Giants Of The Undead Med

They knew that capturing the first high-quality underwater pictures of ultralong and skittish fin whales would be difficult, but DOUG PERRINE and DANNY KESSLER didn’t realise just how difficult! Find out how they got on, working alongside researchers from the Tethys Research Institute.

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IN MARCH 2015, the epicentre of the world refugee crisis was a tiny Italian island in the southern Mediterranean Sea named Lampedusa, about 70 miles by sea from Tunisia, much closer than to the mainland of Italy.

Since 2000, hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East have set out from Tunisia in small boats, hoping to reach Lampedusa and set foot on European soil. Thousands have died in the attempt.

Dr Simone Panigada was patrolling the coast of Lampedusa, strapped into the bow of a small inflatable boat, holding a medieval weapon across his chest and searching for migrants – not from the south, but from the north.

A sudden flash of reflected sunlight alerted him that one was swimming in the water just ahead of his vessel. He signalled to Giancarlo Lauriano, at the helm, and the boat lurched forward, racing ahead at full speed. Panigada raised his weapon and fired.

The projectile arced across the water, striking his quarry with two sharpened points that buried into its flesh.

It succeeded in securing a barnacle sized packet of electronics to the dorsal fin of the migrant – a fin whale that had previously been observed during the summer, feeding in the Ligurian Sea along the Italian coast.

The LIMPET (Low Impact Minimally Percutaneous Electronic Transmitter) tag would attempt to contact an Argos satellite every time the whale surfaced, and would transmit its position for the next six weeks.