Orchestral Music in Middle of Sea Brings Whales to Surface: Fact Check

Story:

Amazing video! Orchestral musicians play music in the middle of the sea, brings whales to surface!

Other Versions

1. Orchestra Plays Beautiful Music to Bring Whales to the Surface.

2. An Orchestra Calls Whales to the Surface with a Beautiful Song.

Picture of Orchestral Musicians Play Beautiful Music in the Middle of Sea and Bring Whales to Surface — Orchestral Musicians Play Beautiful Music in the Middle of Sea and Bring Whales to Surface

Fact Check:

In mid April 2016 Facebook page Thinking Humanity shared the below video supposedly showing a group of orchestral musicians playing beautiful music in the middle of sea, brings whales dancing onto the surface. Many viewers mistook the video to be real as the Facebook post garnered thousands of shares. However, what is shown in the video is not a fact.

The story in question has been doing rounds online since few years now and keeps resurfacing on various online platforms including social media sites. However, it is not real; no whales surfaced from the deep ocean to dance to the orchestra music. The video is in fact a commercial for <a title="Optus" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optus" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Optus</a>, an Australian telecommunications company, which released the video as a part of their Whale Song project. As shown in the video below, an orchestra was transported to a floating platform in the ocean, where it played a composed whale song meant to ‘mimic’ genuine whale communication. At the end of the video advertisement, you can see the tagline of the telecommunications company – “When it comes to communication, anything is possible“.

Picture of "whale song" interactive website — Picture of “whale song” interactive website

Picture of Whale Song Video Advertisement — Picture of “whale song” interactive website

The “whale song” campaign was first published in 2009 and was developed by advertising agency M&C Saatchi. Moreover, the whales visible in the video are not real. Digital arts studio Animal Logic created the visual effects. The “whale song” advertising campaign also had an interactive website that allowed users to create their own whale song and “interact” with whales through their keyboards. Below is a video showing the same after explaining the concept of the campaign.