A Photo and Its Story

Fascinating pictures and the story behind them

The black wall in front of Michael Aw’s eyes is getting thicker and thicker. Thousands of sardines— cornered by sharks and dolphins— are pushed into a few cubic meters of ocean off the east coast of South Africa. It seems it will be only a matter of seconds before the first shark pierces the disorientated swarm to snag its prey. But suddenly Aw, an underwater photographer, observes that the predators are swimming away from the shoal of sardines— and the water under the shoal starts to shine with a silvery-white glow. Moments later, a 25-foot-wide mouth shoots up from the depths and sucks in hundreds of sardines. All Aw can do is swerve to one side— and press his camera’s shutter. The result: a unique snapshot of the mouth of a Bryde’s whale— the phantom of the ocean. Indeed, we know less about these up to 55-foot-long giants than about any other whale. How many are there? How long do they dive for? Where do they migrate to? All of these questions are still unanswered because the whales are rarely sighted and do not follow a fixed pattern of behavior. And so, every encounter with one of these mysterious colossi is a nerve-racking adventure. This is how Aw’s colleague Doug Perrine describes diving with a Bryde’s whale: “Unlike its more ponderous relatives, the Bryde’s whale is like a sleek predatory missile. Diving in the presence of one is like standing on train tracks in the fog: You know that a high-speed locomotive could appear in an instant, but you don’t know from which direction.”