Triumph and tragedy...

There was triumph and tragedy in the tenuous interface between your world and mine this past week. In triumph, a Beluga Whale saved the life of a woman who was drowning in the whale’s twenty-foot deep arctic pool at an aquarium in Harbin, China. Even before the other humans did, the whale sensed the woman’s distress and gently carried her to the surface. This triumph of human and whale interaction stands in stark contrast to a tragedy that transpired half a world away from China, in the Gulf of Mexico off Tampa, Florida. There, caring humans who had nursed a Bottlenose Dolphin back to health released the being back into the sea. Tragically, the dolphin was attacked by a large shark (or kraken as we call its kind). A veterinarian, like my friend Dr. Caitlin Quinn, mercifully put the mortally injured being out of its misery. On behalf of the dolphin who humans tried to save, thank-you. And on behalf of the whale, who saved a human, you are welcome. Triumph and tragedy in the world we share; a world you call Earth but we know as Planet Ocean.