Whalefall

Daniel Kraus’s Whalefall grounds its speculative survival narrative in real-world marine science, incorporating many authentic details from its specific setting. The story takes place off Monastery Beach, where the seafloor drops sharply into the Monterey Bay Canyon, a submarine canyon that is comparable in scale to the Grand Canyon. The novel accurately describes this abyss as a “frigid black haven for the world’s strangest beings” (25). The seafloor’s unique geography allows deep-sea creatures like the giant squid (Architeuthis dux) to venture closer to the surface, and this fact forms the basis of the novel’s premise. Likewise, the author extrapolates from authentic scientific details to depict a realistic battle between the sperm whale and the giant squid. According to research institutions like the Smithsonian, sperm whales are the primary known predators of giant squids, and although the conflicts between these behemoths are rarely observed, such battles are nonetheless a genuine part of the deep-sea ecosystem (Roper, Clyde. “Giant Squid.” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 2009).

This scientific grounding also enhances the novel’s core themes. The title itself is a commonly used term for the ecological process by which a whale carcass sinks to the ocean floor and provides sustenance for countless deep-sea organisms for decades to come.