Leon Anawak—Alicia Delaware

Leon Anawak and Alicia Delaware’s relationship begins in disagreement over how humans can understand animal minds, then becomes a working partnership forged by apology, danger, and evidence. Their collaboration matters both to the investigation of the whale attacks and to the book’s challenge to judging other species by how closely they resemble humanity: the two initially argue over that question, but come to treat intellectual understanding and humane regard as responsibilities that can coexist with difference.

Intellectual Disagreement at the Aquarium

At the Vancouver Aquarium, Delaware questions what the mirror experiment with belugas can really establish. She accepts that an animal approaches a mirror and looks for a mark, but objects that observers cannot know what the beluga is thinking. In her view, interpreting the response as evidence of a mind risks projecting human experience onto a whale. Her objection lands on a point Anawak has long confronted, but he resists the conclusion she draws from it: his purpose is to understand whales, not to assume that they think and feel exactly as humans do.

Anawak answers by putting the comparison in both directions. Human self-awareness, he notes, develops under particular conditions; infants do not reliably recognize themselves in a mirror until roughly eighteen to twenty-four months. He also asks Delaware to imagine how a beluga might interpret a person studying their reflection while applying makeup. The joke unsettles the presumed human position as the measure of intelligence: a whale’s judgment of human behavior could be no more flattering than a human’s judgment of the whale.

The exchange becomes sharper when Anawak mocks Delaware’s makeup and she takes his remark personally. Yet his ensuing qualification makes clear that he is not claiming special closeness between humans and cetaceans. Whales and dolphins inhabit a different environment, have different needs, and have followed different evolutionary paths; mirror tests are only a beginning. The value of the work, he argues, lies partly in persuading people to respect and protect them, not in turning them into humanity’s friendly reflections.

From Argument to Mutual Recognition

Their disagreement continues later aboard the Zodiac, where the sight of Stellar sea-lions gives Anawak a setting for reframing it. Delaware objects to treating human likeness as the basis for animal worth. Anawak acknowledges the arrogance in ranking life by resemblance, while also observing that many people find animals easier to kill than humans and struggle to extend equal respect to forms of life they consider lesser. Their dispute is therefore not simply about what the mirror test proves: it is about whether ethical concern must wait for proof of human-like thought.

Anawak sees a limited understanding of animal psychology as possible, even if entering an animal’s mind completely is not. Delaware is more doubtful that humans can ever cross the gap. Their positions do not collapse into agreement, but each recognizes the force of the other’s concern. Delaware responds with delight when she realizes that Anawak shares her opposition to a hierarchy of life; he in turn distinguishes their common ethical ground from what he sees as her more dogmatic account of communication. The relationship gains its first real intimacy through this capacity to disagree without reducing the other to an opponent.

The personal repair is as concrete as the intellectual one. Delaware seeks Anawak out before a tour and asks to join him. On the water, she apologizes for having acted like a know-it-all at the aquarium. She then insists that he apologize for his remark about the beluga questioning her intelligence. Anawak admits that he had been annoyed by what he took to be her preconceived ideas and attention-seeking, and that his anger had hurt her. His apology does not erase the original friction; it lets them name their part in it and continue together.

The Whale Attacks Make the Partnership Practical

When Anawak encounters Delaware again amid the response to the whale attacks, she is aboard the Blue Shark and calls across to ask who the men in the motorboats are and what they are doing. Their earlier debate is immediately overtaken by the danger and confusion around them. Delaware’s presence also complicates Anawak’s assumptions: he had understood that she was about to leave the island, and his discovery that she is still there contributes to a later confrontation.

After Delaware has been in the cold water, Anawak tells her to go to the clinic. He is angry that he broke the rules to take her along, believing she had persuaded him with a false story about leaving. Delaware explains that she did want to go on his tour, but had misrepresented herself: she is staying for several more weeks, studies biology at the University of British Columbia, and is not from Chicago. Anawak resents feeling used and shouts at her, although he recognizes that the incident was not all her fault. Delaware, recently close to death, refuses to withdraw into the clinic or let his anger end the discussion. She has come to help find out what happened.

Her contribution is not a guess but a traceable piece of evidence. A woman rescued from the water had been filming with a camera strapped tightly around her neck, so it survived the attack. Delaware spoke to her and learned that she had recorded the entire episode, including Jack Greywolf’s arrival. From the position of the witnesses, Delaware remembers that the Lady Wexham was behind Greywolf’s boat. Anawak understands what the footage could establish: it may show the attack itself. He accepts her lead, and Delaware makes clear that she expects to examine the recording with him rather than be excluded from the investigation.

The camera changes the balance between them. Anawak has every reason to be wary of Delaware’s deception, but also recognizes that her idea is their best lead. Her insistence is not merely a claim to be treated kindly; it is backed by a useful observation, access to the witness, and a willingness to keep working after the danger has passed. The former irritation becomes investigative trust, not because their earlier conflict disappears but because Delaware demonstrates the value of her judgment under pressure.

A Durable Investigative Alliance

The footage proves valuable. Anawak and Delaware assemble the year’s Pacific-coast telemetry data and work through positioning records and hydrophone recordings, but the whales’ migration data offer little: almost none carried tags on the journey from Hawaii and Baja California toward the Arctic, and two tagged humpbacks soon lost their transmitters. The Blue Shark video is their only substantial direct evidence. With help from aquarium staff and skippers skilled at recognizing flukes, they replay and magnify it until they identify two humpbacks, a grey whale, and several orcas among the attackers.

The results validate Delaware’s practical contribution, but the partnership rests on more than a single successful lead. Anawak’s initial aversion to her fades as he discovers an intelligent, analytical mind beneath her brash manner. Her persistence can be abrasive, and she does not always stop to consider how her words will land; nonetheless, she brings time, biological study, and a readiness to pursue details others might miss. Delaware, for her part, wants field experience that connects her studies to practical work, while Anawak needs assistance after Susan Stringer’s death.

That loss gives the collaboration a further, painful context. Anawak is haunted by guilt that he failed to save Stringer and by uncertainty over whether anyone could have made an orca release its prey. His research on marine-mammal intelligence seems inadequate against the immediate question of whether he can understand a whale’s thought processes well enough to intervene. Delaware cannot resolve that grief or supply a simple answer. What she can do is help him investigate the attacks, and her work turns their contested interest in animal minds into a shared task. Their relationship settles into an alliance built on intellectual friction, reciprocal apology, and evidence gathered together.