of a ship. It was her way of easing into the subject.
‘The research vessel Knorr . Home port: Woods Hole, Massachusetts. It carries all of the instruments that are meant to assist oceanographers. On longer expeditions there is often a submersible on board.’
It was summertime on the Arctic Ocean. There were fragments of ice. The decks were arranged in rectangles. There was a hangar at the back of the vessel. It struck him as industrial compared to the whaling ships in the paintings hung in his family home, which were curved, studded with whale teeth along the rails. Then again, what he did know? He was a paratrooper who had become a spy.
‘I have a French view of science,’ she said. ‘Very romantic. Don’t get me wrong. I am sensible. It’s just I have to stop myself from falling for comments like “exploration is a hunt whose prey is discovery”.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘Anyway, I’ve never worked in France. When I began my doctorate I divided my time between Zurich and a town called La Spezia in Italy. Do you know it?’
‘No.’
‘The locals call it Spesa. It was convenient; not so far along the coast from my parents’ place. It’s the Italian naval base for the Ligurian Sea. There’s a lovely mural by the Futurist Prampolini in the town post office. There’s also a submerged statue of Christ in the harbour, a few metres down. You can’t see it, but I always felt it under me when we headed out, the hands stretched up’ – she held her two hands over her head – ‘blessing all the boats passing above.
‘The Ligurian Sea is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean. It looks like this’ – she doodled with a pencil a gash on a line she indicated to be the sea floor – ‘it goes down to 2850 metres. An underworld within touching distance of the Riviera. Amazing.
‘I’d gone to Spesa to work on a NATO project to protect the Cuvier’s beaked whales in the Ligurian Sea. They needed amathematician to understand how noise reverberated in the undersea canyons. The hope was to track the diving range of the Cuvier’s and see if the navy sonar was damaging them. There were dolphins in the Tigulian Gulf and fin whales, pilot whales and very occasionally sperm whales further out. In my work I only had eyes for the Cuvier’s. They’re rough-toothed whales.’ She sketched one. She was a teacher. ‘Seven metres long from short beak down its sloping head to its tail fin, here. They’re shy and difficult to spot. They live to eighty.’
Her drawing made them look like dolphins.
‘Are they playful?’
She thought about it. ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. They’re hard to place. At first I felt they hadn’t grown up, that they were childlike, but the more we studied them, the graver their lives seemed to be. What is really interesting about them is how deep they go. They are the deepest diving creatures in the world. They stay underwater for an hour, to a depth of 2000 metres, using sonar to hunt for squid there.’
‘Drink?’
‘Not for me.’
He poured himself a whisky.
‘I appreciated the way they looked, they were pretty things, chalked up under the jawbone, with heavily lidded eyes. The work wasn’t challenging, I grew tired of it, by the end the whales did not interest me any more than a partridge, or one of those funny three-legged dogs you sometimes see in the parks in London. The Cuvier’s are K-selected under the constant conditions of the ocean: slow maturation without predators; large brains, long gestation and low birth rate. If I had been an engineer like you I suppose I might have been interested in how they were at one time rendered for watch oil, causing the seconds to tick on Swiss watches.’ She tapped her dial. ‘If I was a biologist I would definitely have been interested in how they can’t swim into the rivers that flow into the Ligurian Sea because their kidneys can’t clean out the bacteria that’s in freshwater. I probably should have marvelled at
‘The research vessel Knorr . Home port: Woods Hole, Massachusetts. It carries all of the instruments that are meant to assist oceanographers. On longer expeditions there is often a submersible on board.’
It was summertime on the Arctic Ocean. There were fragments of ice. The decks were arranged in rectangles. There was a hangar at the back of the vessel. It struck him as industrial compared to the whaling ships in the paintings hung in his family home, which were curved, studded with whale teeth along the rails. Then again, what he did know? He was a paratrooper who had become a spy.
‘I have a French view of science,’ she said. ‘Very romantic. Don’t get me wrong. I am sensible. It’s just I have to stop myself from falling for comments like “exploration is a hunt whose prey is discovery”.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘Anyway, I’ve never worked in France. When I began my doctorate I divided my time between Zurich and a town called La Spezia in Italy. Do you know it?’
‘No.’
‘The locals call it Spesa. It was convenient; not so far along the coast from my parents’ place. It’s the Italian naval base for the Ligurian Sea. There’s a lovely mural by the Futurist Prampolini in the town post office. There’s also a submerged statue of Christ in the harbour, a few metres down. You can’t see it, but I always felt it under me when we headed out, the hands stretched up’ – she held her two hands over her head – ‘blessing all the boats passing above.
‘The Ligurian Sea is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean. It looks like this’ – she doodled with a pencil a gash on a line she indicated to be the sea floor – ‘it goes down to 2850 metres. An underworld within touching distance of the Riviera. Amazing.
‘I’d gone to Spesa to work on a NATO project to protect the Cuvier’s beaked whales in the Ligurian Sea. They needed amathematician to understand how noise reverberated in the undersea canyons. The hope was to track the diving range of the Cuvier’s and see if the navy sonar was damaging them. There were dolphins in the Tigulian Gulf and fin whales, pilot whales and very occasionally sperm whales further out. In my work I only had eyes for the Cuvier’s. They’re rough-toothed whales.’ She sketched one. She was a teacher. ‘Seven metres long from short beak down its sloping head to its tail fin, here. They’re shy and difficult to spot. They live to eighty.’
Her drawing made them look like dolphins.
‘Are they playful?’
She thought about it. ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. They’re hard to place. At first I felt they hadn’t grown up, that they were childlike, but the more we studied them, the graver their lives seemed to be. What is really interesting about them is how deep they go. They are the deepest diving creatures in the world. They stay underwater for an hour, to a depth of 2000 metres, using sonar to hunt for squid there.’
‘Drink?’
‘Not for me.’
He poured himself a whisky.
‘I appreciated the way they looked, they were pretty things, chalked up under the jawbone, with heavily lidded eyes. The work wasn’t challenging, I grew tired of it, by the end the whales did not interest me any more than a partridge, or one of those funny three-legged dogs you sometimes see in the parks in London. The Cuvier’s are K-selected under the constant conditions of the ocean: slow maturation without predators; large brains, long gestation and low birth rate. If I had been an engineer like you I suppose I might have been interested in how they were at one time rendered for watch oil, causing the seconds to tick on Swiss watches.’ She tapped her dial. ‘If I was a biologist I would definitely have been interested in how they can’t swim into the rivers that flow into the Ligurian Sea because their kidneys can’t clean out the bacteria that’s in freshwater. I probably should have marvelled at
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