Salt & Friends

Fans of Earth's largest mammals (and especially those who have enjoyed a whale-watch cruise) will find plenty to like in this video of some of the more frequent summer cetacean visitors near Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Bar Harbor, Maine. Featuring spectacular visuals of North Atlantic humpback whales engaged in crowd-pleasing water acrobatics (with some almost completely clearing the surface of the water on jumps before crashing their 50-ton bodies back into the ocean), Salt & Friends' true star is the titular whale--one of the best known humpback whales in the Atlantic Ocean--who has been summering in the North Atlantic bays for at least 26 years. Documenting Salt's visits, as well as the appearance of her children and great-grandchildren, and many other uniquely named whales, the program also serves up a number of whale facts (viewers will learn, for instance, about the special markings on the undersides of whale's tails) against a musical backdrop interspersed with the eerie and beautiful sounds of whale songs. Missing, however, is any broader visual context beyond a deck-level view of the magnificent animals, or any interviews with actual whale biologists, or graphics underscoring the factual information. In other words, this is more or less a stay-at-home whale watch, and is recommended only as such. Aud: P. (C. Block)