Secrets of the Whales Premieres in Time for Earth Day

Introducing the National Geographic series at a virtual premiere, to stream on Disney +, part of a weeklong celebration of Earth Day, the actress Sigourney Weaver, found the secrets of whales “astonishing.” What is truly astonishing is how intimate National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry becomes with the whales, learning their “secrets.” It is no spoiler to reveal them: Whales have culture. Using the tag line: they play, they mourn, they are just like us, National Geographic promotes the idea of empathy for another species—big time!

The filming of this epic adventure took three years. Amazing how much humans can bond with their fellow mammals in that time, in many locations: Norway, Antarctica, Dominica, St. Lawrence, New Zealand, the South Pacific, to name a few of the spectacular locations. We were rapt for two hours: one Orca attempted to feed fin and wet suit clad Skerry, undersea camera in hand, who quipped, perhaps she was thinking he was undernourished. She’d picked up a stingray, and knew to turn it upside down to a sleep mode to better serve him for dinner. Yes, survival is key, and that wisdom is handed down through elder females.

We learn: Humpbacks have singing contests, and arrange their spewing spouts or bubble nets in spirals, worthy of any chorus line. Watching with me, my grandson Max (6) noted his favorite part: a Narwhal, brown with a needle-like snout, was separated from his pod, and somehow joined a family of Belugas. The sweet faced gray blue whales did not reject him, even though he did not speak the same language. Returning in a year, the divers were on the lookout, providing a mystery: would the lone Narwhal be swimming among them? Yes, the Belugas took in a stray; in short, they taught him how to survive. Weaver’s narration stressed this sense of community.

Alert: Max did become teary when one beached whale could not escape a preying polar bear.

And he learned a message for taking care of this precious life: Whales become entangled in fishing lines, carelessly left in the oceans by humans who also drop tons of plastic and chemicals that mess with their biological systems. Whales need to be able to call out to one another, which they do, in clicks, as a matter of community and survival. The sounds of engines interfere with their signals. In a post-screening Q&A, Executive Producer and Explorer-at-Large James Cameron put it bluntly, Humans use the oceans as a giant toilet. We have to do better.