Do you know the story of White Gladis? No, you don’t because you wasn’t there. We were there. I was there. I witnessed it. I saw what happened. I know why she seeks revenge.
It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. The water felt warm and perfect.
The fish were abundant and enough for everyone to share. We hadn’t seen or heard a boat in months. But then again, the waters were cooler then and things were now changing.
Just as Gladis’s family had changed. She had welcomed a baby calf. He was the joyous little thing. I watched as the baby learned all about the atmosphere we live in.
We hadn’t heard a boat in months, and then we did, it was coming our way. It was the first one that we heard since the water had gotten warm. Gladis told her calf, to stay close by. He’d stay close but would lose his direction, his mom would yell, and he’d come back. She tried teaching him about the noise coming from the boat. “When you hear that it means danger. Stay near me.” They swam. They could hear the noise getting louder, but the goal of the entire pod was to swim away from the noise. It seemed like they were swimming towards the noise. So they changed directions slightly. Still it got louder. Suddenly, the sun went behind a large, dark cloud. The water got dark making it hard for the pod to see. They decided to turn in the opposite direction that they just came from. Still, the sound was getting louder. By now, with the overcast, they couldn’t even see just a few inches in front of them. Gladis told her baby to stay close by. The baby listened.
The noise grew louder. The baby tried to tell its mom that the noise hurt his ears. White Gladis told him to stay close by. The sound was too loud and the baby couldn’t hear his mom. The baby began to slowly drift away from Mom. There was a hard hit. The baby felt the pain not knowing what it was. The baby had never experienced pain before.
The baby began to feel different. He watched fluids that are normally inside of his body mix with the sea water. He cried and called out to his mom while still trying to swim. The pain was unbearable for him. His swimming slowed.
His mother heard and swam over. Gladis looked at her baby and saw that he was injured. Gladis began pushing her baby with her nose away from the boat. The baby kept trying to swim but the attempt grew less and less. Gladis knew what was coming next. She took the baby back to the pod, and they circled the injured baby. Each pod member understood what was happening. After her baby took its last breath, when she was ready, she let his body go to float in the ocean. We watched it drift away.
That’s when White Gladis changed. She’d had it! With every single boat that came our way, she’d go and pull out the boats rudders. The first time we watched her do it, we thought she was crazy. She had lost her mind. None of us go near those boats, and we don’t go near any of the humans either. We don’t eat humans. We are curious about them but we don’t like them. White Gladis, she likes their boats and she learned that if she pulls them rudders out, the boat sinks. After damaging each one, she simply swims away laughing.
We’re a pod, a family, so of course we stick with White Gladis. Some of us have even learned from White Gladis how to pull the rudders out. There have been times our pod has what we call a, “Rudder Party.” We don’t want to hurt no humans. We just don’t like their boats. Their boats hurt us, and it’s time that they understand they have to share the water with us.
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This story was written about a real pod of whales named by scientists as White Gladis. These whales are the group responsible for damaging rudders on boats sinking 6 and damaging more than 200 boats.
The part about her baby is made up simply to bring awareness to how we as humans can be an unintentional threat to wildlife. Although the story is based on a group of whales called White Gladis the rest of the storyline is fabricated.
Copyright 2026 M.C. Addington. All rights reserved.
M.C. Addington 