Power Multiplied

First Contact continued

On one side, the view from a restaurant high up an almost impassable road in Costa Rica. On the other side, a bloom from my yard on a vine in my Costa Rican back yard. To refresh your memories, I am recounting a special encounter in Alaska and I have been watching a group of humpback whales....After twenty minutes, a very young whale, perhaps sixteen feet long, swam over to examine the sailboat. Curious, he circled us, and swam upside down right under the hull. I loved it. But then the little one’s mother joined us to keep an eye on her young one. Now, the sailboat was thirty-five feet long and Charlie immediately became worried. Perhaps he was thinking of Moby Dick. The humpback was about fifty feet long, longer than our boat by a wide margin. If she had wanted to, she could have sunk us—perhaps you’ve heard of the orcas, smaller in size than humpbacks by quite a bit, in the Mediterranean Sea that have been playing with people’s boats, ramming them, damaging them, even sinking at least one. But that behavior, which most experts agree is not aggression, is rare. One of the prevalent theories is that the orcas, being highly organized social animals, were simply adopting a trend started by a dominant female. If so, at some point, they will tire of the trend and the behavior will stop....to be continued