It was the mystery that biologists from Darwin onwards had been longing to solve. How could we understand the ability of fish and seals to survive in the cold dark waters of the Antarctic? How could humans see inside a biotope that was sealed with layers of ice? What would the Earth look like from the sky, if we crossed the Mediterranean on the back of a goose? How did it feel to be a bee? How could we measure the speed of an insect's wings and its heartbeat, or monitor its blood pressure and eating patterns? What was the impact of human activities, like shipping noise or subsea explosions, on mammals in the depths? How could we follow animals to places where no human could venture?
The answer came in the form of a technology that allowed haulage companies to locate each of their lorries, and helped drivers to pinpoint streets in towns they'd never seen. It was a modern invention that everyone knew and used, without realising that it would revolutionise zoology: telemetry.
In the late 1950s, US scientists had already started to develop ways of electronically tagging animals. Not long afterwards the US Navy was using the technology on trained dolphins, but the experiment failed because the tags were too heavy: it was no good hoping to gain accurate information on dolphins' natural behaviour from tags that affected their movements. The initiative ground to a halt, but the invention of the microchip heralded a breakthrough. In no time ultra-light cameras and tags the size of chocolate bars were being used to transmit relevant data from the wild. The animals carried on as normal, roaming through the rainforests or swimming through the pack-ice in McMurdo Sound, unaware of the fifteen grams of equipment they were carrying. At long-last grizzly bears, dingoes, foxes and caribous were divulging their secrets. Scientists were initiated into their ways of life, mating rituals, hunting habits and migration patterns. They could even fly across the world in the company of white-tailed eagles, albatrosses, swans, geese and crows. At the cutting edge of technology, insects were fitted with miniature devices that weighed a thousandth of a gram and were powered by radar waves. They could send back their signal at double the frequency, allowing the data to be received from distances of more than seven hundred metres.
Most of the tracking was done by satellite. The system was as simple as it was ingenious. The signal from the transmitter was sent into space, where it was received by ARGOS, a satellite-based system run by the French space agency CNES. From there it was transmitted to headquarters in Toulouse and on to a terrestrial station in Fairbanks, USA, for forwarding to other institutions worldwide. The data reached the end-user in less than ninety minutes.
Research into whales, seals, penguins and turtles soon developed into a distinct field of telemetry. The planet's least-known and most fascinating habitat was opened up to view. Data could be recorded at considerable depth on ultra-light transmitters, which registered temperature, length of dive, distance from the surface, location, direction of travel and speed. Frustratingly the signals could only be received from the water's surface, which meant that ARGOS was blind where the depths were concerned. Humpbacks spent a good deal of their lives within a few kilometres of the Californian coast, but surfaced for an hour a day at most. While ornithologists could see and monitor a stork in flight, marine scientists were cut off from their subjects while they were under water. For a complete understanding of marine mammals, they needed cameras that kept rolling at all times – but the Pacific was too deep for any diver, and submersibles lacked the necessary agility and speed.
Eventually the solution came from scientists at the University of California in Santa Cruz, who invented a tiny, pressure-resistant underwater camera. They tried the device on an elephant seal and some Weddell seals and finally a dolphin. In no time they came across the most amazing phenomena. Within a few weeks their understanding of marine mammals was transformed. If only whales and dolphins had proven as easy to tag as other animals, everything would have been perfect. Instead it was virtually impossible. So Anawak was left with far less data than he would have liked – yet at the same time he had more than he could handle. Since no one knew what was important, every piece of information was significant – and that meant evaluating thousands of hours of images, audio recordings, readings, analyses and stats.
'Project Sisyphus' was what Ford had called it.
But at least Anawak had plenty of time to devote to it. The station's reputation had been restored, and yet Davie's was closed. The waters off the west coast of Canada and North America were restricted to large vessels only. The disaster that had hit Vancouver Island had been repeated along the coast from San Francisco to Alaska. During the first wave of attacks, over a hundred smaller craft had been sunk or severely damaged. The number of casualties had fallen over the weekend, but only because no one was prepared to set sail unless they owned a freighter or a ferry. The media was awash with conflicting reports. Even the death toll was uncertain. Various government-appointed emergency-response teams had been brought in to deal with the situation, which meant that the skies were filled with helicopters whirring up and down the coast, laden with soldiers, scientists and politicians peering down at the ocean, each more helpless and bewildered than the next.
It was standard procedure for emergency committees to draw on outside advisers, and that was what the Canadian authorities had done. Vancouver Aquarium was co-opted as the hub of all science-based operations under the leadership of John Ford. Almost every marine-science or research institute was placed under his control. For Ford it was a weighty burden: he was leading a mission without knowing what it was. There was a protocol for everything from catastrophic earthquakes to terrorist nuclear attacks, but no one had prepared a brief for this. Ford lost no time in proposing Anawak as an additional adviser. If anyone in North America or Canada could understand what was going on inside a whale's head, it was him. And surely that was where they'd find their explanation. Whales were supposed to be intelligent, so had the creatures all gone mad? Or was something else affecting their behaviour?
Yet even Anawak, of whom so much was expected, was unable to help. He'd begun by assembling all of that year's telemetric data from the Pacific coast. Twenty-four hours ago he and Alicia Delaware had started to analyse the material, helped by staff at the aquarium. They'd pored over positioning data and listened intently to hydrophone recordings but they still had nothing to show for it. None of the whales had been carrying tags when they set out from Hawaii and Baja California towards the Arctic – with the sole exception of two humpbacks, who'd lost their transmitters almost as soon as they'd started migrating. The video shot by the woman on the Blue Shark seemed to be their only piece of evidence. They'd studied it at the Station with the help of some skippers who were adept at recognising flukes. After replaying the footage and magnifying the images, they'd identified some of the attackers: two humpbacks, a grey and several orcas.
Delaware had been right: the video was a valuable clue.
Anawak's aversion to her had soon evaporated. Delaware had a big mouth and seldom stopped to think before she spoke, but beneath her brash manner was an intelligent, analytical mind. Besides, she had time to help. Her parents lived in the British Properties, an exclusive district for Vancouver's elite. They gave her anything she wanted, but were hardly ever there. Anawak suspected that their financial generosity was an attempt to make up for their lack of interest, but their daughter didn't seem to care – she could spend their fortune and do as she pleased. Things had worked out perfectly: Delaware saw working with Anawak as an opportunity to back up her studies with practical experience, and he needed an assistant now that Stringer was dead.