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COURTESY OF APPLE TV+
Whale watch What do whales say when they “talk” to each other? That’s the mystery behind “Fathom,” a recent documentary on Apple TV+. Directed by Drew Xanthopoulos, the film had its world premiere June 16 at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. It follows researchers Ellen Garland, Ph.D., and Michelle Fournet, Ph.D., as they observe communication patterns and vocalizations of humpback whales in Scotland and the Pacific coast. Also featured in “Fathom” is Leanna Matthews, Ph.D., a Biology faculty member at Metropolitan State University of Denver who joined the group as they were conducting fieldwork in a remote location off the southeastern coast of Alaska in August 2019. “The question we ask in the film is, ‘This sound the species makes — what does it mean?’” Matthews said. “It’s hard to answer when you can’t ask them directly.” There are a variety of vocalizations for different occasions in whale communications, including foraging, reproduction and maybe even just “talking.”
“Fathom” specifically focuses on a type of “‘whup’ call, which sounds like a reverse water droplet,” Matthews said. The film follows a playback experimental design, collecting above-water and underwater data. For a month and a half, the researchers drove around the remote location in a small boat, found whales, played a sound and observed how the animals responded. The research by Matthews and Fournet that’s featured in the film is done through the Sound Science Research Collective, a nonprofit they founded focused on using acoustic research to answer conservation questions. Matthews views the question of how animals communicate as itself a conservation effort and hopes “Fathom” viewers take away an appreciation of how culture exists outside of humanity. “These intricate communication systems have existed for millions of years, and we’re just starting to scratch the surface of our understanding of them,” she said. “Diving into that is messy, complicated — and important.”
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