Rebecca Giggs helped push a beached humpback back into the water off a Perth beach. It came back and she stood with the crowd while it died. What stayed with her was the question, what happens to a whale that dies where it’s supposed to, out in deep water? The answer sends the book everywhere. A body sinks and becomes an entire ecosystem, feeding animals that live nowhere else on earth. Whale song moves through a population like pop music, one season’s hit sweeping a hemisphere. Humpback milk runs pink from all the krill. There are whales down there so rare nobody has gotten around to naming them. The wonder of it all.
Fathoms