Sounding Whale Watch Log

A whale gives you three seconds and one clue. Sometimes it is a bushy little puff hanging over grey water, sometimes a tall column that leans with the wind, sometimes only a curved back rolling under before the mind can name it. Sounding is built for those three seconds and for the long, patient hours around them — the flask of tea, the cold headland, the horizon scanned in slow sweeps. It keeps the sea dark and quiet on the screen so your eyes stay useful, and it holds everything a shore watcher needs between blows.

The heart of it is the Blow Key: shape the spout you actually saw — its height, its lean, whether it split in two — then add the back, the fin and whether the tail lifted before the animal went down. The key answers honestly, ranking the species that fit and naming the one detail that rules each of the others out. Around the key sits a field guide of North Atlantic and Pacific whales with their blows, fins and flukes drawn in words, a Watch Log where each sighting keeps its bearing, its sea state and a photograph, and a Sea Room primer on swell, glare and the hours when spouts show best. Everything lives on the device, works far past the last bar of signal, and waits quietly for the next fin.