I had just broken up with a girl and was feeling very sad and lonely. Zeman: At the time, I had been doing a lot of true crime and needed a little bit of a palette cleanser. Newsweek: What sparked your interest in this whale and inspired you to make this film? The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Newsweek spoke with Zeman about his new film, which counts actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrian Grenier as executive producers. The documentary looks at the centuries of brutal hunting that has devastated whale populations, the discovery of beautiful, haunting whale songs that ignited conservation efforts around the world and the growing environmental impact of our species on the world's oceans-including the increase in ocean noise that disrupts the lives of these highly intelligent animals.Īs Zeman and the crew of scientists set out on a seemingly impossible mission to try and find the solitary whale in the vast Pacific Ocean, the film also explores our changing relationship to the oceans-as well as each other. In the years since then, the whale has become something of a global sensation, with the animal's plight resonating with people around the world in a technology-centric culture where feelings of loneliness seem to be on the rise.Īlongside the story of 52, the film also looks at how the relationship between humans and whales has evolved over time. Watkins studied 52's calls for more than a decade until his death in 2004. The whale of an unidentified species may be the last of its kind, or even the first-perhaps a new type of hybrid between a blue and fin whale. Watkins speculated that this whale, nicknamed "52," was living a solitary life, unable to communicate with other whales. Whales call out as a form of communication, but no response to this unique sound was ever recorded. He concluded that the strange sounds were, in fact, being produced by a whale that called out in a distinctive frequency. While the surveillance system was designed to detect enemy submarines, experts knew this wasn't the source.Īfter the data was partially declassified in 1992 following the end of the Cold War, oceanographerWilliam Watkins of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution analyzed the recordings. The origin of the signal, which resonated at a frequency of 52 hertz, was not immediately clear. Whale's Death Remains a Mystery Days After Washing up in San Francisco.Whale Crashes Onto Small Boat, Sending Two to Hospital.Crying Dolphin Rescued After Getting Stuck on Rocks in Delaware.
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