment. Was it good news or not? If she died, then it definitely would not be good news, as the unborn baby would die with her. However, if she lived we would save two whales, which would make up for the loss of the baby the day before.
    Stephanie recovered enough to ask, ‘Do you think that’s why she’s come ashore?’
    He shook her head. ‘No, she would normally give birth way out in the ocean. She’s here because she’s still grieving for the other calf.’
    ‘When’s the baby due?’ Milt asked.
    ‘Hard to say. They usually give birth in the summer.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ll have to check to see if she’s lactating. If she is, then she would have been feeding the calf that died. If she’s not, she’s at the in-between stage that lasts about a month. It means that she’ll give birth within three or four weeks.’
    ‘How do you milk a whale?’ I asked.
    Colin laughed. ‘With great difficulty. There’re not exactly any nipples dangling down. The calf can’t suck because of its mouth structure. So the cow squirts the milk into the water. It’s thick, like snow-freeze ice cream, and floats in the water. The calf simply eats it.’
    ‘Just like eating an ice cream you’ve dropped in a pool,’ added Stephanie, smiling.
    ‘Precisely!’ agreed Colin. He leant over the whale and began to feel underneath with both hands. ‘Ah, here we are!’ After a few seconds’ massaging, he stood up with his left hand cupped. ‘That’s all she’s got.’
    We gathered around to look. There was about a teaspoon of milky stuff that was more like puss than ice cream. ‘This isn’t milk,’ explained Colin. ‘It’s what you get between lactations. She’d stopped feeding her calf.’
    ‘Could that be why it was starving?’ Milt asked.
    Colin shrugged. ‘Who knows? The thing now is to make sure that the next one survives.’ He fished around in his pocket for a moment before removing a flat plastic object the size of his hand. ‘And to help us I’m going to tag her, so we can keep track of where she goes.’
    He held out the device for us to see. ‘This is a tag I’ve designed. Up until now, tracking devices have been hooked onto the whale using a small harpoon. This one fits tight on the whale and gets taped on.’ He pulled out a roll of what looked like sticking plaster. ‘This has little steel hooks that dig into the top layer of dead skin. They’ll hold it on for months, if not years, and the whale doesn’t feel a thing.’
    He chose a spot halfway along her back, between her breathing hole and the dorsal fin. It took only a moment to fix it in place. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Next we have to put in the ID number that will allow the satellite and us to identify her.’ He pulled out a thing that looked like a TV remote and began pushing buttons. ‘There we are. Now, whenever she’s on the surface anywhere in the world we’ll be able to track her.’
    After that we began the difficult job of getting her back into deep water. First, we had to fit a canvas sling under her body, which required rolling her on to one side and then the other. After that, four of us took a hold of a corner each and tried to move her. Fortunately, the tide was coming back in and that helped a lot. Each time a wave came by,we would heave for the short time that she was supported by the water. Sometimes she didn’t move at all, and at others we’d move twenty centimetres or so.
    All the time Stephanie talked to her, telling her she was brave; how special she was, because now she was tagged we would know where she was; and how important it was for her to go off and get a decent feed to look after her baby. The words seemed to pacify the whale, for at no stage did she struggle against what we were doing.