Sparse intimacies: an ethnography of (knowing) whales

This thesis is about whales and the ways scientists and naturalists know them. Based on multi-sited fieldwork, including research and whale watching settings in Nova Scotia and South Africa; as well as interviews (remote and in-person) in Canada, the US, the UK and South Africa, it interrogates western knowledge practices about cetaceans. I pay particular attention to that which scientists and naturalists learn about whales that cannot be expressed in quantitative forms. I argue such knowledge is crucial to understanding whales, but is at risk of vanishing under contemporary marine science’s turn toward remote technologies and machine learning. Seeking to elucidate what stands to be lost, I develop modes of expressing what lies within the aperture between what researchers know and what they disseminate. I argue that an ethnographic approach to cetacean research and its dissemination can offer new knowledge and new knowledge practices about cetaceans. I offer two ethnographies of specific Bay of Fundy cetaceans: the first, an orca and the Atlantic white-sided dolphins among whom he lives; the second, a humpback with a propellor-lacerated tail fluke.In Chapter 1, I argue that despite the quantitative facade of formalized marine biological knowledge, cetologists already possess significant qualitative knowledge about whales, which informs and shapes their work. Yet, as Chapter 2 details, opportunities for gaining such knowledge are diminishing. Cetology was once characterized by “sparse data” in which scientists had only snippets of observational data. Now remote, automated technologies are increasingly used to collect huge volumes of data in human researchers’ stead, and machines to process it. Chapter discusses this, noting that spending time with cetaceans (or proximate with their habitats) and/or with raw data has until recently been an important component of cetologists’ research process, despite associated inefficiencies. Collecting and processing sparse, raw data provided scientists with qualitative knowledge of whales and—combined with this data’s inherent gappiness—with a thorough understanding of how much there is to whales that cannot be fully known. The shift from, to quote an interlocuter, “a sparse data scenario to a complete data scenario” changes, I argue, both the nature and the substantive content of scientific knowledge about whales, including how scientists advocate for them. As much as technological advances increase knowledge production’s capacity, this shift is also a loss. The old, sparse, slow modes of being present with whales were one of the discipline’s strengths, not a weakness requiring correction, and should not be left to slide unremarked into anachronism.Each of Chapters 3 and 4 is a substantive cetacean ethnography. They are primarily literary-nonfiction in form, and argue for the potency of ethnographic research about cetaceans. Based on my own encounters with the specific whale protagonists; on in-depth interviews with longtime naturalists who know these individuals well; and on extensive reading of the marine biological archive, these ethnographies disseminate substantive knowledge (that has not been documented by science) about the specific whales in question; and work to set down, in narrative, something approximating the whales’ lived experiences. The texts gesture to who and how these particular whales are, adhering to my human interlocuters’ conviction that it is possible to know, by feeling and through sensory empathy, something of that which is intangible of whales. These final chapters propose new possibilities for multi-species anthropology, suggesting that qualitative researchers are well positioned to contribute new knowledge about cetaceans themselves. Such knowledge has conservation implications: the orca who lives with dolphins may help us to understand cetaceans’ capacities to adapt to change, and thus better conceive ways to help them when change cannot be avoided

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