Whales’ codas appear to broadcast their identities. One coda pattern distinguishes individuals, a set of others identifies their families, and a special one marks the cultural clan. The 1+1+3 coda (click pause click pause click click click) is unique to the Eastern Caribbean, is made by all the whales in the Eastern Caribbean Clan, and has remained identical for at least 30 years. Calves spend at least two years learning to make it correctly. And they learn to produce it with great fidelity, which most likely ensures that their clan membership is recognizable over their large geographic ranges and across the diversity of other whales they encounter.

The whales in the Caribbean are distinct, and they appear to identify themselves as distinct. Unfortunately, as a result of a changing climate and human impacts, these urban whales, who live in nearshore waters, are at risk. One in three baby whales born off Dominica will not survive to its first birthday. Tweak’s cousin, Digit, had just begun hunting on her own when she got rope from a fishing net tangled around her tail; now she can no longer dive as well, and is struggling to survive.

Losing a large number of individuals is a tragedy, but what happens when we lose an entire whale culture? What do we lose when we lose a way of life?

Every culture, whale or otherwise, is its own solution to the problems of the environment in which it lives. With its extirpation, we lose the traditional knowledge of what it means to be a Caribbean whale and how to exploit the deep sea riches around the islands efficiently. And that cannot be recovered, not even if the global population of sperm whales was robust enough to support remigration into the Caribbean. These would be different whales, from elsewhere, who do things differently. This region would be profoundly impoverished for the new whales, who would be more vulnerable here. The species as a whole would lose some of its repertoire on how to survive.