By seven o’clock on the clear March morning, whale experts from Key West had arrived and were already beginning to coordinate what would later become a concerted effort by local fishermen and boating enthusiasts to push the beached animals back into the lagoon. Once the whales were off the beach, the next task would be to coax the entire pod into the Gulf of Mexico. There was little or no chance that the animals would survive unless they could be returned to open water.
Carol Dawson was the first reporter to arrive. She parked her sporty new Korean station wagon on the shoulder of the road, just off the beach, and jumped out to analyze the situation. The beach and lagoon at Deer Key formed a cove that was shaped like a half moon. An imaginary cord connecting the two points of land at the ends of the cove would extend almost half a mile across the water. Outside the cord was the Gulf of Mexico. The seven whales had penetrated the cove in the center and were beached at the point farthest from the open sea. They were about thirty feet apart and maybe twenty-five feet up on the sand. The rest of the whales were trapped in the shallows no more than a hundred feet offshore.
Carol walked around to the back of her station wagon. Before pulling out a large photographic case, she stopped to adjust the strings on her pants. (She had dressed quickly this morning when awakened in her Key West hotel room by the call from Miami. Her exercise sweat suit was hardly her usual working attire. The sweats hid the assets of a shapely, finely tuned body that looked more like twenty than thirty.) Inside the case was a collection of cameras, both still and video. She selected three of the cameras, popped a couple of M & Ms from an old package into her mouth, and approached the beach. As she walked across the sand toward the people and the beached whales, Carol stopped occasionally to photograph the scene.
Carol first approached a man wearing a uniform from the South Florida Marine Research Center. He was facing the ocean and talking to two Naval officers from the Marine Patrol section of the U.S. Naval Air Station in Key West. A dozen or so local volunteers were in close orbit around the speakers, keeping their distance but listening intently to the discussion. Carol walked up to the man from the research center and took him by the arm.
“Good morning, Jeff,” she said.
He turned to look at her. After a moment a vague smile of recognition crossed his face.
“Carol Dawson, Miami Herald,” she said quickly. “We met one night at MOI. I was with Dale Michaels.”
“Sure, I remember you,” he said. “How could I forget a gorgeous face like yours?” After a moment he continued, “But what are you doing here? As far as I know, nobody in the world knew these whales were here until an hour ago. And Miami is over a hundred miles away.”
Carol laughed, her eyes politely acknowledging and thanking Jeff for the compliment. She still didn’t like it but had grudgingly grown to accept the fact that people, men especially, remembered her for her looks.
“I was already in Key West on another story, Dale called me this morning as soon as he heard about the whales. Can I interrupt you for just a minute and get some expert comments? For the record, of course.”
As she was speaking, Carol reached down and picked up a video camera, one of the newest models, a 1993 SONY about the size of a small notebook, and began interviewing Dr. Jeff Marsden, “the leading authority on whales in the Florida Keys.” The interview was standard stuff, of course, and Carol could have herself supplied all the answers. But Ms. Dawson was a good reporter and knew the value of an expert in situations like this.
Dr. Marsden explained that marine biologists still did not understand the reasons for whale beachings, although their increased frequency in the late eighties and early nineties had provided ample opportunities for research. According to him, most experts blamed the beachings on infestations of parasites in the individual whales leading each of the unfortunate pods. The prevailing theory suggests that these parasites confuse the intricate navigation systems telling the whales where to go. In other words, the lead whale somehow thinks his migration path is onto the beach and across the land; the others follow because of the rigorous hierarchy in the pod.
“I’ve heard some people say, Dr. Marsden, that the increase in whale beachings is due to us and our pollution. Would you care to comment on the accusation that our wastes as well as our acoustic and electronic pollution have undermined the sensitive biosystems that the whales use to navigate?”
Carol used the zoom on her tiny video camera to record the furrowing of Jeff Marsden’s brow. He was clearly not expecting such a leading question from her this early in the morning.
After thinking for a moment, he answered. “There have been several attempts to explain why there are so many more beachings now than were recorded in the past. Most researchers come to the inescapable conclusion that something in the whales’ environment has changed in the last half-century. It is not too farfetched to imagine that we may well have been responsible for the changes.”
Carol knew she had the right quotes for a perfect short piece for television. She then quickly and professionally wrapped up the interview, thanked Dr. Marsden, and walked over to the onlookers. In a minute she had plenty of volunteers to take her out into the lagoon so that she could take some close-up photographs of the confused whales. Within five minutes not only had Carol finished several discs of still photographs, but she also had rigged up her video camera with a stabilizing tripod on one of the little boats and done a video clip of herself explaining the beachings.
Before leaving the beach at Deer Key, Carol Dawson opened up the back of her station wagon. It served her well as a portable photo laboratory. She first rewound and checked the video tape that she had taken, listening particularly to hear if the splashing of the whales could be heard behind her while she was in the boat. Then she popped the discs from the still cameras into readers to see if she liked all the photographs. They were good. She smiled to herself, closed the back of the station wagon, and drove back to Key West.
2
CAROL finished the redundant transfer of the videotape through the modem to Joey Hernandez in Miami and then called another number. She was sitting in one of the private cubicles inside the large new communications room at the Key West Marriott. The screen in front of Carol indicated that the connection for her new number had been made, but there was not yet any picture. She heard a woman’s voice say, “Good morning, Dr. Michaels’ office.”
“Good morning, Bernice, it’s Carol. I’m on video.”
The monitor cleared up in a second and a pleasant middle-aged woman appeared. “Oh, hi, Carol. I’ll tell Dale you’re on the line.”
Carol smiled as she watched Bernice swivel her chair and roll over to a panel of buttons on her left. Bernice was almost surrounded by her desk. In front of her were a couple of keyboards connected to two large screens, a variety of disc drives, and what looked like a phone embedded in another monitor. Apparently there had been no room for the communications panel right next to the phone, so Bernice had to roll three to four feet in her chair to signal to Dr. Dale Michaels that he had a call, that it was on video, that it was Carol, and that it was coming from Key West. Dr. Dale, as he was known by everyone except Carol, liked to have plenty of information before he answered the phone.
Both to Bernice’s left and right were perpendicular extensions to the desk, upon which were arrayed stacks of floppy discs of different sizes (the stacks were labeled “read” or “file” or “outgoing correspondence”), interleaved with groups of magazines and manila folders containing hard copy printout from the computers. Bernice pushed a button on the panel but nothing happened. She looked apologetically at Carol on the screen above the phone.
“I’m sorry, Carol.” Bernice was a little flustered. “Maybe I didn’t do it right. Dr. Dale had a new system installed this week again and I’m not certain . . .”
One of the two large monitors flashed a message. “Oh good,” Bernice continued, now smiling, “I did it right. He’ll be with you in a minute. He has someone in there with him and will finish quickly so he can see you and speak with you. I hope you don’t mind if I put you on hold.”