“Do you know what whale breath smells like?”

Our captain doesn’t wait for a reply.

“Rotten broccoli!” he bellows as a humpback spouts a few yards from our boat.

Awed by its size and unexpected stench, I almost forget that these majestic giants are, like us, air-breathing, warm-blooded, baby-nursing mammals. But unlike us, some whales have bodies as long as two school buses, tongues that weigh as much as an elephant and hearts the size of a small car, with an aorta (main artery) wide enough for a human to slide through.