Happy World Ocean Day, 2025!
The Hundred-Year Old Whale, Moby Doll, Orcas Everywhere & Sharks Forever
I’m mostly steering clear of my ocean-related writing and activism on this Substack, but it’s World Ocean Day and I’ve written seven books and one documentary about life in the ocean (with more to come) and I’ve been hosting the Skaana podcast since 2017, so today seemed like the time to share some ocean stories.
First off… The Hundred-Year-Old Whale…
Because I write so many different projects in so many different areas, I tend to shy away from naming my favourite babies but, for so many reasons, like getting the notoriously shy fisherman Josef Bauer to consent to being interviewed at UBC’s Beatty Museum under the skeleton of a blue whale… or watching Granny breach while my then future wife Rayne filmed the scene for this movie… this on is tough to beat.
This doc not only won the Writers Guild of Canada Award for Best Documentary, it’s one of the only (maybe the only) short docs ever to score a nomination. It won a bunch of other awards too and played some fantastic festivals around the world.
The Killer Whale Who Changed the World
The Hundred-Year-Old Whale was originally created in part as “proof of concept” for a feature documentary spinning out of my book, The Killer Whale Who Changed the World. I’ll be writing more about that soon - mostly on the Skaana Substack - because my big project this summer is FINALLY getting that doc ready for the world.
Audiobooks
So here’s a bit of inside info from the writing world. Authors with real publishers - like the fantastic ones I work with receive a percentage of each book sale - somewhere between 10 & 15 % depending on… all sorts of factors. And one of those factors is that these publishers make sure our books are out in the world - so you can buy print versions of all my books wherever you buy books (ideally at your favourite local bookstore)!
But because I love doing audio - and audiobooks aren’t always a priority for publishers - I’ve retained the rights to audiobooks for almost everything I’ve released so far. And I’ve just paid the wonderful engineer Alain Derbez to work with me to create audiobooks for Octopus Ocean and Sharks Forever.
The Sharks Forever audiobook features an introduction by Captain Paul Watson, read by Captain Paul Watson and goes live on Spotify and other platforms on June 10th. Audible tends to be last up, so it likely won’t be on Amazon either for a bit - but hopefully in time for the anniversary of Jaws so… here are links to all my audiobooks.
Sharks Forever audiobook on Spotify
Octopus Ocean on Audible and Spotify.
Orcas Everywhere on Audible and Spotify.
The Killer Whale Who Changed the World on Audible and Spotify.
Never Shoot a Stampede Queen on Audible and Spotify.
So this book has nothing to do with the ocean or fish, but it did win Canada’s Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and hit a bunch of Canadian bestseller lists.
Skaana talks oceans and ocean life
For the latest Skaana Substack I shared a list of ten of my fave episodes about oceans and the animals who live there. If you’re here ‘cause sometimes I talk storytelling -that’s something I get into in the latest Skaana episode where I talk with sperm whale expert, Shane Gero. The list also features authors, filmmakers and scientists.
