Ruah talks of her process in creating the score:

​

"My early research, before I had seen the finished animations, led to a cello arrangement of the ‘Hantoon’, a lament from the published collection Songs of The Wexford Coast which had been suggested to David by Andrea Doyle of the Rosslare Ancestry Project. There’s a strong link between the title of the song, referring to the wreck of a vessel the ‘Hantoon’ in 1881 and the Hantoon channel off Rosslare fort where the whale beached in 1891. 

For the next compositional phase of the project I worked in response to the visuals which David was sending me, scene by scene and the challenge was to strike the right tone for each point of the storyline - which is an emotional rollercoaster! Themes gradually emerged for different points, the first of which being our Wonder theme - a light, skipping idea used to portray the wonder of the ocean, being played over David’s animations of a swimming jellyfish and alongside it our first sighting of the majestic whale. A later Moonlit theme is heard at the poignant stage when the whale, stranded in the bay, has become weak and stopped her struggles. For this moment of acceptance and stillness I used a lyrical melody played in the lower cello register over slowly shifting chords."