James Nestor presents his lecture “Humanity and the Deep Ocean” in which he speaks about the clicking of sperm whales while free diving with these magnificent creatures. Sperm whales are one of the loudest animals on the planet with clicks that can be as loud as 236 Decibels. These clicks can create waves under water that can travel up to 1000 miles and can be detected by other sperm whales allowing them to communicate while being on the opposite side of the planet.

Nestor displayed a video in which free divers were swimming with a mother sperm whale and its calf with the whales “clicking them inside out”. The whales produced a combination of creaks similar to that of a creaking door as well as clicks as they swam with the divers. Moreover, the calf whale is seen flipping on its belly as it swims to collect the echoes underneath its jaws. The sounds were so extremely loud that they caused the divers’ bodies to heat up due to the high energy transferred from the sound waves. One diver had his hands out to prevent a whale from running into him as he was clicking which caused his hands to be paralyzed for 4 hours.

Getting closer through freediving provides us with a window to gain immense knowledge that otherwise submarines, scuba diving, and robots cannot due to either unnatural noise or objects that can scare off the whale or prevent them from acting naturally. Nestor states that these clicks and creaks are also a form of communication that is perhaps more sophisticated than human language. Whales not only have brains six times the size of humans but also have a neocortex along with a higher quantity of spindle cells which are sophisticated brain structures that neurologist have associated with emotion and language.