Research
Behind the Book
The series is fiction, but much of what happens in it starts somewhere real. This is where the research lives.
Want the animals themselves rather than the writing? The Real Whales has full guides to orcas, humpbacks and sperm whales, and to what industrial whaling did to them.
The Real WhalesWhat gets researched
- Pods and family structure
- Orca society is built around long-lived matriarchal family groups. Herynn, Okent, Joop and Joom sit inside a real social structure.
- Humpback behavior
- Migration routes, feeding strategies, and the documented instances of humpbacks intervening to protect other animals — the seed of Babel and Hue.
- Entanglement and ocean threats
- Discarded and active fishing gear is a genuine, documented danger to whales worldwide. It is what puts Hue in the nets.
- The world below
- Kelp forests, bait balls, coastal inlets, open-ocean crossings — the actual geography the story moves through.
Research posts
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The ocean science behind the series, sent occasionally alongside release news.