The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (TV Series) The Singing Whale (1973) User Reviews

Listening to the Humpbacks

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 24 November 2015]

My assumption is that since this film was made that the Humpback Whale populations have greatly increased. I've been on quite a few whale excursions and saw quite a few of them. But in the show, the Calypso crew spend a lot of time just trying to find them. Once found, the problem was then getting close enough to observe and tape them-- again, a bit of a problem so the crew had to be creative and eventually they were able to get their shots. Surprisingly, for such large creatures, they were very gentle and seemed to take pains to avoid hitting the divers. In addition to corralling them, an emphasis was on the whales so-called 'songs', though it felt to me that Cousteau and several others waxed a bit too prosaic about this- -and talked how beautiful it sounded and how the whale thinks about these humans(???). Well, I love to watch whales but cannot see myself listening to a DVD of whale noises--and I think wondering about their thinking process is to attribute way too much humanity to the whales! Still, it was a great show simply because of the great camera-work and wonderful shots of the creatures. Well worth seeing.