How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

by Sabrina Imbler

They x-rayed the fin, revealing that it still held seven of the petal-shaped barbs designed to keep the tag under the skin. The attending pathologist found that Nigel had died when fungi entered his bloodstream through the punctures, worming deep into his lungs, and killing him—a rare outcome of routine tagging. It is nearly impossible to imagine that a healthy whale in the prime of his life would have died from such an infection, but Nigel was not a healthy whale. He was not just hungry when they tagged him; they tagged him because he was hungry. He belonged to a pod of whales debilitated by disappearing salmon and polluted waters and the roaring noise of vessels. There is a way, the scientists realized, to study something to death. But scientists have to study whale death, to understand how and why we cause it—as we almost always do.