To know a Risso
A pair of dorsal fins briefly emerges from the surface. The scar-like marks that become visible as the back slowly rolls through the water provide a fleeting glimpse into a cryptic life; a life otherwise spent unobserved, foraging in the depths of the ocean.
Deep diving whales and dolphins are among some of the most captivating, yet elusive wildlife found on our planet. Like the snow-leopards occupying the heights of the Himalayas, and the last rhino’s clinging on in the depths of the jungle, the inhospitable environments in which these animals live makes encounters with humans rare, and this only seems to add to the mystical power they hold in our collective imagination. But how then, can we attempt to grasp the essence of such an animal in a picture? This question has divided the artistic and scientific opinion of people for a long time.
Moby Dick’s Ishmael (1851) famously ridiculed the ‘monstrous’ pictoral resources of whales available in his time, where ‘.. the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes’, and in another instance notes that ‘.. one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.’. All of this is perhaps not too surprising, as Ishmael admits, for a period in which most artist had to rely on stranded individuals or bones in their attempts to reconstruct a vivid depiction of a living individual.
Nowadays, technology enables us to capture images underwater and even explore the depths of the oceans, leading to some surprising encounters; all allowing us to come much closer to accurately representing these animals. Yet perhaps, the true essence of any animal, be it a common garden bird or a rare and cryptic dolphin, will always remain unknowable. Maybe it is also better that way, for what makes life more interesting and surprising, than the mysteries that surround us?