By listening to these subtle shifts in click patterns, and the volume and clarity of the clicks, he has taught himself to predict the location and moment that the whales will surface, with startling accuracy. I ask him: How accurate? Then he demonstrates. “They are two kilometers that way,” he says, pointing west. “They are coming up. They will be here in two minutes.” We sit, staring westward. “Thirty seconds . . .” he says. “They are moving to the east, and . . . right . . .” Exactly on cue, a pod of five whales surfaces about fifteen hundred feet from our boat,
