Episode 110: A Discovery of Whales
Credit: Doreen Cunningham
Doreen Cunningham always loved whales. So when she got the chance to live with an Iñupiaq tribe, whose survival depends on whales, she jumped at it. Years later, back in her home in the UK, Doreen would once again turn to whales, this time to help her heal.
Megan Feighery
From Wyoming Public Media, this is HumaNature, real stories where humans and our habitat meet. I'm Megan Feighery.
This time a woman turns to the natural world to help heal her.
Doreen Cunningham
I was exhausted one evening, fed up with trying to work and had a really bad day. And so I was like right there. I'm not working. I'm going to read about whales.
Megan Feighery
Doreen Cunningham has always felt connected to the sea.
Doreen Cunningham
I grew up with the sea all around. I was an island child. I was born in Wales. And then when I was six or seven, we moved to Jersey, which is a little island in the Channel Islands. My mother suffered from very severe depression and mood swings. And my dad used to take us to the sea a lot. We often went when it was cold and wavy. I sort of knew when the tide was high or low. I learned to swim in the sea and felt very close to it.
Megan Feighery
Doreen also felt a special connection with all the creatures in the ocean, especially whales, even though she never saw them.
Doreen Cunningham
No, I never saw whales. It was more in my imagination. When I was growing up also, it was the time that the Save the Whales campaign was born. So whales were on the TV, sometimes being dragged on to whaling ships. And there was a very active campaign going on, showing the undersea world.
Megan Feighery
The campaign made a big impression on Doreen and she never forgot it. Doreen went on to study engineering at university. She worked in hydrology, and then climate research before falling into journalism. She ended up with the BBC reporting on climate change.
Doreen Cunningham
And that was a time when the deniers were all over the airwaves diminishing and denying climate change. As someone who came from a science background I found it difficult to understand what was going on. And so I decided I wanted to go and see if climate change was happening for myself. I pitched to go to the northern coast of Alaska and speak to local people and to indigenous people and find out what their experience was, you know, hear from the people who would really understand what was happening at the frontline as it were.
Megan Feighery
So in 2006 during the founding she headed to Utqiagvik, the northernmost town in the United States, and one of the largest Inupiaq communities in Alaska. Doreen was excited, her career was taking off and she loved having the freedom to travel and chase her dreams. Life in Utqiagvik revolves around the sea ice, it allows for travel between towns and villages, access to harvesting areas. And when the ice opens, it's time to hunt.
Doreen Cunningham
The whole year is built around the whale hunt because that is how the communities have survived living in such northernmost places. The whale keeps the community alive and it's shared among all of the families, the whaling captain's responsibility is to share with the most needy, those who can't hunt for themselves. Elders or orphans, anyone in need. And so following the capture of a whale, it's a community effort to butcher it. There's a community party where everyone comes and eats. There is a public feast outside as well where whale meat is shared. Whale, meat can be stored for a whole year to feed their families. And it's the basis of the community. And in the olden days, you know, the houses were also built using whale bones to hold up sod houses. Whales are everywhere. When you walk around you hear people talking about them. The whale is what the entire community is built on.
Credit: Doreen Cunningham
Megan Feighery
The BBC had awarded Doreen a scholarship for her pitch. During her time in Alaska, she would be allowed to focus entirely on immersing herself in the local culture and learning as much as possible. Doreen then planned on producing a piece for the BBC about her time in Utqiagvik. More than anything, though, she really hoped to join a whale hunt during her stay. But first she had to get there.
Doreen Cunningham
I remember arriving and very nervously, traipsing around Anchorage looking for the right gear. I'd been lent big down mittens, I'd borrowed ski clothes from friends. And what I needed was glasses or goggles that would protect me on the ice because otherwise no blindness can be a problem. That sounded terrifying to me. Once I had got myself kitted out, I headed up by plane. It was very early spring, so it was still extremely cold. When I got off the plane, it was white in all directions. And I was carrying a water bottle which started to freeze within the length of time it took me to get off the airplane and get into the arrivals building. Then I realized that this was somewhere I was really not equipped for and had no idea how to stay safe. And I really needed the help of the local community.
Megan Feighery
Doreen had secured a place to stay her first night, but she needed long term accommodation.
Doreen Cunningham
On the first day, I went out and I kind of had one lead. I'd been told that there was a Heritage Center workshop where the hunters met and worked on their boats. And so I went there. And the taxi driver who took me told me that, you know, polar bears were waiting behind the mounds of snow on the side of the road. So it became really apparent very quickly that I wasn't safe. You know, I didn't know how to stay safe and I needed to find somewhere immediately, because I certainly couldn't camp anywhere. So I had to be very forthright about what I needed. I went into the Heritage Center workshop. I started to speak to the man who was there working on a boat, introduced myself and said I want to join a whaling crew. Can I join your whaling crew? He was a bit taken aback and got in touch with the whaling captain's wife who was in charge of decisions. And that's how I met Julia, who gave me so much while I was there who invited me into her home and into her family.
Megan Feighery
With Julia's approval, Doreen moved into her house. The two would become very close during Doreen's stay. But before that, Doreen had something to tell her.
Doreen Cunningham
The first time I met her, I explained that I would love to join her whaling crew and mentioned that I was vegetarian. I remember she said a vegetarian from London. At that point I started to realize where I was and think about what I was saying. And then I said, But you know, I'll have what you're having. Well, I wasn't vegetarian for very long. I ended up eating quite a lot of meat. Initially, the first thing I tried out was muktuk, which is the whale blubber and skin, which I found to be kind of quite strong sushi. And it took a little bit of getting used to. But actually the pickled muktuk I came to really like. I object very strongly to the industrialized production of meat.And hunting is a very different sort of relationship with the natural world, particularly hunting whales where there is always a lethal risk. So it's culturally and materially important to this community, which is so far north. The food in the supermarkets is extremely expensive. And it's the way of life, it's how people have survived for so long.
Megan Feighery
Doreen opened herself up and learned from those around her. She ate what they ate, wore what they wore, tried to be helpful, and listened to what they said. But the hardest part was learning to wait. The weather wasn't quite right for a whale hunt.
Doreen Cunningham
The ice was frozen all the way from Utqiagvik, all the way up to the North Pole, and cracks formed and eventually during the spring as it started to melt. And what happens is that one of those cracks opens up into a channel, along which whales, belugas and bow heads and other marine mammals will migrate from west to east. So we were waiting for that to happen.
Megan Feighery
As she learned to be patient, she found ways to pass the time. She listened to Johnny Cash with Julia and got to know people in the community. She read books from the Heritage Center and learned to carve bones into small whale figurines. She asked a lot of questions, but mostly she listened.
Doreen Cunningham
I did learn very quickly about the history of the Arctic and the colonial violence that's been perpetrated there and how outsiders have usually come wanting to impose their culture and their values. And I learned very quickly that that's not something that I wanted to do. So I was very much in learning mode. I was shown extraordinary generosity and hospitality by the people that I met.
Megan Feighery
And in return, Doreen made herself useful.
Doreen Cunningham
We went goose hunting.
Megan Feighery
And you've got a special talent on that goose hunt than you.
Doreen Cunningham
Yes, I didn't know if they were just being kind. But I was told that I was very good at calling ptarmigans. I don't know if I can remember what to do. It was a noise that I recognized. I used to make it as a child. I discovered that I could make this very satisfying noise in the back of my throat, sort of clicking noise. It's kind of like I'll try and do it.
Megan Feighery
Then one day, the winds shifted. The ice opened and it was time.
Doreen Cunningham
When I thought about it too hard, I just became really terrified. Julia kitted me out in a big parka made from caribou skin which didn't let any cold in at all. You know, I felt a bit like a football in it but I got used to it really quickly. Lots of the families have whaling crews and when the ice opens up, the community stays in touch by radio so the people stay safe. Each crew will go out and choose a spot to camp along the lead where they hope a bowhead will come up close enough to be harpooned. You travel out for miles on snow machines. The cleanup crew that I was with there were probably about 10 of us. You set up two big tents, one for sleeping in and one for cooking in. The boat is covered in sealskin over a wooden skeleton, and then there's a metal chaser boat, which goes out after the whales have been struck. Then a bench is set up covered in animal hide where you sit and you wait for hours, it becomes a really mesmerizing experience.
Everyone wears a white tunic over the top of their parkas so that they're also not so visible from the ocean. And so the people are wearing white, the whole place is white tents are white, everything's white. And you also have to stay very quiet so you don't disturb the whales. It was really otherworldly. And although in a way I found it very peaceful. I learned really quickly that you have to be ready to move in a minute. Everyone I was with were absolute experts on watching the currents, the weather, the wind, the sky. It's like being, you know, on the edge of a very wide river and you can see the other side of the ice.
And at one point, the other side of the lead started to approach us so the current had changed. The wind had gotten stronger and I remember it kind of becoming quite wavy and bubbling almost like it was boiling with the pressure of the eye coming towards us. You know, I'd never seen people move faster. They packed up all the gear, everyone got onto their snow machines, and it was just getting away from that place as quickly as possible. And later on, one of the hunters took me out to see where we had been camping. It was like a solidified storm, the ice was piled up into giant mountains, and there had been kind of an ice quake, almost flight to fault lines colliding. You have to be alert to that kind of disaster at any point. So it was serene for me. But that's only because I didn't understand what was going on. It was an all consuming experience.
There's a belief that the whale gives itself to the person or to the crew that is most deserving. And in order to deserve a whale, you have to share. In the end, my crew did not catch a whale.
Megan Feighery
I asked Doreen how she thinks she would have felt if they had killed a whale. She had grown close to the crew, and she really wanted them to succeed. But she was also a lifelong whale lover. Doreen says that, honestly, she doesn't know. Another crew had been successful. When they returned to the village they helped out with the celebration feast. She served whale meat to the community and did a lot of dishes. It felt good to be part of that victory.
Doreen Cunningham
But I was disappointed for my crew. And that's when I realized that I had really assimilated much more than I thought, and how much I appreciated that culture and how welcomed I felt into that family. Very gratifying, in the end to be accepted into the crew who I think we're a bit initially quite suspicious of me. And it was only when they saw that I was really happy to work and join in that they started to be more accepting. And I experienced this sense of belonging and kind of acceptance of my authentic self that I've never had before or since because when you're out there in such a life threatening environment, everything depends on everybody working together. I think you get to see people very clearly. They saw me for all my inexperience and naivety and they made room for me and helped me learn how to be safe and looked after me and it was a an incredible experience that I feel very, very privileged to have had.
Megan Feighery
Doreen wasn't ready to leave but she didn't think she could stay either. Doreen felt accepted and at home in Alaska, but she had already used up all her scholarship funding and had dipped into her own savings. She was running out of money fast.
Doreen Cunningham
I had intended to go for six weeks, but I ended up spending a lot longer. I used up all my leave and then I took some extra holiday. I had been paying Julia a bit of rent but she ended up letting me stay for free and I struggled really badly to come back. I did not want to leave. That was really hard actually.
Megan Feighery
Doreen struggled to adjust to life back in the UK, she missed her life on the ice and her Inupiat family. She filmed a story for BBC World TV and produced an audio piece for BBC Radio about her experience. But reliving her trip was bittersweet. During it felt like a different person and Alaska. Her body had changed and her taste buds had changed. She had changed.
Credit: Doreen Cunningham
Doreen Cunningham
When I was on the ice. It was so cold that I think my body changed and I changed shape. I think I became sort of more dense. I found it difficult to settle back into my usual diet. I was still vegetarian, but I found salad to be watery and tasteless so I've lived mainly on peanut butter and cheese for a long time. I had continued to have a career at the BBC as a news presenter. It was really fascinating. I traveled around and then suddenly I found myself having a child in a difficult relationship.
And then I found myself a single parent. I went through a really rough couple of years. I went through the family courts. I ended up living in a Women's Refuge. Then in a hostel for single parents in my home island of Jersey.
Megan Feighery
It was so different from Alaska to read, it felt welcomed and accepted. They're part of a family back home, she was lonely and struggling to read, had left her job at the BBC and was just barely getting by. She was reaching her breaking point.
Doreen Cunningham
I don't know if I wasn't able to access the life I'd had as a child there wasn't able to really access the natural world. I was struggling to try and do freelance editing work at night. Well, Max was a baby while he slept. And it was exhausting. I didn't have any support. I wasn't being supported financially or in any other way by anybody. And so it really wore me down.
And it was just disappointing on such a deep level, because I'd experienced such privilege. You know, until then, I've been so privileged to have that job to have nobody to care for, travel around, meet these people and have experiences like I did in the Arctic. And I felt like an absolute failure. You know, I wasn't making any money. I wasn't an economic success. All the sort of markers that you're supposed to meet as a parent. I didn't have my own home. Very, very isolated. That's what my life was like. It was a real struggle.
I was exhausted one evening, fed up with trying to work and had a really bad day. There was a bully in the hospital and their child targeted my son. And it was just it had been, you know, I was at a really low ebb. And so I was like, right there. I'm not working. I'm going to read about Wales. So I watched my favorite David Attenborough clip. He's in a little boat, and they've timed it perfectly. This giant blue whale comes up beside the boat as he's talking about Blue Whales. And it looks like a runway coming out of the sea. It's just immense. Now, I just happened upon an article about gray whales. I wasn't looking for it and read about this migration. And I had never read about gray whales, I had not heard of them.
And what I found was that spending that length of time meditating on following the gray whales learning about their struggles, those mothers who do this incredible epic migration with their babies breastfeeding all the way up the West Coast, fighting off predatory Orcas. And just that lovely parallel, but it was just them and their babies. And it was just me and Max. I didn't feel bad for being a single parent any longer. I was just like, well, the whales do it. You know, I can do it too. I guess I just had such a strong need to show him the natural world that I reached out to the natural world.
Credit: Doreen Cunningham
Megan Feighery
The gray whale migration is incredible. Every year they traveled 12,000 miles from their feeding grounds and the Arctic to Baja, Mexico to have their babies and then back again. It's one of the longest migrations of any mammal. A plan was forming in Dorian's mind. She wanted to leave the UK behind, take her son and follow the whales from Mexico to Alaska. Doreen wanted to change an adventure like the one she had had in Alaska. She wanted to break free from her life and show Max there was more to this world.
Doreen Cunningham
And that was a marvelous thing. I literally didn't think about it. I just went into autopilot. I sorted out visas. I booked some flights. I started to look for B and B's up the coast. Once I had had that evening where yes, I went to town in my head. I was like they're going to teach me how to live. I'm not very good at being human. And I think if I hadn't been able to do that I wouldn't have gone because it was such a crazy idea. I mean, I did get criticism from my friends just like he's not going to remember it. He's only two. We're really concerned about your choices Doreen.
Megan Feighery
Doreen was determined she wanted to take this journey. It wouldn't be for work. This was just for her and Max, and she wanted this experience with her son. Doreen managed to secure a loan from the bank, their budget would be tight, but she could make it work. Durian also knew this trip would take her back to Dalvik, the Alaskan village she had fallen in love with the place that felt like home.
Doreen Cunningham
I could not have stopped myself from going.
Megan Feighery
Not too long after Dorian and Max were on a plane heading to California. They landed in San Diego and drove south to Baja Mexico to join their tour group.
Doreen Cunningham
So in Baja, that experience there is really unusual. Lagoons there are actually a site where there was an enormous amount of whale hunting in the 1850s. The whales were used to being quite hostile to humans and overturned boats and stuff. But then in the 70s, a local fisherman per Chico, he was out fishing for grouper one day, and a female gray whale just came out and decided to watch him and he was really nervous. He actually tried to get away from her, but she just kept following. He reached out and touched her. That's where the peace treaty started between the whales and the humans again.
And there's this phenomenon that the tour groups call the friendlies where you go out, and the whales come and see you. When we were there, the first pair that came to see us the mother came and checked out the boat and then went off and seemed to just kind of go to sleep. And then the baby came and started to play. And one of the people on the boat said, Oh, we're free childcare. I really emphasized with that mother, catching a nap when you can But it was wonderful to be able to pat a whale. You know, they look you straight in the eye. They're such ancient creatures and so beautiful. And it's so inspiring to be kind of included in their play like that. And I think the kind of healing that I needed started.
Megan Feighery
Doreen found a freedom in the lagoons of Baja that she hadn't felt in a long time.
Doreen Cunningham
I liked to move around. I like to meet people. I had felt really caged.
Megan Feighery
Doreen and Max enjoyed every minute of their time in Mexico, and they were excited for the next part of their journey. Following the whales up the coast. They stopped in Los Angeles, Monterey depo Bay and the San Juan Islands. They talked to whale experts along the way and absorbed as much knowledge as they could. It was surreal. Doreen couldn't believe they were actually doing it. For the first time in years she felt like herself again, she felt more confident and more secure in being a single mother. She also found it easier to ask for help and chat with people along the way. Gray whales are strong. They're survivors. And the longer Doreen followed them, the more she came to respect them.
Credit: Doreen Cunningham
Doreen Cunningham
These whales have not eaten since the previous winter. They fill up, they get really fat, they build up their blood reserves. And then they migrate all the way down the west coast and have their babies and then they have to sustain them from their blubber reserves while breastfeeding until the babies are big enough and strong enough to go. So then they have to go all the way back north again. And on the way there's a particular bit which has a lot of jeopardy, which is the Monterey undersea Canyon, which is kind of like the Grand Canyon but under the sea and that's where predatory orcas can lie in wait and they prey on the calves. The orcas will gather in groups and try to drown a calf and eat it. And what the whales can do if they are a bit wiser is they can go round and follow the coastline because the orcas in shallow water can't surprise them like that. And they can even hide their babies in the surf so the orcas can't hear they're there. I empathize with them and they are really stunning animals. They have a history of having survived previous climate change. They survived the ice ages by being flexible in what they eat.
Megan Feighery
Gray whales are dying at an alarming rate. Scientists think diminishing sea ice in the Arctic, and warming oceans have affected the whales main food source, tiny little crustaceans that thrive in cold water. But in the midst of this, they're also observing something amazing.
Doreen Cunningham
There's one group of whales called the Sounders and they are being observed in the waters of Northern Puget Sound and what they are doing is stopping off during the migration. And they've found this kind of emergency food bank in the intertidal zone. There are stocks of or populations of ghost shrimp there, and one way in particular really caught my imagination; she's called Earhart after Amelia Earhart. And she has been seen leading other whales to this food source. She's one of the founding members of the group. And when I'm having a difficult day, you know, bad parenting day or when I'm worrying about my children's future as I think many mums are at the moment, I like to think of the gray whales moving through the ocean breath by breath, I like to think of their endurance and I like to think of Earhart because of her resilience and her adaptability. And I get a lot of comfort and strength just thinking that.
Megan Feighery
Their budget was tight. Doreen and Max used buses and trains up the coast, then snagged a last minute deal on a cruise ship. It took them through Alaska's Inside Passage. Then they flew from Whittier to Utqiagvik. Doreen couldn't believe she was back in the place she had left her heart all those years ago. Julia and the rest of Dorian's Inupiaq family welcomed her and Max and embraced them as one of their own. Doreen was so happy to see them and overwhelmed with emotion.
Doreen Cunningham
I wondered why it ever left.
Megan Feighery
Julia fawned over Max and she and Doreen talked late into the night. Doreen's time in Utqiagvik was short, only four days, and she spent most of it visiting everyone she could. She and Max also searched for the gray whales, but they never appeared. It was disappointing, but the whales had done their job. They had brought Doreen home.
Doreen Cunningham
What the whales did in the end is that they gave me my community back. What I had done really by following them was to throw myself out into the world again. And I found I had to ask for help. And I found that I got it, just all the way up the journey. I made friends. By the end of it, I did feel that we were loved.
Megan Feighery
leaving Utqiagvik for a second time was heartbreaking. Doreen didn't know if she'd ever be back.
Doreen Cunningham
Julia, as I was leaving, she said I meant I'm your Inupiaq mum. She said I'm his Inupiaq granny. You need to stay in touch. And she gave him an Inupiaq name as she had given me. It was a mixed trip. Because again I was very sad to leave. But the whales did take me back there; they did let me see my Inupiaq family again.
I'm not a whale. I can't spend my whole life swimming around. I found that what the whale journey gave me and my son was this sort of window of time where it was just us. I could just play with him and be with him and look after him and learn to Mother him. I was very much giving myself the space to learn how to Mother him in the way that I wanted and being guided by the whale mothers as I went.
Megan Feighery
Our storyteller today was Doreen Cunningham. Doreen and Max are back in the UK and while they say life is good, they are in a much better place now. They still keep in contact with Julia and the rest of their Inupiaq family and in hopes they can return to Utqiagvik someday. In the meantime, Doreen has written a book about her experience called sounding journeys in the company of whales. It's a beautiful read, and actually brought me to tears in a few places. There's so much more to Doreen's story that I just didn't have time to include in this episode, so definitely check it out.