While a rising ocean engulfs Taiwan’s perimeter, China’s Marine Corps strengthens its chokehold from all directions. A-jin (Lee Kang-sheng), a retired submarine driver for Taiwan’s Navy, suffers from an intense ringing of the ear. He seeks silence in his mountain home on the outskirts of Taipei, where he devotes himself to his pet fish and Matsu, Taiwan’s Goddess of the Sea. One morning while praying to the Bodhisattva, A-jin begins hearing a voice which guides him to a nearby beach. There, he discovers a conch shell that has washed ashore. He listens to the shell’s core. Fragmented histories of Indigenous and colonial voices speaking Sirayan, Dutch, Japanese, and Amis unfurl amidst atmospheric resonance. These fractured narratives intertwine with shifting environments and the evolving technologies of seafaring, hunting, and warfare. The constellation of the many recorded pasts lure A-jin on a journey south along the edge of the island.

Halimama, a humpback whale, migrates south with her calf towards the Taiwan Strait to feed for the summer. A lifetime of exposure to the harsh soundscape of shipping vessels, navy seismic and sonar testing has severely damaged her hearing, and she struggles to communicate with her pod. She encounters fleets of nuclear submarines stealthily navigating with passive and active sonar. Disoriented, she becomes trapped and beached in an estuary of the Taijiang Inland Sea. 

A-jin, continuing to follow the fractured narratives sounded from the conch, comes across a team of archeologists who are in the process of unearthing the magnificent 85,000 year old skeleton of a humpback whale. Out of the blue, a symphony of whale songs fill the Strait, causing an entire fleet of submarines to lose navigation and surface.