Harbour porpoises

Harbour porpoises enter the narrative through an exceptionally rare specimen: two stillborn animals conjoined in utero, sharing a single body. Found and preserved in Amsterdam, the creature is brought back for Ocean House, where its beauty and strangeness make it a possible centrepiece. Its journey from a colleague’s report to a public exhibit embodies the project’s scientific promise, while also concentrating the novel’s questions about how living and preserved animals are observed, interpreted, and displayed.

The Specimen and Its Discovery

The specimen first comes to Washington Black and Tanna Goff through news from Kees Visser, a distant colleague of Tanna’s father. Visser has described a two-headed cetacean and kept it in cold storage, hoping that Goff might collect it. Tanna admits she doubts the report: the claim is extraordinary, and Ocean House receives other improbable offers. Washington, however, points out that conjoined twins occur in nature, though rarely. Tanna relays Visser’s further description: the animal has two heads but one brain, with the limbic system divided between them.

The pair travel to Visser’s small laboratory near the Amsterdam harbour. The specimen lies on a bare wooden table; Visser’s preservation has kept it looking remarkably fresh. Washington and Tanna see two harbour porpoises conjoined in utero, their fetuses sharing one body. Their response is a silence of astonishment. They gather the specimen into a receptacle made for the purpose, discuss long-term preservation with Visser, and take it to their hotel for safekeeping.

Arrival at Ocean House

When Washington and Tanna return with the specimen, Goff has already discovered that his daughter went to Amsterdam with Washington. He had been preparing to search for them, but the arrival of the creature interrupts his anger. He studies it in silence and remarks on the striking contrast between its beauty and ugliness. The specimen’s unusual form has shifted the encounter: the pair are scolded for their deception, but Goff’s attention turns to what they have brought back.

In the days that follow, the group tests Visser’s suggested methods of long-term preservation and considers how the animal might be displayed. The decision is practical as well as imaginative: if the orange octopus Washington brought from Nova Scotia does not recover, the two-headed specimen may become Ocean House’s centrepiece. Its place in the exhibition therefore depends partly on the uncertain condition of another animal, and on the team’s ongoing work of preservation and display.

Ocean House and the Ethics of Display

The harbour porpoises belong to a larger project Washington first proposes as a permanent public exhibition of aquatic life. He imagines a gallery filled with large tanks and open-air terrariums, where visitors can look closely at animals and learn their habits firsthand. Goff presents the idea to the Zoological Committee in London; the committee accepts it, provides land, and allows an old timber building in the zoological gardens to be adapted for the exhibition, named Ocean House.

Washington takes pride in seeing the project built, because its conception is his, unlike the Cloud-cutter, which he regards as Titch’s vision. Yet the work also exposes a conflict over recognition. Washington understands that Goff, rather than a young Black man with facial disfigurement and no formal scientific training, is likely to be remembered as Ocean House’s founder. The same tension attends the porpoises’ display: the specimen is preserved, arranged, and interpreted for an audience, while the choices and labour behind the exhibition—including Washington’s—may not be visible to that audience.

Meaning in the Exhibition

The creature’s role is not merely to supply a striking exhibit. Washington is proud of Ocean House as a place where visitors might encounter animals they consider nightmarish and learn that they are beautiful and not to be feared. The porpoises make that aim especially vivid: their rare joined form challenges ordinary expectations of animal life, while the care devoted to preserving them turns an astonishing discovery into something the public can examine.

At the same time, the specimen’s presentation remains mediated by human decisions: who obtains it, how it is preserved, what place it receives among the displays, and whose knowledge is credited. The narrative does not settle these questions by treating exhibition as either simple education or simple possession. Instead, the harbour porpoises stand at the intersection of wonder, scientific care, public spectatorship, and the often-unacknowledged labour through which Ocean House comes into being.