Book Excerpt: The Seastead Girl
Excerpt from The Seastead Girl : My heart pounded in my chest as the three of us flapped our flippers toward the juvenile whale. Even though the juvenile was small for a humpback, it was still so huge that I felt like Thumbelina compared to the whale. I was surprised to see a number of fish swirling around the whale, as if they were paparazzi pursuing a celebrity. Then I recognized them as sucker fish, whale suckers. We had studied them earlier this week, in preparation for our whale watch. They were also called remora. They were not exactly parasites, but they were annoyances to whales. This baby was unable to defend itself against the little hitchhikers, and so dozens of them had started to follow it. About half of them were attached by their suckers, and the other half were swimming nearby. Although I had my oxygen tube hooked up I almost forgot to breathe. Kaplan swim within a foot of the whale’s head, meeting its gaze with his own. From where I was, I could see the intellige...