In the mid-1950s, newspapers and magazines excitedly reported on scientist-explorers undertaking daring expeditions to harpoon gray whales off the North American Pacific Coast. Tales of enraged mother whales bashing boats and groups of men attempting risky technological feats painted an image of maritime scientific adventure. The scene of these adventures was the foggy southern California coast and a “lonely Mexican lagoon.”
Yet, there’s something unusual about these altogether too-familiar-sounding tales of rugged men in rugged landscapes doing rugged deeds. Led by medical doctors, these expeditions planned to record whale hearts’ electrical activity, hoping to unlock the secrets of human hearts. These “coronary explorers,” as one newspaper called them, aimed not to understand gray whale behavior and physiology, but rather to use whales for human medical research. Although these expeditions have been largely forgotten, they provide a window into intersections of medicine, whale science, and colonial masculinity in the mid-twentieth century. Instead of unlocking cardiological secrets, these expeditions – including their bad weather and uncooperative whales – played a pivotal role in public imaginaries of seafaring masculine hero-scientist figures.
Dr. Paul Dudley White led the most famous “cardiographic whale hunts.” An influential cardiologist posthumously declared the “Father of American cardiology,” White rose to national prominence when he became President Eisenhower’s personal cardiology consultant following Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack. White’s gray whale adventures commenced two years earlier in January 1953 off La Jolla, California. This initial (and largely unsuccessful) expedition sparked a small flurry of attention. An AP headline declared: “Weather Bad and Whales Un-cooperative So Heart Specialists Return Home.” Visibility in the foggy waters off La Jolla was poor, and the AP reported that the whales that the expeditioners did see “seemed more concerned with reaching their mating grounds in southern waters than aiding the advancement of science.”
White’s second expedition in February 1956 made a larger splash in media coverage across the country, from the New York Times to a self-penned National Geographic spread. Leading an effort called “Expedition Heartbeat” to Mexico’s Laguna Ojo de Liebre (then called Scammon Lagoon), White radioed updates to media, which followed the expedition raptly. Once again, gray whales proved elusive, evading harpooners despite White’s purportedly benevolent, scientific intentions. “Whales Wary of Baring Their Hearts To Dr. White’s Coronary Explorers,” a DC newspaper declared, adding that White “lost the first round in his effort to wiretap a whale’s heartbeat.” In National Geographic, a photo spread accompanied stories of the expedition’s (mis)adventures – including an attacking mother, a ruined boat, and whale sightings the expedition just barely missed. White admits, “[in] the end we fell short of our goal,” but concludes optimistically, hoping to return again to “record the heartbeat of wary grays.”