By Mark Hendricks
Silver Solas Award-winner in the Men’s Travel category
“Now. In quickly, go now.”
With that command I slid off the inflatable starboard of a zodiac into the chilly waters off the Azores archipelago. My heart rate was already pounding as I prepared to enter the abyss. Now in the ocean another jolt of adrenaline shocked my body further. Even though a 5 mm neoprene wetsuit covered my skin, the sensation of the 60-degree water on my face was enough to increase my respiration further. This is in part due to increasing adrenaline, but also in part because I did not fully zip the back of my wetsuit in my haste to get into position on the vessel. Chilliness aside, the color of the water is beautiful; an ethereal tone of coral blue. Ahead of me floats a Portuguese man-o-war, another link contributing to this growing chain of adrenaline. It was hard not be mesmerized by the lustrous cyans and purples of the deadly hydrozoan, nor to stifle at the thought of an excruciating sting from the 10 feet of tentacles that drift below it. At the very least it would be a painful night back at the tavern.
“To the left! Left!” shouts a strong, matter-of-fact voice.
The voice belongs to Amos Nachoum, legendary explorer, expedition leader, and underwater photographer.
“Straight! Swim Straight!”
From below the surface, I hear the sounds of a rhythmic clicking. A feeling of electricity bordering a trance overcomes my body. Even with the adrenaline, I feel oddly at peace, zen-like even. The clicks come from a whale as it echolocates. It sends a signal that returns to the whale after bouncing off me, giving it an impression of what must appear an odd figure before it.
“In front! Look in front” shouts Amos.
From the blue the grayish figure of a sperm whale, enormous and awe inspiring, swims directly toward me. She isn’t alone; directly underneath me swims her calf. It has a distinctive white ring in front of its small dorsal fin.
The mother swims next to me within touching distance. “My God she’s enormous,” is all I could conceptualize. Her eye stays fixated on me as she passes by. I then watch as her tail and the calf fade into the deep blue of the North Atlantic, moving as rapid as the rain clouds are overhead.
The adrenaline I had been experiencing will last through the night.
I look back to the zodiac at Amos, who is laughing and exclaims, “Just stay in the water, you’re living!”
I am. I really am.
~
I arrived to a gray and stormy Faial island after having embarked on four flights within 24 hours. Usually the April storms subside by early May, but this one had lasted now into its third week. But the walk to the terminal after disembarking brought some much desired relief from the stickiness that always festers on one’s skin after spending an ungodly amount of time in airports and on planes. It comes with the territory, but we restless travelers are usually not the cleanest types. The surrounding landscape though is lush and very green. I can understand why the flight attendant on my third flight, a born and bred local, described the Azores as “Europe’s Hawaii.”
While technically in Portugal, the Azores feel like a world by itself. The islands are over 900 miles away from mainland Europe. This remoteness is part of its charm, a seafaring, red wine stained, subtropical charm. About a quarter of a million residents are spread out amongst the volcanic chain’s seven islands. More than half of those live on the island of São Miguel while less than 400 make their home on the tiny island of Corvo. The most current census has around 15,000 residents on Faial, with the majority concentrated within and around the port city of Horta. The size of the airport is appropriate to the residents. It is small, very small.
Passing through the terminal, I was swept back to an atavistic memory of the Azores. It was from a documentary, Sperm Whale Oasis, by the late underwater filmmaker Feodor Pitcairn that aired on PBS. The beautiful film showcased the Azorean islands, their people, their history as a whaling-based economy, and their many volcanic calderas. But the stars of the film were the island’s resident population of sperm whales. The documentary fed a greater obsession I had with marine mammals, cetaceans in particular, almost since my infancy. I was four years old when I first saw living marine mammals: beluga whales and a seal colony at my hometown aquarium facility. Then at five they brought in bottlenose dolphins, more charismatic and responsible for increased visitation.
Even then I was aware of the arguments in support and against the keeping of cetaceans in captivity. But I was a child and agnostic to the debate; I just knew I loved them so. Far away from any wild cetacean my childhood was spent in a concrete, crime ridden, urban metropolis. But my family’s annual membership to the aquarium opened a world to me, the world of the sea, of sharks and coral reefs, of moray eels and kelp forests. Every Friday night I would observe the belugas and dolphins, imagining what it would be like to swim alongside them. This fascination never strayed, only intensified with each passing year into adulthood. Eventually this led to a career as a trainer and behavioral researcher of bottlenose dolphins and the rescue and rehabilitation of wild marine animals. But after years of nonprofit politics, poverty wages, and unscrupulous management I became disillusioned with the idea of working for an aquarium. But the desire to work with and study cetaceans was unwavering. I wanted something more; more wild; more edge; more adventure; the world of the wild cetacean.
Fifteen years prior to landing in the Azores, when I was just in the infantile stages of becoming a professional wildlife journalist and in midst of leaving the world of zoo and aquaria for good, I came across a video of Amos giving a lecture on his work with the biggest and most dangerous animals of the sea. Blue whales, sperm whales, great white sharks, orcas, and leopard seals are just a minuscule fraction of the wildlife he was interacted with over his life. Here was a man who was doing what I dreamt of when I sat in that underwater viewing area, imagining what it would be like to be a whale. His life was more mythos than career. His is a life so storied that it was chronicled in the documentary, the aptly titled Picture of His Life. He became my inspiration as to why I sought to become a wildlife storyteller and restless traveler, to explore both land and sea with pen and camera, to swim with the ocean giants.
A few weeks before Covid-19 brought the planet to a standstill I met Amos after he gave a keynote address at a diving expo. We struck up a conversation and, still to my surprise and with deep appreciation, quickly became friends. Now stranded at home because of the pandemic we spoke often, and he shared with me his desire to return to the Azores to study and film cetaceans. And he invited me to join him on that exotic chain of islands. I had already begun a whale project, more personal than intellectual, but to work alongside one of the best to ever do this was too great to pass on.
The Azores is one of the world’s best locations for the study of whales and dolphins as 28 species reside or migrate through the archipelago. Early May would be the most optimum time for the expedition because, besides sperm whales, it aligns with the arrival of the other ocean giants such as blue, fin, and humpback whale that feed off the island’s rich waters. For two years we planned the expedition as a trio- myself, Amos, and a friend of his from the UK, Chris.
~
While waiting at the baggage claim a tall, lanky fellow with a shaggy mane adorned with a backwards facing Costa embroidered baseball hat kept looking at the long free diving fins I carried and glanced at the dirty fly fishing vest I wore to pack gear that didn’t fit into my luggage.
“Spearfishin’?”
“Diving,” I replied.
“Oh nice. For what?”
“Whales.”
“You have a permit? That’s awesome. Are you filming them?”
For one to enter the water in the company of whales the Azorean government grants permits for audiovisual work and scientific research only. Only three permits are granted at any one time and one must go through what can be a long, tedious application process. It was this process that held up the expedition the year prior.
“I am. Well, at least I hope so.”
Wildlife sightings are never a guarantee. My past expeditions taught me that whales are among the most difficult animals to approach, let alone have enough time to film or collect data for research. I had some decent encounters with orcas and humpback whales, but it took multiple days, and in some cases multiple expeditions over multiple years.
“Did you check in anything?”
I nodded in the affirmative. “Clothes, my wet suit.”
“I hope they don’t lose your gear. This place is notorious for it,” he warned. “My other team members have been here for a week. They just got their luggage yesterday.”
He was a member of a sports fishing team that were being filmed as part of a YouTube series on big game fishing and was staying nearby to where I was.
Later at customs we exchanged pleasantries and he said, “Take it easy, let’s grab a beer in town if you don’t get eaten by a whale.”
Outside the terminal was one lone taxi. In my best Portuguese I said to the driver, “Obrigado. Você pode me levar ao Hotel du Canal?”
“Hop in.”
Upon seeing my large fins I placed along the back seat he asked, in a thick Portuguese tone
“You a diver?”
“Sim.”
“American?”
“Sim”
“Very nice. You will love it here. Try our pineapple. It very nice.”
“Obrigado”
“You swim with the whales?”
“Yes. Sorry, I meant ‘desculpe.’” My knowledge of the Portuguese language was subpar but I always speak the greetings and basic words in every country I visit. Even if I sound laughable and they speak better English than I do.
“Sim. I am. How could you tell?”
“You look like someone who love the whales.”
What regarding my outward appearance hinted that I love whales was puzzling. Unless he was an oracle, it was much more likely this was a routine question asked of his passengers as whale watching is the most popular ecotourism activity in the Azores. And the people here love their whales. Driving into Horta it appeared that the sperm whale was the island’s unofficial mascot. Icon like sperm whale art shone from windows, their form as the centerpiece painted on outdoor murals, as mascots of stores and restaurants, and represented on flags.
Sperm whales, it would seem, are as Azorean as the peopIe of this autonomous zone, sharing a unique seafaring resilience. Which is what makes their previous relationship appear so paradoxical. In the not so distant past the slaughter of sperm whales was the primary economic activity here. Generations of Azorean men risked their lives in open boat whaling expeditions, small wooden vessels, and used hand harpoons in their quest to harvest the whale’s precious blubber and spermaceti oil. That oil is what made the largest predator of the Anthropocene the main target of these exploits; it made candles and cosmetic products, it was a finish applied to textiles, and used as an industrial lubricant. It was a dangerous undertaking, much like the target species that hunts for giant squid at depths of 2,000 feet below those very boats. It was low paying but allowed them to make somewhat of a living.
Tales of their Melville-esque conquests eventually reached the United States and fleets of commercial whaling ships from Nantucket made the 2,300 mile journey eastward to hunt this population and hire these rough and tough locals, who were promised a job and immigration to the United States. To this day Portuguese is the third most spoken language in Massachusetts, following English and Spanish.
And the Azoreans continued this antiquated whaling practice even when other countries used much larger, more industrial, modern ships that blasted harpoons from cannons; all the way to the very end when the commercial whaling ban went into effect in 1987, of which Portugal supported. A way of life that once typified these island became the subject of its museums.
Within a few years the first whale watching based company started in the Azores. A new path forward using the whale as part of a business model. Across the channel from Horta is the island of Pico where the namesake Mt. Pico, the dormant volcano and Portugal’s highest peak, rises over 7,000 feet above the azure waters, its base carpeted in lush greens of subtropical flora. It was here on the mountain that outposts were once constructed for lookouts to find where the whale were. Those former lookouts and whalers went on to use their skills in a growing tourism sector of the economy. They understood whale behavior, could tell the difference between the spout of a blue whale versus a fin whale. It was very successful and whale watching became synonymous with the Azores.
~
Having arrived in Horta I met Amos and was introduced to Chris, a brilliant artist and mad scientist of a photographer. While high megapixel digital cameras with superior resolution are the norm for today’s growing legions of photo enthusiasts, Chris was years ahead of the curve in the early days of digital imaging. He constructed his own digital amphibious medium format camera for underwater photography. Imagine if Ansel Adams was scuba certified and had used a classic Nikonos underwater film camera instead of 4×5 view camera. That’s Chris.
“How was your flight?” I asked.
“Good. But they lost my luggage that had my wetsuit. It’s ok, I have my camera.”
We walked the narrow, damp, cobbled street of Horta. It had a pleasing gleam cast from the street lamps. Across the road is the Horta Marina, a legendary port amongst sailors in the Atlantic. The gray cast from weeks of stormy weather could not conceal just how colorful the marina was; filled with an array of sailing yachts of incredible length, painted in pastels that complement the sea. The jetty has long served as a canvas for generations of sailors. Crews paint images of their boats and nautical adventures along the breakwater. Superstition, of which there are many for sailers, states that the those who do this will make it, safely, to their final destination. Of course there are tiles painted with scenes of sperm whales and the occasional dolphin.
We ate dinner at Peter Cafe Sport, the century old restaurant that long served as a sailor’s meeting house. Yacht flags from all over the world decorate its rustic wooden walls and hung overhead. A cacophony of conversation is the music here. Many famed navigators and adventurers have sat at these tables or stood cramped at its bar including Jacques Cousteau. It has since become a rite of passage for yachtsman to meet here and feast. It is the most Horta-like of Horta’s establishments. Attached to the restaurant is a store and a museum filled with scrimshaws of elegant drawings and maps carved in the teeth of sperm whales.
“Ah, my luggage is in Lisbon. I imagine it’ll take a few days to get here,” said Chris over the throngs of raconteurs.
“They already contacted you?”
“No, I see where my Apple AirTag is here on my iPhone. I hope they have a wetsuit for me tomorrow that fits.”
~
Barring live-aboard dive boats or lodging on a catamaran, mornings for marine based expeditions follow a simple routine. Here in Horta was no different: up early, breakfast, walk to the marina, transport gear to zodiac, apply sunscreen, search for whales, apply sunscreen, search for more whales, rinse, repeat, “Oh that was just a sunfish,” apply more sunscreen, “I see a spout!” damn the whale dove, apply more sunscreen, return to port, in that order.
Our first few days at sea were gloomy and unsuccessful. One day we had to turn back as swells from the tail end of the storm became just too large for the zodiac to navigate through. On other days we just couldn’t get close enough to the whales. Sperm whales are notoriously difficult to track; the largest of the toothed whales can vanish with a quick dive. And when they dive, they dive; to depths of almost 10,000 feet into the ocean’s midnight zone. Only few other marine mammals are so well adapted to this long form deep dive. Add in their ability to hold their breath for upward of two hours this can make for very long searches, the kind of searches that Amos thrives in.
Amos is a tactical leader, stemming from a stern upbringing in his native Israel along with the years he spent in service to the military. He’s an original in a field that today is littered with tawdry imitators and social media “influencers.”
He approaches expeditions with meticulous planning. Decades of experimentation and experience gave rise to his methodical approach to big animal photography and filmmaking, one in which the animal is not under any human induced stress. To have an amazing animal encounter, especially with a whale, requires almost superhuman patience. It often takes way too much time, sometimes more time than a permit holding film expedition has. But it is when the whale is not under stress and accepts you that powerful imagery is crafted. This is the ethics of Amos and of anyone who has had the privilege to learn under his guise. No longer a soldier in war, an experience that still haunts him, he’s a soldier for the sea, using his work to bring awareness of conservation issues and inspire a sense of childlike wonderment. His deep affection for the ocean is so intimate that something as seemingly innocuous as throwing an apple core is a breach of trust, as I eye-witnessed when an intern on our boat did just that.
“Never throw anything into the sea,” he directed toward the intern.
“But it’s fruit,” she justified.
“But it makes you too comfortable. If others see you do it they may learn from you and think it is ok. And then they do it in front of others. And then, however innocent, it’ll be something worse than an apple core that gets tossed in.”
We turned around and grabbed that apple core and placed it in our trash container. Later in the day Amos instructed the intern on photography techniques and shared with her stories of epic encounters from his career.
In time the slow and steady approach may provide a good return on investment, if you are patient enough. Amos, Chris, and I were a rotating trio in the water and it worked. I filmed a young whale that, upon realizing I was no match for it, slowed down to inspect this awkward looking bipedal swimmer. It was as curious of me as I was of it. On another dive I swam with the same mother and calf from this very introduction, though this time they were being escorted by a mammoth bull. The scars on his tail fluke confirmed he was not a resident whale but a visitor from Norway that hadn’t been seen in the Azores for many years. This bull had once traveled so far to the Caribbean island of Dominica to court the resident females there. I overheard similar tales of courtship from some of the merry sailors drinking their libations at Peter.
To find the whales a directional hydrophone system was employed to listen for their clicks from under the water. These clicks, called codas, sound like if the mathematical precision of morse code was intertwined with the scansion of a rhythmic stanza. The mystery of their communication has only recently began to become unraveled. Researchers studying the whales in Dominica used artificial intelligence to analyze over 8000 codas from 60 different whales*. It found a rich, complex, deeply layered, communication. Building blocks of the codas, think phonemes in language, are influenced by changes in rhythm and tone, possibly changing the meaning of the codas. It’s an amazing revelation in the study of animal communication. Sperm whales are social, long lived animals, and the intricacies of their existence is still very a much a mystery.
~
On our final day at sea, we searched the coast, along pristine beaches lined with volcanic, black sand. We navigated through islets of impressive, vertical monoliths. I understand why some have imagined that the Azores could be the pinnacles that lie atop the mythical, lost city of Atlantis. Along the bow of the boat a pod of common dolphins rode the waves. Small and nimble as far as cetaceans come, we were able to interact with and film them.
As we continued the search in the late afternoon we saw the unmistakable diamond like shine of the spout of a whale on the horizon.
“Whale. Mark, get ready,” commanded Amos. Looking toward the whale a spout of water then blew beside it. “Two whales.”
The whales were headed directly en route toward the boat. Following Amos’ guiding I swam along side the same mother and calf adorned with the white ring. Unlike the first dive when it dove below me, and the second being shielded by the large bull, this time the calf just allowed me to swim beside it. It nudged its mother’s underside, communicating to her it wanted to nurse. There was no apprehension nor fear; just a hungry baby and its mama, not concerned about anything else.
I climbed back on to boat feeling more elation than adrenaline and grabbed Amos’ hand.
“I’m glad I came here” I said.
Smiling, he replied, “Me too.”
*Sharma, Pratyusha, et al. “Contextual and Combinatorial Structure in Sperm Whale Vocalisations.” Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1, 7 May 2024, p. 3617, www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47221-8#citeas, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47221-8.
~ ~ ~
Mark Hendricks is an award-winning photographer, writer, and author working on environmental issues, travel, and adventure. His first book, Natural Wonders of Assateague Island, was a 2018 Foreword Reviews award winner. His latest book is The Central Appalachians: Mountains of the Chesapeake. His images and articles have been featured in National Geographic, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Living Bird, Audubon, and many others. Mark is a faculty member at Towson University, where he serves as a lecturer in the Department of Psychology, an adjunct in the Department of Biological Sciences, and is co-director of the Animal Behavior Program. He is a fellow in the International League of Conservation Writers and member of the ethics committee for the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA).