The Blue Whale Adventures

Aerial Videography on the Open Sea.

- Gavin Garrison & Andy Cowell

I’m writing this while on a campaign with the group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, en route to Antarctica to conduct an annual anti-poaching mission in the Southern Ocean. My role on the ship is to produce video content that will later be cut into a broadcast television show, and my new role this year is also to pilot the complement of drones, three DJI Phantom 3 Professionals that we have onboard. I was thrilled when, just a few days into the campaign, one of the crew members spotted a blue whale mother and her calf near the ship. We ran for the drone and got it up into the air as fast as we could. Here’s how we got the footage, which went on to garner more than a million views online and received coverage from National Geographic, Discovery News, GeekWire, ABC, Inverse, and a host of local affiliates across the United States and Australia.

DRONE PILOTING: NOT A ONE-PERSON JOB

Shooting moving objects from a distance is a challenge for even the most skilled pilots. There are some approaches to drone flying that can come in handy in situations like these. When I know that I’m going to encounter a situation like this, the first thing I do is brainstorm a handful of shot ideas that will help craft the story. Doing this can help ease the pressure of shooting once-in-a-lifetime events and can help facilitate communication with any assistants or observers that might be helping you. On this particular day, our mission was to shoot footage of a pair of blue whales while maintaining a safe distance. We’d later find out that this flight would deliver the first-ever aerial footage of a blue whale mother and her calf and some of the only footage—ever—of a blue whale calf nursing.