‘If this worked,’ he suggests here, ‘you might try asking dolphins direct questions. The same year he shared the text of his lecture promoting the need for scientific exploration of dolphin communication. In a blog in 2019, Payne wrote that the COVID pandemic could be seen as a positive thing for mankind as it helped reduce over-population.
It is, however, worth taking a look at his blogs on the website of Ocean Alliance, the organisation which he subsequently founded. The importance of Payne’s achievement in this respect cannot be underestimated. The scientist who was responsible for this is the film’s central figure, Roger Payne. This was thanks to the release on record of the first recordings of whales’ haunting songs. There is a fair amount of padding, but the film usefully pinpoints a significant moment when our attitude to whales changed in the late 1960s. The documentary goes through the history of whaling. Once we’re an hour into the film and there’s still been no sighting of the whale, you find yourself reflecting on the strangeness of the human obsession with whales, starting with the fictional Captain Ahab and Moby Dick. The very maleness of the set up is only emphasised by the decision to include three young women as interns, whose job is mainly to point at screens or announce things like ‘I don’t know how long I can work in these conditions.’ So the boat sets off with its gang of Ancient Mariners together with some nerdy young scientists who understand the equipment.
#The loneliest whale plus#
The film then follows the assembling of scientists plus equipment in readiness for a seven-day trip to track down the legendary whale off the coast of California.
#The loneliest whale series#
The early part of The Loneliest Whale features a series of interviews with members of the original team of marine biologists who first identified 52, as the whale is unromantically known. Zeman, who with Lisa Schiller, also wrote the script, is clearly passionate about searching for this creature. Director Joshua Zeman clearly aims to touch our hearts with the film’s focus on a lonely creature, swimming the oceans in solitude, unable to communicate with its own kind. He and a handful of fellow researchers believe this points to the existence of a unique whale, a hybrid between a blue and a fin whale. Scientist Roger Payne identified it as broadcasting at 52 hertz.
The hook for this documentary is simple: the search for a legendary whale, believed to have spent its entire life alone because the frequency of its call is unrecognisable to other whales.
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