Apple+’s Fathom Is The Imaginative Whale Communications Documentary That We Really Need

“The oldest cultures are not human, they’re from the ocean.” Photo courtesy of Apple+

When we think of whale communication, we think of the same squealing, splashy, base-y humpback songs we’ve all heard before. But Fathom goes far beyond those old, dusty recordings of yore in an effort to reshape how we think about animal communication and explore the unprecedented idea that not only are whales speaking to each other, they just may want to speak to us.

Dr Michelle Fournet tracking whale pods, breaches, and blows in Alaska as they attempt to play and broadcast human-created Humpback “whups” in the hope that the team can get a recording of the whales responding back. Photo courtesy of the NYTimes.

Dr’s Michelle Fournet and Ellen Garland have been researching whale communication for years, with Fournet being a post-doctorate marine ecologist based at Cornell University who uses bioacoustics to better understand peculiar Humpback calls known as “whups” that seems to be a means of saying HI or I’m here (as in the whale’s location not sorry I’m late you wouldn’t believe the traffic around French Polynesia at this hour.) Garland is a senior research fellow at St Andrews University who specifically studies Humpback songs, looking for similarities and differences in calls made in various locations around the planet to answer questions like do Humpback whales sing the same kind of songs in the Pacific Northwest as they do near Australia? The answer is no, which raises even more questions about whale communication and unshrouds irrelevant research.

Dr. Ellen Garland listening for Humpback whale songs in and around the French Polynesian islands hoping to trace these songs back to other whales across the region or even the globe. Photo courtesy of The Wrap.

With Dr. Fournet in Alaksa and Dr. Garland in French Polynesia, both with teams to maintain, both with lives back home waiting for them, and both trying to understand the data their separate research has discovered, you get a fairly complete picture of what fieldwork is like. The documentary does start off a little slow; there’s no narrator, there’s little in the way of a music score to keep things moving, and what conversations do happen between participants doesn’t initially seem to add much to the film. Once you get past the 30-minute mark though, it all gloriously makes sense.

Within Fathom, the idea that whale communication is linear is completely debunked, the concept of whale culture blooms and grows into an enlightening and tangible concept, the difficulties of living and working in the field then transitioning back into normalcy are discussed with raw emotion but without ridiculous drama and while it is science-driven it isn’t difficult to understand or boring. Neil deGrasse Tyson with Chuck Nice recently interviewed by Dr. Fournet and Dr. Garland for an episode of Star Talk which I highly recommend checking out right here.

For additional show art, official trailer, and where to stream Fathom, click right over here.