The Shark and the Albatross

by John Aitchison

  ‘Can you spin the boat a bit, Steve?’

  The camera is blocking my view to one side and as Steve steers, Tom directs me. He too is used to working around whales: ‘Two off the bow, three close astern, round to the right.’

  I hope they know we are here. The whales rise and roll back under before I can frame them, but then one lunges straight at us, open-mouthed. I film right down its throat, looking uneasily into that watery cave as its mouth wobbles and expands, filling with three tons of water. Pleated grooves appear: white lines on the dark skin, echoing the pattern of the snow runnels on the volcano behind. The roof of the whale’s mouth is startlingly pink. Stiff fringes of baleen close the gap and tighten, as it forces the water through them with its tongue: filter feeding, keeping back the krill and herring. There is a rising curve of a back, an impression of rubbery bumps and the white stars of barnacles passing by. A knobbly spine flexes and the tail comes up, like a dark wine glass above the sea.

  The humpbacks do not feed in their tropical breeding grounds, so what they eat here has to last them a whole year. They make the long journey back in the faith that these seas will be full of food, especially krill. Krill live in all the world’s oceans but they reach their most astounding numbers towards the poles in summer, when the long hours of daylight drive the blooms of phytoplankton on which they feed. At their peak the most numerous krill species alone weighs more than the entire human race.

  Like the whales, we have come a long way to be here, but none of us has travelled the furthest to this feast. That distinction belongs to seabirds called short-tailed shearwaters. Streams of them are passing the boat, all going the same way. They have slim bills and charcoal-coloured, bullet-shaped bodies. They hold their wings stiffly, rising and falling like crosses against the sky, in dark mimicry of the waves. They are searching for krill and to film them feasting we have to work out where they’re going. You’d think it would be easy to find half a million birds, and so it would if it wasn’t for the fog. They are much faster than us and we quickly lose them in the greyness.

  After spending a few more days offshore from Dutch Harbor we realise that we do not know enough about where and when the krill will swarm, so we cannot predict where the whales and birds will gather to feed. Chadden decides we should base ourselves further east, where Jimmer has seen many shearwaters in the past, around the small island of Akutan. If we catch the right tide it will be a five-hour journey and, as usual, it is not FAC. Waiting for better weather would mean missing the tide and prolonging the journey by travelling against the wind and into an eight-knot current, so we grit our teeth and set out. Blue-green water blocks the horizon each time we sink into the wave troughs and groups of tiny whiskered auklets burst from the surface above our heads, with their wings already whirring, as if they have not noticed the transition from water into air. During the whole journey we see only one whale.

  The only village on Akutan has wooden walkways instead of roads and quad bikes instead of cars. Seventy-five people live here in brightly painted houses but the village is very quiet. It seems that everyone is working in the fish-packing plant, a converted whaling station smelling of pollock. Closer to the houses the smell is of smoking salmon. There is nowhere to stay but the school is in recess and the head teacher says to make ourselves at home. I unroll my sleeping bag on a crash mat in the gym, surrounded by exercise machines and dumbbells, where I have the benefit of an inspirational poster on the wall: Attitude is your mind’s paintbrush, it colors every situation.

  In the corridor, other paintbrushes have been at work: the children have made a big picture of their island and added neat labels. In the centre there’s a volcano with glaciers down its sides and in the sea they have labelled icebergs. All around, in the water, they’ve painted whales.

  We set off early the next morning and soon pass a gang of Steller’s sea lions, crammed onto a rock. From the boat we can see a scar on the hillside, formed twenty years ago when lava from Akutan’s volcano flowed into the sea. There are nearly sixty volcanoes in the Aleutians and almost half of them are active. People in the village rarely give it much thought but this morning was different: I wonder whether the sea lions felt their small island shaking, as we did on Akutan. There were two big shocks, as if a truck had backed into a wall or someone heavy had jumped, twice, onto the floor. The school banged around us, with its doors and gym weights rattling, but thankfully it was only an earthquake not an eruption. We ran outside and checked on Jimmer. He had stayed aboard his boat and the earthquake struck while he was peeing over the side. For once, he said, the land had moved up and down while the sea stayed still.

  This time we travel far offshore. In the west the clouds meet the water and the sea is dented all over like a pewter tray. The echosounder shows that we are over another shallow area. A sleeping fur seal, smaller and slimmer than the sea lions, floats in a curve to keep its toes and muzzle out of the water. It wakes with a start, its ears sticking out sideways like pencil stubs. In the water around it, herring scales tumble as if they were snowflakes. We have just missed something big.

  Pancake marks appear on the sea, first on one side of the boat, then the other, made by a whale’s flukes passing under us as it dives deep. It seems a krill swarm rose to the surface with the herring hitting them from below and the whales following, only to sink back into the depths. There are shearwaters here, floating on the sea and pecking like hens, delicately picking up the last of the krill with bills as thin as twigs. They chatter quietly to each other and wait to fly until the boat is almost on top of them, pattering away with the sound of bubbles popping. Some are so full that before they can take off they have to regurgitate, with little high-pitched pukes.

  After shearing the first wave they climb, by converting the wind’s energy into height, then turn downwind to trade it for speed, which carries them to the next wave, where they start again. It’s as if they are sailing, and with the same pros and cons: like a yacht they cannot always take the most direct course but they can travel almost for free. This is how the shearwaters make one of the world’s greatest migrations, from one end of the Pacific to the other, by mimicking the shape, the motion and the rhythm of the waves. Chadden says their gatherings around the Aleutians bring together more seabirds than anywhere else in the world but that each lasts only as long as there are krill near the surface. When the krill surface next they could be many miles away. The shearwaters and humpback whales need to work out where, and so do we.

  Two whales rise, blowing columns of spray like pale trees. They are a mother and calf. The mother breathes out with the reedy note of a massive bassoon, then inhales with a deep, elephantine squeal. Going under, she streams water from her sides like a slate hillside in the rain. The calf ’s inhalation is higher pitched, a hurried, ‘Wait for me!’ Steve photographs their flukes as they dive: adding two more pictures to the database of whales.

  The wind is picking up, wrinkling the sea surface like soaked skin. There are more whales around us now and giant pectoral fins beat the sea to a froth. A tail slaps like a gunshot and then a humpback breaches. For a frozen moment the huge whale hangs in the air, astonishingly large, then it twists and topples back in. The impact makes a crater in the sea, which caves in with a muffled thunderclap. Waves surge outwards, then the surface erupts again with the whale’s own volume of displaced water. An aquamarine wound marks the place where air has been forced deep, in a patch of water shocked to stillness. I am glad we are not in the inflatable boat.

  ‘They’ll do this for about an hour after the sea gets that rough texture,’ says Steve. ‘No one knows why.’

  By the time the whales stop breaching I have filmed some enormous splashes. One leap haunts me: the whale came so close to the boat that it filled the camera’s frame, but the shot was obscured by the mast. It’s the one that got away: a fisherman’s tale to tell with my arms stretched as wide as they can go: ‘It was this big!’

  Jess tells us that her boyfriend, who works on
one of Dutch Harbor’s trawlers, was on watch one day when a humpback flew past his bridge window, immense and utterly unexpected. ‘Awesome,’ she says, and about humpback whales the word is exactly right.

  To everyone’s relief, especially Dave’s, the glue has lasted the course. He has filmed plenty of whales and it’s time to take his stabilised camera ashore and into the air, if the helicopter can cross the fog and reach him in Dutch Harbor. So far the rough seas have been making it hard for me to use the other camera. The tripod’s gyros compensate for the wave motion and keep it upright, but when Miss Alyssa crosses the bigger swells the boat seems to dance around the fixed camera, which often smacks me in the eye. It is impossible to film a whale or a flying shearwater with the long lens unless I can anticipate the sea’s movement and if we do find a big gathering there will only be one chance to get it right. I know I will miss it unless I can respond automatically to the boat’s gyrations and fit my body snuggly beside the rigid camera so I practise as we travel, bending my knees and swaying at the hips while looking through the view-finder, touching the tripod just enough to pan and tilt without gripping it too tightly. It feels like holding one eye to a telescope while stirring a huge pot of porridge. By the evening, when I lie down in the gym, my crash mat seems to sway as wildly as a hammock, rocking me to sleep.

  On trawlers, where huge quantities of pollock pour from the nets and the newer fishermen struggle to gut the fish quickly enough, the older hands tell them they will be fine once they have had The Dream, refusing to elaborate beyond saying, ‘You’ll know when you’ve had it.’ After spending every day at sea for more than two weeks, I wake one morning from a dream in which I was following shearwaters smoothly through the long lens, responding so automatically to the boat moving beneath me that I found it easy to keep the camera to my eye. I have had The Dream. Afterwards the sea’s constant motion becomes so normal that it is hard to imagine life without it.

  Close to the horizon a wave breaks but this one is not made of water. Thousands of dark splinters rise in an arc. At the top they tilt and stream downwind, shearing the sea, to repeat the movement on the face of the next wave. During the Second World War, short-tailed shearwaters gathered in flocks so huge that they showed up on radar and the US Navy shelled them, believing they were Japanese warships. Unfortunately they do not show up on Jimmer’s modern equipment, or our job would be easier.

  Until quite recently the most unusual thing about the shearwaters’ lives was unknown: while nearly every migrating bird flies north to nest, these do the opposite. They nest in the southern hemisphere, around Australia, during the northern winter and spend their off-season here, feasting alongside the whales. The only animals able to attend this banquet are those few who can cling on through the Aleutian winter, or cope with the immense journeys to and fro. Surviving the voyage has always been a problem for human explorers too. Bering’s exploration of the Aleutians ended in 1741, when he died trying to go home.

  After three weeks of trial and error, constrained by fog and tide, by the wind and rough seas, we are beginning to understand some of the shearwaters’ own constraints: how the wind’s strength and direction affect their flight, how the upwellings, which feed the krill swarms and push them within diving range of the birds, are determined by the tides. The shearwaters and the whales seek out places where these upwellings are most likely: the shallow banks offshore and narrow channels between the islands, where rising tides flow the fastest. But the islands’ complex shapes mean the tides are fickle: there might be three flood tides some days, and no ebb.

  We are still unsure where to go next when a friend of Jimmer’s comes on the radio. He is fishing for halibut in a channel where the current is particularly fierce and he says he’s surrounded by feeding birds. He is several hours away from us and even if we set off now the peak tide would be long passed before we arrived, but Jimmer says the tides will build over the next few days, so we can attempt that channel tomorrow. We try not to be too excited because similar hopes have been raised before, only to evaporate: our highs and lows pass by as quickly as waves on the unquiet sea.

  Puffins paddle-steam ahead of us, but they’re unlike the puffins I know from home. They have all-black bodies, with white faces and orange feet and bills. Wild lemon-coloured plumes fly from their heads. They’re tufted puffins. Porpoises streak across our bow, snatching breaths as they go, like gasping black and white torpedoes. To reach the halibut fisherman’s spot, Miss Alyssa first has to contend with the tide-race close to Akutan. This morning the water is flowing with us and we shoot through at fifteen knots, although the boat’s top speed is only nine. Around us whirlpools twist beside oily upwellings, which bulge and spill from their centres. We enter a clear patch and then it is instantly rough again, with white breaking heads of waves. The fog makes it eerie: we can’t see where we are going and all the time the sea grows rougher. There are great holes in the water, not wave troughs but cavities. We are all holding on, looking ahead and wondering what is there. Perhaps this is how it was for Bering, approaching these unknown shores. Jimmer, thankfully, is using his radar.

  Since Bering’s day many people have left their names on these islands, and sometimes more than that. Headlands and bays are named for the ships wrecked there. So far we’ve passed four rusting reminders to take care and Jimmer has shown us one fishing boat which was steered onto the rocks by its youngest crewman, right beside a stumpy lighthouse. He had been told to aim for the light while the others slept. Today we pass yet another wreck; even Jimmer didn’t know it was there.

  ‘I guess they didn’t make that turn,’ he says. A name is just visible on the stern: Lisa Jo, a wife or girlfriend – older now. I hope her fisherman came home from the sea.

  The fog clears and for the first time in weeks we see the blue sky. Shearwaters take off all around the boat, so many at once that their feet sound like a river running over stones. Lines of them fly alongside us and a whale surfaces. For once we are all going in the same direction. Ahead dark smoke seems to hang over the water. A huge flock is gathering: birds swarming like bees. The tide has turned and Jimmer accelerates. We must get there fast. On the sea below that swirling mass, the shearwaters are so densely packed they look like currants in a pudding. They must have found vast quantities of krill. Some are already too full to take off and a surfacing whale scatters them like an explosion of grey ash. Its tail, powering a feeding lunge, hurls some shearwaters out of the way while others, flying, swerve around the explosion of its breath. For an instant the dark birds are reflected in the whale’s wet sides and as they stream past we smell their musty scent.

  ‘What the hell?’ says Jess, standing by to help me choose which way to film.

  The flock is building all the time. Whales shoot their breath skywards, as if cannonballs were striking the sea, and squadrons of shearwaters fold their wings and dive among them. Head-on, their bodies are perfect circles, their wings as slim as blades, but they break their aerodynamic forms and shiver their wings to spill the wind, jack-knifing into the water. Wave after wave, thousands of them, vanishing in showers of spray. There are now four huge dark patches of feeding birds and still more come streaming in. One patch breaks up and another forms: the birds switch between them as new krill swarms are pushed up by the herring. Behind us the lower part of the sky is black, the horizon blotted out. When the shearwater flocks turn they spiral like dust lifted into the air by a tornado. The biggest groups are still ahead but we are now making slower progress against the tide. The back of a whale passes close by, blowing vapour as if it were a submerged train. There are whales everywhere, almost porpoising to feed. There must be so much food.

  ‘More shearwaters, going in right behind you!’ This time they are all diving in one place, calling as they go: so many of them that it doesn’t seem natural. I had imagined this frenzy might last five minutes but when I check with Jess she says it has been going on, at the same intensity, for two hours. The boat’s wild motion, the twists and t
urns of the tripod, have not registered at all in my need to make the most of our only chance. Then the helicopter appears overhead with Dave’s stabilised camera swivelling, revealing the patterns of the flocks from above and the dark ripples spreading through them, as whales surface in their hearts.

  We are in the eye of a hurricane of birds: hundreds of thousands in the air at once, mirroring all the life below, in this fizzing sea full of krill. For this much food it is worth travelling halfway round the world.

  ‘Fortune favours the bold,’ they say, at least the ones who survive do, and it has never been more true than in the Aleutians. Plunging back towards Akutan’s volcano, I understand a bit more now about these inhospitable islands and their fabulously productive sea, where only the boldest can survive: tremendous explorers all of them, whether they are birds, or whales or people.

  – ELEVEN –

  ANCIENT MARINERS AND SAVAGE SEALS

  The sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia is at the other end of the world from the Aleutians but the cold sea around it also swarms with krill, which feed vast numbers of animals. Antarctic fur seals breed on its beaches, in the world’s greatest gathering of marine mammals. It is hard to imagine that 100 years ago they were close to extinction. Their extraordinary recovery has happened almost unseen, thanks to the remoteness of their home. South Georgia’s smaller neighbour, Bird Island, now has so many of these aggressive seals that they affect everything you do there, which makes them hard to live with. As you might gather from its name, the island is also home to some curious birds, which I am looking forward to meeting more than the seals. To film them both I’m heading south, on one of the longest journeys of my life.