BELUGA WHALEs
Photographing beluga whales underwater on Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea is an almost impossible mission - they’re very timid and always swim away. So this time we had another plan: to tie a photographer by his feet to a boat using a long rope and tow him slowly behind the boat. But here’s the secret - you need to sing something loudly into the snorkel. The sound vibrations attract them somehow! So that’s what we did for a whole week, it worked and I got some shots. But all encounters were very quick, and I wasn’t too happy with the outcome. Then extraordinary thing happened - I’m not very good at knots, and clearly didn’t do a good job at trying myself when the rope untied and I found myself floating in open water. And suddenly I realized - a huge beluga was just below and inspecting me closely. It circled me for about 10 min, and after then returned with friends! Honestly, I believe the rope incident was a major factor of this atypical behavior.
