Song for a Whale

This chapter is from Blue 55’s perspective. He experiences a break in his loneliness when a pod of dolphins swims alongside him. He leads them to a school of fish, and one of the dolphins rides on his back. The dolphins seem content to leap and chatter alongside him. He doesn’t know what draws them to his song but finds that “they understood each other in a way” (206). Still, the dolphins move on, leaving him alone.

Iris wakes up nervous the day she’s scheduled to meet Blue 55. However, Blue 55 has changed course: Instead of going North to Alaska, he’s heading South toward Washington State. Andi has sent an email apologizing for the change, and she announces that the team at Oregon’s Lighthouse Bay sanctuary, which must now tag Blue 55, don’t want to play Iris’s song because they don’t think it’ll be efficient. Iris feels angry and betrayed.

Further phone research about the Lighthouse Bay sanctuary reveals to Iris that it hosts a young whale named Mara, who was found stranded on a beach and, after some rehabilitation, pushed back into the ocean. She returned periodically to Lighthouse Bay and was a Blue whale like Blue 55’s mother.