The incredible and dangerous story of an extraordinary photograph

Doug Perrine, one of the most prominent photographers of underwater nature, told the story of the creation of, one of his extraordinary pictures. It all took place when he was photographing a shoal of sardines off the coast of Mexico. At one point, the shoal was torn apart by an attack from a striped marlin. The sardines melted on all sides, and after a while they started to form again.

[blockquote style=”2″]”Visibility was quite good, about 15-20 metres, and the water was crystal blue. My brain went into a ‘no data processing’ state when suddenly my optical neurons noted the appearance of a dark area, shaped like a large disk, just behind the shoal.”[/blockquote]

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The object seemed to be stationary at first, but at some point it began to move closer at an incredible rate, smashing a school of sardines. A moment later the photographer came face to face with something the size of a locomotive, all the time approaching him. A moment later, this “something” was right in front of him, with its mouth wide open, devouring hundreds of fish.

[blockquote style=”2″]”I was about to be swallowed by a cetacean. The one or two fin kicks I managed pushed me aside enough to probably save my life. They also made the subject in the photo slightly off-centre, with the whale’s upper jaw escaping the frame.” The whale also reacted by starting to close its mouth to prevent the sardines locked inside from escaping. Doug managed to prevent the whale from swallowing him and sharing the fate of the biblical Jonah[/blockquote].

After pushing himself away from the lower jaw of the great mammal with his flippers, he was launched as if from a catapult through the water-filled great folds on his throat, directly in front of the approaching – as it seemed at the speed of light – tail.

[blockquote style=”2″]”I was dragged through the great whirlpool, without any control over my body, I myself don’t know if by dumb luck, or maybe by skill though, I managed to avoid contact with its great fins.”[/blockquote]

It turned out that the specimen encountered was a Bryde’s whale, a long, lean predator belonging to the whale species – cetaceans that filter food from the sea with the help of plates in their mouths that form a kind of net.

Doug compares diving near whales of this species, to walking in the fog on a railway track. And this with the knowledge that a locomotive could appear at any time, from any direction and without warning.

[blockquote style=”2″]”I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t done those two fin kicks to the side. Would I have been smashed to a pulp? Would I have been swallowed and spit out? Or would I have escaped with the best photo of a whale ever taken, showing the inside of its mouth from the perspective of a sardine about to be consumed?”[/blockquote]

Source: divemagazine.co.uk Photo: Doug Perrine, wikipedia.org CC 3.0

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