Ambitious Documentary on the St. Lawrence Estuary Ecosystem
A highlight of the 2025 season was this documentary film project on the St. Lawrence Estuary ecosystem, produced for the German broadcaster NDR in collaboration with the television production company Coraxfilm, a team that has specialized in nature documentaries for 25 years. The project aimed to capture high-quality footage to create a comprehensive portrait of the St. Lawrence Estuary ecosystem — spanning from its source (effectively Niagara Falls) to the Atlantic (specifically Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador). The camera crew had already spent more than two years in the Canadian Atlantic provinces before bringing in Mériscope for filming in Quebec; this involved not only the actual production but also organizational aspects (such as permits) and logistics.
This collaboration was divided into two phases: the first in winter, from February 15 to March 3, 2025, and the second in summer, from September 6 to October 2, 2025. Fisheries and Oceans Canada granted us two permits covering both filming periods — including authorization to use drones to film endangered species (beluga, blue whale, and North Atlantic right whale). In contrast, despite several discussions on the matter, the authorities of the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park decided against granting our request for a filming permit that would have allowed us to film marine mammals within the marine park during the summer months.
Despite these administrative hurdles, filming in the St. Lawrence Estuary was a resounding success. The winter shoots allowed us to film migrating belugas, the Saguenay Fjord in its winter setting, and ice fishing, as well as — to our great surprise — blue whales feeding at the surface off Portneuf-sur-Mer. During the summer shoots, Almut (director and camera) and Christoph (drone pilot) captured breathtaking footage of minke whales, humpback whales, fin whales, blue whales, belugas, and seals in the St. Lawrence Estuary, including sequences filmed with an underwater camera. In addition, the work of Mériscope was documented — both in the field (photo-identification, biopsies) and in the laboratory (minke whale catalog) — alongside the coastal landscapes and human activities that threaten marine wildlife in the St. Lawrence.
Editing of the documentary will be completed in the autumn of 2026; NDR will broadcast it as a four-part series — with each episode lasting 45 minutes — as part of its « Expeditionen ins Tierreich » program (“Expeditions to the Animal Kingdom”). Canadian singer Bryan Adams, born in 1959 in Kingston near the St. Lawrence River, composed the film’s theme song. Plans are in place to release an English-language version on Netflix in 2027, followed — possibly shortly thereafter — by a French-language version on ARTE.
