Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul Read Online Free PDF

writer stared in amazement. Incredible, was all he could think.
    The fisherman explained that the ritual had begun long ago, when he was out one day and a barracuda had come up to the side of his boat. This went on for years, until the time came when he noticed the barracuda was getting older and slower in his movements. He knew that some time soon, he wouldn’t be seeing his friend from the sea.
    One day he went out, slapped the side of his boat and saw not one rippling, but two. Alongside his old friend was a younger barracuda. The old one let the fisherman rub his head, then nudged the younger one closer to the boat, as the fisherman cautiously put his hand into the water to rub his new friend’s head. Then the old one slowly swam away.
    The next time the fisherman went out, along came his new friend, alone. He leaned over to rub its head as his tears fell into the sea. He knew he would never see his dear old friend again.
    Never in his whole life had the writer heard such a story, but now he believed. Now his heart believed. And now he had a greater respect for the sea—and the special part of life that keeps us in harmony with nature.
    Martha Gusukuma-Donnenfield

Encounter with a Sperm Whale
    Back in 1981, few people—if any—had swum with sperm whales: forty- to eighty-foot-long masters of the deep sea with enormous jaws containing rows of large, conical teeth. Sperm whales are elusive. They dive hundreds to possibly thousands of feet and seldom initiate contact with humans, unlike the gray or humpback whales.
    We were off the coast of Sri Lanka in a small thirty-three-foot sailing vessel following pods of sperm whales for extended periods of time under the auspices of the World Wildlife Fund. The longest we managed to do this was for a few days, and it was difficult, relentless work because we had to rely on tracking their sounds. Because the whales dive for over an hour sometimes, we could not rely on sight. So we rigged up an underwater acoustic system that could locate the whales’ sounds by receiving the clicks emitted from the foreheads and jaws of the whales to obtain a fix on their position. Of course, the whales sometimes “shut up,” at which point it was highly possible that we would lose the group. But often we were successful, and when we followed the sounds correctly, the whales would surface in the vicinity of our little ship.
    In the process of following individual whales, it was important to know if we were following males or females, so the obvious move was to go and have a look. I, of course, was dying to swim with these enormous beings, so I immediately offered to jump in. With wry humor and twinkles in their eyes, Doctors Hal Whitehead and Jonathan Gordan, my two British companions, reminded me that sperm whales “stun” their prey. The whales feed on the mysterious deep-sea giant squid, a creature that can reach sixty feet in length. The whales stun the squid, then use their long, narrow mouths to delicately seize their mouthful of food. All of this happens in darkness, possibly a thousand or more feet underwater.
    And here we were, in the tropics of the Indian Ocean, dabbling with the delights of swimming with the “gentle” beings of the deep. How did we know they were gentle? Why, I might be just the size of a delectable baby squid paddling about on the surface of the water with the bright tropical sun making me an obvious target! Of course, the sperm whale will know better than that, I convinced myself. Furthermore, I was tantalized by the possibility of swimming with one of the largest and most elusive creatures on Earth!
    I hastened on my snorkel gear, hand-hoisted myself over the stern of the thirty-three-foot sloop, tying myself to a hemp rope fastened to the stern of the ship that would pull me through the water. I had been trained a few hurried moments before about the little Nikonos camera that I held in my right hand while holding on to the rope with my left hand. I was