Swimming with humpback whales is a unique and profound experience that every marine enthusiast dreams of at least once in their lifetime.
Le whale They are animals that live in the vastness, with an evolutionary history that dates back fifty million years. Not only today are they the larger animals on the face of the planet, present in all major oceans, but some species of cetaceans move every year between the Tropics and the Poles, while others still speak to each other thousands of kilometers away; the voices of the humpback whales they skim the underwater soundscapes, describing curves in the darkness to transmit themselves to other distant whales, which they will never meet.
Since humans have existed, the whale has been considered a prodigious animal, warranting pause in wonder; its appearance and disappearance are memorable for those fortunate enough to witness them.
I tried to understand why, I thought about it a bit and I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons why we are so interested in whales is the distance we have from theOcean: the fearful respect for an ecosystem to which we are not connected, the symbol of a pocket of pure nature that we have not yet managed to corrupt, as we have already done with other areas of our planet.
Every diver's dream: swimming with whales
Having said this, it is not difficult to understand why the forbidden dream of any underwater I say swimming with the whale, to share an aquatic space with them, to meet their gaze in the blue of the ocean and, precisely because if we have to dream it is better to do it big, to take some pictures photo to watch and rewatch for years…unfortunately, there aren't many places in the world where this is possible.
It is necessary to fly beyond the world, another hemisphere and other latitudes, other stars in the sky to guide the routes of sailors.
Humpback whales in French Polynesia: a paradise for encounters
And that's how I find myself in the middle of thePacific Ocean, off the island of Mooreain French PolynesiaThis is one of the oceans where you can meet humpback whales, perhaps the most iconic of whales, universally known for their singing, engraved on discs, used as a meditation tool, and even included in the golden disc aboard the Voyager I spacecraft, launched in 1977 and now drifting beyond the Solar System's heliosheath, further away than any artificial object humans have ever ejected from the face of the planet.
In these waters humpback whales arrive from the Southern Ocean, after a journey of thousands of kilometers, to give birth and raise their young in a nutrient-rich environment away from ocean predators such as orcas e white sharks giants.
And it is precisely in these waters that, with a bit of luck, it is possible to dive and swim with them. We board small boats early in the morning and quickly head out to sea. The pilot and guide scan the horizon in all directions, looking for the little one. splash which indicates the humpback whale's emergence. At this point, the boat quickly heads toward the spray and stops no closer than 100 meters from the whale, so as not to disturb it.
The Technique: Freediving Photography in the Open Ocean
Then you descend quickly and silently into the immense blue, like a Navy SEAL would do and you start swimming. And that's the moment you think: "Oh my God... I'm in open ocean, the land is far away, the green tops of the palm trees are barely visible above the water's surface”. Below me only the deep blue that absorbs the light and becomes abyss. The diving camera It weighs as much as a tractor tire and I'm finning on the surface with mask and snorkel.
They are not used cylinders for these photos, everything is done in a because the regulator bubbles could disturb the cetaceans. I arrive where the whales should be... and there's nothing left... so I return to the boat, cursing under my breath as only an old Romagnolo can. This happens three or four times.
On the fifth time, I jump in, a little discouraged, but I swim anyway, as if my life depends on how fast I can go. I reach where the whale was blowing, but nothing. Then I look out into the deep blue, sinking beneath me. I see, or think I see, something.
A close encounter with the giants of the oceans
A distant, indistinct shadow that materializes more and more with every beat of my heart, playing like a Deep Purple drum solo, partly from the physical effort, partly from the emotion. At a certain point, all doubts end. I see fins, I see mouths, I see eyes.
I see 3 humpback whales, two adults and one puppy, which come straight up towards me; for a moment, a very long moment, I'm afraid that they will overwhelm me with their 18 meters in length and theirs 40 tons of weight, carried with unnatural elegance. As I take the shot, hoping that the camera setting I've studied for a long time is the right one, the large humpback whale slips past me and rotates itseye towards me.
It is not the wide eye of a fish, an evanescent eye in which one seems to glimpse the silver base behind.eye of the whale It bears no resemblance to the brilliant black eye of a bird or the conical, jerky eye of a shark; it looks like a gigantic human eye, though the emotion it conveys is beyond words. In the most essential sense, the humpback whale's eye looks human because it has airis has always been pupil and the white of the cornea that surrounds it when you open it wide.
The perspective-changing gaze of an underwater photographer
Even though the whale had eyelids, while it was looking at me, it hadn't blinked the entire time. It watches me with a vigilance that resembles our own: thoughtful, inquiring, aware. It wants to be sure I don't pose a danger to the calf it carries on its back to teach it to dive and surface, the basics of survival for any whale. cetacean.
At this point they parade away, far away, towards thePacific Ocean, the biggest of them all. Once I got back, it took me an hour to decide to look at the photoI was afraid they were blurry, poorly composed, poorly defined, in short, wrong. The passage of the humpback whales lasted 20-30 seconds. In total I took 16 foto, 3-4 so beautiful that they will be remembered for a lifetime…
