The Pod: Sperm Whale

Sperm Whale (aka Sperm, aka Moby, aka The Essex Obliterator)

Male / known whaling-ship destroyer / 26 meters long (85 ft or 11.3 Yao Mings) / 73 tons (32 chevy silverados) / vulnerable status

Sperm whale the species:

The sperm whale uses something called echolocation to find its prey and their diet consists of almost entirely squid. To find the squid they nourish themselves with, they often have to plunge over a mile deep to get to a meal. The way echolocation works for them, is by making clicking sounds that travel through the water, they can receive the sound waves that bounce back off of objects. That information from the returning sound waves tell them where to look for their prey. The sounds that they can make can be devastatingly loud. My understanding is that if you were underwater and near a sperm whale when it was echoing at their loudest, it could rupture your heart and kill you instantaneously. So getting in the water with sperm whales could be dangerous even if they have no desire to hurt you. The organ that they receive the bouncing sound waves back after they create a clicking sound, is through an organ called the spermaceti organ. The spermaceti organ acts like a satellite receiver, taking in the information and passing it onto the brain. And it is the spermaceti itself that made them a target for whalers for so many years.

Why whale oil and why spermaceti? Well, any fat that you render from any animal or vegetable can be used to make a simple oil lamp. I'm not suggesting you try it, but it does work. I experimented with a simple vegetable oil lamp with a wick made from canvas and it sat in the liquid and burned. An hour later, my carpet was stained with black soot, but I learned a valuable answer to 'why whale oil'. Through my mistake, I researched and found that whale oil burned with a less offensive odor, burned brighter, and was less smoky than other animal fat. Today, there are far better alternatives that are readily available that just weren't available to people during the peak period of whale hunting. Whale oil is a thing of the past, but when it was available, spermaceti was even better than standard whale oil rendered from the other animals and so the sperm whale was the species that whalers craved to get their harpoons into.

Sperm Whale the character:

Sperm (derived from his common species name) is based on the same whale that inspired Herman Melville to write the great novel Moby Dick. Sperm was hunted by humans but he got away by busting up the boats they used to harpoon him. Now he's very distrusting of others because of the incident. He's grumpy, defensive, and talks a bit like the sailors who hunted him.

If you want to read about the real Moby Dick, here's a link kindly made available by the University of Denver. Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex