Natural History on the Big Screen – The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52
March 18, 2022
Emily Frost:
I am Emily Frost, and I want to welcome you to the 30th annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, which is where I'm sitting currently in tonight's event, around the film Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52. As I said, I'm Emily Frost. I am the managing editor for the Smithsonian's Ocean portal website, an ocean science education site. And I'll be moderating tonight's discussion. We're going to give it a few more minutes as we let folks come in, but I think we're going to just maybe dive in quickly with the starting on the program since it's 7:02. So tonight the program is offered in collaboration between Natural History Museum and the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital as I mentioned. We'll be hosting three more events this week. This is the kickoff event, and there's three more events this week alongside the festival that are with Natural History Museum. So please be sure to check out those from our website.
We've been a proud partner of the D.C. Environmental Film Festival for the past 30 years, which is crazy, 30 years. And we'd like to thank the Environmental Film Festival for being such a great partner, not only during the festival, but throughout the rest of the year. And we're really excited to welcome everyone to this panel discussion. At the museum, we are actually the world's largest collection of whale materials. So we are no stranger to the public love of whales. And we have a beloved model of Phoenix and Atlantic right whale in our Sant Ocean Hall. Then we also have a half a million square foot whale warehouse where we house around 10,000 whale and dolphin specimens in Suitland, Maryland. So our whale collection helps answer research questions for our in-house researchers and others around the world. So we're pleased to be a part of this program, and I'm learning more about whales.
So the Loneliest Whale asks a compelling research question. And if you haven't had the chance to see the film yet, please watch after the discussion. You can watch until the festival ends on March 27, but there is a limited number of screening views available. So do get on that. Before we get started, I wanted to say a few housekeeping notes. The discussion will be offered in closed captioning. It can be turned on via the settings and gear icon, which is in your lower right hand corner in Eventive. If you have questions you'd like to ask our panelists, please use the chat box in Eventive. Folks will be watching throughout for submission. So please feel free to throw them in at any time. We'll get to as many as we can during the question and answer portion at the end. If you have questions for somebody specific on the panel, please let us know, and I will direct that accordingly. So with that out of the way, I'd like to introduce our panelists.
So first I will introduce Joshua Zeman who's the film's director. He has been at the forefront of documentary filmmaking for the past two decades, best known for his documentary series, The Killing Season, Murder Mountain, the Sons of Sam and the critically acclaimed feature, Cropsey, a critics pick with the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. As a narrative writer, Zeman receive McDowell Colony Fellowship as well as the San Francisco Film Society's screenwriting award for his screenplay Collider. As a producer and co-producer, some of Zeman's past credits include The Station Agent, which won the audience award and screenwriting award at Sundance Film Festival, Mysterious Skin, a Venice Film Festival selection, and needed for IFP Gotham award, The Hawk is Dying a Sundance Film Festival selection and Against the Current, also featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Welcome Joshua.
Joshua Zeman:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Much appreciate it-
Emily Frost:
Hi, there you are.
Joshua Zeman:
Hi, sorry. Much appreciate it. Thanks.
Emily Frost:
And next I'll introduce Dr. John Hildebrand who co-led the expedition with Josh to search for the 52 Hertz whale. John Hildebrand is a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego, a member of the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps and an adjunct professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering. His research focuses on using sound to study marine mammals and the impact of anthropogenic sound in the ocean. Hildebrand's lab has developed a high frequency acoustic recording package called harp that is capable of long term acoustic monitoring in remote ocean locations. This technology has been a key component to reveal new information on the behaviors and seasonal migrations of whale and dolphins. Hildebrand's work has also documented that ocean noise levels from commercial shipping have increased dramatically over the past few decades, raising concerns about potential impact of ocean noise on marine mammals. Welcome.
John Hildebrand:
Thank you, Emily.
Emily Frost:
And finally, our third panelist is senior research assistant, Sara Heimlich, one of the scientists featured in the film if you've watched it. Her work with NOAA focused on bio acoustic data processing and analysis. It includes identifying and locating seismic activity and marine mammal vocalizations to piece together some of science's mysteries to better understand marine ecosystems. Her data analysis played a critical role in answering some of the research questions highlighted in the film.
Sara Heimlich:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Emily Frost:
Welcome. All right. So I'm going to dive in. For those who have maybe have not ... We just opened the doors, so to speak, for these films. So for those who haven't had the chance maybe to see the film yet, Josh, could you maybe give a brief overview. You're muted. We still haven't gotten it two years later.
Joshua Zeman:
Yeah. And I'm the filmmaker, right, which is even worse. The film is about a cinematic quest to find what we call the 52 Hertz whale, the loneliest whale. The loneliest whale has been heard, but never seen. It's called the 52 Hertz well because it used to call out at a 52 Hertz frequency, and that's a different frequency than other low frequency whales, blue and fins. And this is a really interesting story. I first read about it through Andy Revkin in the New York Times, wrote an article about it in the Science Times. And this story, it captivated me. I was immediately struck by the story of this lonely whale, and yes, completely anthropomorphizing this whale. But then I went on the internet and just was looking around and there were all these people who seemed to have this connection as well. They just felt something.
And that was really interesting to me. And I wanted to know why, why did this story of this lonely whale seem to have this reaction to so many people? And so I started to do a little bit of research just about whales, about loneliness, and then I got into the science. And that's when it got really cool. And just if you don't know anything about sound in the ocean, it's amazing. And that led me to our wonderful scientists. And then that the crazy idea of saying how hard could it be to find one whale in an entire ocean. And so I convinced them to help us on this journey 10 years of course later.
Emily Frost:
Wow. So 10 years. All right.
Joshua Zeman:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. It did. It took an unbelievable long time.
Emily Frost:
When did that article come out, when were you ... We're talking about a decade mark probably.
Joshua Zeman:
Oh yeah. More than a decade ago. I think it was like 2000. I can't even remember, at four at this point and I remember we just ... It took us so long, even four years before we even knew that the whale was even alive or maybe the whale was even alive. So yeah, an unbelievably long quest for the 52 Hertz whale.
Emily Frost:
Well, one of your points was talking about bringing these scientists on your journey, and I'm wondering, John, and maybe Sara, you can mention it too, but did you ... John, was this an easy answer when you were asked to join this adventure, or was there some pause or how did ... Was there some convincing happening? Tell us what was going through your mind when you were invited.
John Hildebrand:
Well, my relationship with the whale goes back to the time where Bill Watkins was first starting to study it. And the thing that was interesting about what Bill was doing was he was saying that he thought he could identify the voice of an in animal, that here's one animal. We can pick it out of the ocean and track it across these vast ranges of the ocean. And so I thought that was really interesting. And I would get Bill's papers to review as he's publishing this. And he's a very conservative fellow, just absolutely did not want to speculate on what it was. And so I would push him to say, "Well, what do you think is making this sound?" But he wouldn't go there, but I had that context. When Josh connected with me on this, I said, "Okay, yeah. Watkins whale, yeah." And so it's something we still don't know very much about, even all these years after Bill Watkins first identified it.
Emily Frost:
And how about you, Sara, did you-
Sara Heimlich:
The way I came into it was because I look at data from different resources. And we had the privilege and the group that I was working with at the time, looking at the sources data, which is classified. And I saw this little blip in there and it was pretty reoccurring and it was at around 52 Hertz. And so Josh had come to us, I think, before John and [crosstalk 00:11:01] before imposes this question about, "Well, what about this whale?" And I have to admit, it's skeptical at first when he was proposing the idea about going out, and then I realized, "Well, John Hildebrand would be a really good resource for him." And so I'm really glad that they actually made the attempt and go out and see [inaudible 00:11:20] because John has a wealth of more real time data and he has all the resources. I should be able to go out to his site and I should go look for something.
However, it still is in haystack for sure, because the ocean is so vast. So that's how I saw it. I was like, "Oh, well, this is a little interesting blip in here," and realized, "Oh, that must be what ..." And it's the same data set that bill Watkins first saw it in any, not the same dataset, same data source that Watkins first saw it in any house. So our group has really nice timeline from when Watkins first saw it, when equipment was very, very basic and technologies just advanced us so far in the ways that we can actually listen in the ocean now. That he actually found in some very old funky equipment is pretty amazing actually. Don't you think, John?
John Hildebrand:
Yeah. Well, with the help of the Navy too [crosstalk 00:12:19]. Okay. Uncle Sam, many things are possible, but yeah, it was impressive what Bill could do. And the personal effort he put into it, right, that would go and sit with the island and do the work himself. And I don't know how much you knew him, but he was a really interesting fellow, spoke a lot of languages. Just he had a lot of skills as an analyst all by himself, and really didn't lean on a lot of other people. When bill would do something, you knew he had done it and he would stand behind it.
Emily Frost:
Right. It's a long journey, before even this article that spurred Josh.
John Hildebrand:
And then Watkins' absence, it was waiting for somebody else to pick up the thread because he's really the main person who had brought it to the four or brought people's attention to it. And then it got a life of its own because saying that it's an individual whale and there's only one of them, then this concept of, oh, well, must be lonely. Who's answering? He's out there singing and calling and no one's picking up the phone. So that's where Josh comes in to ask the question. And interestingly, that's partly about us as much as it is about whales.
Emily Frost:
Absolutely. That was actually one of my first questions. And you address it in the film a bit, Josh, the should we be anthropomorphizing this lonely whale, why do we do this as humans? And maybe he is actually lonely.
Joshua Zeman:
Right, right. It was really interesting. And I didn't know. I was like, "Oh, lonely whale." And some scientists got really pissed off. They're like, "This is ridiculous. You cannot say that this is a lonely whale. And I'm like, "What's the problem?" But it was really interesting to learn as a nonscientist the issues of anthropomorphizing animals. But at the same time, we're very self-involved species. We are not going to anthropomorphize animals as much as you might not want us to. And so that was a really also interesting dichotomy as well. I think, and present company included, we all need to be better storytellers when it comes to stories about nature and caring about nature and how we care about nature and why we need to care about nature.
And so it was really interesting to take this idea of going on a quest for a whale and then a lonely whale and get into the anthropomorphizing. Why do we anthropomorphize, what does that mean, can whales even feel loneliness, are they sentient? Or even to take something interesting, a whale who has spindle cells and whose creates emotions, not visually, but acoustically, what is loneliness in that respect? There's just so many different and interesting variables in terms of this idea of loneliness. And so it becomes a really interesting tableau with which to ask all these questions and then to engage with nature and feel. And so that was really an interesting thing. It was I wanted to make a film, an anti-nature film. In some respects, it's about us and our relationship to the animals. And so that was cool. But the science on the same side, sound is just so interesting in the ocean. It's so cool and fascinating.
Emily Frost:
So I want to, I want to get back to the science, but first I do want to ask you, Josh, because reading your bio this week, your film background is not necessarily in biological science.
Joshua Zeman:
No, no, no, no.
Emily Frost:
Or maybe a different type in true crime documentary. You said you were inspired by this article, but how was this process different or where was your brain space in making that jump?
Joshua Zeman:
Well, I think I had just done three true crime series back to back, and maybe I needed a palate cleanser or something like that. But at the same time, those true crime, a lot of true crime is about mystery. The who'd done it, the why, that. And this was just a different kind of mystery. It was a quest to solve a different mystery. And what I realized as a filmmaker is if you thought murder was dramatic, the ocean is incredibly dramatic, and there are mysteries that will blow your mind. It's not who done it. It's just the ocean is a mystery in general. And so I just realize it was so much more of a satisfying mystery in that, and one that we need to go out and to answer and to go on this quest to find that answer. And so that was really inspiring for me to learn that there was a ... I could find a mystery in a different place.
Emily Frost:
No, that makes that. Yeah, there's a lot of gruesome stuff that happens there too-
Joshua Zeman:
Sure.
Emily Frost:
... in the ocean. For the science side of things, I see a lot of science coming through on the Ocean Portal. But in the film, you talk about this concept of the hybrid whale species. And I'm curious, Sara, maybe you can start with an answer and then if John has anything to add, but can you talk more about that, how does that even happen?
Sara Heimlich:
Well, it happens all over the natural world. It's not that unusual. We have an example of donkey and horses and so it's ... I wouldn't be that unusual. And we do have, in other cetacean species, we do all have other crossovers also. So I wouldn't be surprised if it was a hybrid, but towards the end of the film, as Joshua and John can say, is that suddenly they're hearing two voices making this sound. So then that begs a question. Is it really a hybrid? If it's a hybrid, is it a viable, can it reproduce? And we don't really have answers to those questions. Or is it a fin whale or blue whales that are just now developing a whole new, different call format and John could probably address that more.
So there's still a lot of mysteries about what this [inaudible 00:19:05]. Until somebody actually seize one and can confirm that this is not a blue whale or a fin whale, we really won't have a definitive answer. So I'm hoping that they can carry on where John's been working in actually at one point find it. But as I said, trying to find something ... Any cetacean in the ocean is a hit and miss. So something Josh is talking about is natural history films. I think they make people think it's easy, and it's not. I'm sure that now Josh has had experiences. You spend a lot of time out there looking for things, both acoustically and visually, and you can have days where nothing happens. And it can get really frustrating.
Emily Frost:
John, yeah.
John Hildebrand:
I want to say something about the concept of song. Because in general, when these animals make sounds that have a pattern, we call it song. And, and this is actually a topic where I had an extended exchange with Bill Watkins, because Bill was very picky about what we could call song, okay, so everybody has grown up with sounds that we call song. There are things that are non-song, like right now I'm not singing, right, I'm just talking, but I could break into arousing rendition of jingle bells and you'd recognize that that was song, right, or something like it. And it would bring thoughts into your mind about Christmas and presents under the tree and all kinds of stuff, right, so with a very small piece of sound that's repeated, I would bring in this whole complex of concepts.
So it's a way with a very short piece of sound to bring forward an entire range of things in one efficient package. And I believe that there's some aspect of that in terms of whale song, that the animals need to communicate that by having these pattern songs that have meaning, then even if you hear a short piece of my song, you know what I'm getting at. And maybe it's about let's go off and have sex. So that's the question, is the basic model for animal song, and this mostly comes from birds, is that either repeated sounds that are made by males that somehow demonstrate their fitness for breeding. And females use these sounds to choose the proper mate. And then the rest is history, right, that it's obviously a very important part of the animal's entire behavior repertoire if it means that you reproduce or you don't, right?
Now the question is, when you take that model that we understand fairly well for birds, and you try to apply it to whales, all kinds of things don't work. So for instance, when whales sing, at least blue whales and fin whales, when we've observed them singing, they're not stationary. They're moving. And a moving target isn't your best strategy inside the bar, right, and then there are other aspects, what parts of the song are allowing the female to [inaudible 00:22:43] the health of the male, right, so when we've looked at that detail, it's not clear that it fits the models we have for song in a terrestrial setting. So there's a lot we don't know.
And I believe if we could decode the Watkins whale song, it would help us to understand a lot about the generalities of whale song. And so now back to hybrids, okay, is your mom a blue whale, or is your mom a fin whale? If your mom's a blue whale, you end up hanging out with a lot of blue whales and you hear a lot of blue whale song. If your mom's a fin whale, you end up hearing different song from the fin whales, right, but do you inherit the song from your mom or do you inherit the song from your dad? And is it a hybrid that's a girl with a mom of a certain sex or a boy of a mom of the ... So, the possibilities here multiply really quickly.
But there is a science aspect to it besides the, oh my God, he must be lonely. If we could actually sort all this out, I do believe we'd learn a lot about the function, the whale song. And probably people this is what of the ways, if you talk to Roger Payne who was famous for popularizing humpback whale song in the 60s, he was very explicit about using the song as a way for people to connect to the animal, and therefore want to conserve the animals. We could listen to humpback and it sounds like they're singing, and you hear the pattern. And it repeats every 10 minutes or whatever, but you feel connected to the animal. Blue whales and fin whales are a little bit more pedestrian. Their songs are not as complicated as humpbacks, but as Sarah mentioned, they do change over time. And there are different populations of blue whales that sing different songs. And so there's a lot that we need still to understand. And it's our first step, just a little peek into the culture of whales.
Emily Frost:
Right. Fascinating. Sara, you wanted to say something briefly.
Sara Heimlich:
Yeah. I just want to remind people of that. These whales can all hear each other. The different species can hear each other. It's not like the 50 Hertz whale is just making the 50 Hertz whale, nobody else can hear it, right, and so that also goes in the concept about the loneliest whale. They can hear each other all the time. Different species can hear each other and different individuals in a group can hear each other. And so then that begs the question again about what does lonely mean, right, for a species lives in such a hugely acoustic environment. That's all I wanted to say.
Emily Frost:
Oh, great. No, thank you. Josh, I'm going to ask you one more question, then we're going to jump into some audience questions that have come in. But science is inherently just a journey that there's more questions usually than answers. So we've alluded at the punch line for this film, but if you don't want to give away too much, that's fine. But as you embarked on the film, how did you ... You probably have an idea of what you hope a film to be when you start it, but with science, you can't control that, right, and I think it's similar to some of your past films too, but how do you balance that, how do you balance the nature of science and then the art of filmmaking?
Joshua Zeman:
That's a darn good a question. And once I figure it out, I will let you know. But I think what we knew, whether we found 52 or not, we knew we had a great story about whale, about whale culture. And for me, we never wanted to save whales until we heard them sing and how that went all the way through, what we were saying with Roger Payne, how that went through with the green movement, how that even helped sparked climate change understanding. And so there's just so much to learn. Also, there's never been a creature that has been so vilified and then revered in such a short amount of time. In 100 years, we used to kill ourselves to kill whales and suddenly we're killing ourselves to save whales. And so that's also a really fascinating shift. And then I could do eight episodes just on why do we love whales?
Why does everybody love whales? They're huge. We're humbled finally at one species that makes us not the center of attention. Is it the spirituality, is it the spindle cells and the idea of sentience, is it ... We could talk about Moby Dick and all these things. And so there's just so much there that hopefully it doesn't matter by the end, whether you find the whale or not, hopefully. What you find is at the end, everybody's like, "So, did you find the whale?" It doesn't matter, any that stuff. They really don't care because it is such a concept, right, going out to find a whale. It's the ultimate quest, Moby Dick. It has been our thing. So it's almost like you really set yourself up there on that one to answer this question.
So thank God. I was terrified. I was terrified that we wouldn't find it, but at the same time, I was just so darn happy that we got to go on this quest with these great, unbelievable scientists that they said yes. I didn't think they were ever going to say yes. So the fact that they just said yes, and that we got the money and everything to do it, I was just so happy we got to go out there. So at that point, I was just euphoric. And then once we got home, I was like, "Oh my God ..." or once we're in the middle of the trip, I'm like, "Oh my God we better find this whale.
Emily Frost:
What have we done?
Joshua Zeman:
I'm dead meat.
Emily Frost:
Well, that's a perfect segue to one of the first questions we have for John, which is, what else have we learned about 52 and its friend. What's happening now, any updates?
John Hildebrand:
Yeah. Well, I'll get into a topic that's a little controversial and it has to do with the designation is 52 Hertz. Almost all of the animals have been shifting the frequencies of their song. This is best documented in blue whale as Sarah and others have followed up on. We discovered this basically because our computers, every year we would train our computers to find the sounds. And one year to the next, it wouldn't work because we had to shift the frequency down of what we were looking for. So there's been a steady decline in the frequencies of all these large whales, the songs. And we have no idea why. Absolutely no idea. And maybe 10 years ago, some colleagues and I wrote a paper that said it was related to the recovery of the whales.
And I still get abusive emails over, how can you say that? And it's really something else. And the answer is we don't know. But the 52 Hertz, the Watkins whale, is shifting down as well. And I wish we knew why. We have sensors out. We've had sensors out for more than 20 years. We still hear occasionally but not in large numbers. And you can watch the film and see what we learned from that most recently, but they're still out there and singing away. And I think that's good, but we do need to figure out why they're singing and who they are, basically. The ultimate would be to go out and actually get a biopsy. A sample would give you the genetics and you'd probably have to do that multiple times. So, so anyway. We're ready to go back out with the help when the opportunity arises because- but
Joshua Zeman:
But John [inaudible 00:31:00] got a biopsy, remember John?
John Hildebrand:
Yes. But not a song.
Joshua Zeman:
Not a song. Right. So this is the other thing. It's how do we prove 52 is that animal? I thought is like, "Oh, that's the animal that's singing. Let's just get go get a biopsy." They're like, "No, you need a drone that comes down and then can confirm 100% that it's this whale, biopsy it while it's singing." There is so much to do in terms of proof to prove that is this thing. And it's just like, "Oh my God, I didn't know. I didn't know." talk about rigorous, science.
John Hildebrand:
There are a couple thousand blue whales on the west coast, right, and maybe half of them are males and so they're singing. One of our first tasks was to go out and prove that it is the males who are singing. So John [inaudible 00:31:56] and I spent a couple of years going out and trying to figure out how to localize, where you could point to an animal and say, "That is the singer." And we ended up using [inaudible 00:32:06] sonobuoys, the same thing that we had out with you. And then once we had said, "Yes, that's definitely the singer," then getting a biopsy sample. It took us a couple years to do that. We got one sample. We sent it off as a paper and it was published, but barely. Because people said, "Oh yeah, that's just random, one sample." So then I had graduate student who spent the next five years, and then she ended up, I think with seven samples, which if you do the math, flip a coin, it's like 95% probability that it's not random, right, flip a coin-
Emily Frost:
So you're speaking to all of these layers and the drones and the amount of effort that is put into this-
Joshua Zeman:
Unbelievable.
Emily Frost:
It's a huge amount of effort. And it's, you know, you're using ship time and all of this. So to elaborate on that, one question we have from the audience was how challenging was it to fund an expedition like this, given the uncertainty that it would be found? And I know that probably doves tails between the film and then John, your ongoing research that has that. But I don't know if one of you could speak to that.
John Hildebrand:
We know a lot more about where the animal spends time and what time of year. And when Bill was looking at it, his arrays that Sarah looks at are pointed out into deep water. And so he saw it at a place where it's almost inaccessible or really difficult to get to. North Pacific, times of year where you don't want to be there, deep water. Now we found actually that there are times where it's singing off of [inaudible 00:33:48]. So if I were lucky, I could walk down to the beach and jump in a little boat and go see it.
Emily Frost:
That's the time to do it.
John Hildebrand:
Yeah. Well, if things were that simple. But, it's we're in a better position now than we ever have been. And I think it is worth at some point sorting it out.
Emily Frost:
All right.
Joshua Zeman:
Incredibly expensive. Let me just say incredibly expensive. There is a reason there's not a lot of indie expeditions. Okay. There's a reason why Nat Geo does it. First of all, I couldn't believe how expensive it was. And it got to the point where it was we had this money, it was like, "okay, who can go on the boat and who can't go on the boat because we don't have, or how many days can we go out, how much is gas? Gas is this much. Why is gas this much?" Your real producer brain starts to come in there.
And it was just unbelievably expensive to go out there, even for the shortest amount of time to go do this. And so it was truly fascinating, but also scary how much money it is to go out on these expeditions. And we, just, FYI, these guys did it on the cheap. We got on a boat and I was like, "Where's our big?" And they're like, "No, no, no, that's the boat." And I was like, "There's 16 of us are going to fit in this tiny boat." And they're like, "Yeah." And I was super impressed that they were willing to really rough. It was like beans and rice in little cabins. It really shows the dedication.
Emily Frost:
Sounds like the life of the marine biologist.
Joshua Zeman:
Totally.
Emily Frost:
All right. So we have a question from Diane to Sara. What was one thing that really stuck out to you from ... Is there anything that you as scientists learned from the film?
Sara Heimlich:
Yeah, I actually learned quite a lot. I knew about the historical background, but it was really nice to see the historical background presented so well. And I learned a few things about the backstory, more details I had known before. And then interesting thing was that where John and Josh and John [inaudible 00:36:06] were looking for the whale was near where they had heard it, but then they actually heard it in some other location. And that made me very happy in a lot of ways. One is because it meant that it's not just one whale. It opened the door to lots of other questions, and that in some ways the system works so well. And I really have to commend John and his team. They really did a great job out there. The field work is incredibly difficult. And I was just looking at old data. And I'm envious, because they get to look at new data and I was looking at old data.
And also interesting that, like John said, so many of the whales are really dropping their voices, if you'd like to say it. And that the 52 Hertz call, and I like to call it the whale, just to honor Bill Watkins. That that's also dropping. And so to me that suggests a lot of environmental issues that are going on there. John has talked about this too, about the cocktail party effect where you change the picture of your voice, because there's so much noise around you so you can either be heard better or you can hear better. So the 52 Hertz call is showing the same kind of drop evidence as all the other whales. That's very interesting to me.
Emily Frost:
Well, I think we all know, or at least we all know here that old data is very important. Let's see. Josh, one question from the audience. What are you working on next?
Joshua Zeman:
Oh, that's a good question. Well, there's a couple things. Working on a documentary about Lyme disease. So another mystery, if you will. And I think that is very interesting when it comes to some of the issues surrounding chronic Lyme. I think is very interesting. And getting into the science there. We were talking just internally about, oh, other cool stories like the de-extinction of the Tasmanian tiger. That's really interesting thing that's come up recently, and another one, right, the last creature. I think that's very interesting. So just things like that. I'll let you know if they get done.
Emily Frost:
Well, everyone will keep their eyes out. So, the human interest has come up a bit, our love of whales as humans. And obviously there's lots of issues facing our oceans and our earth these days. And how can we channel the human interest in these whales to have people who are watching this film, or maybe walking into the ocean hall at the museum, take action to protect our oceans, was that a goal of yours Josh, or how do you hope people, well, take action after watching a film like this?
Joshua Zeman:
That's a great question. First of all, I think the first thing that you have to do is create emotional connection. We could have made a film that was completely about ocean noise pollution, and it is a dramatic and important issue. At the same time, I wanted to do a little bit of a different type of film. We could have made that disaster film if you were, but I think I wanted to create a different type of nature film to really engage us and say, "You know what?" It's like listening to songs in the humpback whale for the first time. When we listened to that album the first time, our conceited human selves said, "Oh my God, what out there make such a beautiful sound?" And they're like, "Whales." And they're like, "Whales? But we kill whales." And it was like, "Oh my God, we can't kill these creatures that make this beautiful sound. What are we doing?" And so that's a little bit like this.
If you make a film about a lonely whale who's calling out in the ocean, theoretically lonely, if you make a film about a whale, that's calling out in the ocean and you create that emotional connection, and then I tell you, "But that whale, we're only making a whole ocean of lonely whale because of ocean noise pollution," then you can understand that feeling. By the way, I'm in New York City. I live in New York City. If there is a car alarm that goes off or radio, I will literally get out of bed and throw something out my window at that car alarm. The noise makes me crazy. And so you could understand for whales if that was 24/7. And so I want to throw the question over to John of what can we do. There's been a couple of other things, and maybe I could talk after it, but I first want to hear what John says, because he's really been in the ocean noise pollution world.
Emily Frost:
Yeah. The science side of that.
John Hildebrand:
Yeah. Well, as bad as you think it is, Josh, you are basically a creature who primarily depends on your eyes and secondarily your ears. All the whales, dolphins, mini marine animals, their ears are the primary sense, right, and just as a for instance, if you look at the brain of a bottle nose dolphin, it has twice the processing power put into the sound part of its brain, which turns out to be on the side, just like your earmuffs, and that it does in the visual part. Whereas we're the opposite. We spend a lot more of our machinery processing visual. So the thing is, if you say, "Here are these animals, they're very dependent on sound," now you're going to make their sound environment incredibly polluted. You are going to have noise from ships, noise from sonars noise, from oil exploration.
And unless we put our ears in the water and think about how that impacts these animals, it's something that we do with no understanding of the overall impact. So, as a for instance, there are bands of the ocean where you will almost never hear natural sound. You will always hear sound from ships or from sonars. And that's the low frequencies of these bailing whales. The ocean is so polluted that they will never hear the conditions under which their ears were evolved to operate. So that's bad.
And we don't have a baseline. That's the other part. A baseline means you got to go back a hundred years, at least 50 or more years to where the ocean was quiet. And then what was that like and how did the animals make use of that? And now with no sense of the environmental impact, we've upped the sound level somewhere between 25 and 30 dBs in this range. If I say dBs, okay, let's say, Emily, in your office, if I were to increase the ambient noise by 25 and 30 dBs, I believe that OSHA would come in and say, "You better wear earplugs." And we're not out there issuing earplugs to all the whales.
Emily Frost:
Right. Right. One question that's related from the audience, is it, and you said you're not sure, but the change that you're seeing, is there a conjecture that is due to the as response to competition with the noise that we're seeing or how it-
John Hildebrand:
That is one theory, but it's one of maybe half a dozen competing theories. And so I wish there were a clean theory that predicted it all, but because it's tied up in the cultural aspects of the whale that we don't understand, then it doesn't all make sense to us. If you were a whale, it would totally makes sense, right, I know that, but you're not, we're not. There's no clean theory that says, "Oh yeah, this is it, of course." It's because the ocean is warmer. It's because the ocean is noisier. It's because of where the ships are. There're a bunch of theories. And that's why, when we finally did publish this, the shifting and the frequency, why scientists want clean, here's some data, here's hypothesis that explains it. That's the way science is done. And we don't have that yet.
Emily Frost:
Yeah. Questions.
John Hildebrand:
[crosstalk 00:44:55] just to publish a phenomena without a model or a theory for why is that way? But unfortunately, that's where we are.
Emily Frost:
Yeah. One other sound related question first, and then I'll jump back to you, Josh, so, more about that. For John, is there any common water depth at which whales sing, was the question.
John Hildebrand:
Yes. And that comes down to they make use ... They sing relatively close to the surface of the ocean, right, and first of all, that's because as you dive to down to depth, the pressure collapses the volume of the air that you have available. In order to sing, you need to have air. You're pushing air out of your lungs past some constriction, the same way that I'm speaking right now. The deeper you go, the less air you have, the less volume of air you have to make sound. So it makes sense that they would sing near the surface.
The second thing is you can find a depth that's somewhat beneath the ocean surface where the reflection from the surface adds to the sound that you're making now. So it sounds louder to you. This is much like you're in the shower, you hit that note that really resonates and it's like, "Oh my God, I'm an opera singer." And so it's natural, but if you look at whales that are tagged with a sensor, and then you record the sound they're making, and you think about the frequencies, they're sitting just at that wonderful resonant spot where it sounds loud to them, but it sounds loud to the other animals.
Emily Frost:
That's fascinating. Okay. So Josh, there's a question for you and then folks in the audience, if you have any last questions, please do add them, because we're speeding through our time. So, Josh, there are a lot of members in the audience who are interested in the more filmmaking side of things. And clearly I need a filmmaker here who can ... I'm a writer. I have no idea how to do lighting. So it's very interesting that, as the director, you were the co-lead of the expedition. Is that true? Maybe-
Joshua Zeman:
Not really. Yeah. No, not really.
Emily Frost:
Well, you at least you were out there in the field.
Joshua Zeman:
Yeah.
Emily Frost:
So I guess could you talk about the challenges of maybe the footage capture when you're at sea, I guess, is the question and that process and then any particular highlights from being out on sea with a camera?
Joshua Zeman:
Yeah, that's really interesting. Basically in this instance, first and foremost, it was like, "Let these guys do science," and you're a fly on the wall. And you could try, they're not going to repeat stuff. They're not going to be like, "Oh, can you come back on the ..." That's not happening. Okay. So it is just like you are a fly on the wall, try and get it as best that you can. And if you get it, you get it. And if you don't, you don't. And guess what, we're going to go tag more whales tomorrow. So stay out of their way and just try and be, try and do some stuff. Try and just be there, you're a fly on the wall.
At the same time, it's really super fascinating. These guys, and you see it a little bit in the film, what they were doing with the drones and the equipment and trying to localize and all this stuff, it's like a bank heist what these guys doing. It's like an action film. And so that was really fun for us to be able to shoot, to cover it here and to cover it there. And plus it was just very ... You might have seen it from the film. This is not Nat Geo. We don't have 12 freaking cameramen. It's myself, another guy and another guy. And just is like, "Did you get that?" "I don't know. I got it." "John's coming in." "Okay." It was really special because it was more than just filming though because this was all new for everybody, I think. And John you could talk about this, but they had tried to identify and tag a whale like this to prove it, but they hadn't really done it before.
So it was more like, "Let's see if this works." And so we all got to be part of that cool experience. And for me, the crossover was fun too, because for example, there was a moment in which the drone and that we had brought had picked up a whale singing. And they were like, "Oh, that's the first time that we've able to be ..." Because the GPS say exactly that that whale is singing at that moment because there's a GPS attached to the whale and there's a GPS on our drone. And so this is the first time we've ever been able to do that.
And so learning and being close to that type of new science is totally interesting and exciting. And at the same time, we got laughed out of the room for two years when we said we wanted to do this. So the advice is keep going no matter how crazy. But then once you earned it, right, because you did the research and the whole thing, then it's cool. But also stay out of the way. It's science. You have to be the backseat to that.
John Hildebrand:
I would like to comment on how John Calambokidis dealt with it. So John Calambokidis is the best field biologist that you will ever see. Small boat operator, he can do six things at one time, right, he's taking pictures, he's shooting biopsies. He's getting the boat in the position for when the whale comes up to the surface. He's a genius at this. And I've spent a bunch of time in the boat with him. So now add this element of a cameraman in John C's boat. This was so classic. What John C did was he created a spot in the back of the boat where the cameraman would stand and he basically strapped him in. He's not going anywhere. He can feel, but he's not going to get hit by the biopsy or whatever. And so that was just his way of dealing with it. We've got the cameraman and I know where he is and I'm not going to worry about it.
Joshua Zeman:
Yeah. He basically, the morning, in the morning, he put the cameraman on the thing, he strapped him in and then he let him go for lunch and then strapped him back in for the rest of it.
Emily Frost:
So there were no lost cameramen or women. Were there any lost scientific equipment or film equipment off the side?
Joshua Zeman:
Well, of course that's the whole thing, right, isn't that the joke, John? What's the joke that's said in the film? You're doing oceanography when you take something really expensive and you throw it in the air. It's fascinating. It was so cool.
Emily Frost:
Yes. Lots of stuff to navigate there. Okay. So I have one last question for the group. I can go down the line, and see if anybody else has any final thoughts too. But one thing that we had come up in our pre-discussion actually too was this film was made prior to the pandemic, but how has the isolation during COVID 19 pandemic amplified the meaning of the film? And so the meaning of the film to you, Josh, but then for the others, for Sara and John, the meaning of this film and your work as scientists. So we'll start with Sara.
Sara Heimlich:
Well, I actually have been retired since 2018. And this film was my last 15 minutes of fame, I guess. Doesn't mean that I'm not still interested in the field, but I haven't been actively working in the field. A lot of that has to do with grant funding. And I did want to say one thing about going back to filmmakers or filmmakers is that as a scientist, I'm trained to be skeptical in a way. And I think the advantage of people who come in from the art side or from the filmmaking status, they can come in without these biased modalities of thinking about things.
And I think that presents a really good interface for progressing the science in a way, because at first, I have to admit that I was kind of like, "Okay, I rolled my eyes. And I felt like Josh didn't really have a really good idea about where he wanted this movie to go." And it was really nice for me to see that he pulled all of these various elements, the background history, the personal stories, his own personal agenda. And he did, I have to say, a really fabulous job.
Joshua Zeman:
Thank you.
Sara Heimlich:
And especially the ending of the story about, oh, there are other ones out there. And I think if he hadn't had John Hildebrand and John Calambokidis go out with him and look at it, it would not have been a very interesting story. And so I want to encourage people to go out there and yes, continue to make natural history film stories. And don't be afraid of coming up with these crazy ideas because they can work.
And I think in the film, I said to him, "Okay, well, shoot. Really Josh, if you really want to go find this, you just go out and find it." Did I offer him any suggestions about how do that? No, except to tell or talk to John Hildebrand about this. So that was the only last comment I want to make about the filmmaking. For me, the COVID thing is it's made it challenging for me to stay in touch with my colleagues and know what's going on. And I don't like Zoom very much so, especially once you leave the profession a little bit. It made it more of a challenge for me. So this has been fun, this whole encounter online.
Joshua Zeman:
Oh yeah. It's wonderful to have you and your thoughts, especially your point about art and the threads of that. And especially in the film about the threads of song that you're working with that's come out as data. John, any final thoughts on your end either related to that isolation question or just wrapping us up?
John Hildebrand:
Well, of course during the pandemic, we're all caught inside and there's less social interaction, right, and so we're a lot in our own heads. And I found it very refreshing to look at the film, and it had been a few years because it just reminded me of being out and being in a setting where we're all working for this common goal, and that there's this other world. It's not just I'm not going to be stuck in my living room forever or whatever, or at least there is this other world that still is out there. And I go along with what Josh said earlier, that in a way, the pandemic made the film more poignant. And the concepts we're putting forward there of, oh yeah, here I am. I'm in my living room. I'm going to get up and spend another day just staring at the screen or whatever, right, anyway, the pandemic is a horrible thing for all of us, but the film was a little bit of a relief.
Emily Frost:
And Josh, any final thoughts on your end?
Joshua Zeman:
Yeah. Suddenly I look pretty smart making a film about a lonely whale, but that wasn't intentional. But it did allow for a shared empathy in terms of loneliness. And I think that that was really important because it's like, "Oh my God." It was really funny because I had lived in this world of loneliness before that, because I had been making the film and asking questions about what is loneliness versus aloneness. Especially, look, there is nothing more interesting and questioning the idea of loneliness versus aloneness than being on a boat in the middle of the ocean. That is where that question really rises to the top and makes you think. And it's like a Walden thing, am I lonely or am I just alone?
Because alone is okay and cool and empowering versus lonely is not. What I found interesting was suddenly the pandemic comes along and I'm talking all these people about the film. And here I am starting to wonder, I'm in a dark room, I'm speaking to somebody thousands of miles away using sound waves in this darkness called the internet which could be in a metaphorical ocean sense. And so I actually started to connect with people even more and maybe it was because I started to listen to people more in this route. And so it was really interesting to see those connections and live almost like a whale, connecting with people thousands of miles away acoustically. And so that was an interesting, shared experience. I'm like, "Oh my God, we're all living in this whale communication over thousands of miles scenario."
Emily Frost:
Oh, fascinating. Well, here we are two years later, but we are out of time. So I want to thank all of you for joining us Joshua, John and Sara. The production team has been helping out behind the scenes with D.C. Environmental Film Festival too. They've been sending me chats from the audience. So thank you so much on that end.
Joshua Zeman:
Thank you guys.
Sara Heimlich:
Thank you.
Emily Frost:
Absolutely. And I'd also like to give a special, thanks to those who made the program possible. We have donors, volunteers and viewers joining us like you. All of our partners who help us reach, educate and empower millions of people around the world today and every day, we really appreciate you and thank you. There are three more events. As I mentioned with the Natural History Museum and D.C. Environmental Film Festival, and they've got an awesome ... You can check all the other different lineup events that are happening throughout the time of the film festival on the website. There should be a link in the chat. You'll also see a link to a survey in the chat. We hope you'll take a moment to respond. We really do appreciate your input and take it very seriously. So again, thank you so much to our participants, to those who have been listening and for the wonderful questions. And we'll hope to see you at another event sometime soon.
Joshua Zeman:
Thank you.
John Hildebrand:
Bye.
Sara Heimlich:
[inaudible 01:00:00].
Emily Frost:
Thanks everyone.
Joshua Zeman:
Much appreciated. Thank you. Bye.
