LAST OF THE RIGHT WHALES Director Nadine Pequeneza - Image courtesy of Dan Abravomici Photography
North Atlantic right whales are dying faster than they can reproduce. With less than 350 remaining, these great mammals rarely die of natural causes. Instead they are run over by ships or suffer lethal injuries from fishing gear. With unprecedented access to film the migration from their calving ground off the coast of Florida, to Cape Cod Bay and onward north to their shifting feeding grounds in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, LAST OF THE RIGHT WHALES brings a message of hope about a great creature on the brink of extinction. We bear witness to their struggle and see the promise of new fishing techniques that bring hope for their survival.
LAST OF THE RIGHT WHALES screens during the in-person portion of Salem Film Fest on Saturday, March 26 at 11am at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) and streams during the virtual festival, Monday, March 28 - Sunday, April 3. SFF Program Director Jeff Schmidt caught up with Director Nadine Pequeneza ahead of the festival.
Jeff Schmidt: How did you become aware of the plight of North Atlantic right whales and when did you decide that you needed to make a film about them?
Nadine Pequeneza: It was the multiple deaths, 17 in a few short months, that grabbed my attention in 2017. At the time I had never heard of a North Atlantic right whale. When I learned it was us who were unintentionally killing them, I knew I had to tell their story. Living in cities as most of us do, often many kilometers from the ocean, it’s not surprising that we are disconnected from the marine world. But people only need to see what is happening to the North Atlantic right whale to feel a sense of responsibility for their plight.
JS: The whale imagery in the film is incredible. How did you manage to capture such stunning footage of these animals?
NP: Wildlife films are always challenging to make. The footage is even more difficult to capture when the animal is critically endangered and inhabits the entire North Atlantic coast from Florida to the Gulf of St Lawrence – ‘needle in a haystack’ was said more than once during production. With less than 350 remaining, right whales are rightfully protected. In order to approach the whales we required multiple, hard to get federal permits. We had to rely on aerial cinematography because diving with North Atlantic right whales is prohibited, which meant waiting for behaviours that happen on the surface of the ocean – mom’s nursing, skim feeding, social groups. All these stars had to align in order for us to capture the incredible images featured in Last of the Right Whales.
North Atlantic right whale fluke in the Gulf of St. Lawrence at sunset. Image courtesy of HitPlay Productions
JS: In a film like this, finding characters isn't enough as you also need to research the science and figure out how to present it on screen in a compelling way, how did you approach this?
NP: Scientists have been studying these whales since the ‘30s. They’ve been cataloging them and naming them and following their life history. They’re not just whales. They’re whales with family – with calves and grand-calves and they actually have documented those family lines and have seen similarities in where they go to calve and raise their young, and even where they might choose to feed. The scientists have such a close relationship with these whales; I wanted to convey that in the film and for the audience to also have that deep connection.
The film introduces viewers to heroes who have dedicated their time and sometimes their lives to the protection of the North Atlantic right whale. It also introduces us to two individual whales – Snow Cone and her new born calf. Over the course of the film, we see the close bond that forms between this mom-calf pair, a bond that is ultimately destroyed due to human activity. It’s next to impossible to watch their journey and not feel empathy for these whales. Oftentimes the way we connect with animals that are not people is to give them human characteristics. That was a central goal for me – to show people those human characteristics that all animals share. The bond between mother and child and mom and calf; that’s something that all mammals share.
JS: As a filmmaker, were there any moments during filming that stand out for you as particularly revelatory?
NP:: We captured something that has never been filmed before or even witnessed by scientists who have been studying this species for decades – a fresh entanglement in fishing gear. We know it was recent because scientists had photographed the same North Atlantic right whale gear free just four hours earlier. What we witnessed was the brutality of a fishing gear entanglement.
The public hears reports and sees images of entangled whales often, 85% of the right whale population has been entangled, but seeing the immediate aftermath of an entanglement demonstrates the trauma of this interaction. For six hours we filmed 5-year-old male, catalog #4615, struggling to free himself from a rope caught in his baleen, wrapped over the top of his head, and weighted on the other end by what was presumably a trap. 4615’s struggle to free himself is difficult, but critical to watch. It is one of the most memorable things I’ve ever filmed over the course of my 20-years making documentary films.
Wildlife Photographer Nick Hawkins documenting the necropsy of North Atlantic right whale Punctuation (#1281) on Miscou Island, NB. Image courtesy of HitPlay Productions
JS: What do you hope audiences will take away from your film and is there anything you would like to encourage them to do?
NP: First and foremost, I hope the audience will come go away with a new found love for North Atlantic right whales. I hope they will feel connected to them. I hope that they will feel empathy for Snow Cone and her calves – the one that died and the new one that’s miraculously just been born despite the mom coping with an ongoing entanglement.
I also hope that they will see solutions. That they will see that there is a possibility for us to correct our behaviours in a way that makes coexistence possible. The commitment and determination of the people featured in the film is inspiring. There’s a lot of fabulous work going on with engineers and fishers trying to develop safer ways of fishing. There’s been a lot of testing happening over the last four or five years. Some of these systems have been used successfully in other parts of the world for many years already. I’m very encouraged by the fact that people have been moving in this direction in Canada and the U.S.
The collaboration between the film’s impact partners who have joined forces to protect the North Atlantic right whale is powerful – IFAW, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Sierra Club Canada Foundation, Canadian Wildlife Federation, Canadian Whale Institute and Oceans North. People’s reaction to the film and their desire to get involved is palpable.I am hopeful that our species can do the right thing for these whales, for ourselves and the planet
LAST OF THE RIGHT WHALES screens in-person - Saturday, March 26 at 11am at the Peabody Essex Musem (PEM) - and streams Monday, March 28 - Sunday, April 3. Purchase tickets to the film here.
