tagging, and has been proved to be the world’s avian migratory champion, flying further non-stop than any other migrating bird. The godwit flies 10,200 miles south from its breeding ground in Alaska without stopping in flight. It can make the flight in seven days with the benefit of a tailwind, and can return north in nine days. Incredibly, godwit chicks can make the southbound flight when only two months old. These are amazing journeys, which the latest technology has allowed us to track and feed into our ongoing research into migration patterns.’
Kemp flipped a switch, and the lights came back on.
‘OK, what’s missing there?’
A hand went up. It would be him. That studious boy from Michigan, Jacob Sylvester, a state scholar. Leo had met his new students at an induction class. He always tried to spot the ones that were going to make something of the subject but it was difficult. Sometimes the shy, silent types produced original thinking in their coursework while the pushy talkers simply regurgitated everything they had read.
Sylvester was a talker; he asked all the right questions and took notes in laborious longhand. He had a Ph.D. and academic career stamped all over him. Rachel Ginsberg wasn’t really shy but she pretended to be and looked at the floor while asking complex questions about the marking of grades. She would flash him quick looks from under long eyelashes to see if he was listening and smile slightly when he nodded her to go on. He sensed she was very ambitious and he knew her foxy-faced good looks would take her up the corporate ladder in some big company.
Then there was Gunbrit Nielsen, very serious, very pretty, with slate-grey eyes and a long plaited pigtail. She was far too beautiful to be sitting in anyone’s class studying marine biology. She should be on a movie set on the west coast. But here she was in his class working for a Ph.D. that would take her back home to a teaching job in Sweden, marriage to a man with a thick red beard and four children.
He would get to know them well over the course of the year and would watch to see how, just as in the wild, a natural leader emerged from the group. Already they seemed to take their lead from Sylvester, letting him ask the questions.
‘Sea mammals, sir. This isn’t our subject,’ said Sylvester.
Leo snapped out of his reverie.
‘Well, clearly a godwit is not a seal, Mr Sylvester. Let me repeat the question: what is missing from that commentary? Something important, really important, that has been left unsaid?’
Silence, heads lowered, sidelong glances: What’s he talking about? When’s the break?
‘OK, here goes. What that commentary did not tell you is that those birds, the godwits, make their migrations without food or water, flying huge distance for seven days southbound and nine days northbound. It didn’t tell you that because we don’t know how they do it. No one knows.
‘Scientists’, he continued, ‘cannot explain the godwit’s ability to lift and transport its body weight of eight to ten ounces for that distance without in-flight refuelling. And science does not like the irrational. The flight of the godwit is incomprehensible to science, because science tells us, and the naturalists tell us, and the nutritionists tell us, that a small bird like that cannot fly such a distance without sustenance.
‘We know that swifts and swallows make similar journeys, but they eat their natural food – flying insects – on the wing. Godwits do not. Their food – worms and molluscs – lies beneath the sand on the shoreline. And there are no shorelines at ten thousand feet. They should not be able to survive their annual migration. But they do.
‘Mr Sylvester.’ Leo pointed to him, arm outstretched, finger extended.
‘Yes, sir?’
Leo had the class now; he loved it when he made a breakthrough and grabbed the attention of those mediachoked minds, brains buzzing with electronic music, video games, sex, sport and fast food. Cut through the media dazzle with some original godwit-thinking and you find that there is life in the interior of their minds; thin soil maybe, but enough to plant the seed of thought.
‘Your point is that a godwit is not a seal?’
‘Right on.’
‘Absolutely correct, but my original principle applies. It’s what we don’t know that should interest and excite us, not what we do know. Seals have always had their own language, but we do not know what they are saying.’
The Swedish girl had put up her hand.
‘Yes, Miss Nielsen?’
‘Why are we only interested in the language of these seals? Surely there is much more to learn about the seas in which they live?’
She spoke in slightly guttural English that Kemp, whose own accent was a mixture of his native Australian layered with lowland Scottish, found hard to follow.
‘Well, we have only begun to understand how these mammals communicate. But you are right. Our oceans are all around us – we swim in them, travel on them, feed from them and prepare to make war beneath their waves. Yet we have little understanding of them, or of the creatures that live in them.’
He had said too much. This was very much the way he always kicked off the first lecture, but perhaps he had overreached himself this time.
Time for a surprise, he thought.
‘All right. What I am saying is this. Once we understand that the oceans remain the greatest mystery on earth, once we hold that thought in our heads and hearts – yes, in our hearts – then we can move forward. Acknowledge your ignorance. Take nothing for granted. Any questions?’
‘But who says we know it all anyway?’
That boy again. Jacob Sylvester.
‘Never underestimate the arrogance of the science establishment, Mr Sylvester. Big money goes into science in order to produce answers. Scientists have to play the game and pretend that there are answers. My point to you today is that sometimes there are no answers, at least not ones that conventional science can uncover.’
Then he surprised them: there would be an unscheduled field trip the next day, on the tug Antoine. Since only twelve students had turned up he would take them all. Tomorrow was a Friday, and a sea trip would be a great way to start the weekend. They were to meet at the Institute’s own landing dock at 10 a.m., he told them. ‘Bring wet-weather clothing. Packed lunches and lifejackets provided. See you tomorrow.’ He picked up his notes.
‘Where are we are going?’ It was Gunbrit Nielsen again.
He told her that, weather permitting, they would run up to Monomoy Island – a favoured hauling-up place for grey and harbour seals. They would take hydrophones and recorders and spend the day on the water. Field trips were not picnics, he said, they were hard work.
‘And if anyone who didn’t make it here today wants to come, please tell them they’ll have to wait for another time
– the boat has a full complement.’
There was a buzz as the class left. Field trips were popular. As Leo liked to say, what better place for marine biology students than out on the ocean?
He picked up the rest of his papers and walked back to the car. The 15-year-old Saab 900 had doubled its resale price thanks to the film Sideways a few
