When Agathe Serres was 10, her family moved from Paris to Quimper, a French city known for its links with the sea.

Growing up near the coast, she soon began her love affair with cetaceans — aquatic mammals that include whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Serres, now 31, developed a deep fascination with the ocean, drawn to the idea of living as freely as the cetaceans.

But distressing news about the animals emerged from time to time. Whales can have a prolonged maturation period before becoming reproductive and they give birth to a single calf per pregnancy; amid the increasing occurrence of human activities in the marine habitat, many cetacean species are now endangered, according to latest research.