Tag Archives: cetaceans

Mark Brownlow: “We’re not Greenpeace”

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If you’ve watched high quality natural history filmaking, and especially those concerned with the wildlife of our oceans, then the chances are you’ve seen something produced by Mark Brownlow. Mark is series producer of the acclaimed Ocean Giants and has been making world class documentaries for the BBC Natural History Unit in England for nearly twenty years including the landmark Planet Earth. He appeared at WhaleFest 2011 and in 2012 has been telling us where he believes the moving image can take us in our relationship with whales, dolphins, the sea and the planet. He also tells us what he thinks WhaleFest might achieve. Mark was talking to Colin Williams.

There are no two ways about it, most of the population never even go to the seaside and wildlife films still provide a very important function: to give people access to the big picture and impossible places. They can transport people and show them the wonder of nature, while filming technology has opened up huge opportunities for us.

Just around the corner, building on satellite tagging technology, cameras are beginning to appear that we’ll soon be attaching to species like sperm whales as well as other cetaceans. With the downscaling of hard drives and camera size, and as camera systems get better and better, ground-breaking imagery will appear of behaviour that has previously been impossible to capture.  It might not be beautiful but will be hugely valuable. However, because you’re attaching something to the animal, there are some controversial ethical issues and it’s not something that any filmmaker should undertake lightly. It should only be done if it’s part of a project, but at that point there’s a reality check involved, and that’s budget.

So if you’re asking me why I do what I do, its because there is always new imagery to go after. There’s a permanent hunger to film new species and new behaviour, but it’s expensive. The reason why people film bottlenosed dolphins so much is that they’re easy to film and therefore affordable. It’s only very rare projects like Planet Earth or Frozen Planet that have the budget to allow you to take a gamble and attempt something new, like the wave washing killer whales that normally you wouldn’t be able to afford to do. We’d all love to film new behaviours and new species but the costs involved are prohibitive.

But when you get it, there is no question that the ground-breaking footage changes attitudes.

Let me give you a couple of examples of what I mean. At one time everyone liked to think that chimpanzees were benign, warm, positive role models with their friendly nature, scavenging for termites.  But when Wildlife on One showed them capturing other monkeys and dismembering them it was a seminal moment.  The audience had their cosy preconception of chimps turned on its head and it introduced the reality of chimp biology which meant eating meat which involved pulling apart a live monkey.

There was also a great film about the bottlenosed dolphins of Shark Bay [link not  available in some countries] in western Australia and again, perhaps even more than chimps, people like to think of dolphins as smiling, gentle creatures of the ocean. But this film showed male dolphins, as a group, effectively kidnapping females and holding them captive. Films showing this kind of gritty, shocking behaviour turns people’s attitudes.

To shy away from it would be wrong and filmakers have a huge responsibility to present a balanced view of any animal. For instance, the sequence in Planet Earth of killer whales drowning and eating the tongue of a grey whale calf was a memorable one because it presented huge drama in a programme that also contained lighter moments. But it has to be put into context that killer whales have young who have to eat to live – they provide a positive function in the ocean keeping things in check, just like the lions of the savannah. It would be a very different story without these apex predators.

Yes, I do accept a degree of criticism in our industry about what we show. Many filmakers, like me, are ex scientists and perhaps we’re hardened to the realities of nature. We have to be mindful that our audiences are not always as open minded but at the same time, we’re not going to shy away from those realities.

The nature of wildlife filmaking has changed. The good news is that there used to be a complete aversion to environmental issues by programme makers and commissioners. But the environment is much more headline news now, in the public conciousness and no longer an issue for a marginalised audience. There is an awareness creeping in that unless we do something drastic for our planet, that’s it, and I think that TV would look foolish if we ignored environmental issues.

You know as well as I do that within the industry it’s a debate that still goes. We’re not Greenpeace. We’re not paid to make campagning films. We are bound by commercial pressures and we always have to be aware of who is paying the bills. We’re paid to make journalistic films for the viewer to make up their mind where they want to go with it but with that comes huge responsibility. These films can send powerful messages and it’s a very interesting psychology: why do people care about saving pandas when they’re never going to go to China – never going to see one in the wild?  Wildlife filming provides that window, it gives an access.

I’m reflecting on all this becuase I know that people are busy planning WhaleFest right now and I can see that although it is in its infancy it is an idea that can bring together the whale industry, media and the general public and can be powerful movement. There is a dilemma between tourism pressure and cetacean well-being and I’ve seen it many times now where unregulated ecotourism is hugely detrimental to the cetaceans. What I love about WhaleFest is that you are addressing the problem and a lot of your work is with ecotourists. I feel that together you are going to promote responsible ecotourism.

I suppose the last thing for me to say is that I believe that ecotourism is key to saving whales and dolphins because it helps if you can attach an economic value to these creatures. There was a model done on caribbean reef sharks. Apparently every reef shark was worth was $30,000 because of the amount of money they generated on shark dives.  This stopped fisherman taking the sharks because they were too valuable. I’m a bit of cynic: I think everything’s got to have an economic value to make it on this planet and I think ecotourism will provide that as long as it’s done responsibly.  WhaleFest is an open platform to discuss these issues and hopefully we can all work together for the greater good of whales and dolphins.

Florence: “Even today the looming whale figure plays on my mind”

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In a subterranean restaurant near the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol in the late winter of 2012 the WhaleFest team got together with some big names in the world of wildlife and talked about what WhaleFest could achieve. At some point in the meeting someone said that, whether they’ve seen one or not, everyone has a relationship with whales and dolphins. And so I asked my friend Florence who’s 12 years old and never seen a whale to write about them, just to test the theory. Florence, by the way, would like to be a writer and, as we shall see, already writes effortlessly, with passion and a sense of beauty.  She eloquently sheds light on that curious psychological paradox that whales present us with: Fear and Fascination. Her words teach us much about why we do what we do and why WhaleFest exists. Here’s to you, Florence.

Everybody thinks of something different when they see a whale for the first time. Some are happy, some shocked, but I was downright frightened. The sheer size of the model of a Blue Whale in the London Natural History Museum took me by surprise. Never in my life had I seen a creature of such a HUGE size. I had seen different documentaries on whales and dolphins, thinking they were just big and nothing more. This model, however, filled the whole room in the museum. I was only about 7 years old then, which made it seem even bigger.

Previously that day we had been to see the Tour de France leave England, and my brother had very nearly gotten lost in Covent Garden, but the one memory that stood out for me on that day was the enormous whale. Even today the looming whale figure plays on my mind, scaring me. People have phobias of spiders, the dark, snakes, but I seem to have a slight phobia of large creatures. Even so, I find it hard to understand how these gigantic whales are so graceful. Despite their big, heavy bodies they somehow seem to dance in the water with the elegance of a ballerina.

I have recently revisited the Natural History Museum, thinking I wouldn’t find the figure as scary as when I was 7. I was wrong. My aunt and uncle found it a bit daunting too, because the size of its eye is about as big as a humans head! I do admit I am still as scared of the big blue model as when I was a lot younger, although I am a lot more interested in them now I have learnt a bit more about them.

In comparison, I absolutely love dolphins. They are really intelligent, but seem to come across slightly cheeky. Like whales they look so beautiful when they swim in the water, twisting and turning with so much elegance. I love watching programmes on the television where you can hear a pod of dolphins calling to each other in various clicks and squeaks; a bit like mice-aliens. It’s kind of like listening to someone speak in a language you can’t understand, but you want to know what they’re talking about.

David Rothenberg: “A simple moral from a beautiful sound”

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When I first met David at WhaleFest 2011 I didn’t really know what to expect from a thoughtful naturalist, deep thinker, writer of thought provoking and beautiful books and extremely handy jazz musician. After all, there aren’t many of those people around. But for many years David Rothenberg has written and performed on the relationship between humanity and nature. He is the acclaimed author of Thousand Mile Song which explores making music with whales and he demonstrated this to devastating effect at last year’s WhaleFest.  David’s words and music invite us to consider sound, space, perception and endless possibilities. One is left with the impression that although whale song can be infinitely explored we will always be surprised by its capacity to illuminate the charged and liminal nature of our relationship with other animals. His latest book, Survival of the Beautiful, was published by Bloomsbury in 2011 and here he answers some questions exclusively for WhaleFest 2012. 

From your perspective as a musician where do you think music can take us? What more can it show us about our relationship with the ocean and whales?

Music allows us to communicate in ways we cannot quite understand.  I can perform together with someone from another culture with whom I might not be able to speak with, but meaningful music can result.  I believe the same can happen with other species; it is easier to play music with birds and whales than to decipher what they are saying, especially with humpback whales. These animals are contstantly learning new songs, so they are interested in new and unfamiliar sounds they have never heard before.  Music is tremendously important to humans, and to whales, and we are not quite sure why!  This trans-species mystery remains a wondferful and beautiful thing.

So what musicians are pushing the boundaries between humans and whales? And between humans and nature in general?

Check out Alexis Kirke in Plymouth, UK and the Karelian group of electronic musicians in Petrozavodsk known as WHALE KIT.  Between humans and nature generally, then Lasse-Marc Riek and his Gruenrekorder.de label is one place to start.  Louis Sarno and his years among the Bayaka pygmies.  Douglas Quin,  Jana Vinderen, there are many…

What is the piece of music you’ve heard that best distils the unfathomable nature of the sea and why?

George Crumb, Vox Balaenae, is pretty important for me… but I rarely listen to it, because it is as if it comes from a whole different world.

And finally, you worked with the legendary musician and songwriter Pete Seeger on his song The World’s Last Whale. Tell us about that experience…

I wrote a little about this in Thousand Mile Song. There was no recording of it, but a quick internet search did conjure up the lyrics:

It was down off Bermuda
Early last spring,
Near an underwater mountain
Where the humpbacks sing,
I lowered a microphone
A quarter mile down,
Switched on the recorder
And let the tape spin around.

I didn’t just hear grunting,
I didn’t just hear squeaks,
I didn’t just hear bellows,
I didn’t just hear shrieks.
It was the musical singing
And the passionate wail
That came from the heart
Of the world’s last whale.

This song seemed quite different from the others of its time.  It’s all about how the song is recorded, and how the music happens.  At the end, it does return to a morality tale:

So here’s a little test
To see how you feel,
Here’s a little test
For this Age Of The Automobile.
If we can save
Our singers in the sea,
Perhaps there’s a chance
To save you and me.

I heard the song
Of the world’s last whale
As I rocked in the moonlight
And reefed the sail,
It’ll happen to you
Also without fail,
If it happens to me
Sang the world’s last whale.

Seeger got all the details right, the microphone deep under the sea, the rocking, rhythmical beat of the boat swaying back and forth and the whale poetry resounding and repeating underneath.  Never recorded?  I was shocked.  Pete Seeger lives just up the road from me, so I wondered if I might rectify that situation—Let’s record it today.

We had recently performed on the same bill in Toronto, so I gave him a call.  “You remember that song about the world’s last whale?”

“What song?” a scratchy voice on the other end of the line sounded suspicious.

“Goes like this:  ‘I heard the song, of the world’s last whale…’”

“Ah yes, you know my mind doesn’t remember it, but I believe in muscle memory.  My body’s still got that tune.”

“You want to sing it?”

“I’m eighty-seven years old—too old to sing. But you, you should come on down to the Hudson riverfront and play some of those whale songs of yours while the swimmers cross the river from the other side.  They’re going to love it.”

“I’ll do that if you sing the song.”

“What song?”

“’The World’s Last Whale.’”

“Oh, we’ll see about that.”

The next weekend I ambled down to the waterfront festival in the nearby town of Beacon.  Pete started the Great Newburgh-to-Beacon Hudson River Swim four years ago to remind us that this river has gotten clean enough to jump in. He wanted to celebrate some environmental good news, and raise money to build a lined swimming pool in the river to make it safe enough for all.

I had done my homework, found out that in 1988 a humpback whale had actually swum up the Hudson River.  Why not play some of its songs to inspire swimmers just finishing their mile long crossing?  I asked a question of the crowd, “How many of you know what a whale sounds like?”  The parents and grandparents smiled.

I pressed “play” on my computer, and the swoops and bowed bass notes resounded from the speakers from the stage. I accompanied on clarinet, trying to play sounds that would blend.  It was a bit of a change from the usual river festival folk tunes, but the swimmers and their families didn’t seem to mind.

A tall, rail-thin man with a beard pushed his way to the stage with a banjo and a big pile of of papers.  “You know, I had totally forgotten about this song until this young man brought it back to my attention,” Pete nodded in my direction.  “Here are some copies of the words, and I wrote out the music, too.  These whales still need our protection.  Anyone who wants to keep this song alive, here, take a copy.”

Can Pete Seeger still sing after sixty years on the road?  More than once I’ve heard him go on unaccompanied for an hour at a time.  On the tribute album to Seeger’s work, I find that Bruce Springsteen, with his worn, gravelly delivery, sounds a lot older than Pete.

This lilting, grooving tune in a doleful key reveals exactly what the song of the humpback whale meant for us when it first became known:  In the 1960s, miraculous underwater recordings revealed there is music under the sea, and we learned of one more rare thing of nature that was fading away. If we don’t work hard to save this song that is so radiant yet also fragile, we’re going to disappear just like the whales.  It’s a simple moral from a beautiful sound.

Since then Pete recorded the song on his record Pete Seeger at 89, and he and I have now recorded a version together that will be coming out soon on a new project.

The Clash and the Titan

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Stick with me, this is about Whales.

Hearing properly for the first time London Calling by The Clash was one of those life-defining moments. I don’t wish to exaggerate but I imagine the unveiling of Picasso’s Guernica was but a ripple in the artistic pond compared to what this record meant (and means) to me: Mick Jones’ atom bomb guitar punctuating Joe Strummer’s desperate howls. I was, and I mean this quite literally, transfixed with every pulsing, sweating, sneering word and note. If He played in a band, this is what God sounded like when He brought His A-game.

Looking back on the experience with hindsight, I always knew this was what music was supposed to sound like. Before the needle even rested in the groove I carried a genetic imprint in my fibres of what would happen to all of my endorphins, hair follicles and cells when music was at its best and most affecting. But until that moment, it was largely a matter of faith, kept alive by what history has proved to be a pretty tasty collection of my Father’s records. Records like London Calling turned me into a true believer.

Seeing a whale for the first time brought about much the same crisis of physiology and mental instability. Despite being steeped in affection for the wild and wild things from an early age this was a piece of blubbery, evolutionary liveliness on a scale which was unlike anything I’d experienced before. The animal, a fin whale in this case, was breathing, stinking and swooshing just a few yards away from me and I was suddenly plunged into a depth of feeling for which I was quite unprepared.

Up until that point, I had seen endless hours of footage and countless photographs: I knew what whales did, how they moved, what they looked like, that there were species that seemed impossibly strange, that they made noises and leapt and breached and swirled and blew. I knew all of that. But seeing the thing… that was a needle dropped on a very deep groove indeed.

Since then I have seen thousands of cetaceans. It would be cool and detached of me to say that the experience of that first whale is dimmed slightly in the light of the sheer volume of blubber I’ve observed since. But that would be a fabrication: Much like the first listen of that record it wasn’t a one-off high but instead acted as an elevator of everything after that; It was a new lens through which I could view everything else rather than a temporary hit. Because of that, my experiences around whales and dolphins since then have built in a slow-burning intensity and never, but never, get boring.

And years after that first listen, I met Mick Jones, guitarist on that beautiful mess that is London Calling. He had just come off stage at an event which I was involved in and in the backstage bustle he looked exhausted but elated after a barnstorming set with his band of the time, Big Audio Dynamite. Always intending to play the cool and reluctant observer it was inevitable that this façade would crumble in the presence of yer man. He was with an eye-wateringly beautiful woman but I barely noticed the poor girl as I shambled up to him and proffered a hand.  He was, of course, the quintessential rock n’ roll gent: pleasant, affable, self deprecating and patiently putting up with my ridiculous questions before autographing a scrap of paper and leaving me beaming.

Like I said, some things do not diminish with the passage of time. I, and my pleasures in life, will age well having been gilded somehow. Because whales (and The Clash) can do that.

Asher Jay: “Every morning that I wake, I wake up with that whale”

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Asher Jay is a designer, artist, writer and activist and founder of Garbagea and Sea Speak Sphere. She’s a staunch supporter of animal rights, wildlife conservation and sustainable development and she uses her fashion, art and writing to raise awareness. Over the years she has produced several graphic campaigns, written many narratives, and pieced together numerous collections and canvases to eloquently elucidate the serious issues currently assailing our fragile planet.  Through her extensive travels across the globe, and her studies in art history, she has developed an aesthetic sensibility that is amalgam of contrasting cultural influences. All her work is anchored by the deep commitment she harbors toward the realisation of a collective future. WhaleFest asked her to tell us about the big moment of realisation.

I am fascinated by cetaceans, because of their titanic size, illuminated eyes, sentient awareness of their place on this blue marble and their ability to share familial bonds much like humans and apes do on land. I find them to be profoundly enlightened beings, infused with the grandeur of the ocean expanse, brimming with memories that happen at depths we have only now begun to explore. They glide through the unchartered salty membranes of the deep and the shifting swells of the surface, experiencing time with quiet tranquility, undaunted by urgency and fear.  Their immensity impregnates their being with power but they do not express this through acts of violence, and this inherent peace can be seen in their eyes as they stare back consciously at you.

When I caught my first glimpse of a Blue Whale I knew that my life had changed forever, and my pulse bonded instantly to this fellow mammal several times my measure, whose arteries I could have effortlessly crawled through as a child. Every morning that I wake, I wake up with that whale, wherever she may be, connected by a singular sun and moon that schedules our distinct lives. I will forever cherish the few moments she spared to relate to me, and it is this love that I feel in every cell in my frame towards this behemoth of the blue that goads me to support her kind, as well as other cetaceans. Every whale and dolphin I have encountered in my life has taken the time to barter a sliver of their soul for mine, and in this way I feel linked to these discerning sea souls every moment of every day.

Of course my mother has seen how emphatically passionate I am about these pelagic goliaths in person, when I took her along on an excursion, and she is convinced that I was a whale in my previous life and in all likelihood still one. As an afterthought she added, “Maybe in this bipedal form you can save your kind better.” I prefer this explanation as it increases my dimensions from being 5 foot ten inches short to 100 feet long and as a marvelous bonus I get to be underwater 24/7!

All images are copyright and are courtesy of Asher Jay, reproduced with her kind permission. Thanks, Asher.

Ocean Wanderer

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There is no doubt some solid and dependably calculated percentage of the blood of Homo sapiens that is water. My best guess is that it’s actually sea water.

I have never met a person who doesn’t think the sea is a wonderful place. Not everyone is happy to swim in it, paddle in it, dive in it, row across it or sail on it (all some people do is vomit in it) but in everyone there is an innate sense that it’s special. It is the whole environment of the ocean with its innumerable possiblilties that sets the mind racing; unseen islands and lands are always just beyond the horizon.

For me, for us, for the whole human race it continues to be a thing of wonder; an undiscovered country where stuff we just don’t understand happens; where beings of infinite variety and impossible anatomy move and live as easily as we do on dry land; where the curious clockwork of creatures buffeted about by deep sea thermal vents seems too distant and bizarre to contemplate. It also has the added quality of consisting of another medium altogether. Moving from the dry and open air into the water is more, much more, than walking from one habitat into another. Doing so, in our imaginations or in reality, is to step from something manageable and understandable into something where physical laws change. Standing on top of a mountain we can perceive the height and depth of where we are. Floating on a boat over the deep blue we have no such conceptions and our normal senses of position no longer function. Our perception of our environment involuntarily changes.

Simply to be close to the sea can help us define our relationship with the planet and cement our sense of place. I grew up living and working alongside the expansive salt marshes of the Wash, on the east coast of Britain. It is a vital and threatened ecosystem but also a habitat essential to my spiritual self. It was here that I saw my first marsh harrier. Here that I swam in the salty cuts and picked up salty gashes. Here is where we collected samphire and here that every ingredient of the sheer experience of being out of doors is driven home by a sensual assault.

The sea edges out any complacency or comfort and teaches you what to be aware of. Everything here is so immediate and definite. Everything here is without compromise, softened and blunted by nothing. It magnifies all your senses. Makes you realise why they’re there and what they’re for. It forces you to count each wave of experience. And instinctively we assimilate them to create a feeling for which, frustratingly but joyously, we can count and name the components but cannot begin to describe.

This is no more acutely apparent than when we see the creatures of the sea from the largest wanderers such as the great whales to the smallest and most balletic petrels. Being out on the open ocean unbalances our internal and spiritual compasses. But that moment when the animal appears sets the needles of our compass spinning wildly, frantically. You just don’t know where to put yourself because these animals put out of kilter what our imaginations are able to deal with.

But our human testimony of the wonder of the ocean and its inhabitants is frequently frustrated by the knowledge that we’re looking at a habitat that is dying in front of us. Infinitesimal changes wrought by human hands seeking a quantifiable yield are beating their butterfly-sized wings in the deepest canyons of the marine ecosystem. And their destructive effects, hurricane-like, are manifesting themselves in every bleached coral reef, every blood borne heavy metal and every stranded whale.

But redemption is never out of reach and to simply experience the sea, the way it has shaped us and our social history and the way it constantly surprises us may be just enough to help us realise why it cannot be lost. At the Large Hadron Collider they’re looking for something to explain the beginnings of the universe but within yards of the deck of a boat or a rocky headland is something much more tangible that explains what the universe means to me, to us and what it means right now.

So scientists of the LHC, I invite you (just for a short while) to remove your hard hats, your fetching white rubber wellies and your one piece contamination suits. Put plastic sheets over your microscopes and take off your goggles. Close down your spreadsheets and silence the oscilloscopes. And when you’ve done all of that go whale watching. Come and feel what it’s like to share a brief moment with something that will defy analysis and description; something that you can’t put into a formula. Something that’s so big that in all your academic brilliance you will not be able to see the beginning or end of the theory behind it.

The presence of the great cataract of the sea and the mysteries of what abides there unseen and unseeable is a connection we can’t, and shouldn’t want to, live without.  As the source of ancient first life, the home of the planet’s most majestic residents and a place of fear and wonder the ocean is still, in Jaques Cousteau’s words “the great unifier, man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat.”