Heterotopia, deriving from the Greek words ἕτερος/ hetero, meaning other, and τόπος /topos, meaning place, was conceptualised by Foucault as a space that is somehow other. In social heterotopias normal rules do not apply, yet this space somehow mirrors reality. The philosopher might have had prisons, bars and ports in mind when coming up with the term, but I can only imagine Darwin would have found the concept of the heterotopia fascinating in nature, too.

When he finally arrived in Tenerife in 1832, Darwin encountered sights he had only previously seen in drawings and even more so, a landscape and ecosystem that defies the norms of normality as he would have known them. A volcano in the middle of an island. High mountains emerging from sea level up. Endemic species, different types of forest right next to each other. A land of rock, water, wind, green. Life.

Darwin never managed to actually set foot on the island, but had to research solely from the Beagle. Imagining what he would see, drawing from afar what he was getting glimpses off, reporting back on the ecosystem of an island, from a boat. Exemplary heterotopia!

What Darwin did manage to see and report were pilot whales; from his heterotopia he managed to report a creature transcending worlds as we know them, moving between elements, travelling around the globe. He didn’t see much, but he clearly saw Her. An animal that much like heterotopias, defies normality. A sea creature that needs air to breathe, a beast that sings, a top predator that gives birth and cares for its young for decades. She is the protagonist of this landscape and She has been leading her family in these waters for hundreds of years.

It is hard to imagine in a world of marine traffic, scientific endeavour, whale watching, whaling and Sea World, what would have crossed Darwin’s mind when he saw a whale 200 years ago, and even more what She would be thinking seeing this bearded man that changed science, sketching in a book.

Since Darwin’s era, the status of the pilot whale has drastically changed. Before the global moratorium on whaling, the enterprise almost drove Her family to extinction. Man’s dominating passion enclosed the oceans rulers into confined bathtubs, forcing an animal that can sing, care for Her young, mourn and commit suicide, perform for millions of tourists worldwide. As Alexandra Morton puts it, humanity's aggressive interest has put yet another pressure on whales, with whale watching boats internationally following them around, bargaining for a Sea World show in the wild. To this end, the massification of tourism and marine traffic, global noise pollution, overfishing and sea warming have so drastically and negatively changed the landscape over the last few years that it is fair to assume that Darwin himself would give the word “evolution” a second thought.

Pilot whales, like the majority of cetaceans, are to us an immersive reflection; like Alice through the looking glass, through Them we get an idea of a word so upside down to ours, and yet so parallel in so many ways. A Pilot whale’s life is Her family, with the young’s mom being Her whole world for up to the first 15 years. They travel together, eat together, rest together, breathe together. A life in synchrony, a perfect family ecosystem, that we have yet to even fathom. The same animal that breathes on the surface will then reach 1000m depths, fight giant squid, swim and feed in complete darkness and then find Her way back to Her family using only sound and individual calls. She will rejoin the family, rejoin our world and if we are lucky, allow us a quick sighting of Her presence.

It is hard to imagine a past different from the one we know. But we owe it to ourselves to imagine a better future, and even more so we have the moral responsibility to use our imagination and, in Jane Goodall’s words, indomitable human spirit to the service of the animals that were here long before we came ashore and will hopefully still be here after we are maybe gone.

History is written by the winner, and the losing side more often than not remains forgotten. Before the Spanish colonised Tenerife in 1494, a whole other world was already up and running here - the Guanches, the natives of the Island, who were doomed to a history of violence and silence.
Much like them, the Pilot Whales are the Guanches of the Tenerifian Sea.
May they not be silenced and may they not be forgotten.

This is for Her, the Guanche of the Sea - The Pilot Whale
by Iro Tsarmpopoulou-Fokianou