The world's 'loneliest whale' can teach us a lot if we listen to it, says filmmaker
Documentary chronicles years-long search to find a mysterious marine mammal known as the 52 hertz whale
When people hear about the 52 hertz whale, whose distinct song has gone unanswered for decades, they tend to have a strong reaction.
"People would cry," filmmaker Joshua Zeman told As It Happens guest host Duncan McCue. "Their face would go pale, or they would grab my arm ... or they would get goosebumps."
Zeman says it was these intense responses that inspired his new documentary The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52, which is available to stream Friday. In the film, he chronicles a years-long search for the creature experts told him would be "nearly impossible" to track down.
"That's when I think we said, 'Great, let's try to do that,'" he said.
Mistaken for a machine
First detected by the U.S. Navy in 1989, the call of the 52 hertz whale is more than twice the frequency of typical whale song. In fact, Zeman says the technicians who first heard it assumed it was mechanical — and likely military.
"They thought it was a Chinese submarine for many years … and when the Berlin Wall fell, they turned the [listening] system over to scientists and said, 'Well, you can use this.'"
That's when the late scientist William Watkins at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution first realized the recordings might be of a whale.
Zeman says Watkins and others began speculating that what they were listening to was a hybrid species — perhaps a cross between a blue whale and a fin whale.
But when the filmmaker first pitched the idea of searching for the creature, researchers and prospective funders were sceptical at best.
Listen to a 1993 recording of the 52 hertz whale's song:
"They kind of laughed me out of the room," he said. "They said, 'Well, look, it's going to take a lot of money.' And I said, 'Well, what if I could get the money?' And then that got them thinking."
After four years of fundraising — and with support from celebrities, including actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrian Grenier — Zeman had his team. What he lacked was any certainty that the whale they were seeking even existed, and if so, whether it was still alive.
"It's really interesting to go out there and to try and go on a quest," he said. "When we tried to get the film funded ... all these investors would say, 'Can you guarantee you can find the whale?' And I was like, 'No, that's the whole point. This is a real quest, an honest-to-goodness mystery.'"
A life under threat
While the 52 hertz whale remains something of a mystery, Zeman says constant disruptions from larger, ocean-going vessels made it abundantly clear that the creature they were chasing is imperilled. And he says the threats it faces are one thing it has in common with all whales.
"If you don't live on the ocean, you really don't understand the impact and effect of global shipping," Zeman said.
"What's happening is [the ships] are creating noise — basically a consistent, constant noise in the ocean. And that prevents the whales from calling out, from communicating, from being able to feed, from being able to hunt, from being able to meet or have co-operative behaviours."
Absolutely, without a doubt, this whale is lonely.- Vint Virga, veterinarian
Whereas whales were once predominantly threatened by commercial hunting, Zeman says their new nemesis is noise pollution — the scale of which means the 52 hertz whale may no longer be the only one whose call is going unanswered. And according to a number of experts interviewed in the film, an unanswered whale is indeed a lonely one.
"Whales are social beings," veterinarian Vint Virga says in the documentary. "The fact that nobody is responding to him [means] absolutely, without a doubt, this whale is lonely. And that's not being anthropomorphic."
Learning to listen
Zeman wouldn't reveal whether the team ultimately found the 52 hertz whale. You'll have to watch the movie to find out, he said.
But, he says one of the biggest lessons he learned making The Loneliest Whale wasn't about whales at all; it was about himself.
"I first got involved in this because I had gone through a breakup," he said. "And at the end of this journey, I can actually say that looking for this whale has made me a better human being."
He likens his own epiphany to the collective one that occurred in 1970 when Roger Payne released his Songs of the Humpback Whale album.
"Suddenly people realized, 'Oh, my God, we can't kill these whales. We have to save them. They make these beautiful sounds,'" Zeman said.
"If we want to be better stewards of this world, then the goal, the trick is to listen. And that's also the trick to never being lonely is to learn how to listen, because if you can listen, you will always connect with people. And so I learned to listen. And I hope that everybody else learns that same lesson as well, because it's an important one."
Written and produced by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes.