Tom Mustill

How to Speak Whale Tom Mustill

From biologist Tom Mustill--the nature documentarian who went viral when a thirty-ton humpback whale capsized his kayak--comes a thrilling investigation into whale science and animal communication that asks: "What would happen if animals and humans could meaningfully interact?"

"When a whale is in the water it is like an iceberg: you only see a fraction of it, and have no conception of its size."

On September 12, 2015, Tom Mustill was floating in a two-person kayak with a friend, just off the coast of California. It was cold, but idyllic--until a humpback whale breached the water and landed on top of him, releasing the energy equivalent of forty hand grenades. He was certain he was about to die, but when his head miraculously broke the surface, he felt as though he'd survived a lightning strike. In the interviews that followed the incident, Mustill was left with one, seemingly unanswerable question: How was he still alive?

Drawing from his experience as a biologist and wildlife filmmaker, Mustill started investigating human-whale interactions around the world. When he was approached by two Silicon Valley investors, who told him they wanted to use artificial intelligence (AI) to decode animal communications, Mustill embarked on a journey where big data meets big beasts, using animal eavesdropping technologies to train AI--originally designed to translate human languages--to discover patterns.

There is a revolution taking place in biology, as the technologies we've developed to explore our own languages are turned to nature. In How to Speak Whale, Mustill takes readers on a fascinating journey from seventeenth century Dutch naturalists, to the whaling industry of the nineteenth century, to the cutting edge of Silicon Valley, looking at how scientists and start-ups around the world are working with powerful new technologies to decode animal languages. Whales, with their giant mammalian brains, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for this to happen. But what would the consequences of such human-animal interaction be?

We're about to find out.