Last of the Right Whales
A documentary premiering in Savannah on July 12, at Lucas Theater.
Right whale #4615, a five-year-old male, entangled in rope and with visible wounds, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Contributed by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Photos provided by HitPlay Productions
for their oil-rich blubber during the time of whaling. Though harpoons are no longer a threat to the species, this population, once rich in abundance, now faces very different humandriven threats a century later, namely entanglement in commercial fishing gear and unintended vessel strikes. Since 2017, a staggering 50 right whales have died or are presumed to have died in U.S. and Canadian waters, necessitating NOAA to declare these elevated mortalities an Unusual Mortality Event (UME). It was these multiple deaths, according to Pequeneza, that grabbed her attention. “When I started researching this film, I had never heard of a North Atlantic right whale, let alone so many dying, seemingly inexplicably, all at once. When I learned it was us that was unintentionally killing them and that we could change our behavior to prevent those deaths, I had to tell this story.” To Pequeneza and her team at HitPlay Productions, it was critical to tell this story – not only from the creative lens of a moviemaker – but from the lens of scientists, photographers, rescuers and fishermen – all of whom are collaborating to turn this crisis around. Partnering with key wildlife conservation groups including the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), Canadian Wildlife Federation, Canadian Whale Institute, Oceans North, the New England Aquarium, and Oceana, Last of the Right Whales intends to attract an audience far beyond the conservation crowd. Pequeneza is quick to point out that North Atlantic right whale has faced and surpassed an extinction crisis more than once before. However, both times help has come from man. “The first was when mankind ‘helped’ by banning hunting them in the 1930s and more recently when we slowed ocean traffic and moved shipping lanes in conjunction with the whale migration.”
T
he veil separating life and death is borne by all species, yet it is far thinner and more tattered for some than for others. Rarely do we truly perceive the fact that some species are under pressures so great, that the loss of even one individual reverberates with devastating consequences on the population at large. Facing such a tipping point is the North Atlantic Right Whale, Eubalaena glacialis, whose ongoing struggle for survival has inspired a breathtaking documentary by award-winning Canadian producer/director Nadine Pequeneza and her team at HitPlay Productions, aptly titled Last of the Right Whales. The documentary follows the right whale migration across 1,000 miles of critical habitats including coastal Florida, Cape Cod Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence – culminating in 92 minutes of breathtaking cinematography of this elusive, 70-ton right whale, the film’s central character, as well as the people so deeply committed to saving them. Migrating yearly from their breeding and calving grounds off the coasts of Georgia and Florida to their feeding grounds in coastal New England and Canada, these majestic whales travel through some of the most heavily industrialized ocean in the world. Its population now hovers around 336 individuals, a cataclysmic decline from tens of thousands in the early 1900’s, when originally hunted 20
Southern Tides Magazine June 2022
