It is an exceptional advance, a unique event in the world: thanks to the combination of the work of Professor Hervé Glotin of the University of Toulon for the acoustics, and the images of René Heuzey, the oceanographer François Sarano announces that we can communicate with the Mauritian sperm whales.
On April 26, at the Grand Baie Yacht Club, the three specialists and their teams made this beautiful announcement. The Journal des Archipels was there.
It took 10 years of data collection, but above all of passion and love for these “non-human people” as François Sarano likes to call sperm whales, to collect and analyze an exceptional data that allows us today to understand who is talking to whom and on what subject.
In short, a language of clicks and meows that researchers have been able to decipher here in Mauritius and nowhere else.
Indeed, the Mauritian pods (the name given to the clans of sperm whales) are particularly calm with divers, which allows interactions that are difficult elsewhere in the world.
Would the sperm whales off Port Louis also have the same sympathy with foreigners as the Mauritian people? The question remains open…
Read the full report in our next issue of the magazine.
Pictured from left to right: René Heuzey, underwater film director, president of the Indian Ocean Marine Life Foundation.
François Sarano, doctor in oceanography, former scientific advisor to Captain Cousteau, honorary president of the Indian Ocean Marine Life Foundation, presenting the book that will soon be published by Actes Suds and that summarizes this Mauritian odyssey.
Hervé Glotin, professor at the CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research, based at the Scientific Research Center in Toulon), honorary member of the Indian Ocean Marine Life Foundation.
