It’s impossible to get a true grasp of the size of a sperm whale from the surface. It isn’t until you join them in the water that you begin to understand.

Sperm whales are the largest toothed whales on the planet, and the most dimorphic of any cetacean—males can reach lengths of seventy feet and weigh upwards of fifty tons, while females measure about a third of that and half the weight. The communication and echolocation clicking sounds that the whales use are also distinct. While females click, males clang. The sounds are like a baseball card against bike spokes compared to a blacksmith’s hammer against an anvil. 

You don’t need a marine biology degree to recognize a male sperm whale. When you see and hear one—you know.

While identification may not be overly difficult, encounters with males are far less common compared to females. Sperm whales form matriarchal units that typically include grandmothers, mothers, and juveniles. Females will inhabit warmer, tropical waters year-round, while males leave their unit any time between four and twenty years old to live relatively solitary lives in the colder seas closer to the poles. But these heavyweights visit the waters off Dominica for just a few weeks of the year to mate, making their sightings even more special.

On this day, the males were clearly present—bodies longer than double-decker buses, swimming alongside these matriarchal pods. On several occasions, I found myself a decent distance from the whales as they’d begin their descent from the surface. There was one moment, though, when I knew I was well positioned. 

One of the males coasted forward, straight for me like a ship barreling through the water. He veered slightly to pass to my right, staying at the surface so his giant head broke the plane. Even with a wide-angle lens, it’s a challenge to capture the entire body. I opted for a profile shot to showcase the scale and shape of this iconic forehead before he sailed past.

It's a moment that would be fitting for the booming horn of a Hans Zimmer score, and one in which you can only marvel at the sheer magnitude that life can attain.