My first interaction with a sperm whale was when I was just two years old. A young whale had stranded on the beach near my home in Long Island, New York, and a group of veterinarians decided to bring this whale into a nearby boat basin to get a closer look at him and determine if they could help him. The young whale was nicknamed Physty, a play on both the scientific name of sperm whales, Physeter macrocephalus, and on his seemingly feisty personality. Physty was approximately 25 feet long and was probably somewhere between five and seven years old when he found himself gravely ill and in the shallow waters of coastal Long Island. He stranded twice before the rescue team brought him into the basin for a closer look. While the veterinarians and rescuers were standing vigil thinking at any moment this creature from the depths was going to die, the scientists were also trying to determine what was wrong with this whale and why he had left his family unit, or was left by his family unit, ending up on the beach. It was determined that Physty had pneumonia and eventually, he was fed squid packed with antibiotics, and slowly started showing signs of improvement.

During this time, Physty was in captivity for nine days and people could go to visit him to see his progress. In the early days he simply wallowed, but as his condition started to improve, he started to swim around the boat basin. I was immediately captivated when my mother took me to visit him. I will never forget the first time I looked into Physty’s enormous eye and he looked back at me. It is one of my earliest memories and remains as vivid today as it was then. Here was an enormous mysterious creature that came from the depths of the ocean. It made me wonder, what else could be in the ocean’s depths? In that moment, I was hooked – the ocean and its conservation has been my life’s mission ever since.

Throughout my career, as I moved from researching zooplankton in the Antarctic to studying Bluefin tuna in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, before pivoting to sharing stories of scientific research, those moments I spent with Physty were always in the back of my mind. I wanted to know more about his story and to see another sperm whale in the wild. The next time I saw a sperm whale, I was on expedition in the Norwegian Sea. I was filming for a project on Atlantic salmon when, out of the fog, I saw the telltale 45 degree blow of a sperm whale. I nearly fell overboard as I wanted to get as close as possible to this whale for a better look, but a few minutes later, it sounded and disappeared into the depths. Fast-forward to 2018 when, after years of expeditions during which I conducted scientific research, made films and photographed the underwater world, I made my first expedition to Dominica to try to reconnect with these fabled giants.

Our first trip to Dominica was a solid reminder of what makes wildlife filmmaking and ocean story telling so challenging. The weather was terrible, and the whales were nowhere to be seen. We spent long days listening for the distant clicking of whales but heard none. The ocean was silent until one afternoon in the pouring rain, we heard the sound we were waiting for, the gentle clicking of sperm whales hunting in the depths. After decades of dreaming about Physty and that quick glimpse in the frigid waters of the Arctic, this was my moment to reconnect with these incredible animals. However, this interaction would last only two minutes, and while brief, it only sparked my desire to spend more time in the water and learn more about these incredible animals. I had seen whales around the world and had spent time in the water with orcas and dolphins, but this fleeting moment solidified my understanding that sperm whales had truly captured my heart.