Whales

Whales are both the focus of Jake’s proposed research in Baja and a measure of how readily he imagines a future beyond his current path. The book presents them not merely as subjects to be studied but as animals that approach people voluntarily, provoke intense human responses, and may possess forms of communication and intelligence that humans have yet to understand.

Research and encounter

Jake tells Helen that, four days after the BCSC trip ends, he plans to fly from Denver to Baja for a research assistantship studying whales. The field study will take place at their breeding grounds: researchers will row out in small fishing boats and observe how the animals interact with humans. In Jake’s account, the encounters are initiated by the whales themselves. They swim up to the boats, and people pet them.

That detail gives the proposed research its particular force. The whales are not described as passive objects brought within human reach; their voluntary approach makes contact possible. Helen asks why anyone would pet a whale, while recognizing the simple answer: because the whale wants the contact. Her response marks a difference between understanding the attraction and sharing it. Jake finds the encounters powerful; Helen initially says she does not see what is so great about them, and he answers with confidence that she does.

Human responses to whales

Jake describes the encounters through their effects on people. Some cry; some burst into show tunes; people say afterward that they are never the same again. The reactions, as he reports them, range from tears to exuberant performance, but share the claim of lasting change. The whale encounter is thus represented not as an ordinary animal sighting but as an experience that unsettles or transforms its human witnesses.

The contrast between Jake’s conviction and Helen’s skepticism gives this account a place in their conversation as well as in his plans. He does not offer a technical explanation for why the animals inspire such reactions. Instead, the story lets the reported responses stand beside the concrete image of whales swimming to the boats. Their approach remains an animal action in its own right, while its emotional meaning becomes visible through the people who encounter it.

From assistantship to possible vocation

Later, Jake connects the Baja position to a wider interest in what whales might be able to communicate. He found the assistantship posting on a bulletin board in the student center and applied on a whim. Getting the job made the possibility feel consequential, though he resists Helen’s suggestion that it was destiny: he calls it a possible new direction. That distinction keeps the opportunity open-ended. The field study may shape his future, but he has not yet decided that it will.

Jake explains that the professor he will work for takes an underwater microphone and records whale sounds. He says whales have a highly evolved language that works like sonar, and that they possess spindle cells associated in humans with self-awareness, compassion, and language. In his account, whales have had those cells about fifteen million years longer than humans. The book presents this as part of Jake’s explanation of why the research intrigues him, rather than as a conclusion established by the field study.

The prospect of deciphering whale communication gives the assistantship a possible long horizon. Jake wonders whether he might make a career of trying to understand what whales say. He also speculates that they may be smarter than humans, adding that he suspects they are. Helen encourages the possibility that he could be the person to find out how much. Jake remains measured: he will see how the internship goes. The exchange leaves whale research poised between a summer job and a potential vocation, without resolving which it will become.

The wish to meet them

Whales also appear on Jake’s personal list of things he wants to do: he would like to pet one. When the subject comes up alongside other ambitions, including scuba diving, driving a race car, and riding the world’s scariest roller coaster, he is pleased to be reminded of the whale. The wish joins his scientific interest to the possibility of direct contact; he hopes not only to study the animals but to experience an encounter like the ones he has described.

The possibility becomes an invitation when Jake suggests that Helen come with him to Baja. She welcomes the idea while imagining it as a reason to miss a bar mitzvah she has been dreading, and frames her excuse around the gray whales’ spawning season. The scene does not establish that she ultimately travels with him. It does show the whale plan changing from Jake’s individual research opportunity into a shared prospect—one that Helen can imagine wanting, even before she knows whether it will happen.