Not a lot of people have heard of the North Atlantic right whale and its struggle to stay alive. But Nick and Cheryl Dean hope to change that with their new film, “The Right Whale: Tales of Resilience and Hope.”
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The filmmakers went underwater and filmed across four continents to capture the beauty of these creatures that are 45 to 52 feet long and weigh up to 140,000 pounds. There are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales living in the Northern Atlantic off the East Coast, making them one of the most critically endangered whale species.
“Nick and I fell in love with them while filming their robust healthy families in the Southern hemisphere, so we wanted to show people what a thriving whale population can look like, provided we give them the protections they need,” said Cheryl Dean, co-director and producer of “The Right Whale.”
The first half of the film is about Southern right whales, filmed South of New Zealand, off Australia and Argentina. The couple also filmed North Atlantic right whales off North America, and there is a short segment about North Pacific right whales. The documentary will be shown at two free screenings in Encinitas.
The couple had previously completed a documentary, “The Witness Is a Whale,” in 2021, about Soviet and Japanese illegal whaling during the Cold War and the reverberations today of removing so many whales from the oceans. That film won a slew of honors including a gold trophy from the Deauville Green Awards International Film Festival and Best Conservation Film at the New York WILD Film Fest.
“The best conservation stories are about people deciding that a species is worth saving. Southern right whales recovered because people took action,” said Nick Dean, co-director and producer of “The Right Whale.”
The Deans hope their latest work, filmed in collaboration with scientists worldwide, will inspire conservation efforts.
“Any measures such as reducing vessel speeds in critical habitat areas and reducing entanglement in fishing gear would help other whales too, including our gray whales and humpbacks that encounter these same risks off our coast,” Cheryl said.
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The couple went through great lengths over six years to capture footage from the sub-Antarctic calving grounds to industrialized oceans in the north.
“The hardest and also the most fun part of making this film was working on the whales’ schedules and moods and the ocean conditions,” Nick said.
Sometimes storms would shut down an entire port for days when the couple was ready to go out with their permits (which took about a year to get). Other times a sudden storm came up when they were out on the ocean.
But the reward was when they got close and could film a mother gently caressing her calf or curious whales swimming up to them and circling or playing.
“It was lovely to simply hear all of the whales surfacing to breathe, resting in their calving grounds. We just want people to experience the sense of awe we felt while filming,” Cheryl said.
Two free community screenings of “The Right Whale: Tales of Resilience and Hope,” which has won several awards including the Audience Choice Award at the Big Blue Film Festival, will be at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sept. 5 at La Paloma Theater in Encinitas.
The screenings are hosted by Spindrift Images, a nonprofit the Deans founded to share their films and inspire ocean and wildlife conservation, with the help of the City of Encinitas Community Grant Program. The Deans will be at the screenings to answer questions and discuss how the film was created–the challenges of filming in remote locations underwater and from boats, and ways to help the North Atlantic right whales.
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Visit https://therightwhale.eventive.org/welcome
