The Song of the Sperm Whale

Long massacred by whaling ships, sperm whales were almost driven to extinction. Saved when whale hunting ceased in the 1980s, the largest predators on the planet had, until then, always been studied from the surface, allowing their life beneath the seas to remain a mystery.

For the first time, a team of scientific divers has literally become immersed in the day to day life of a clan of cetaceans. Off the coast of Mauritius, over a period of 7 years, they shared the fascinating lives of the clan and tried to unravel the mysteries of their communication using a specifically designed recording device.

Witnesses to moments of intimacy that had never before seen, from the exchanges between a mother and her newborn, to the relationship between the latter and its "nurse", they aimed to decipher the secrets of the whales' dialect and those of the complex relationships forged within this astonishing cohesive, matriarchal society.