Close Call in a Kayak

A story from Joy Reidenberg, PhD.

Humpback whale breaching

Joy is a comparative anatomist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, but this is her version of her good friend Tom’s breaching whale story. Joy, as so many others had, first heard about the episode through the media. When she realized it was her dear friend who nearly died, she reviewed the video of the event and shares why she thinks Tom and his friend are alive today.

JOY REIDENBERG is a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York. She is a comparative anatomist, specializing in the vocal and breathing apparatus of mammals, particularly cetaceans, that is whales, dolphins and porpoises. Joy acknowledges it is rather weird to be in the marine mammal field and be a medical school professor, but her interest in marine mammals really comes from being so excited about their adaptations and how they survive in such an unusual environment. Her goal is to try and understand these adaptations, bring the information back to the human condition and then remake those adaptations for treatment of human disease such as emphysema or cystic fibrosis. In addition, she hopes to develop protective devices to help deal with issues like decompression sickness for people who have to live and work in similar unusual environments.

Joy was always interested in art, science and animals, but had no idea what she wanted to do for a career. Her father suggested she look in the phone book, which Joy actually did. It wasn’t until she reached Veterinarian that she found something that peaked her interest. However, she went to intern briefly with a veterinarian and took pre-vet in college, but decided the job was more that of a technician and did not involve the level of creativity and curiosity she wanted to bring to her life’s work.

Joy attended Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, where she was in the College of Arts and Sciences, because she couldn’t decide which to study! She earned her bachelor’s degree there, and received her masters and doctorate (Biomedical Sciences: Anatomy) from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine Graduate Program in Biological Sciences.

It was the Chairman of the Department of Anatomy at vet school, who had a PhD, who told her to stop chasing the DVMs, and go for a PhD – a degree in research. He gave her a job dissecting a giant jar of toad fish.  Toad fish (croakers) were setting off underwater bombs, and scientists and the military wanted to know why.

Joy discovered that anatomy involved drawing, dissecting, learning and conveying information. She felt that science could be more creative than art. A scientist could ask any question and design the experiments. Anatomy was also very visual. It was a perfect career choice for Joy. As a teen, she had already been gutting fish, but didn’t realize people would pay her to look at guts. At that time she had no idea that anatomist was a career.

Joy was born in Connecticut and currently works in New York City. She considers herself a Nor’easter as she has only lived in three states –New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. However, she has visited Monterey Bay on multiple occasions and been enthralled by her experiences there.

Joy initially came to Monterey Bay in 1989, the first time she attended a marine mammal conference as a pregnant faculty member.

Educating the public outside of the academic setting seems to be a specialty of Joy’s. In addition to Big Blue Live, she has appeared as a regular on “Inside Nature’s Giants” dissecting a variety of animals including a fin whale, sperm whale, elephant, camel, giant squid, great white shark, and leatherback sea turtle, and she starred in four episodes of PBS’s “Sex in the Wild”. Joy is an engaging speaker and has also presented at scientific conferences including the international Society for Marine Mammalogy and the American Cetacean Society.

You can watch Joy’s story on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwVnMrR3kjo

CLOSE CALL IN A KAYAK

Now I will tell a story that didn’t happen to me, but happened to a colleague of mine, while we were filming for Big Blue Live. We (the Big Blue Live crew) were out in that area, and I was there to talk about sea otter fur and humpback baleen, and all these other great things, all about anatomy – my role. At the same time this was all happening, there were people out on the water filming. One of the people who was out there was not involved with Big Blue Live, but he was out there at the same time this was happening. He was in a kayak with a friend.

He went out on the kayak to see humpbacks really close. But you know, you have a setback. You can’t get that close. He was properly obeying setbacks and was watching the pod that was feeding. It was more than 200 yards away. And he and his friend were just lolling around; they weren’t going anywhere, just sort of lolling around watching these pods feeding.

Then out of nowhere a humpback breached right in front of them, that they did not know was there. And it landed on his kayak, and plunged the kayak down. This whole incident got caught on video, by someone who was on one of the whale watching ships.

I didn’t know this had happened at the time, but after I got back home I was communicating with my friend Tom, his name is Tom Mustill. And Tom’s actually a filmmaker.  He had directed some episodes that I had been in for another TV series, and so he sent me an email saying, “I was in Monterey Bay when you were there filming, and guess what happened?” “I got breached on by a humpback whale!” “No, you’re just joking me, aren’t you?” “No, no, it really happened.” Then he showed me this clip. I said, “Wait a minute.” I’d seen this clip. It ran viral. Everybody had seen this clip. “That was you? No, you’re just kidding me, right?” “No, it actually really was me.” So I thought, that’s pretty bizarre. Well, I started looking at the clip a lot more closely, cause my first impression was ‘what an idiot, why were you so close to humpback whales.’ But then he told me he wasn’t close to the whales; this one came out of nowhere. They were very far from the whales that they were watching.

So I’m looking at this video clip, and I’m watching it frame by frame by frame by frame. And as I’m looking at it, I’m realizing this humpback did not do a normal breach. Normally when humpbacks jump up, they jump up and they arc backwards ‘cause the head is so heavy. And the back of the head where the skull is is much heavier than the front which is the throat, assuming there’s no water in it when they’re not feeding, ok?  So as they arch up, they come out of the water, and they end up usually landing backwards on the back of their head.

This whale started to do that, but I think as it arched, and often they twist a little bit, it could see the kayak out of one eye. I think the whale was like ‘oh crap, I have to move, there’s something in the way.’ And it purposely turned in a way that was not consistent with how it was arching, and it didn’t land on its back like it normally would. It ended up landing on its side. And I think the whale purposely tried to avoid the kayak, because it saw the kayak at the last minute. It didn’t know it was there when it was breaching. But it saw and really tried hard not to hit the kayak.

So this whale was not trying to breach on top of my friend and his woman friend; this whale tried to avoid them. And it was only because it had to turn, you know to bring the flippers around like when ice skaters make a twist, and they use their arms like this and they spin. The whale did that with its flippers and it made a spin, and one of the flippers hit the kayak and actually dented in the front of the kayak. If the whale had actually not done that, the back of the skull, which is, you know, the size of a couch, ok, would have hit the kayak and probably would have killed them. But it didn’t, so they lived. And they got plunged under, ‘cause as the whale hit, it sucked everything down with the pressures of pushing them down, but they popped up again and they were laughing. They couldn’t believe they were that close to a humpback whale. But they also didn’t realize how close they were to death.