Roger

was excited. He had never seen a whale in the flesh before. At the time, he was studying moths.

And i thought, oa must see it. But i had other stuff to do. And by the time i got there, it was dark and everybody who had been on the beach had left, and it was raining. But i found the whale, and it turned out to be a dolphin, which is a form of whale. And somebody had cut the tail off this whale, somebody else had carved their initials in its flank, and someone else had stuffed a cigarbut in its blow hole. And i stood looking at this beautiful creature, and at one point my flashlight went out, but it was still gently vaguely backlit by a kind of glow of the sky. And i could see its silhouettete, beautiful curves of this creature. And it occurred to me that, you know, something has got to be something different.

Roger knew that many species of whales were on the verge of being hunted to extinction, just barely holding on. And from roger's perspective, the problem was clear, people couldn't see whales properly. See, at this moment in history, 19 66, whales were not yet the international sensation of a mega pauna. Microbiologist david gruber found so irritating whales appeared as soap oil or a tedious assignment in your tenth grade english class, but otherwise didn't show up that much in the average human life. Because whales are enormous animals that move through their lives at a completely different tempo over vast and far flung oceans.