In Search of Moby Dick: Quest for the White Whale

Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby Dick immortalised the idea of a battling white sperm whale roaming the ocean – but could such a beast exist?
Writer and explorer Tim Severin travels to the islands of the Pacific to find out.
From Nuku Hiva to the Philippines, from Tonga to Indonesia, Severin travels on a journey of discovery. Along the way he encounters the extraordinary hook-jumpers of Pamilacan, who make their living by leaping on the backs of ten-ton whale sharks. He observes a Tongan harpooner named Samson – now a priest in the Tongan church – re-enact the mystic ballet of a kill, transporting himself to his youth like a shaman from a forgotten age. And he accompanies the fishermen of Lamalera, who still hunt sperm whale by hand from their Stone Age boats. For them the white whale is no fiction but an ancestor which must be treated with respect. The leviathan is ‘Leader of the Whales’, intelligent and aggressive … and real.