#ziphid

“No Air”

A female Cuvier’s beaked whale is headed down. Down past the birds. Down past the fish. Down past where light can reach. She’s already in the twilight zone. Soon her lungs will collapse, the negative buoyancy pulling her further down like a sinking bullet. Down down down into the inky black abyss. At 2 kilometres depth she’s in her element. Here she hunts, fighting the squid that over the years have marred her face with scars. She will stay down here as long as it takes. One hour. Two hours. Three, four. It is only the mammalian condition that forces her upwards again. Towards life, towards light. And that crucial breath.

“Nothing more”

Well this was a strange thing I made this one time. No idea what it is supposed to mean or represent, it just sort of happened. Though someone told me they found it rather haunting, and they were reminded of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’;

"Tis only this and nothing more. Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore'."

“The ocean alight”

A (generic) beaked whale comes too close to one of the many bombs humans have dropped in the ocean. It’s a real problem for them, even in modern times. In 2012 a young killer whale (L112) stranded on the BC coast, and although cause of death could not be determined with total certainty, it was suspected she died of ‘blast trauma’; sustained from an exploding bomb.