Shankara

Chapter 5 - THE HUNCHES OF NOTRE DAME

When Edwin ripened up a bit and Connor thought he could take a little more information, he continued, "Chloe, can you bring up the map of beachings worldwide, please." He looked at Edwin and said, "No one will admit it, especially Chloe, but I'm her favorite," and he winked.

In front of them suddenly appeared dozens and dozens of different-colored dots, each splayed out on the planet below. "As I mentioned before, each color represents a different whale species," and above each colored dot appeared what Edwin could see was a perfect image rendering of each whale species.

He looked and immediately said, "Mmm, that's interesting. Are all these magnetic anomalies fairly deep? About at least possibly 1 kilometer deep?"

"What makes you say that?" Eve asked, intrigued.

"Well, I'm no whale expert, just a whale geek, but it looks to me like all these are deep-diving whales. Whales that dive to at least 1 kilometer depth to hunt for food. May I?" he asked while gesturing at the images of whales.

"Be my guest," Connor replied and happily took a back seat.

"Here," and he hit one of the images, "we have Shepherd's Beaked Whale if I am not mistaken, Tasmacetus shepherdi," as he read the image's label. "I know of it because it is seldom seen and quite rare. Here as well, we have Cuvier's Beaked Whale, Ziphius cavirostris," but this time he didn't even need to read from the label; he knew this whale. "One of my favorite whales, it is the deepest-diving mammal on the planet. They actually dive to almost 3,000 meters, and I'm fairly sure they can hold their breath for at least 3 hours down there. Fascinating..." He trailed off. He raised up his hands defensively and said, "I'm a bit of a whale geek. I mean, they are after all one of the most fascinating mammals on this planet."

And he tapped on each colored dot, and sure enough, his suspicions came to pass. Gray's Beaked Whale, the Northern Bottlenose Whale, and so on. All of these whales hunted for food deep down in the ocean—he was now sure of it. And as he did, he couldn't help himself saying, "Did you know that we actually think sperm whales might have an alphabet?"

He looked up and realized both Connor and Eve were looking at him with a newfound look of respect and a heartwarming smile, as if they had found a long-lost friend. He felt like he was right back under his uncle's steady gaze upon instinctively guiding them to the fish's feeding grounds once again. Both Connor and Eve were impressed. Edwin had seen in a moment what no one else but Chloe had.

"You're right on the money, buddy," Connor said, and Eve took over gesturing at the image.

"And then we have this. Chloe, bring up the associated geomagnetic resonance anomalies," and suddenly more colored dots started appearing one after the other, and Edwin could clearly see that the colored dots of each beaching had an associated dotted line going from it to other similar-colored dots. But these, contrary to the beaching dots, were all in the ocean.

"Wow," Edwin said.

"Wow is the word," Eve said. "As you may notice, each of the dots of each of the beachings is quite close to these new dots representing geomagnetic resonance anomalies. And we theorize that the beaching dots follow the appearance of these geomagnetic resonance anomalies or GRA for short. Now, the dotted line linking each beaching dot to a GRA dot is theoretical, as we do not have proof that one caused the other... but," she continued, "this is a map of all beachings known so far and of all GRAs as well."

They almost perfectly overlapped, and each dot representing a whale beaching had a coincident dot in the ocean close to it. "Coincidence?" she seemed to ask herself.

Edwin thought for a brief moment, but his brain was already awash, and before he realized, he was thinking aloud. "I mean, it would make sense. We believe all these whales not only use celestial and ocean current navigation when they are at the surface but also use echolocation and geomagnetic navigation when they dive deep into the ocean. You have to realize that past 1,000 meters, there is no more light down there. It is a very dark, lonely, and cold place. Some scientists actually theorize that these whales might have magnetic crystals in their brains or tissues which allow them to detect the Earth's magnetic field. If these geomagnetic disturbances are strong enough, and if the whales get close enough, it could cause them to lose their way. We already think that underwater sounds from submarines and some underwater formations throw some marine animals off course, causing them to beach on land. It is a theory, but a fairly sound one," Edwin continued. "And so it would not be surprising that there is a connection between your magnetic anomalies and the beachings, although I am assuming these would have to be sizeable to strand all these animals... wow, that's very cool."