Shades of Moby Dick! We went whale watching, Victoria and I. Now, I must confess the initial lure was the sea itself, a chance to ride the bounding main and view the rugged beauty of the Cape Ann coastline from boatside.

As for the whales themselves, well, that might be interesting, a bonus of the four-hour journey, if it actually developed there were some of the big fellows to see. But, frankly, I, for one, didn't put much stock in that aspect of the trip.

Enjoy the ride, marvel at nature's magnificent sculpturing of rock formations with only water and wind to work with, and bask in the sun while cooled by a kindly breeze - that sort of thing: that's how Victoria and I assessed the prospects for this afternoon of a recent vacation in Gloucester.

But we didn't reckon with Karen Smith.

She's a former schoolteacher, a naturalist and an expert on the whales who serves as a tour guide in season and spends much of the rest of the year as a consultant. Her fascination with her favorite subject proved infectious. What started as a low-key lecture on the types and habits of whales soon developed into a suspenseful narration on the prospects of seeing the marvelous mammals in the flesh and in action: Karen Smyth not only knew her subject well, she knew how to convey the excitement about it which she has never lost during her two decades of firsthand experience.

The first sighting was nothing more than a black outline against the blue waves. Victoria and I exchanged doubting glances, even as Smith promised there would be more, much more, on this, a propitious day for whale watching.

And soon enough, it all came true. Just like the pictures we'd all seen. The whales came up out of the azure depth. With style and gusto.

The leaped skyward and arched back into the drink, sometimes they belly-flopped with a thunderous whack, other times they shook their tails. At first they were off in the distance; before too long they were close to our craft, the Privateer, and to other tour boats in the area.

Now, Victoria and I, who admittedly had been a bit blasé about this whole business, suddenly found ourselves running from one side of the boat to the other so that we wouldn't miss a thing.

But what struck us most in retrospect was th3e quality of Karen Smyth's devotion to her work. It became evident to us that hers was a labor of love, one which is based on something bigger that the orca or humpback or any other species of whale on which she is so knowledgeable. This is a women who bespeaks environmentalism without uttering the word; while others politicize and harangue, she spends her life doing - work which will help to ensure preservation of a form of ocean life too long threatened by rapacious hunters.

Why, how, where to save the whales: that seems to be Karen Smyth's mission in life, but in the fulfillment of that objective, she transmits a larger lesson, the need to safeguard the whole of the surroundings God has given us: the sea and its denizens, the forests, the jungles and their multitudes, the air we breathe and the sky we look up to.

Judy and Merwyn Spaulding newly found friends from Connecticut, went whale watching before we did and recommended the idea to us. "The whales put on quite a show," Merwyn told us, "almost as though they knew what they were doing was for our benefit." Can it be, I wondered to myself as he spoke. And then I found I was using the same phraseology when others asked for our reaction after our own whale watching trip.