Well this orca seems to have an eye on me, while I attempt to emulate an octopus; engaged in sorting, finalising, packing and completing eight things at once, intent on fitting my life into a suitcase ready to rejoin my husband in America next week. However, I am afraid that despite my best attempts, my octopus impression does not quite stretch to being abe to write a ‘real’ blog post right now. (To the disapproval of my watching killer whale friend I am sure.) But I can at least give a couple of shout outs for two up and coming events which anyone with an interest in flukes, flippers, blowholes and other such whale related curiosities, may jump at the chance to attend.
The wording below is taken from Marine Life Studies and Planet Whale’s promotional materials. Please visit their websites for more details.
“Flip for Whales“ Sunset Cruise and Yacht Club Party, featuring National Geographic photographer, Charles “Flip” Nicklin, Saturday October 20th, Monterey Bay, Calfornia, USA
This fundraising event will support Marine Life Studies’ whale and dolphin research, the Whale Entanglement Team (W.E.T.), and free educational programs for children, youth, and adults.
The sunset cruise, 4 to 7 pm, departs Moss Landing Harbor on the Blue Ocean Whale Watch vessel, “High Spirits”. Special guest Flip Nicklin will be featured along with live music by Jim Davis, wine, appetizers, and a silent and live auction.
The yacht club party, 7 to 10 pm, is at the Elkhorn Yacht Club in Moss Landing. Activities include a special presentation by Flip Nicklin and Peggy Stap, Executive Director of Marine Life Studies, live music by composer/pianist Nick Peter Fettis, wine, appetizers, and a silent and live auction.
Mingle with Flip during this event where he will: share stories of his adventures photographing whales and dolphins around the world; give pointers on how to take that perfect “National Geographic” photo; sign his book “Among Giants: A Life with Whales” which will be available for purchase.
Minimum donation is $125 per ticket. Donations are tax deductible. Limited tickets are available so call 831.901.3833 to make a reservation or visit the website at www.marinelifestudies.org
‘Save the Whales’ Reloaded: WhaleFest 25-28th October 2012, Brighton, UK
Thirty years ago the world voted to ‘save’ the whale. Now it’s time to inspire the next generation to finish the job at the very place where that monumental vote was first made. WhaleFest is the world’s biggest celebration and declaration for whales and dolphins, organised by the Planet Whale team.
Celebrities and expert speakers at WhaleFest will include Bill Oddie, Doug Allan, Mark Carwardine, Ingrid Visser, Pete Bethune, Mark Simmonds, Philip Hoare, Erich Hoyt, Gill Lewis and Nicola Davies.
The World Whale Conference will be held on 25th and 26th October; your chance to make a difference along with cetacean conservationists from around the world.
The festival will take place on 27th and 28th October. Activities include ocean storytelling, speed dating with marine experts, music and arts, competitions and much more.
Children’s tickets are free and adult tickets range from £7.50-16.50 for one or two days of the weekend festival. For more details on these, plus tickets to the World Whale Conference, please visit:
http://www.whale-fest.com/
Sometimes we are fooled into thinking that the world is getting smaller… We can fly around it so fast, access information about every corner of it in seconds, watch instant live pictures of the most remote places from the familiarity of our homes… Smaller and smaller, more known less unknown, more commonplace less remarkable… Easily taken for granted and less easily able to shake us awake to look with wide-eyed wonder at the incredible, unfathomable, bounteous marvels around us.
Because really, the world is not getting smaller and it is still filled with wonder, more wonder than most of us can handle in one lifetime. (Maybe it is just our minds shrinking a little during our adult lives that fool us into thinking otherwise.) When we can summon just a little energy to step outside the relatively small box of everyday life, take ten minutes to explore something new, turn on a computer and look up new realms of interests, read a book about something we know nothing about, (never mind jumping on a plane and visiting someplace new)… We can stumble across things that explode the world open again and show us how vast it really is.
Mmmm, as I am finding out, the world of orcas is so much bigger than that and to think otherwise is to do a great injustice to orcas and to people who know better. Some such people are so intensely interested in killer whales that they spend their entire lives trying to learn more about them and passing that knowledge on to others. Peggy Stap of 
After my confusion about orcas and their seemingly misplaced classifications of residents (who do not reside in Monterey Bay at all); transients (who seem to reside or, at least, visit the bay most frequently); and offshores (who inhabit some mythic realm of my imagination in some distant ocean along with giant squids, Poseidon and krakens)… I did some online-orca-hunting of my own and suddenly found the world of the killer whales opening up before me and getting a whole lot bigger.
Resident and transient orcas were first named by a scientist called 
I cannot in one blog post do killer whales any justice by attempting to present the uniqueness and complexity of each ecotype. So, to give you just a tiny snapshot of their ‘characters’, let’s imagine we are in a speed-dating scenario, attempting to decide which orca-ecotype we would like to take on a date to the prom (to borrow Peggy Stap’s nickname for killer whales). I’ll allow each ecotype a few words to introduce themselves, but only as many as can be read in 30 seconds or so:
Well, if your speed dating encounter with killer whales has made you keen to have a second date and find out more, there are a couple of places I can recommend you turn to. I came across the most fascinating in-depth writing about orcas in the 
It is a subtle shift that occurs, between periods of time when words disappear into a hazy background while other preoccupations hold the foreground, and periods of time where a space opens up right in the centre for words to move into and claim for their own. At present, a jumble of words are tumbling over each other to be written. The overly linear side of my brain would like to organise them into a coherent order; complete the Bob Talbot posts, write some welcome updates on Peggy Stap and then progress to writing about Pieter Folkens and climate change, or the lack of it. However, aided and abetted by the Bob-cat still evading my attempts on completion, each time I sit down to write, I feel the other flexible, non-linear, meandering side of my brain (must be the right side) stepping forwards and moving me into non-logical places.
And so it is that today, while I had every conscious intention to write about Peggy Stap and our adventures together searching for cetaceans (aka whales) in Monterey Bay, I am pulled into a minor digression about her black and white research subjects which she calls her ‘dates to the prom’, none other than the fantastically named KILLER WHALES.
Of course, as most people know, this name does not do them justice but does elevate them, by name alone, to the status of being ‘cool’. And in the flesh, they are even ‘cooler’. There is just something so extraordinarily compelling about these most beautiful of ocean dwellers. Having seen them a handful of times up close and personal, I know that all the words in the world – stunning, magnificent, sleek, majestic, powerful… – can never be enough. Orcas generate a feeling which lies deeper than words can reach.
The absolute clincher that causes my jaw to drop in awe and my respect soaring to dizzying heights is knowing that these animals that hunt and tear apart seals, dolphins, whales and sharks have never willfully attacked a human in the wild. Moreover, there are only a handful of documented accounts of accidental attacks, none of which have been fatal. Different ‘sub-species’ of killer whales have completely different diets with some, called transient orcas, specializing in preying on marine mammals. I can only guess that a mammal-eating-orca knows full well that human beings are mammals, and ones which, if out swimming or surfing, would be a much easier target than, say, a fast, wary and alert harbor porpoise. Yet, they leave us alone. I cannot help but wonder as to why they afford us such a singular place of honour.
Even as we have been slowly but surely, ignorantly and self-servingly, hammering metaphorical nails into their coffins, orcas still leave us alone. It is, maybe, debatable whether killer whales would even be aware that our actions are the cause of their distress. Do they know, for example, that the high levels of toxins in their bodies are because of us? Or that their lack of food is caused by our endless fishing? Or that the injuries to their ears that can cause them to beach themselves come from manmade underwater explosions and sonar systems? Or even that the debris in the oceans which they can become entangled in is our debris…? How intelligent does an animal have to be to sense that at least some of these abuses can be attributed to those strange creatures who travel across the oceans in noisy, metallic, free-floating islands, dragging huge nets after them and dumping foul-smelling waste into the depths? Maybe orcas, along with fish and other ocean inhabitants, do not have a clue as to the source of their problems… But, seeing as orcas are a great deal smarter than fish, maybe they do. If they do, it is an even greater wonder that they still leave us alone and do not seek retribution. I am not sure if humans would do likewise.
In fact, the only documented accounts of orcas attacking and killing humans are when they are in captivity. Those stories make the headlines; surely we have all heard of incidents at one Seaworld or another where trainers have been hurt or killed, with the most recent killing of a female trainer in 2010 by an orca called Tilikum. Whether or not these incidents are willful attacks or misguided, boisterous attempts at play is uncertain. Dolphins in captivity can commit the extreme act of suicide by refusing to eat, refusing to breathe and striking their heads against aquarium walls. It is equally plausible that an orca could reach levels of despair, frustration and insanity deep enough to commit acts of aggression directed at people. I feel sad for the humans who have died and I feel equal empathy towards the killer whales; an animal of lesser intelligence and capacity for emotional distress, would not get bored, feel despair, or be capable of ‘losing their mind in the heat of the moment’.
… So, did I mention something about a transient orca? Let’s return to that ambiguous term. What on earth does ‘transient’ orca mean and, for that matter, what does ‘resident’ orca and ‘offshore’ orca mean? Initially I did not know that these different classifications of killer whales existed. Once I learnt their names, I still did not know exactly what the names meant and so I got very confused when Peggy told me that her main research subjects are transient orcas and not resident ones. I assumed, quite understandably I think, that resident orcas must reside in Monterey Bay, (with transients going in and out of it randomly, and offshores staying a long way out to sea and never entering the bay).
Today I was reading ‘Abundance and Right Livelihood’ by 
In every leaf, every drop of ocean, every bird that flies or animal that runs, crawls, slithers or swims, in every fragment of rock and every beam from the sun… The whole world delivers a message every single day and every single night.
It is all there, raw and glorious and unhidden, contained within that one glance. The ocean… That gives life, and takes it. That offers the softest of playful ripples to paddle in with laughter, and the most vengeful of raging torrents to suck ships and people alike to a dark-drowning end. That contains a plentiful bounty of nourishment and wonder, and a power so strong it can throw itself against the land with an all consuming violence that spares nothing in its path. We came from the ocean, along with this abundance of miraculous life; we owe our very existence to its creative prowess. Yet, it has also heralded destruction on a grand scale, when ‘anoxic events’ gave rise to a splattering of mass extinctions strewn along the thread of our planet’s long history. It ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows, to a rhythm which takes its lead from the wanderings of our accompanying moon, but which occasionally breaks from this harmonious song to throw discord and chaos at the world.
I cannot help but smile to realize that this leads me to a glaringly obvious thought. If God exists, and by God I mean that divinity which all religions point towards but which none own outright, nor can claim singular knowledge of or singular path towards, then It is the ultimate definer of the word ‘inclusive’.
But in the face of these monumental shows of inclusivity, the evidence written into every physical manifestation around us, what do we humans manage to do? In the tragic-comic puppet show of our existence we divide, condemn, judge and attempt to separate the godly from the ungodly. People of one religion make war on those of another, a heterosexual man condemns a homosexual one, and we all want to shut someone or something out of our club.
In the face of such a paradox, in what direction shall I steer my ship? Shall I set a course towards a land of love, compassion, understanding and growth? Or shall I steer towards darker realms of greed, ignorance and stagnation, knowing that the divine gives full blessing for me to do so? There is no push or pull to do either, no carrot of heaven and no stick of hell to propel me. Whether I choose stagnation or growth, I am still included within the divine’s embrace.
“Not only are you always given a choice, you are always making a choice, and you’re always making the choice that you think will best produce, or avoid, a given outcome. What you seek is the outcome that will assist you in defining Who You Really Are. That’s what you are up to. Now, you may not articulate it in that way, but I assure you, that’s what the human soul is up to. And when you begin to see it that way, when you begin to frame it in that way, you see life in a whole different way. And you imagine life to be a grand adventure, because suddenly it becomes an extraordinary adventure – an adventure in self-creation.”
While the elusive Bob-cat (renowned photographer and film-maker 
I visited Peggy for a couple of weeks in April, staying with her in beautiful Monterey Bay, California. I have a soft spot for Monterey, with its cute old houses (of course, we are talking old for America, not old by world standards), gentle streets that people actually walk along as opposed to simple drive through, and its lush variety of trees and plants that provide a wonderful feeling of nature, freedom and woodlands in amongst an urban setting.
I met Peggy’s husband Dick for the first time; an intelligent, gentle man with an all-encompassing love for his wife and the most interesting, eloquent person to sit down with and have a conversation of substance. Peggy’s dog Whiskie the Whale Spotter was as adorable as ever and I swear I have never, ever seen a dog with such an ability to relax in the most indulgent fashion; every day sprawled in some new, exotic position on her favored chair of the moment.
‘Take it to the Streets’ is an initiative devised and run by MLS in collaboration with 
I know from my own dance teaching the immeasurable value that out-of -the-ordinary experiences provide children. Young people need unexpected and exciting experiences to shake their perceptions, instill new thinking, bring fresh energy and encourage a renewed sense of curiosity. As adults, we can easily forget to seek these experiences and fall into the trap of living a life where we believe that life is simply about ‘getting by, plodding along’. But children have not yet been deceived into believing that life is about living a humdrum existence. They are alive to possibilities and open to the potential for growth that the unknown brings. One-off exciting and nurturing experiences spark new fires in their imaginations and remind them that the world is limited only by their perceptions of it, and sometimes this impression inspires a lifetime of passion-infused living. This is exactly what ‘Take it to the Streets’ provided.
However, children by their very nature, are also wonderfully changeable and adaptable, and in their teens their attention can swing wildly between conflicting focuses; one day they think the world of something, the next it is forgotten. They require the intellectual and emotional freedom to develop their own perceptions of the world, but they also require structure to develop these ideas coherently and safely, and they require steady, patient guidance to introduce and nurture certain aspects of their thinking. Out-of-the-ordinary experiences like ‘Take it to the Streets’ may light a fire that does not die out for some children, but, for some, the fire may be forgotten by tomorrow. Maybe that is enough; maybe that is just how it should be. But maybe, in a world where our actions are causing such harm to our planet and others around us, more is required.
I do not have an all-encompassing answer and I do not even believe there is necessarily just one answer. We are all such different creatures, needing different experiences and different ways of learning. One religion does not serve all of humanity; while all paths may lead to the same essence eventually, a multitude of paths can be taken along the way. So it is with how we learn, how we interact in our families and how we build our communities; there may be many solutions to the challenges life presents us. I do, however, believe that our overall approach could change… from one which is externally led to one which is internally moved. From one which is about material possessions and achievement in the outer world, to one which is about inner treasures and internal growth. From one which focuses on what we can all get from the world, to one which nurtures the concept of both inward and outward flow, giving and receiving.
And now I am left with a challenge… I started writing this post freeform with no defined objective as to what subjects it might lead me to or where it would end, just a picture of Peggy and her child-like self and the vague notion that I would write about her and MLS. And look where I ended up; in the midst of musings that weave their way from education to religion to the state of our world! A complicated puzzle but one where everything is intertwined, everything is connected. From Peggy, to child-like, to the education of our children, to children’s innate natures, to our human nature, to the flames in our hearts, to the small picture of one person unthinkingly dropping litter, to the larger picture of our whole world, to the mysterious inner realm that underpins our external life, to inward and outward flow… All of these subjects are connected, as is every aspect of our lives, with everything influencing and being influenced by everything else. Remarkable!
“It was only in my forties that I became less judgmental about us as a species and more accepting that we behave as we do because it is our nature; just like any other creature. When I was young I was morally outraged. On some level I still am, but I now temper that outrage with rational thinking that I hope leads to more effective solutions.”
In his youth, this conflict was strong. Bob was guided more by his emotions than by intellect. It was innate for him to feel passionately about the world and our species’ relationship with it. He would feel, react to how he felt and then take action, often driven by anger and frustration. He experienced guilt, angst and the belief that he should be doing more, coupled with an equally judgmental attitude towards the rest of the human race. He took up the good fight believing that if issues were made clear to people then reason and empathy would win out.
This sparked a dialogue between the rational and emotional sides of Bob’s nature, something along the lines of, 
However, Bob is of course human and admits he can still be a judgmental person. 
Which is why he remains an environmentalist to this day; one who accepts that our future may not be bright, but nevertheless keeps hope alive that it still could be. And one who wants to instill in each of us the unshakable, ethical and honorable stance that if something is worth fighting for we must fight, regardless of whether we win or lose.
