Any time a highly trained scientific observer, speaking within his or her particular area of expertise, announces a jaw-dropping breakthrough, you might want to pay attention. Veteran whale watch guide Dr. Curt Kinkead, who has taken a quarter of a million people whale watching, and who wrote the Whale Watch Guidelines for the Marine Mammal Protection Act, summarizes the evidence in support of the notion that the cetaceans are humanity's door to the stars. This is not a dry foot-noted treatise—it's a quick overview of what we know, written in terms we can all understand.