The Pygmy Blue Whale
Photographed and written during my tenure as Oceanographic Magazine’s Storyteller in Residence (2024-2025)
Barely two kilometres offshore, we slip, delicately, into the waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean. The inky wilderness that engulfs us is disorienting; an expansively megalophobic world of no bearings and no borders that twists some 10,000 feet downwards. Then, as suddenly as a whisper breaking the stillness of night, an ogive ruptures the monochromatic blue. It swims toward us, moving with such improbable grace for something so vast that you could be forgiven for forgetting that the enormous creature is, in fact, rapidly charging down an invisible migration highway. On its third breath, it sinks downward in a glide that disappears into the bowels of the Ombai Strait. Climbing back onto the boat, I grin. I just came face-to-face with the pygmy blue whale.
