 Book cover | |
| Author | Daniel Kraus |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Kirby Heyborne (Simon & Schuster Audio) |
| Cover artist | Will Staehle [1] |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Thriller |
| Publisher | MTV Entertainment Books (US) |
Publication date | August 8, 2023 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 9781665918169 |
Whalefall is a 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus about a teenage scuba diver who is swallowed by a sperm whale.
Its cover art is by Will Staehle. [1]
Jay Gardiner is a teenager living in the California Central Coast who is struggling over the recent death of his father, Mitt Gardiner. Mitt was a well-known figure in the local scuba diving community who worked a variety of jobs that drew on his diving and nautical skills. While Mitt was well-liked by local divers, he had a strained relationship with Jay. After an incident in which Mitt gets drunk and pressures Jay to cut himself, Jay moves out and begins staying with friends. Not long after, Mitt is diagnosed with advanced mesothelioma. Despite pressure from his mother and sisters, Jay never visits his father to make amends. Mitt later commits suicide by jumping off a boat off the coast of Monastery Beach near Monterey, California while weighed down with diving weights. Feeling both shame over his inability to live up to Mitt's expectations, and guilt over his culpability in Mitt's suicide, Jay decides to scuba dive at Monastery Beach to attempt to retrieve his father's remains.
Partway through this dive, Jay encounters a giant squid, which is being attacked by a sperm whale. As the whale is attempting to eat the squid, Jay's diving gear gets caught on the squid and he is swallowed. Jay, though seriously injured, attempts a number of strategies to escape, including crawling deeper into the whale's digestive tract, using a squid beak to cut himself out of the whale's stomach, and climbing out of the stomach into the whale's throat using a jellyfish's bioluminescence to illuminate handholds. While navigating these physical challenges, Jay confronts his role in Mitt's suicide. Throughout the ordeal, Jay communicates with the disembodied voice of his father, which seems to be connected to the whale, and the two eventually make amends. Jay escapes from the whale by creating an explosion in the whale's stomach using steel wool and batteries and is rescued.
Whalefall received generally positive reviews and was included in a list of the "Best Thrillers of 2023" by the New York Times. [2] Sarah Lyall of the New York Times described the book as a "crazily enjoyable, beat-the-clock adventure story about fathers, sons, guilt and the mysteries of the sea," and compared the book to the survival film 127 Hours . [3] Lyall also suggests that the psychological explorations of Jay's and Mitt's relationship can sometimes feel "a bit heavy-handed." A positive review in Paste Magazine suggested the book plays with readers' expectations through its similarity to archetypal stories about people being swallowed by marine animals, such as the Biblical story of Jonah. [4] NPR's Up First podcast described the book as a "page-turning thriller" and a "deep meditation on fathers, sons and loss." [5]
Cetacea is an infraorder of aquatic mammals belonging to the order Artiodactyla that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Key characteristics are their fully aquatic lifestyle, streamlined body shape, often large size and exclusively carnivorous diet. They propel themselves through the water with powerful up-and-down movement of their tail which ends in a paddle-like fluke, using their flipper-shaped forelimbs to maneuver.
Jacques Mayol was a French diver and the holder of many world records in free diving. The 1988 film The Big Blue, directed by Luc Besson, was inspired by his life story and that of his friend, Enzo Maiorca. Mayol was one of the screenwriters and authored the book Homo Delphinus: the Dolphin Within Man of his philosophy about the aquatic origins of humans.
Jonah or Jonas is a Jewish prophet in the Hebrew Bible hailing from Gath-hepher in the Northern Kingdom of Israel around the 8th century BCE. He is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, which details his reluctance in delivering the judgment of Yahweh to the city of Nineveh in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. After he is swallowed by a large sea creature and then released, he returns to the divine mission.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the Aqua-Lung, which assisted him in producing some of the first underwater documentaries.
Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have had their last common ancestor around 34 million years ago. Mysticetes include four extant (living) families: Balaenopteridae, Balaenidae, Cetotheriidae, and Eschrichtiidae. Odontocetes include the Monodontidae, Physeteridae, Kogiidae, and Ziphiidae, as well as the six families of dolphins and porpoises which are not considered whales in the informal sense.
Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean located on the coast of the U.S. state of California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area. San Francisco itself is further north along the coast, by about 75 miles, accessible via CA 1 and US 101.
The giant squid is a species of deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae. It can grow to a tremendous size, offering an example of abyssal gigantism: recent estimates put the maximum size at around 12–13 m (39–43 ft) for females and 10 m (33 ft) for males, from the posterior fins to the tip of the two long tentacles. The mantle of the giant squid is about 2 m long, and the length of the squid excluding its tentacles rarely exceeds 5 m (16 ft). Claims of specimens measuring 20 m (66 ft) or more have not been scientifically documented.
Freediving, free-diving, free diving, breath-hold diving, or skin diving, is a mode of underwater diving that relies on breath-holding until resurfacing rather than the use of breathing apparatus such as scuba gear.
The sperm whale or cachalot is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the genus Physeter and one of three extant species in the sperm whale family, along with the pygmy sperm whale and dwarf sperm whale of the genus Kogia.
The toothed whales are a parvorder of cetaceans that includes dolphins, porpoises, and all other whales possessing teeth, such as the beaked whales and sperm whales. 73 species of toothed whales are described. They are one of two living groups of cetaceans, the other being the baleen whales (Mysticeti), which have baleen instead of teeth. The two groups are thought to have diverged around 34 million years ago (mya).
Cuvier's beaked whale, goose-beaked whale, or ziphius is the most widely distributed of all beaked whales in the family Ziphiidae. It is smaller in size than most baleen whales—and indeed the larger toothed cetaceans —yet it is large among the beaked whales and smaller cetaceans, appearing somewhat like a bigger and stockier bottlenose dolphin. Cuvier's beaked whale is pelagic, generally inhabiting waters deeper than 300 m (1,000 ft), though it has been observed closer to shore on occasion. In these offshore waters, Cuvier's beaked whale executes some of the deepest, longest recorded dives among whales, and extant mammals, at 2,992 m (9,816 ft), for 222 minutes. While likely diving to forage and hunt prey, such as cephalopods, and potentially evade predators, the frequency and exact reason for these extraordinary dives is unclear. Despite its deepwater habitat, it is one of the most frequently-spotted beaked whales when surfacing.
The false killer whale is a species of oceanic dolphin that is the only extant representative of the genus Pseudorca. It is found in oceans worldwide but mainly in tropical regions. It was first described in 1846 as a species of porpoise based on a skull, which was revised when the first carcasses were observed in 1861. The name "false killer whale" comes from having a skull similar to the orca, or killer whale.
The vampire squid is a small cephalopod found throughout temperate and tropical oceans in extreme deep sea conditions. The vampire squid uses its bioluminescent organs and its unique oxygen metabolism to thrive in the parts of the ocean with the lowest concentrations of oxygen. It has two long retractile filaments, located between the first two pairs of arms on its dorsal side, which distinguish it from both octopuses and squids, and places it in its own order, Vampyromorphida, although its closest relatives are octopods. As a phylogenetic relict, it is the only known surviving member of its order.
The dwarf sperm whale is a sperm whale that inhabits temperate and tropical oceans worldwide, in particular continental shelves and slopes. It was first described by biologist Richard Owen in 1866, based on illustrations by naturalist Sir Walter Elliot. The species was considered to be synonymous with the pygmy sperm whale from 1878 until 1998. The dwarf sperm whale is a small whale, 2 to 2.7 m and 136 to 272 kg, that has a grey coloration, square head, small jaw, and robust body. Its appearance is very similar to the pygmy sperm whale, distinguished mainly by the position of the dorsal fin on the body–nearer the middle in the dwarf sperm whale and nearer the tail in the other.
The Humboldt squid, also known as jumbo squid or jumbo flying squid (EN), and Pota in Peru or Jibia in Chile (ES), is a large, predatory squid living in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is the only known species of the genus Dosidicus of the subfamily Ommastrephinae, family Ommastrephidae.
Perrin's beaked whale is part of the toothed whale suborder and is one of over 90 known cetaceans in existence today. Beaked whales are part of the family Ziphiidae, which are the second most diverse group out of all marine mammals with over 20 species currently recognized. Although diverse, little is understood about these timid, deep divers that can dive for up to two hours. The whales are partially named after their beak shaped jaw, which extends from their small head. The genus name Mesoplodon comes from the Greek meanings of meso- (middle), - hopla (arms), - odon (teeth), and may be translated as 'armed with a tooth in the center of the jaw'.
Brian Skerry is an American photojournalist and film producer specializing in marine life and ocean environments. Since 1998 he has been a contributing photographer for National Geographic magazine with more than 30 stories to his credit, including seven covers. In 2021 Skerry won a Primetime Emmy Award for his role as producer in the miniseries, Secrets of the Whales.
Moby Dick is a 2010 American science fiction thriller film that is an adaptation of Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. The film is an Asylum production, and stars Barry Bostwick as Captain Ahab. It also stars Renee O'Connor, Michael B. Teh, and Adam Grimes and is directed by Trey Stokes.
Cephalopod attacks on humans have been reported since ancient times. A significant portion of these attacks are questionable or unverifiable tabloid stories. Cephalopods are members of the class Cephalopoda, which includes all squid, octopuses, cuttlefish, and nautiluses. Some members of the group are capable of causing injury or death to humans.
Cristina Zenato is an Italian-born shark diver and conservationist. She is known for her work with Caribbean reef sharks in The Bahamas.