Blue whale

It’s dark inside this living tornado! The crustaceans swim into you, hitting face and hands like hail.

No law seems to govern the shrimp and their erratic movements; their instinct for survival means disappearing into the mass to avoid the predator. But which predator? The few sardines who try to pick off a few here and there? The blue shark swimming in the distance? No. The threat is on a different scale…or rather totally off the scale! Initially, we can’t work out what is happening; the huge cloud of krill that we were swimming in a few minutes earlier has disappeared into what we thought was the ocean but was actually a gaping mouth…

Then it all becomes clear: the blue whale was too big, too wide and filled our field of vision completely. Amidst the twisting streams of bubbles we can make out the inflated throat and grey-blue skin under which the titanic muscles undulate as they contract and relax. The whale passes endlessly: 25 metres? 30 metres? Finally, the shape changes announcing the arrival of the colossal tail – 7 metres wide – upon which we “board” for an instant before, with one flick, it propels the monster away.

François Sarano

Images du diaporama : Richard Hermann and François Sarano /Galateefilms "Océans" Jacques Perrin