(wind blowing)
- Welcome to Engaging Our Communities,
part of the Convergence Writers Series.
I'm Stephanie Rothfuss,
and I teach at Edmonds Community College.
And with me today is Rachel Clark,
author of the new novel
The Blackfish Prophecy,
which is set here
locally in the Salish Sea
and other places in the United States.
Thank you, Rachel, for joining me.
- It's a really great
pleasure to be here with you.
Thank you, Stephanie.
- [Stephanie] Yes, thank you.
I know the students really enjoyed it.
So let's jump right in.
I'm curious about how this novel began.
You know, they all kinda
start like a little kernel,
so what was the kernel that
got you started writing?
- The kernel, actually
there's kind of a story.
If you wanna hear it,
I'll tell you the story.
- [Stephanie] Of course, yeah.
- [Rachel] It's a little
bit bigger than a kernel.
- [Stephanie] Okay. (laughs)
- So when I was in college,
I was a biology major,
and actually biology and music,
and I kind of thought I wanted
to go study whale communication
back when I was in college,
probably along with half the
other girls in the country.
(Rachel laughs)
And then I had the lucky
opportunity to work
in the National Aquarium in Baltimore
as a marine mammal intern,
and so I was able to work
very closely with the trainers
and the beluga whales and the dolphins.
And shortly after that I
came out to the West Coast
to the Friday Harbor Marine
Lab and was doing some research
or some classwork on invertebrates,
and I, on a whim with some friends,
went to see the west side
of the island on a bike,
where we heard rumors that you
could see wild killer whales,
and in fact we saw wild killer whales.
So that's really the kernel,
because those two experiences
when I was about 20 years old
and a biology major
thinking of studying whales
and whale communication
for my job and my career
really made an impact on
me at that time in my life.
And I ended up going to get
a master's degree in zoology.
I did not work on whale communication.
Evidently, it was really
very hard to find.
I mean, there's only
like a couple of people
in the world at that time
who were studying that.
And I ended up studying
something entirely different,
which was fine,
because then I ended up
becoming a science writer
and covering the environment
for quite awhile after that.
So the original kernel was really working
with captive cetaceans
and then seeing wild orca,
and then studying biology,
really filling in a
lot of my own knowledge
around how the world
works and how life works,
and then covering a lot
of issues over the course
of the next 15 to 20 years
about what's happening
in the world right now
and climate change and everything else.
And then really the idea
for the book came to me
quite a long time ago,
probably in the first five
years after that experience
with the cetaceans.
I kind of had an idea
that was pretty formulated
at that time.
I knew it was gonna be
in the Pacific Northwest,
even though I didn't live there.
I grew up and lived on the East Coast
all throughout this time.
I knew it was gonna have
a native elder in it,
and I knew that there were
gonna be central characters
that were killer whales.
And I had a pretty good idea of the title,
but the title has actually
shifted since the original.
But the original title
in my mind plays out
in the series title,
'cause this is just the
first in five books.
- Oh, five books you have planned?
Okay, that was a later question I had.
- Yeah.
- Can I ask how far along
you are working on those?
- Right there.
- Right there, okay. (laughs)
- Book two is right here.
- Okay, got it, got it.
- So is the other three.
- Yeah, so it's got that
added pressure, though,
'cause they printed it in
the back, "Coming soon."
- Yep.
- [Stephanie] Okay.
- [Rachel] Yes, there's
some added pressure.
I'm gonna be doing a lot
of writing this summer.
- Excellent, excellent.
And will you be writing
in the San Juan Islands?
- I will be doing some writing
in the San Juan Islands.
Mostly I'll be over in
Moscow, at home, where I live.
- Excellent.
- Which is the watershed.
It's still in the Salish Sea watershed.
- Oh, okay.
- [Rachel] So I feel very
connected to this place.
- Yeah, wonderful.
- Yeah.
- So my other question for you
in relation to how this began,
so you had experience as a
science writer, as a journalist,
so what made you wanna
take that pivot to fiction,
since this is your first fictional work,
yes?
- [Rachel] Mm-hmm.
- So, yeah, what is just,
can you talk a little about that shift
and what that was like
and why you felt like this
story had to be told in fiction?
- Yeah, definitely, it's a great question.
In fact, I almost finished
answering it before,
so that was good.
(Stephanie laughs)
- (laughs) When I had
the idea for the book,
it was a long time ago,
and I knew it was a novel.
And I was like,
"How on earth do people write novels?"
I mean, I was so clueless about novels.
So I just kept plodding
away with my science writing
and my environment coverage,
and then something really interesting
and different happened, and
that was in the summer of 2012.
And this sounds a little bit woo-woo,
so just be forewarned.
- [Stephanie] Okay. (laughs)
- [Rachel] I actually had a
dream about a killer whale,
and my kids were in the dream
and we were in the Pacific Northwest,
and the whale came up onshore
like out of a pebbly beach area,
and the dream was just
fundamentally different
than any dream I'd ever had before.
It was like real.
There was this feeling
of connection and joy
and this wisdom that was emanating,
and it was definitely a female,
and there was definitely a
reason that she was there.
I was like, "Oh, that's a cool dream,"
and I wrote it down in my journal
and didn't really think anything of it.
And that would've been late
June in the summer of 2012.
And less than six weeks later,
I was in the library
at the new book shelf,
and I wish I had brought it with me.
I saw a book that was on the shelf
and it had a killer whale on the front
that was trapped in a pool, and I thought,
and it was called Death at SeaWorld
and it's written by David Kirby.
You're familiar with the book?
- Yes, and didn't he
give a quote for yours?
- Mm-hmm, he did.
- [Stephanie] Yeah.
- [Rachel] And I saw
David's book and I thought,
"Oh my gosh,"
and I think in that moment
I remembered the dream,
but I knew without a doubt
that I was supposed to read this book,
even though I knew it
was gonna be very hard
for me to read it.
So I took it home and I read it.
And I couldn't put it down.
I was on the couch for three days straight
reading David's book.
And my kids were like,
"What's going on with Mom?"
And sometimes I was telling them stories,
and I even, there was a part in the book
where one of the trainers
that I had worked with,
his name is Steve Aibel,
back at the National
Aquarium in Baltimore,
was featured in part of the storytelling
that David did in his book.
And I was reading it,
and I didn't know if Steve
was gonna live or die
while I was reading it,
'cause I hadn't heard the story,
and it was a story about
how he was in a pool
with a killer whale who wouldn't
let him get back to shore.
And it was a little terrifying,
'cause he was in there
for a good long while
and the whale wouldn't
let him come any way.
So I read this book and was compelled.
Captivated, I should say.
And a few days after I finished,
my kids went back to school,
and just in that short period of time,
this thing happened to me.
I took a notebook with me for
my kids' first day of school,
they had a field trip,
and just started writing.
And these notes started to come out.
And the next day I sat
down at my computer,
and the novel was finished
less than three months later.
- Oh my goodness, yeah.
- There was a lot of
editing to do after that.
- Yeah, but--
- [Rachel] Quite a lot.
It's very hard for me to explain
who I went from science
and environment reporting
and writing in nonfiction
to the fiction.
It was almost like I just had to do it.
It was like the story was coming to me
and I had to sit down.
In fact, I was waking up at
4:00 or 4:30 every morning,
and it was like the
story was waking me up,
and I had to go to my computer,
and it was very, very intense.
- Yeah, wow.
Wow, fantastic.
So during the editing
process, were there any,
so you mentioned obviously
the nonfiction that you read
that inspired it, but any fiction books
or any storytellers that you enjoy
that you kind of read or...
(Rachel sighs)
I know that's a--
- [Rachel] When I was a kid,
I read every single Black Stallion book in
the series by Walter Farley.
- [Stephanie] Oh, okay, yeah.
- [Rachel] That series fed me.
I read a number of whale books.
I read Farley Mowat's
A Whale for the Killer
when I was a young person,
probably in my late teens.
I actually talk about
Jean Craighead George's
books in this book.
- [Stephanie] Yes, yes.
Yeah.
- Yeah, that kind of fiction
fed me when I was a kid.
- Well, and that's interesting,
'cause that leads to my next question,
which was about, because
when you're writing fiction,
there's this series of
choices that have to be made,
and so the choice to
have a young protagonist
and some of the novels
that you just spoke of,
Black Stallion, Jean Craighead George,
always had these young protagonists.
So, yeah, could you say a little bit about
that choice to have the
13, 14 year old characters
in the lead roles?
- [Rachel] Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great question.
When I first had the idea for the book,
way back, probably in my 20s,
I knew that Terra was Terra,
and I knew that she was a young teenager.
I can't quite tell you
why it wanted to be a young protagonist,
other than the issues and the things
that they were confronting
are the kinds of things
that you confront when
you're a young person.
This is not stuff that
an adult would confront,
because their parents
actually protected them
from some of these issues,
and so they're coming to
terms with coming of age
in a world that's really
unsettled and chaotic,
and captive whales that are killing people
and things like that.
It's a way of presenting
information to people
who haven't seen it before.
And plus I'm the mother of two young,
a 15 year old and an
almost 12 year old and--
- Okay, yeah.
- That's part of it for me,
is writing a book that is for my kids
and their generation.
- Yeah, yeah.
So do they help you with
research in some ways or--
- Um, no.
(Stephanie laughs)
That's a really good question too.
- Spying on their dialogue. (laughs)
- Yeah, they inspired me, for sure.
In fact, the first scene in the book,
Terra is doing a bow
drill to start a fire,
and that came from watching my older son
start a fire with a bow drill.
It's such a primal experience
to see a human being build fire from wood.
Have you ever seen that happen?
- Not in real life,
only in film.
- [Rachel] For film.
It's really, I can't
recommend it highly enough.
It's a very primal experience,
or to make one.
I've never made one.
It's not easy
to make fire from wood.
- [Stephanie] No.
- [Rachel] So he inspired that,
and then Kenan, my younger son.
Yeah, Avery's my older son.
And Kenan, he inspires
a lot of things too,
but he actually became a vegetarian
while I was writing the book,
'cause I was telling these stories
about things that were
happening in the book
and that I'd read,
and he's been one ever since.
Just very devout about it.
Very matter of fact.
(Stephanie murmurs)
Yeah.
- Yeah, so it seems like
when you're that age,
you just have that idealism,
and just like the belief
that you can change things.
Yeah, you really get that feeling
with the characters in the book.
So, yeah, usually characters tend to be
like a amalgamation of people
that you know in real life,
and then you do have some
real life people (laughs)
who are in the book or inspired.
But, yeah, what went into creating Terra
and Miles and Tiluk?
- Well, Terra...
Terra kind of came to me fully-formed,
and I think Terra is partly me.
I wish that I had grown up
as a killer whale biologist.
I mean, what could be better than that?
Just like the idea of growing up
in this very magical place
and having parents who
are out there studying.
Not that I, you know, I
love my parents dearly.
So. (laughs)
- [Stephanie] Yeah.
- [Rachel] But to be able to,
and having all of the training
that I have as a biologist,
the idea of being able to be that intimate
with another highly
sentient social species
right in your backyard,
and to be communicating
with them on a daily basis
was very appealing to me personally,
and so Terra probably
came from that kind of,
my own personal interests.
Tiluk,
my dad told me stories when I was little
about his great-great-grandmother being
a full-blooded Algonquin
Indian, Native American,
and that she had married a trapper.
And so I always grew up thinking about
how I had native blood.
And that had a lot of meaning for me.
And learning the history of
colonization and domination
and genocide in this country
of the native people,
and just being very personally
affected by those stories.
It was really important to me,
and Tiluk is just part of that.
Having that person in the book was part
of that history of my own.
And then Miles,
I'm not really sure where
Miles came from. (laughs)
Miles, in a way, is the
wild child of that book
and the whole series,
and you'll see when you read
the ones that are coming.
I guess he's the person that I think of
when I think of the things
that I maybe would do
if I were brave enough.
He does some crazy stuff.
- Okay, yeah, actually he does.
In the book, he's quite brave.
- He is brave, and he's very...
He has a huge amount of integrity,
and he wants to do the right thing,
even though he sees a lot
of not-so-good things.
And they all do,
but Miles is definitely, (sighs)
yeah, I'm not quite sure about Miles.
- Yeah.
(Rachel laughs)
See, at first, yeah,
on the surface he seems
more like the typical teen,
just really moody and
shutting himself off,
but, yeah, once you get
to know his character
a little bit more, yeah,
he's pretty remarkable,
which is probably true of
most teenagers. (laughs)
- I believe that.
I believe that.
- [Stephanie] Yeah, good.
- [Rachel] There's a lot
of amazing stuff coming
out of teenagers.
- And they do.
They use Facebook and the Internet.
- Yep.
- But it fits within there.
So the other thing that
I wanted to ask was
about the landscape.
So we were talking a lot about characters,
but also setting is very
important to the story,
and especially this region,
and just so special.
So I guess I'm wondering how,
you said you grew up on the East Coast,
so what was kind of the
landscape like growing up?
What was it like to be in the Puget Sound
for the first time?
And could you talk a
little bit about that?
- That's a great question.
I actually grew up in
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,
which is definitely a very
big, huge tourist town.
And it was a tourist town
because of what happened there,
and it's this incredible story
of this horrifying battle
where so many people lost their lives
fighting for something that
they really believed in.
It was about human dignity and oppression
and removing that and finding liberation.
And so having grown up
steeped in that story
and living on the battlefield basically,
I mean, I was there for
most of my childhood,
you could never get away from that.
That was just part of what I was soaked in
when I was a kid,
so I'm sure that that
probably fed my ideas
about human rights.
And when you learn about these orca,
they're sentient the way
we are, if not more so,
and very, very intelligent,
so that carried over.
The landscape is incredibly
different over there,
and there's a lot more
people on the East Coast.
At least there was when I was growing up,
and it's gotten to be more so even now.
But the landscape was
very, very different.
I wasn't particularly attached
to that landscape at all,
and I don't think I knew
that when I was growing up.
And then when I,
well, the first time I
was on the Salish Sea
on the Puget Sound area
was actually my early 20s
when I came out and I saw the whales,
and I resonated with it.
And then there was a
trip shortly after that
or around that time when we
went to the Olympic Peninsula
and got to see the rain forests over there
and the giant cedar trees
and the giant Sequoias
and the Doug firs,
and it was like, oh, this is a place
that's a place that I really.
But it wasn't really until
I moved out here as an adult
and then was able to
experience the Salish Sea
as an adult and really kind of
be in that place more fully.
Then I started to recognize
it as a place that I really,
I call it one of my soul homes.
It is a very magical place.
- It is, it is.
That's very true.
Which brings up the topic of ecology,
because I think this is
very much a novel that,
you could call it maybe an eco-novel,
because it is very much
concerned with not just orcas,
but the planet as a whole.
I guess I was just wondering
about that aspect of it.
And maybe this would be a good time
to talk about your
meeting with Jane Goodall.
- Oh, I didn't meet with her.
- Oh, you didn't?
No, okay, but you communicated with her.
- Yes.
- [Stephanie] Yes.
- [Rachel] In a one-off kind of way.
- Okay.
- [Rachel] But yes.
- [Stephanie] Yes.
Could you say a little bit more
about her influence on the book,
since she appears in it as a character?
- Yeah, well, and I think
the question you just asked
is a really big and important question.
So it's true.
The book definitely has
a huge element, a theme,
around interconnection and ecology
and the human relationship
to the natural world.
And Dr. Jane Goodall is
definitely a huge hero of mine,
as is true for many, many,
many people on the planet.
I think she's definitely
one of the big inspirations
for a lot of us.
And so when I was writing the book,
for me as a biologist and as someone
who had covered all of these issues:
environment and science,
it was just natural for me to write a book
that was full of themes
that are about the interconnection
of humans and the natural world.
And then, likewise, (laughs)
Dr. Goodall just came through.
It was like Terra had to contact her.
As an orca whale biologist
and a child of an orca whale biologist,
when she was confronted with these issues,
her natural thing as that character was,
"I'm gonna write to Jane Goodall."
And it was like, oh, I'm
writing this book, and I'm like,
"Well, of course she has
to write to Jane Goodall,"
so, of course I wrote that down.
And then one thing led to another,
and Jane Goodall contacted her back,
and then I wrote that down.
And it just all unfolded
very, very naturally.
And Jane Goodall, of
course is one of the people
on the planet who is
like the human epitome
of grasping the interconnection of humans
and the natural world,
and living that in such a way
that she's inspiring tens of thousands,
if not probably, definitely
millions of people
to become more attuned
to the natural world.
Yeah.
- So what was the interaction with her?
- Yeah, so, well, because I wrote a book
that fictionalized her.
- [Stephanie] She was in.
- [Rachel] I, as a person and
(laughs) as a human being,
I mean, I knew, I did the research,
and it's perfectly legal to
fictionalize a famous person.
I knew that I would never publish a book
with her as a character
unless she was okay with it,
because I respect her too much to do that.
And so I wrote the book and I thought,
"Okay, I'm gonna write Jane Goodall,
"because that's what's happening here,
"and somehow this will
all work itself out."
And so then I got the book contract
and I started putting
the book into production,
and we wrote to her team.
And because of my background
and my science and environment
reporting and all of that,
and because I had this book
that had characterized her,
fictionalized her, I
said, I told the story,
"I'm not gonna publish the book
"unless she's okay with it."
"Well, let us see what we can do."
And apparently Dr. Jane
Goodall doesn't have much time
for reading a lot of books,
because she's traveling
like 330 days a year
and she's very, very busy.
So we were in touch with
her team and back and forth,
and even right up to
Christmas of this last year.
I got an e-mail saying,
"Well, Dr. Goodall has
your book in Africa,
"but she has trouble
getting to the Internet
"and her keyboard stopped working."
- [Stephanie] Oh! (laughs)
- It was this back and forth,
but it was wonderful.
They were incredibly
gracious and very supportive.
And then as we were about
to do our cover reveal
for this beautiful cover,
she finished reading the book,
like a week before the cover reveal,
which is why we were able to
put her amazing endorsement
on the cover of the book.
And I heard from her team,
and the person that I was interacting with
actually sent me an
e-mail with her feedback.
It was written by her,
and it came to me.
- [Stephanie] Oh, wow.
- [Rachel] It was like
one of the biggest moments
of my life, getting to have this moment
where I was getting
this wonderful feedback
from Dr. Goodall on the book.
And she read it, she loved it,
and she had a couple of
specific suggestions for me.
She improved the book.
- [Stephanie] Wow.
- [Rachel] And I took
them all into account,
and I mostly addressed them.
There was a couple that I couldn't quite.
I mean, there was like four
things that she asked about
that were able to be--
- [Stephanie] Yeah, wonderful.
- [Rachel] Addressed.
- [Stephanie] And your book
went to Africa with Jane Goodall.
(both laugh)
- At least the electronic version.
- Yeah, the electronic. (laughs)
- I hadn't thought of it that way.
That's great.
- [Stephanie] Yeah.
There you go. (laughs)
And so that actually leads
into my next question,
was 'cause we were talking
about it being an eco-novel.
This is, I would say
considered a feminist novel,
because you have what
you call the J Squad,
so you have Dr. Jane Goodall,
who is a real-life character,
or real-life person, I should say,
and then a character, Janet Carson,
who works with an
organization called NOAA.
So you have these two heroes
who are high-powered female scientists.
So, I mean, was that kind of in your mind
that you were setting out
this idea of feminism?
- It kind of was.
It was not prominent.
It wasn't like a big
part of what I thought,
what I was doing,
but it turned out that we had Jane Goodall
and Janet Carson.
She was inspired by someone in NOAA,
who is a very important,
incredible scientist,
and also female.
We have Granny.
And the whales are very
matriarchal, so there's that.
Obviously Terra.
And there's a part in the book
which you probably remember reading about
in the prophecy section,
where there's some discussion
about how women have been
oppressed over the years.
- Yes.
- [Rachel] And girls.
And how important it is to
bring back the great feminine.
That part of the book I
didn't know was coming,
and it did, and it came,
and I knew it was really important
and it needed to be in the book.
So, yeah, it turned out to be kind of
a strong feminist theme
and approach in the book,
and it wasn't necessarily intentional,
but it was supposed to
come through that way.
- Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating,
and for anyone who doesn't
know that much about orcas,
and I've actually seen J pod in real life,
and Granny is a real
whale who is out there,
over 100 years old.
Yeah, and the calves, the males,
stay with their mother for life.
- [Rachel] That's right.
- And if the mother dies,
then they kind of adopt a new one.
Isn't that true?
- Yep, there is actually
examples of that in the J pod
and the other pods.
Well, there's a couple of things.
If the mother dies, we
have really good evidence
that it's more likely that
her sons will die earlier
than they would otherwise.
And for those lucky
enough to be adopted in,
and they almost always are.
The families are very gregarious
and highly, highly bonded.
If a mom dies, typically the offspring
of that mom will be adopted
by a relative, excuse me,
like an aunt or a sister
of the mother whale,
and keep track, and they
become very, very close.
Yeah, so that does happen.
- Must be incredible.
So the other thing, some
moments in the book,
a lot of the moments are
inspired by true events.
And I guess instead of rehashing,
was this true, was this true, (laughs)
could you just talk about
kind of those choices to
what you completely fictionalized,
what you based on real life,
and how those decisions were
made as you went through?
- I think that's a great question,
and I think part of the reason
that I felt like I was
compelled to fictionalize some
of these things that had happened was
that I, as a human being,
I was trying to deal with
some of what I was learning.
And so some of the things
that happened are just so
disturbing and sad,
and I wanted to find a
way to memorialize those
and to inspire people who
read the story to be like,
"Oh my gosh, this really happened.
"What can we do to make sure
this doesn't happen any more?"
One of the themes of the books is
that this is not just about whales,
it's about a system that we're living in
that allows for this kind of domination
and abuse of other beings and other humans
and native people and women.
It's about a system that's in place.
But there's a number of
stories, and I talk about this
in the letter to the reader afterwards,
that are true stories that
I talk about in the book.
One of the ones that sort
of causes a turning point
in the book to happen
is when Terra finds out
about a whale that her mom had observed
when she was younger,
and the whale's name is Corky,
and it's based on a real whale
who lost her calf when she was in a
tank in California.
And it's very common for that to happen.
And in this case, the calf was born,
and in the wild there's
a whole family around
to help the calf find the mom
and to find the place to nurse.
And the white patches on
the mom's belly are there
in part to help the calf
find a place to nurse.
And in the captive tank,
the calf can't always do that,
and there's not a lot of
whales around to help.
And in this case this calf imprinted
on the mom's eye patch,
and so she was trying to
nurse from her mother's eye,
and that's the only,
and then she died.
I mean, they tried to feed her in any way.
And then the story is
that, and this happened.
This actually happened.
This whale was so
distraught by her baby dying
that she hung in front
of the wall of the tank
and stared at the killer
whale stuffed animals
that were in the gift
store that she could see,
and she just stared at them.
And after some period of time of this,
it was hours or days,
she started crashing
into the wall of the tank
and she actually broke it,
and the water drained.
And I had to write that.
It was like, "This is so disturbing,
"and this is something that
people need to know about."
And it was a formative
moment for Terra in the book,
and it caused her to do something
that I'm not gonna talk about.
- Yes. (laughs)
Main turning point.
- Yeah.
- That's incredible, because
when you think about it,
and I think that's a testament
to just how sentient they are,
and to see the stuffed animals
and know that that's what,
you know.
- [Rachel] Right.
- [Stephanie] That those are symbolic,
like these are
representative of your baby.
- Right, and we think that
humans are the ones that,
the only ones that do things like that,
and that's not true.
- [Stephanie] Yeah.
It's not true, wow.
When did that happen approximately?
Was that a recent or--
- Probably in the '80s.
- Yeah.
- [Rachel] Is my guess.
- [Stephanie] Yeah, because a lot of this
has been going on.
- [Rachel] A long time.
- [Stephanie] And it really hasn't
received that much attention.
- It's kind of shocking.
- Mm-hmm, yeah.
Well, and the other question
I have about fictionalizing.
So there was a part about
Morse code in there.
Is that based on anything
that people have tried?
- [Rachel] That just came
right out of here.
- [Stephanie] Yeah.
- [Rachel] That's a great question.
I don't know if anybody's tried
teaching the whales Morse code.
I will tell you that it just
came right out of my head,
and I just thought,
"If I were two kids that were
killer whale biologist kids
"and I had a hydrophone in my room,"
which is a yurt in the book,
which is super fun, (laughs)
"I would be trying to
teach them Morse code,"
'cause that would just be like,
a no-brainer.
- [Stephanie] It made sense.
- [Rachel] And I won't say
much about what happens
in the book with the
whales and the Morse code.
However, I will tell you
that one of the things
that Dr. Jane Goodall suggested
to me was that she said,
"I think your whales,
"they know more than just Morse code.
"I think what the character Terra did is
"she made a connection,
"and it was about thought transference,"
and that was actually Dr. Goodall's idea,
and I got to put it into the book.
So I'm very grateful to
Dr. Goodall for that idea,
'cause she was very brilliant
and clever thinking about that,
'cause I hadn't made that
connection myself that the whales.
Because Terra was so focused
when she was doing the Morse code thing,
she was so focused that that's,
the whales actually picked up on more
than just the Morse coding,
and I just thought that was a
great hypothesis on her part.
- Yes, yes.
- Spoken like a true scientist.
- Excellent. (laughs)
I love that part.
So was there a scene that
was your favorite to write,
and maybe a scene that
was the hardest to write,
and maybe they were one
and the same? (laughs)
- No, they were, no.
That's a great question.
Thank you for asking.
'Cause I know exactly the two. (laughs)
- Okay. (laughs)
- In chapter four or
five, I can't remember,
it's the chapter where Miles first,
he's woken up by a terrible nightmare
after he sees a terrible
thing that happens.
And he's been woken up two or three times
by these nightmares, and
so finally it's like,
"This is stupid.
"I'm gonna go figure out
what's going on here."
And he gets online and he researches
the story of what he witnessed,
and he reads a very in-depth report
on what happened to that
whale and where it came from,
and that this whale had actually
killed two other people.
That story that I wrote (laughs)
was the hardest part for me.
It was nonfiction and it was, excuse me,
it was science writing,
and it was the stuff that I've been doing
for 15 or 20 years.
And I found myself writing it, going,
"I don't wanna write this.
"I just wanna get back to the story."
I didn't wanna write the nonfiction part.
And it was a really important
moment for me as a writer,
because I realized
I love writing the novel.
It was like I felt like
this was why I was on the planet.
I was put here to write this
story and others like it.
But, boy, I did not wanna write
the nonfiction part of it.
And I did.
- Logically, you had the experience,
everything to back you up.
- [Rachel] You'd think.
- [Stephanie] And that
was the hardest part.
- It was.
- [Stephanie] Interesting.
- [Rachel] Didn't like it.
- (laughs) And so going to
your favorite part to write.
- My favorite part was,
and it's probably my
favorite part of the book,
is when they, it's later in the book,
and they set up a live
feed for Miles to help.
I don't know if I wanna
give anything away here,
but there's a scene in the book
where the whale biologists
are in San Juan Island
and Miles is in Florida,
and they're able to set
something very special up
for the family of whales,
and that was definitely
my favorite part to write.
It's probably my favorite
part of the book.
- That was my favorite part to read.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, it was very suspenseful,
we'll just say that.
So, yeah, but the hydrophones,
I've actually had the
privilege of being on,
and I actually had a question about that.
So I grew up in the Midwest.
- [Rachel] Okay, oh.
- So Michigan, similar.
- [Rachel] Interesting.
- [Stephanie] So surrounded by freshwater,
and for a time I wanted
to be a marine biologist.
And so when I moved here quite recently,
one of the things that I did
when my parents came to visit
was go on one of those
whale watching excursions.
- [Rachel] Oh, wonderful.
- It was a wonderful experience,
and the people on the boat were very,
they were ecologists, they
were very knowledgeable,
and seemingly very careful
to keep their distance,
cut the motors, and we did see J pod,
and it was really cool to see that.
And then they put the
hydrophone in the water.
And to hear the whale sounds.
And so I guess,
and this is a question I'm
a little bit afraid to ask,
but I think it's important,
which is, with those kinds of,
so obviously we know that
SeaWorld and parks like that
are no place for orcas.
What about these tours
that happen in the Sound
that bring the people to the orcas?
I mean, they can be educational,
but is that also possibly
messing with their habitat
and their life?
- It's an excellent question,
and I'm glad you asked it.
Don't worry about asking
questions like that.
- [Stephanie] Okay. (laughs)
Well, I'm worried for
my own selfish reasons.
- Oh, yeah.
- Wanting to enjoy it.
- [Rachel] Well, 'cause you
wanna go enjoy it and
watch them again, right?
- Mm-hmm.
- It's an important thing
for humans to be able
to observe these incredible animals,
these incredible sacred beings.
I mean, they're incredible
other sentient consciousnesses
that are millions of
years older than we are.
The best way to answer that question is
to remember to hold
that with great respect.
When we understand that
these whales are out there
and the way that they use their ears,
their sound facilities,
it's very important to respect
them, to give them space,
to let them be in charge
in their home environment,
to do the research and
find out if you're working
with a respectable whale watching company.
I mean, there's laws
in place for a reason.
And it's important to
find out and make sure
that the people that you go out with
are gonna be very, very
respectful of the whales.
Whale watching boats make noise,
but they don't make the amount of noise
that the naval sonar people are making.
And I shouldn't say people,
but there's devices out there
that make incredibly loud noises.
So it's a matter of having perspective.
And if there's a level of care and respect
around witnessing and
encountering them in the wild
with some kind of understanding
of what the realities are in the ocean,
the whale watching boats
are a tiny little scratch
on the surface compared to
what the really big issues are out there,
and that's climate change,
it's losing the salmon,
and it's the sonar sounds
that are out there.
Be respectful and find out
and make sure that you're out there
with a good, respectable captain.
That's really important.
And don't fly your drone over the whales.
- Don't fly your drone, yes.
(Rachel laughs)
- I mean, if you're gonna fly a drone,
fly it way up.
- [Stephanie] Yes.
- [Rachel] And don't get in
their faces and blowholes.
- Yeah.
- Just the respect is important,
and just have an awareness.
- Okay, good.
All right, thank you for that. (laughs)
- Yeah.
- And so I guess we'll
end with this question,
because it is topical,
and recently SeaWorld made an announcement
that, I think,
people were heralding it as
like, oh, this big victory,
which is that they were no longer going
to breed whales in captivity.
And so I wanted to get your thoughts
on that announcement.
Is it as good as it sounds or?
- I think there's an important
way to answer that question,
and what I would say is that it's huge,
but maybe not for the reason
why SeaWorld thinks so.
It's huge because that
announcement heralds
a very, very, very big
shift in our consciousness
as a global society,
particularly in this country,
but I think it's not just this country
that this is happening.
There's a lot of raised
consciousness now in the world
around not just human rights,
but also other sentient animals rights
and animal rights in general.
That announcement coincides
with this very significant big change
in human consciousness
on the planet right now,
and that consciousness
isn't just about human
and animal rights.
It's about this awareness
that I talk about in the book,
that we're all interconnected.
So for me, that announcement was historic,
because to me it was a metaphor or analogy
of this much bigger thing that's happening
on the planet right now
that I'm calling The Great Transition.
That's what the series title is called.
(sighs) And it's great
that they're gonna stop
breeding the whales,
but they haven't made any concessions
to retiring any of their whales.
So they're planning to keep
the whales that they have
in the tanks until they die,
and that's not acceptable
in my opinion.
- [Stephanie] Yeah.
- [Rachel] So.
- Would there be a possibility,
like could a whale safely
return to the wild?
- Well, we already know
that it's possible,
because Keiko did that,
and Keiko's story is a huge success story.
Keiko was the whale that
was featured in Free Willy,
and it raised so much
awareness of so many people,
and when they realized
this plight was real.
I mean, the movie is fictional,
but they realized that that
whale actually was suffering
in a tiny little tank in Mexico,
and because all this
awareness came to light,
money was raised, kids
were writing letters.
They made a lot of money with bake sales.
And they got Keiko transferred
to this amazing facility
that they built for him
in Newport, Oregon,
and they initiated a
program to retire him,
and that meant that they
flew him from Mexico
up to that pool and they put him in.
They rehabbed him in Newport, Oregon.
He became healthy.
He was sick.
He was in dire straits in Mexico.
They put him into a tank
that was much, much bigger,
and it had real sea water filtering in.
He ate really well, he got healthy.
He was feeling a lot better.
They could document it
with the biological trackers
that they were using.
And then Keiko was brought to Iceland
where he was captured originally,
and they retired him into
a temporary holding tank,
which was also much bigger,
and there's images of
him in there on YouTube.
And you can see he's so happy.
(both laugh)
And the industry likes to say
that this story is a
failure because he died,
but that was five years
after he was released.
So he was released after
being trained and rehabbed
and taught how to catch wild fish.
I mean, he wasn't just like
thrown into the big ocean
to fend for himself.
The trainers that he was
working with loved him
and helped him and taught him
how to go back into the wild
ocean where he remembered.
I mean, they're incredibly smart.
They have incredible memories.
And he was able to hang out
with other wild killer whales
and spent five years
of his, the last years,
probably the best years
(laughs) of his life
out there swimming in
the North Atlantic Ocean
before he passed on.
And I would guess that
Keiko was really happy
that he got to do that rather than perish
in a tiny little tank in Mexico,
probably much earlier
than he would have done
had he not gone back to the wild.
So we know it's possible,
and we know there's
lots of good scientists
and other folks who are working on
and have created proposals
for how to retire these animals
in a very safe and effective manner.
So it definitely can be done.
- All right, so we will
end on that note of hope,
that, yeah, it is possible,
and hopefully with
people reading your book
and watching the films,
this will continue.
So thank you so much for
sharing this afternoon with me.
- Thank you very much, Stephanie.
It was really great to talk with you.
- Thank you for having me.
(wind blowing)
