Beachcomber Magazine 03

Y ou have to sail right out to sea, beyond the barrier reef. Some- times you wait for hours. Then you scrutinise the dark surface of the water to make out the foaming spray of the giants. Sounding the water with a hydrophone, listening out for a dry metallic clicking sound. “Click, click, click...” The signal is heard. Under the water the shadows increase, the water darkens. The monsters – they can weigh up to 50 tonnes and be 20 metres long – have arrived. “ They always come to meet us, it’s never the other way round, ” explains François Sarano, the former expedition leader from La Calypso , who was born in Valence, France, in 1954. “ They find us thanks to their echolo- cation systems. We let the mammals come to us. The huge bodies eclipse the light and flow endlessly by. Sometimes they skim past us and at the last minute lift their tail flukes to avoid us! ” “ You can’t cheat when you’re in front of a sperm whale. The encounter has to be genuine, or it doesn’t happen ,” insists the oceanographer, author of a small book written with a contagious enthusiasm, Le Retour de Moby Dick ou ce que les cachalots nous enseignent sur les océans et les hommes (“ The Return of Moby Dick , or What Sperm Whales Can Teach Us About Oceans and Men ”, Ed. Actes Sud). WITH PASSION In 2013, with government permission and led by the Marine Megafauna Conservation Organisation (MMCO) founded by his Mauritian friend Hugues Vitry, a legendary diver who has been observing sperm whales for over 20 years, François Sarano began studying the social life and incredible physiological and cognitive abilities of these largest of ocean mammals. The MMCO team identified at least two pods off Mauritius and in particular the pod of “Irène Gueule Tordue” (Irene Twisted Nose), off the west coast: a large, almost sedentary family, currently comprising 27mammals, only females and their young – MAURITIUS THE ART OF DISCOVERY 48 