Cherished viewers, welcome to today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants featuring photographer Bryant Austin of the United States, who has produced the world’s first life-size photographs of whales. From World Ocean Day, June 8 to September 8, 2010, his collection of whale photos is on exhibit in Lofoten, Norway.

Mr. Austin hopes that his close-up images will help change people’s perceptions about these ocean giants, particularly in whaling nations and eventually lead to a total ban on whaling activities around the world. Director Kate Miller has produced a documentary entitled “A Short Film: In the Eye of the Whale” about Bryant Austin’s laudable project.

I’ve been an artist most of my life engaged in many mediums, but photography captures a reality that’s beyond our imagination, what nature creates for hundreds of millions of years on this planet. So much of that is beyond our imagination and the camera can just document that without this filter getting in the way. And I think it’s more wondrous than our own imagination, so photography helps with that.

My current project is the production of life-size high resolution photographs of whales to be exhibited in whaling nations. And the way I work with them is about five feet away from them. And it’s all on their terms and it’s very rare encounters and circumstances. It takes months and months to achieve.

With the whales, I snorkel and it’s mostly at the surface. It’s only the rare times when I come across a whale with exceptional behavior that I can dive down.

When I find a friendly or an inquisitive, accepting whale, that’s when you could enter that third dimension of depth and engage them. I’ve only done it twice and it’s incredible. You start to feel… once you lose the surface of the ocean, and enter that third dimension of depth, you really feel like you’re in space and you’re floating with this 50-ton animal, rolling around you, looking at you. It’s just really incredible, sort of a dance, in three dimensions.

In all his trips to the ocean, Bryant Austin is accompanied by his field assistant, Diana Hay, who will now share her thoughts on the wonderful whales.

Encountering whales is very, very special. One of the things I couldn’t get over the whole time is how big they are. They’re really, really big. And you’ll see them in water and they’ll be at a distance, and you’ll be (saying), “Oh, they’re big.” And then they get closer and go, “Oh, they’re really big.”

Dr. Roger Payne who’s one of the first biologists to begin studying whale social biology, talks of this phenomenon called the 10-foot arrier, and that people love seeing whales in the water, but when they come up to about 10 feet; it’s too overwhelming. There’s just something about their presence that’s so overwhelming.

When you’re in the water with the whales, do they actually come up and brush against you or touch you?

I was watching a smaller whale in front of me, and I felt a gentle touch on my back, and I turned to look, and I was eye to eye with a 50-ton female Humpback Whale, who was behind me. She’s bigger than a school bus, and she extended her 15-foot pectoral fin, which was like your arm, to reach out and touch me and let me know that she was behind me, that I ended up accidentally between her and her calf. I was just floating, they swam around me, and the calf swam in front of me so I was in between them. And that’s when I was so struck, I was so close to a whale’s eye, less than 10 feet.

I was so close to her, and her expression in her eye was so calm and mindful. She was no longer a whale to me; she was simply, conscious, very aware. And it was a life-changing moment, and led to all the work I do now.

And what are some of the other touching stories or experiences that you’ve had?

I got into water to photograph a mother calf. And I was photographing the mother below me, she was about 10 feet below me, and she was looking up at me, and as she was looking up at me her eye kind of widened, and I noticed that, and then as that happened, I felt a presence on my back. I was floating at the surface, and her calf swam up right behind me and rested his head on my back, and he gently brought his pectoral fin around my body and held me.

He wrapped it around me, and we just floated together, motionless, while I breathed through my snorkel, and he was breathing through his blowhole. And I didn’t want to move, I didn’t want to startle him, because there is a chance they could hurt you accidentally, they’re so big and powerful. And my friend, my assistant was in the water with me, and she gently pulled me aside. And that was one of those bizarre timing of events that just stays with me till this day.

When we return, Bryant Austin will discuss whale protection and preservation. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants here on Supreme Master Television, featuring Bryant Austin and his amazing, life-size photos of whales, which are now on exhibit in Lofoten, Norway, until September 8, 2010. These photos reflect Mr. Austin’s hope to inspire people to save the world’s dwindling populations of whales.

What is the family life for whales? Can we talk a little about the interactions, for example, between the parents and the children and also the whale communities.

Whale communities, whale social biology has only been studied for the last 40 years so there’s still a lot that isn’t known. And I’m particularly fond of the Sperm Whale and they’re a lot like elephants, in that they’re matriarchal. And so the mother leads the group, the family, and they develop very slowly, the young will stay with the mother until they’re about 11 years of age, and then they eventually will go on their own and form bachelor groups with other males and then eventually the males become solitary animals. They can live to be 80, so they’re very much like us but they’re aquatic and still a mystery.

It’s also interesting to note that the speed at which whales travel depends on their position in the family. Observers at Hervey Bay, Australia, have found that groups of older, juvenile humpback whales pass the east coast of Australia each year earlier than do mature males, and then soon after the mothers follow with their calves as they make their way to their summer feeding grounds in the Antarctic Ocean.

And regarding migration back to the north, Blue Whales have been known to send off the older and pregnant whales first with the father whales staying behind with the older juveniles until they’re ready to migrate. We asked Bryant Austin to talk more about his favorite whale species and his interactions with them.

I love all of them, but the Sperm Whale in particular, they possess the largest brain ever to exist on our planet. It can be seven times the size of our own, 21 pounds. And the Sperm Whale has been in existence 20-million years. That’s a very long time compared to our arrival, which was 200,000 years ago.

And they’re complex social animals, whose communication and social biology we don’t understand yet. And I’ve been closer to them than you and I, eye to eye, and I’ve had them press the front of their head against my body, and acoustically scan me, to where they can see my beating heart inside my body, and then they would lean over to the side and move forward so their eye can meet mine, and there’s something there and the thought of never knowing what’s there and losing that in this century is a devastating thought, it’s one of my motivations to share that worldwide.

What is happening with whale populations worldwide? Are they decreasing?

Some are decreasing, some are on the brink of extinction and may disappear in this century for the first time in recorded human history. Others are stable but they face a lot of uncertainly, with climate change, with fisheries on the brink of collapse in the next decade. There’s a lot that remains to be seen, a lot we don’t know what will happen.

Whaling is the primary reason we have so few whales. In the middle of last century within the span of maybe two human generations, we decimated most large whale species anywhere from 20 to two percent of their original population, so there are very few remaining, and those few now face even far more difficult issues threatening their environment.

You look at the Gray Whale, the Western North Pacific Gray Whale, that travels through Japan and Russia, there are only 100 left and they may go extinct. The Gray Whale’s one of the oldest living mammals alive today. That population could go extinct in this century, easily.

A distressing occurrence that is sometimes seen is whales beaching or stranding themselves on land. What causes them to take this drastic action? We asked Mr. Austin for his perspective.

That’s been observed throughout our recorded history, and there are a lot of reasons. In the modern day, you’ll see whales that will beach themselves from lethal noise pollution, from navy sonar that’s so powerful that their brain will hemorrhage and they’ll bleed through their eyes. And they’re so distressed that they just beach themselves, and they die. There are other reasons, too, that we don’t really understand.

As Bryant Austin explains, it’s now up to us to save the whales for future generations.

We’re the last generation who will ever be in this position to ensure that whales will be around for thousands and thousands of years to come. No future generations will have these opportunities and it’s really what we do right now that’s going to ensure that they will be here. Many may go extinct in this century for the first time in recorded human history if more isn’t done. So it’s really my hope that in my lifetime we’ll be able to achieve the full scope of our mission and bring whales into our collective mind and ensure that they’re a part of our lives for thousands and thousands of years to come.

Thank you Mr. Bryant Austin for taking the time and effort to speak to us about your unique whale photography. The images you have taken are uplifting and beautiful.

For more information on Bryant Austin and his life-size whale portraits, please visit: www.StudioCosmos.com or www.MMCTA.org To view “A Short Film: In the Eye of the Whale” please visit Vimeo.com/7173679

Please join us tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for the second and final part of this series. Thank you friendly viewers for your company today. Up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News. May animals continue to fill our oceans with their magnificent, loving presence!