Usually boisterous with the chatter of many languages, the guests and crew of our whale-watching boats were left speechless by what we encountered. Panga pidgin, it seems, is largely just figuring out ways to tell others to be still and enjoy a moment in nature. Like when the exhalation of a mother gray whale, flanked ever so closely by her precious calf, evokes memories of our own mothers shushing us. When we lock eyes with a creature foreign yet familiar and are left to ponder what she may be pondering.