Otter Eye

Documentary
EN | Canada | 22 min | 2018

Otters are like little ghosts travelling above and beneath the ice day or night between very special spots at lake outlets where upwelling warm water keeps ice from forming. Otter independence and apparent joy of living engage our imagination. Otters are spiritually powerful. Too wary to easily film even from blinds, we use extreme long lenses and camera traps as a creative tool to create sequences and an unobtrusive, intimate look at the world of otters and wolves even in the darkest Yukon November night. Camera trappers Kim Melton and Rene Rivard set motion-trigger "windows in the woods" with precision and intuition informed by years of observation and study.

The documentary visits early winter whitefish runs to reveal never-before-recorded behaviour of wolf packs fishing like bears! Even ravens get into the act, battling with eagles and raven bureaucracy in ways never filmed before. The goal of the documentary is awareness. Around these places we must not build, dredge, sluice, pollute or block for our own souls and for the sake of lives as wonderful as our own.