In this series, some vignettes of sperm whale life:
+Scarred face of a deep-sea predator.
+A pod with two new-born calves; the second calf is deeper in the background, suckling from its mother.
+ A solitary calf, too young to dive with them, awaits the return of older family members who are hunting fish and squid a thousand metres or so beneath the surface.
+Mocha Dick was a real life white sperm whale who for nearly 30 years survived the repeated attacks of Yankee whalers in the waters around Mocha Island off the coast of Chile. They eventually killed him in 1837. His legend lives on in Herman Melville's novel, Moby Dick. And perhaps his genes survive too in this white female swimming with another adult female and two calves off the Azores.
+With freshly-snapped umbilicus flapping from its belly and with soft flukes still curled from its confinement in the womb, a new-born female sperm whale gambols like a lamb, meeting for the first time the family members of its pod with whom it will spend its entire life.
NB: Photographs used here have all been taken under permits issued by the Secretaria Regional do Mar, Ciência e Tecnologia with precautions taken to avoid disturbance to the animals. Swimming with whales is forbidden in the Azores without written permission of the Secretaria.
