My cousin Lucy is a marine biologist, and has been passionately interested in nature since she was a little girl. (Her father, Allan Keith, is a pretty well-known birdwatcher in that community.)

When she graduated from college 26 years ago, Lucy’s parents’ “adopted” a whale for her as a graduation present, meaning that they donated to the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation. The whale, a humpback, had been given the name Istar, and has been studied since the 1970s. Istar was a female and gave birth to her first calf, as far as the foundation can tell, in 1977. Nine more calves would follow. Istar was, apparently, a regular in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.

On April 16th, however, a humpback whale washed up on the beach of Quogue, Long Island—Istar. It’s not for sure yet, but it seems that the cause of death was a ship strike. The death may have been natural, though; humpbacks live for about 50 years, so Istar would have been nearing the end of her natural life.

Still and all…I can’t help thinking how sad that is. To have a connection, no matter how tenuous, to an animal for a quarter of a century—especially an animal as beautiful as a humpback whale—and then to see a magnificent creature reduced to this…

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