Rarotonga Became Her Home Base
Over the years, Hauser was able to turn 772,000 square miles of the island nation’s waters into a whale sanctuary. This is where she set up the Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation. And all of her hard work and petitions paid off in 2001 when the Cook Islands’ government declared that the whale sanctuary would extend 200 nautical miles in every direction from the islands’ shore line. So naturally, by 2017, Rarotonga in the Cook Islands had become her home base. Perhaps that whale hugged her and that other whale saved her from the shark as a way of saying thanks for turning that area of the ocean into a save haven for whalekind.