The Thing About Whales

I made my first crossing on a sailboat recently. It was a 5-day journey across the sea and the checkmark of a lifelong bucket list experience. While the main purpose of the trip was to move the sailboat from the Baja side of Sea of Cortez to the Mexican mainland side, the other purpose of this passage was to seek out the whales that come to live in the region for the season: Humpbacks, Finbacks, and Blue whales — the largest in sea.

I may have seen a whale before — once on a whale watching tour as a child or the Orcas at Sea World (if they can even be called whales — they are really just large Dolphins) with their fallen fins of captivity, but there is no tangible meaning to these memories. I have lived near the sea most of my life, but I realized recently that I do not really know the sea. Like most people, I love to spend a day at the beach, eat the fruits of the sea, and admire the ocean’s beauty. I am in awe of all the creatures of the sea and the role they play in the circle of life. I am by most accounts a very well-traveled person. I have been on 5 of the 7 continents and in dozens of countries — and I have often been told ‘you have seen the world’. Yet I wonder how I can say I have seen the world, when most of it is covered in ocean and; until recently my only experience of the ocean was from the shore?

So what is it about whales? I know so little about them, but as someone in the crypto/web3 space I hear the word ‘whale’ on a near daily basis. As I got to see a few of these magnificent creatures in the wild this past week, I started to consider their activities and behaviors and ask myself this question. I am quite sure that many of us in the crypto/web3 space would like to one day be a whale. But what does it mean to be a whale and why do we use that term to describe the holders of large amounts of an asset?

There is a story in every word and as someone that speaks several languages, I am always fascinated by those etymologies. As a word becomes used commonly, we tend to take for granted that story and forget why we started using a word in the first place. Perhaps it seems obvious why we would call the largest holders of an asset ‘whales’, but maybe there is more under the surface we can glean from the behaviors and mannerisms of the whales of the wild. Here are my musings on wild whales — take from it what you will. None of this is actual financial advice — Ha!

• Despite their massive size and power, they are relatively gentle beasts.
• They are the largest animal in the sea and yet they mostly live off the smallest animals in the sea. And these tiny animals — diatoms, krill, and plankton also seem to perform a magical conversion of energy, turning sunlight into matter and carbon and into sugars.
• When they move, the oceans seem to move with them, as if to suggest a oneness between whale and water, wave and tide.
• They cross oceans but almost always return to the same locations year in and year out. It is only when their recurring habitats change so drastically that they seek out new places to visit.
• They stay for a season in a region of the ocean. But when they leave, they are gone without a trace. And they cross oceans at speed.
• They move with such haste, yet what seems like such decisive and deliberate locomotion. The whales we saw could swim at twice the speed at which our small boat could sail or motor. It was a juxtaposition from the normal dominance we feel over nature.
• When they come to the surface (to be seen) it is only to grasp for a sip of air and to release a gentle spray of ocean breath. We could always sight the whale’s spray before we saw the whale itself. Only once did we see one surface in front of us before seeing the spray.
• When they dive, they dive deep. But not before displaying their tail sign — as if to say ‘I was here’ and ‘here I go again’.
• They surface and dive consistently. Every 7 or 8 minutes when they are fishing. Certainly they could stay above or below the surface longer, but they seem driven by consistent routines.
• They surface only for a brief moment as if to say: ‘I won’t be here much longer. Catch me if you can.’
• At one point in time their fatty blubber was the oil that kept our world aglow. Yet, that history seems like a faint murmur of a past we can hardly fathom in the era of hydrocarbon energy. How could we have sustained our desire for light and warmth from what is now akin to a dwindling tribe?
• Whales are carbon sinks. They store the carbon of the ocean — and when they die, they release dozens of tons of it back into the environment. If we truly wish to manage carbon emissions globally, we would do right by supporting whales and the role they play in the carbon cycle.

I saw a documentary film recently where a modern-day whale hunter expressed his belief that it was better to kill only one life rather than many to get the protein needed to survive. I am not so sure if this is the right way, but I am always willing to listen to ideas and opinions that challenge me to re-evaluate what I conceive to be the best path. Regardless of how we conceive of whales — as food, as fuel, as carbon sinks, as important members in the circle of life, there is no doubt that they are one of the most fascinating and admirable creatures on this planet.

In my own (metaphoric) way, I would like to be a whale — to be the largest, yet gentlest creature that takes only the smallest things to thrive. And to perform a magical conversion — to be full of light made into matter. Then, I would cross oceans and make waves with my movements alone. If you were lucky, you might see me passing by as a spray on the surface, but when I were to leave, all you would see is the swirling water as I descend and the flash of my tail.