A CAPTIVATING QUEST
The Loneliest Whale
Cast:52, whale experts
Director: Joshua Zeman
Duration: 1 h 30 m
Available: In select cinemas, and July 16
on demand
This is a tale with a long tail. Back in 1992, U.S. navy sonographers, part of a top-secret program listening for enemy submarines, heard a strange noise in the Pacific, at 52 Hertz. At first they suspected “something mechanical,” says a Navy spokesman, refusing to say more. But then marine biologist William Watkins listened to the sounds and guessed it was a whale.
Trouble is, no whale species speaks at that frequency. It was as if some exotic marine mammal — The first of its kind? The last? — was out there in the deeps, singing its heart out, receiving no answer. Some called the animal 52, after its unique voice. Others went with the name director Joshua Zeman takes for his documentary — The Loneliest Whale.
When the Navy program ended in the early 2000s, so too did data on 52. Zeman picks up the cold case in the present day, with a harebrained scheme to take to the ocean and find the whale. Some scientists say listening won’t turn up anything against the ocean’s background noise and false positive signals. Others say a visual search would make finding a needle in a haystack simple in comparison. But of course the director goes ahead — because there’d be no film otherwise! — and gathers a ragtag group of scientists and a little ship named Truth. They’ve got provisions and funding for just seven days.
If you’re curious as to what 52 Hertz sounds like, you can Google “52 Hertz test tone” — you’ll hear a sound like a stereo amp that’s turned on and humming. When the scientists speed up 52’s vocalizations 10 times to make them easier for us to hear, the basso thrum expands into a plaintive cry. It’s a noise that could break your heart.
The documentary expertly balances on a fin-thin line between sentimental anthropomorphizing and science. We meet some winsome oddballs, like the guy who plays his saxophone at sea, letting the whales harmonize with his music. And there are marine biologists and oceanographers, though even they are clearly caught up in the soulful side of the story.
The 90-minute doc features some fascinating, perfectly timed detours. There’s a few minutes devoted to the worst years of the whale hunt in the 1960s, when blood lust, explosive harpoons and factory ships created a perfect storm of killing. We hear Roger Payne tell how 1970’s Songs of the Humpback Whale became the bestselling nature sound recording of all time.
There’s also a nice discussion from neuroscientists about whether 52 is lonely at all, and whether whales can feel loneliness. It’s an unanswerable question. Also, the answer is yes.
The Loneliest Whale creates a deep emotional resonance — an undertow, if you will — that pulls the viewer into 52’s story. I was particularly struck by a comment made by John Hildebrand of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, in which he talks about the 95 per cent of the ocean depths that remain impervious, unseen and unexplored.
It put me in mind of dark matter, a hypothetical substance that is believed to make up most of the universe, and that binds the galaxy together. And that got me to thinking of the search for non-human intelligence in the cosmos. We probe the deep, dark, inky cold of space in search of signals. They may be out there. But as The Loneliest Whale makes clear, it’s not the only place to listen.★★★★★