The documentary The Guardians of the Planet, released Wednesday at the cinema in France, is an aesthetic and educational love song to the greatest living being. The role of cetaceans is essential in the balance of the planet
First of all, it was a meeting, on the open sea. A day when scouting for the TV magazine Ushuaia i found myself swimming with whales, i had an underwater encounter and eye contact with a whale », says Jean-Albert Lièvre, the director of the documentary Guardians of the Planet, released on Wednesday February 22 in France. ” It was so intense that I said to myself that day that I would have to make a film at the cinema so that the spectators could have the same experience. ” It succeeded : Guardians of the Planet is an educational and poetic documentary, with breathtaking images of intimacy with cetaceans. When the camera brushes past these graceful colossi, the viewer becomes one with the whales.
There was then a reading: the long prose poem by the Briton Heathcote Williams Whale Nation, which celebrates the beauty and intelligence of whales. So, in French Polynesia, Mexico or Greenland, Jean-Albert Lièvre went to film his own hymn to the love of whales: “ I would like people to realize when they leave the room that we are not the only intelligence on this planet. There are others, and others who have been around much longer than us. “50 million years ago, a land mammal returned to the water: the ancestor of cetaceans (which includes whales, dolphins and porpoises).
A million calories a day
In Guardians of the Planetwe see some of the 14 species of whales that roam the seas and oceans of the planet, and we hear them. “ Each clan has its own accent. Each of us has a different song, varied enough to emit complex emotions. », says the voice off of the documentary, that of the actor Jean Dujardin, who adopts the point of view of a whale. Contrary to the title of Commander Cousteau’s famous film, the oceans are not at all silent », continues Jean-Albert Lièvre. ” Very quickly, in the ocean, when you go down, there is no more light. All communication therefore passes through sounds, sound orientation also passes through sound vibrations. In water, sound travels five times faster than in air. Whales communicate in a network over gigantic distances.»
The sound of the blue whale can be heard up to 1,000 kilometers away. She is “the largest living creature on the planet” . It can weigh 170 tons, the males have a penis 2 meters long, their tongue is heavier than an elephant. Such a mass, it must be fed: the energy needs of the whale reach 1 million calories per day. And in its food cycle, the whale is essential to the balance of the planet – if we humans breathe, it is partly thanks to the whales.
Massacred for centuries
Cetaceans are essential to phytoplankton, the microalgae that produce the majority of the planet’s oxygen, much more than plants. “ Mammals take in oxygen and exhale CO2. Plants, on the other hand, absorb CO2 and spit out oxygen. On land, forests have roots to feed themselves, but in the water, phytoplankton have no roots and they feed on the excrement of whales“, explains the director of Guardians of the Planet .
In the service of humanity, whales have been slaughtered for centuries. Whale oil, for example, was used to light cities. During the Industrial Revolution, hundreds of thousands of whales were killed each year. Today, a thousand whales are still targeted by fishermen every year. This dominant species has never killed anyone. “Among themselves, they are non-violent “says Jean-Albert Lièvre. ” Whales have been seen saving seals by interposing themselves between an orca or a shark. They therefore have a consciousness of good, and this is perhaps also a message from the guardians of this planet from which we could learn something.“Whales are our guardian angels.
“Are there feathered locusts? »
It is in fact the nickname of the most numerous birds on the planet; there are more than a billion queleas on Earth. And the red-billed worker, one of its other names, does as much damage to crops as locusts. Kenya deplores at the beginning of the year an invasion of these gregarious birds. Each individual consumes about 10 grams of grain per day, but when they are a million at once, imagine the havoc in a rice field. The quelea, like humans, is a victim of drought; in lack of wild seeds, he falls back on crops. He does not know about the food crisis.