Location: North Atlantic
Today a four-meter, the two-thousand-pound baby was born. Everyone reading this is probably like, uhhhhh, what? To explain, today, we witnessed the birth of a baby sperm whale. To repeat THE BIRTH OF A BABY SPERM WHALE!! Let me explain how rare that is according to Tom, sperm whales only start mating once they’re 18 and only give birth every three to six years. And we witnessed it. The entire day I’ve been having trouble comprehending how special and magical the moment was, and I’ll probably never be able to fully comprehend it. There were about 25 whales in this one pod Carolyn counted and they were all swimming practically on top of each other.
We were all so confused as to why they were so close together; it was such odd behavior. Tom got out the drone and sent it over, and we saw that they all seemed to be supporting one whale in the center. We were all standing around the screen of the drone in awe until we saw a bunch of blood in the water worrying? We concluded that the whale must either be injured or give birth. Suddenly, the whale in the middle started to rotate onto her back, and we saw the tail of the baby sticking out of her! We collectively screamed at that moment, and people who were standing on the bow came sprinting back to see what the commotion was about. We were all stunned some of us were still screaming (myself included), some were just sitting with their mouths hanging open, and some of us were crying. Emotions were running high; none of us could believe what we had just seen. We decided since we are literally the only people in the world who just witnessed the birth that, we had the right to name the baby. So, it is my pleasure to introduce the world to Gilbert Francis Oswald III. A fitting name, if I do say so myself. Anyways, we’ve all agreed that today was the day we all peaked in life. I mean, how can anything ger any cooler, more magical, more special than this? And on the last full day of passage what a welcome to the Azores. Some of us were dreading today a bit, having only gotten five hours of sleep and 1/3 of us taking the navigation master exam today (I can be included in both categories), but now I can’t even fathom having any negative emotions. Life is just so awesome. Tom even said that this may be one of the coolest things he’s ever seen, and he’s seen a lot of cool stuff. I wrote this just minutes after the even, so y’all at home are getting my fresh thoughts right now. Will I be talking about this for the rest of my life? No doubt.
But, anyway, back to the planned schedule. (IDK how we can return to our ‘normal’ life after today’s events, but we’re managing). Like I said before, about a third of us took the navigation master exam today, which is a three-hour long exam on navigational charting. Grueling. The headache I had after, oh my. But I passed! Natalie and I found out at the same time and started screaming our heads off and ran up to give Abi a hug (she also passed). Then we had dinner and clean up and watch the drone videos of the whales!
It’s crazy that tomorrow we’re finally going to be in the Azores it does not feel like we’ve been on the open ocean for 16 days at all. It has truly flown by. I am so excited to restock on snacks in the Azores; I’ve been really craving some sour skittles.
That’s all from me,
Zoe
p.s. I’ll talk to y’all tomorrow, fam! Miss y’all!!
p.p.s. we saw dolphins right after I finished writing this. What even is life. What a day.