All of our actions have consequences... we don’t live on Earth in a vacuum
S Earth Day approaches on April 22, Disney+ is here to remind us that the planet and in particular, its expansive oceans are ours to save.
The brainchild of National Geographic explorer and photographer Brian Skerry, a new four-part documentary series called Secrets Of The Whales shows just how similar humans are to these majestic, ocean-dwelling giants.
Filmed over the course of three years across 24 locations, the series sees Brian, 59, document the lives and interactions of a variety of whale species – and in a world first, captures a sperm whale nursing her calf for the very first time.
Narrated by Alien and Avatar actress Sigourney Weaver, 71, and executive produced by Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron, 66, the series sets out to challenge our perceptions of these warm-blooded creatures.
Brian tells us more about the breathtaking project.
There is a multi-billion-dollar whale-watching industry on planet Earth, where people go on boats all over the world to see a whale jump or a tail, they eat a hamburger and then they go home, but they don’t really know so much about those lives.
So, with Secrets Of The Whales, it was really about bringing people into the lives of these whales.
A humpback whale shows its fluke before a deep dive underneath one of Antarctica’s largest icebergs
Brian says it never gets old getting up close to whales
Norwegian Arctic are eating herring.
It’s these ethnic food preferences, international cuisine, that makes that culture.
I certainly had great admiration for his genius and his work. He’s a master storyteller.
He can create everything from fictional characters and scenes and sets and story narratives, he can invent the equipment that’s needed to film it in 3D and do things that haven’t been done before.
But he’s also a pioneering ocean explorer who, you know, builds his own submarines and goes to the deepest part of the ocean to understand.
Bringing in Sigourney Weaver as the narrator was fantastic.
I always thought it would have been fantastic because that female voice, especially for these whales, that are often led by females, was brilliant.
So yeah, on every level, it was sort of organic.
At one point, we see you intervene and help a trapped orca. Do you ever worry about upsetting the natural balance of the oceans?
I’ve done sea turtle projects where you see the little leatherback babies running down the sand to the ocean, and they’re getting eaten by birds. It breaks your heart, but you leave it alone, because that’s pure nature.
If I see a sea turtle wrapped in line, if I can, I will cut it out, because that’s not natural...
In the case of the orca, these are air-breathing animals. Even though that animal could temporarily breathe, you don’t know if that’s going to change as it gets more entangled.
You’ve got its family sitting there watching it and it’s slowed down and stopped, essentially asking for help. I think in a case like that, I’d rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission.
We have to realise that all of our actions have consequences. That we don’t live on this planet in a vacuum, that we are intricately connected to nature and everything we do matters.
We’re dumping £18 billion of plastic every year into the ocean. We’ve lost 90% of the big fish in the
Main image: National Geographic’s Brian Skerry photographing orcas off Patagonia. Above, a turtle saved by the team ocean post-World War Two and we’ve lost half the world’s coral reefs...
It can be as simple as finding better ways of fishing and not having vertical lines that animals get entangled in – and that’s going to take some collaborative efforts.
Or, it could be just being better consumers, informed consumers, voting for people who care about conservation and science.
It never gets old – if anything, it’s addictive. I’ve been doing this for decades and every year I swear, it gets better.
As a young boy, I had dreams and fantasies of doing this kind of thing and you have certain preconceived notions, but the reality ends up being better than those fantasies...
You have to get the footage, but there’s a scene in the sperm whale film where I put my camera down – I’m playing with a six-monthold calf out in the middle of the ocean.
And at some point, you have to stop working and just soak it up.