looked to be about late twenties or
thirty-two at most. Attractive and with shoulder-length light hair,she was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve turtleneck that complimented her figure.
Suitably thin, it always surprised me that Jen was not “granola” and did not allocate
any of her time to working out. She was naturally fit, while her overall studious
demeanor was juxtaposed by the occasional cigarette she would partake of while sipping
coffee or wine, but never in front of Greg. Throughout my experience working with
Jen, she was singularly focused on promoting and protecting the collection of data
for any and all types of research that could be extracted from the project. I also
found Jen to be genuinely concerned for Keiko’s well-being.
There were others, but they had not yet returned from their duties on the bay pen.
To my surprise and with no effort, I immediately felt comfortable with everyone I
had met thus far. In retrospect, I suppose my expectation was to find something akin
to the Berkeley radicals of the era. I had no reason to think this way; I had not
heard anything negative about the staff on-site. In fact, I really hadn’t heard much
at all about them (certainly not from Robin, who didn’t invest much time in character
descriptions). My perception of the organizations leading the project had colored
my expectations of those in the field. Once realizing that the people actually tending
to Keiko were “animal-oriented people” I was able to let my guard down and felt more
at home among professional peers.
The first night in the hostel, we all exchanged the usual small-talk introductions,
drank red wine (a nightly practice on the project) and finally, turned in for the
evening. The majority of our exchange had been fueled by my curiosity about the project
and the people. For that night and many weeks yet to come I was in information gathering
mode. But after a full day of travel and stimulation overload, sleep was a welcome
reprieve. I had been on my feet for more than nineteen hours.
Keiko’s Bay Pen
By five a.m. we were ready to go, clad in long johns, fleece outerwear and bright
orange Mustang survival suits. The first stop afterleaving the hostel would be the fish house, located in an old warehouse adjacent to
the harbor. This is where Keiko’s food was stored and prepared each day. In contrast
to the enormous freezer warehouse in which it was located, the actual fish preparation
room was not much larger than a walk-in closet. Every morning, the opening crew (typically
two people) would bucket the fish that had been put in cool water the night before
to thaw, weigh out Keiko’s base (his total food allotment for the day), place it in
steel buckets and cover it in ice for the trip out to the bay pen.
I was no stranger to “food prep” and immediately pitched in helping to scrub down
the fish room and carry the four approximately thirty-five-pound fish buckets out
to the truck. The two-story warehouse was a catacomb of freezers and was almost always
deserted with little indication of human activity from one week to the next, although
there was ample evidence of seemingly ghostly activity nonetheless. During daily ventures
into the freezer building, we were often welcomed by creepy sheep heads, the decapitated
remains of a healthy appetite for lamb in Iceland. Not far behind in ranking was puffin
meat. Mounds of frozen and yet to be processed puffins would often greet us within
the subzero structure. At night, when we would reverse the process of breaking out
Keiko’s food to thaw, the darkened warehouse full with carcasses proved to be the
ideal setting for pranks.
Keiko’s diet was identical to the whales’ diet at SeaWorld. He was provided high-quality
herring and capelin: 30 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter, totaling
approximately 120 pounds of fish per day. The only contrasting
thirty-two at most. Attractive and with shoulder-length light hair,she was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve turtleneck that complimented her figure.
Suitably thin, it always surprised me that Jen was not “granola” and did not allocate
any of her time to working out. She was naturally fit, while her overall studious
demeanor was juxtaposed by the occasional cigarette she would partake of while sipping
coffee or wine, but never in front of Greg. Throughout my experience working with
Jen, she was singularly focused on promoting and protecting the collection of data
for any and all types of research that could be extracted from the project. I also
found Jen to be genuinely concerned for Keiko’s well-being.
There were others, but they had not yet returned from their duties on the bay pen.
To my surprise and with no effort, I immediately felt comfortable with everyone I
had met thus far. In retrospect, I suppose my expectation was to find something akin
to the Berkeley radicals of the era. I had no reason to think this way; I had not
heard anything negative about the staff on-site. In fact, I really hadn’t heard much
at all about them (certainly not from Robin, who didn’t invest much time in character
descriptions). My perception of the organizations leading the project had colored
my expectations of those in the field. Once realizing that the people actually tending
to Keiko were “animal-oriented people” I was able to let my guard down and felt more
at home among professional peers.
The first night in the hostel, we all exchanged the usual small-talk introductions,
drank red wine (a nightly practice on the project) and finally, turned in for the
evening. The majority of our exchange had been fueled by my curiosity about the project
and the people. For that night and many weeks yet to come I was in information gathering
mode. But after a full day of travel and stimulation overload, sleep was a welcome
reprieve. I had been on my feet for more than nineteen hours.
Keiko’s Bay Pen
By five a.m. we were ready to go, clad in long johns, fleece outerwear and bright
orange Mustang survival suits. The first stop afterleaving the hostel would be the fish house, located in an old warehouse adjacent to
the harbor. This is where Keiko’s food was stored and prepared each day. In contrast
to the enormous freezer warehouse in which it was located, the actual fish preparation
room was not much larger than a walk-in closet. Every morning, the opening crew (typically
two people) would bucket the fish that had been put in cool water the night before
to thaw, weigh out Keiko’s base (his total food allotment for the day), place it in
steel buckets and cover it in ice for the trip out to the bay pen.
I was no stranger to “food prep” and immediately pitched in helping to scrub down
the fish room and carry the four approximately thirty-five-pound fish buckets out
to the truck. The two-story warehouse was a catacomb of freezers and was almost always
deserted with little indication of human activity from one week to the next, although
there was ample evidence of seemingly ghostly activity nonetheless. During daily ventures
into the freezer building, we were often welcomed by creepy sheep heads, the decapitated
remains of a healthy appetite for lamb in Iceland. Not far behind in ranking was puffin
meat. Mounds of frozen and yet to be processed puffins would often greet us within
the subzero structure. At night, when we would reverse the process of breaking out
Keiko’s food to thaw, the darkened warehouse full with carcasses proved to be the
ideal setting for pranks.
Keiko’s diet was identical to the whales’ diet at SeaWorld. He was provided high-quality
herring and capelin: 30 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter, totaling
approximately 120 pounds of fish per day. The only contrasting
Similar Books
