Based on the popular international Te Papa exhibition, Whales: Giants of the Deep, this resource brings these majestic marine mammals and their underwater world to life, with a special focus on the whales and dolphins of the South Pacific. From the first richly illustrated chapter, readers are immersed in the salty sea to explore their amazing diversity, biology, and adaption to life in the oceans. Throughout the book, hundreds of breathtaking photographs, historical images, astonishing facts and figures, and informative illustrations and diagrams bring the whale world to life. It also includes stories from people whose lives have been inextricably linked with whales—from legendary South Pacific whale riders to international whale scientists and from conservationists to former whalers and their families. For centuries whales have captured imaginations and ignited emotions; humans have revered and mythologized them, hunted them to the brink of extinction, and passionately protected them, and this book is a powerful combination of storytelling, science, and culture that reveals the relationship between whales and people.