(with words and phrases from the video “How Whales Change Climate” and “Whale Poop Pumps Up Ocean Health” in Science Daily)
But now, a trophic surprise. Looking from above what little
you imagine. Nitrogen and iron in fecal whale pumps nourish
copepods, swarms of krill, and phytoplankton that
photosynthesize, removing carbon from the sea as they fall to
the seabed, changing global climes. Saints or prophets, whale
kind write Genesis with their feces—otherwise what you call
waste. In fact, more plumes mean more silver menhaden skitter
sardines, herring, mackerel, triggerfish, capelin, fusiliers, and
sandeel, flash as nutrients cycle back up to the photic zone
caused by the churning of water, mixed up and down the water
column by cetacean bodies, making more oxygen, keeping
plankton stores respirating, sinking carbon to the depths. More
small schools of fish mean more bottlenose and common
dolphin pods and orcas, more great whale congregations of Sei
Minke, blue and Bryde’s. The lunge-feeder feeds its prey who
feeds their predator. Black tip and copper sharks, gannets,
gulls, shearwaters, sea lions, seals, and tuna torpedo through a
din of one billion tightly bound bodies, picked until a shimmer
of scales rains to the floor.
Underwater, sight
curves. Beneath you spirals
a galaxy of fish.
Photo by Jordan Miles
Selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way Books for his book entitled The Taxidermistʻs Cut (Spring 2016), Rajiv Mohabir's first collection is a finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. He received fellowships from Voices of Our Nationʻs Artist foundation, Kundiman, The Home School (where he was the Kundiman Fellow), and the American Institute of Indian Studies language program. His second manuscript The Cowherd’s Son won the 2015 Kundiman Prize (Tupelo Press in May 2017). He was also awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets, and a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of Lalbihari Sharma’s I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (Kaya Press 2019), published originally in 1916.
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