Eric Stackpole

I feel like that moment, at least for me, really helps me understand in a broader sense what being alive on the planet means.

That's a great question.

Because yeah, you don't have to, you know, someone didn't need to- You don't have to be the one in the ship.

Yeah, no, you don't.

And in fact, you also don't need to know anything about science.

You know, you can be very, you can have just learned that there's a thing called a sperm whale that day and still found this fascinating.

Yeah.

I remember aboard the ship with a lot of people who have dedicated their lives to researching these types of animals.

They'd always warn us not to personify them too much.

They are different than we are, you know.

But I think you don't have to personify an animal to relate to it.

When you see it diving into the abyss, you know, that kind of energetic desire to go into the place where you can get your sustenance.

I think we've all had that feeling, you know.

And then as it's starting to concentrate, now it's gotten into the deep, dark abyss and it needs to listen for that echo coming from its echolocation.

I felt an emotion of kind of like, okay, now there's this stillness.

We got to the place.

Mission on, like, let's see if we can find this food.

And then you bring back in the human factor that it's almost sort of scary down there.

It's dark.

You don't know what's lurking.