In her genius debut book Fathoms: The World in the Whale, writer Rebecca Giggs introduces readers to blue whales that exhale canopies of vapor so high that their blowholes spout rainbows, to spade-toothed beaked whales that are so rare they’ve never been seen alive, and to sperm whales whose clinks are louder than the heaviest space rocket ever launched from Earth. In prose so deft it ought to be called poetry, Giggs describes scientific research on how whales shift the chemical makeup of our atmosphere, how they respond to solar storms that migrate vast unseen geomagnetic mountain ranges, and how a bestiary’s worth of fantastic creatures flourishes in whale carcasses as they sink to the ocean floor.
“Every species is a magic well,” E.O. Wilson wrote. “The more you draw from it, the more there is to draw.” But, as Fathoms illuminates, there’s more than just mystery and wonder in the wells these days. Animals’ bodies and lives are polluted with reminders of ourselves. Into these magic wells, we have dumped our plastics and our poisons. As one example, Giggs describes a sperm whale that washed up dead on Spain’s southern coast. In its ruptured digestive tract, scientists found an entire flattened greenhouse that once grew wintertime tomatoes, complete with plastic tarps, plastic mulch, hoses, ropes, two flower pots, and a spray canister. The whale had also swallowed an ice cream tub, mattress parts, a carafe, and a coat hanger. And that was just the obvious human refuse. Toxins build up in whale blubber over years such that the concentration of pollutants in some whale bodies far exceeds that of the environment around them. We have turned the world’s largest animals into hazardous waste. ‘‘Would we know it,” Giggs asks, “the moment when it became too late; when the oceans ceased to be infinite?”
Whales, as Giggs writes, have always driven humans to new depths of imagination, worldliness, and moral imperative. Through learning about whales, we discover new truths about ourselves. But how do whales experience our changing world? How was the triumph of the “Save the Whales” movement subverted by what we’ve done to whales’ environment with our shipping vessels, our fishing gear, our greenhouses, and our greenhouse gases? What can whales teach us about life’s possibilities and interconnectedness? What does realizing our impact on other animals do to our own psyches?
In Fathoms, Giggs dives deep into these questions, expanding our imagination about both our moral and physical landscapes. At a time of profound ecological crises, when so many of us are isolated and may feel like our lives are small, Fathoms reminds us that our lives are much more enormous in their impact and much grander in their entanglements with those of other creatures than we realize.
Rebecca Giggs is a writer from Perth, Australia. Her essays on how people feel toward animals in a time of ecological crisis and technological change have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and other publications. Fathoms is her first book. In the apt words of journalist Ed Yong: “Humanity’s relationship with nature has never been more important or vulnerable, and we are truly fortunate that at such a pivotal moment, a writer of Rebecca Giggs’ caliber is here to capture every beautiful detail, every aching nuance. She is in a league of her own.”
Rebecca Giggs’ recommendations:
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
On Trails: An Exploration by Robert Moor
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
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