This article approaches the story of whales that entered and stranded in the Tagus estuary at two distinct historical moments and contexts. It addresses the whale sighted on the eve of the 1531 earthquake and the whale that stranded in 1723, creating a narrative that interrelates the existence of these animals — their appearance, life, and death — with that of the people living along the Lisbon waterfront in the early modern period.

An integrative approach that combines the analysis of historical, documentary, and iconographic sources with the study of associated literary and artistic productions has been adopted. Voice and perspective are given to the whale itself, making it not merely the object and subject of the narrative but one of its co-creative agents. This is a methodological and communicative approach situated within the framework of the Environmental Humanities.

The whale-entity is conceptualised through an approach that transcends the real and biological existence of these animals, transforming them into a cultural construct or ‘imagined reality’. Thus, the whale becomes kaleidoscopic. Within the whale, multiple worlds come into being — all more-than-human worlds, all times, geographies, and meanings. For us, the whale is a hyperobject.