My first interaction with a sperm whale was when I was just two years old. A young whale had stranded on the beach near my home in Long Island, New York, and a group of veterinarians decided to bring this whale into a nearby boat basin to get a closer look at him and determine if they could help him. The young whale was nicknamed Physty, a play on both the scientific name of sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus, and on his seemingly feisty personality. Physty was approximately 25 feet long and was probably somewhere between five and seven years old when he found himself gravely ill and in the shallow waters of coastal Long Island. He stranded twice before the rescue team brought him into the basin for a closer look. While the veterinarians and rescuers were standing vigil thinking at any moment this creature from the depths was going to die, the scientists were also trying to determine what was wrong with this whale and why he had left his family unit, or was left by his family unit, ending up on the beach. It was determined that Physty had pneumonia and eventually, he was fed squid packed with antibiotics, and slowly started showing signs of improvement.

During this time, Physty was in captivity for nine days and people could go to visit him to see his progress. In the early days he simply wallowed, but as his condition started to improve, he started to swim around the boat basin. I was immediately captivated when my mother took me to visit him. I will never forget the first time I looked into Physty’s enormous eye and he looked back at me. It is one of my earliest memories and remains as vivid today as it was then. Here was an enormous mysterious creature that came from the depths of the ocean. It made me wonder, what else could be in the ocean’s depths? In that moment, I was hooked – the ocean and its conservation has been my life’s mission ever since.