THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



into the lonely waters of Mexico's Scammon Lagoon 

 (half-way down the Pacific coast of Baja, California) 

 early in 1956, with an extraordinary objective: the 

 venture was organized to record the heartbeat of a 

 whale. 



The National Geographic Society, the Douglas Air- 

 craft Company, the Sanborn Company of Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts, and many other organizations and indi- 

 viduals had given generous aid. The expedition's ulti- 

 mate purpose was to contribute something to man's 

 investigations of the mysteries of the human heart, which 

 is roughly the size of man's two fists and beats from fifty 

 to ninety times a minute, compared with the heart of a 

 whale, which weighs more than two hundredweights and 

 beats far more slowly — perhaps fewer than ten times a 

 minute. 



In 19 1 6 a young Boston cardiologist. Dr. Paul D. 

 White, had dissected the heart of a sperm whale, and 

 published the first detailed scientific description of it. 



The mammalian heart — in the mouse, the man, the 

 elephant and the whale — beats constantly because of the 

 electricity it generates within itself: its driving impulse or 

 current in the human heart being no more than a 

 thousandth of a volt. The Scammon Lagoon expedition 

 failed in its objective, but it had gained valuable know- 

 ledge regarding its shortcomings. Applying that know- 

 ledge towards the perfection of their investigational 

 methods, and not in the least daunted. Dr. Paul Dudley 

 White (who is President Eisenhower's heart consultant) 

 is returning with his colleagues to the Lagoon this year. 



Man's contact with the whale is therefore not always 

 tinged with cruelty : it may be that his investigations are 

 in some way benefiting the animal itself. 



234 



