In loving memory of Pat Steinoff.
Music by Annabel Carter 
“Relax and Meditate – Session 1”
In 2010 the documentary film Where the Whales Sing, by Andrew Stevenson premiered at the Bermuda International Film Festival. The film is a result of three years of Andrew’s researching, photographing, filming and cataloging of the humpback whales that migrate past Bermuda each spring. Bermuda’s unique mid-ocean platform provides a natural port of call for the humpbacks during their seasonal migratory voyage to the cold northern feeding grounds. For viewers it is a visually stunning journey of discovery into the life of these majestic marine mammals and a call in the plight for protection against man’s ever increasing and often devastating impact on the oceans and its inhabitants. The film is accompanied by the voice of wonder and innocence of his 6-year old daughter.
Where the Whales Sing” was an award winner for best emerging underwater filmmaker at BLUE Ocean Film Festival, a high honours winner at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, was selected as a finalist at the Nations Capital Environmental Film Festival, won an award as the best environmental film at a film festival in Croatia where it also won the audience choice award. It has been translated with Spanish subtitles for the Environmental Film Festival in Dominican Republic. Recently it won the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art 2011 Chairman Prize – A. Stevenson
Slideshow of photographs taken by Andrew in the Spring of 2007 and exhibited at The Elliot Gallery from Feb 19th to March 3rd 2008.
Where the Whales Sing Awards
The musical score for the film was composed by Steve Gallant who has granted BermudaStream an exclusive interview and fascinating look into his world of musical composition – Steve Gallant Interview
TEDxBermuda 04/23/2011
Dr. Neil Burnie shows the beautiful side of one of the most terrifying creatures in the ocean. Abandoning the steel cage, the Bermuda Shark Project swims freely with the sharks and tags them with GPS tracking units to discover some surprising facts about their migration patterns
tedxbermuda.com | facebook | twitter
“Where the Whales Sing” one hour documentary on the humpbacks.
The Bermuda Shark Project is an independent research programme with the simple aims of discovering more about the Tiger Shark. They satellite tag Tiger Sharks that are caught and released within the territorial waters of Bermuda.” … read more
Bermudashark.com | facebook.com/BermudaShark
Bermuda Turtle Tagging Project as seen on LookBermuda.TV
Three years ago Bermuda-based Producer/Director Andrew Stevenson embarked on what seemed like an interesting and challenging project to film the North Atlantic humpback whales underwater in the middle of their mid-ocean migratory crossings.
| Official Website:
Email:spout@logic.bmOffice: Phone: 77SPOUT (777-7688) |
Bermuda Whale Watching as seen on LookBermuda.TV channel 1.
Bermuda Humpback Whale Migration Footage
The waters around Bermuda host a liquid jungle of creatures that exist in floating forests of golden brown sargassum seaweed. Deep within its waters live bioluminescent deep-sea creatures, reminiscent of comets, suns, and stars.
I had spent 300 hours over ten weeks trying to film the migrating humpbacks underwater. It was the end of April and I didn’t have a minute of footage. And then I was in the water filming dolphins when this whale found me. The encounter was almost two hours long often within inches of the whale. It was also the first chance I had had to use my underwater housing and video camera. I had an overwhelming feeling that I was looking into the eyes of a very intelligent creature. It took me a week to sleep after the experience and a month to talk about the experience without becoming emotional. It is tragic that the Japanese whaling fleet is setting off this year to kill 50 endangered humpback whales, 50 fin whales and 935 minke whales in Antarctica in a whale sanctuary. – Andrew Stevenson
1. Humpback whales filmed up close and underwater in Bermuda. Underwater footage of a humpback whale fifteen miles off Bermuda.
2,3,4. Bermuda Whale Song. “This is the first part of a recording I made late April on Challenger Banks, fifteen miles offshore Bermuda. I believe this is one of the most beautiful recordings I have of a humpback whale, the sounds are very clear. We heard this whale through the hull of a 35-foot trawler with the engine idling, gear in neutral. The recording is with the engine off, the hydrophone about 30 feet down in 170 feet of water. We hear the humpbacks singing often in this exact location, especially at night when the singing seems to be non-stop. During the day the singing is sporadic but always there are whales milling around the singer. This to me does not seem like the breeding behaviour of humpback singing in the Caribbean or Hawaii and I wonder, despite the disbelief of marine scientists, whether this whale song attracts other whales to the singer. I have often witnessed humpbacks aggregating on the Challenger Bank with as many as 14 whales in close formation milling around for some hours. The behaviour is not the aggressive behaviour seen in the breeding grounds. I have also witnessed large groups of humpbacks move on a steady course and speed (5 knots) in a north east direction and again, this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but I wonder if the whales have aggregated into large protective groups to complete the migration up north and to run the gauntlet of orcas somewhere between here and their feeding grounds. Although orca attacks have rarely been witnessed on humpbacks in the North Atlantic, about a third of this population of humpbacks have orca scars on their flukes, dorsals and pectoral fins.”
5. Sounds of Humpback whales in Bermuda http://www.filmbaby.com/films/4995 has all my video footage on “Where the Whales Sing”. Here is a track of the humpback sounds we can hear consistently off Bermuda as these whales migrate past us each spring from the Caribbean to the North Atlantic. At times the singing is 24 hours per day. Is it the males singing for other males as they do apparently in the warmer waters of the Caribbean? Or are these whales singing to other whales still migrating up from the Caribbean to signal their position in the shallows off Bermuda before continuing on their migration? Where we hear the singing the loudest is also where we see the most whale activity so there does seem to be a connection. Incidentally, most of the id matches Allied Whale has made (by matching our photographs of tail flukes) have been with whales photographed in Newfoundland.
This playlist is no longer available
‘I had spent 300 hours over ten weeks trying to film the migrating humpbacks underwater. It was the end of April and I didn’t have a minute of footage. And then I was in the water filming dolphins when this whale found me. The encounter was almost two hours long often within inches of the whale. It was also the first chance I had had to use my underwater housing and video camera. I had an overwhelming feeling that I was looking into the eyes of a very intelligent creature. It took me a week to sleep after the experience and a month to talk about the experience without becoming emotional. It is tragic that the Japanese whaling fleet is setting off this year to kill 50 endangered humpback whales, 50 fin whales and 935 minke whales in Antarctica in a whale sanctuary.’ – Andrew Stevenson
