Brian Skerry was a boy from a small Massachusetts town with a big dream, to one day explore the mystery and natural beauty of the world’s oceans with a camera. Forty years, 28 National Geographic assignments, a Peter Benchley Award for Excellence in Media and some 10,000 hours underwater hours later, one could be forgiven for thinking he has seen it all.

Then came his underwater moment with an orca off the coast of New Zealand last September while filming Secrets of the Whales, a four-part event series for the Disney+ streaming service that bows on April 22nd, Earth Day.

Skerry was one of several National Geographic explorers and filmmakers at a Zoom session, “Underwater Storytelling,” with TV reviewers last week. Skerry joined Enric Sala, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence whose upcoming program, Pristine Seas: The Power of Protection, premieres Monday next week on NatGeo WILD; Valerie Taylor, one of the world’s pre-eminent shark experts and a deep-sea diver and ocean photographer in her own right; marine biologist and shark expert Melissa Cristina Márquez; and Janet Vissering, the executive in charge of natural history program development and production for National Geographic’s global network of TV channels .

“These animals have to let you into their worlds,” Skerry recalled. “So many things have to line up. The sun has to be out, the animals have to let you close, they have to be doing something interesting, the visibility has to be good — all those things. You need almost divine intervention, everywhere you are.

“I had this moment, off New Zealand, where I was hoping to see this population of orca who have figured out how to eat stingrays. I jumped in the water and was swimming toward this family of orca that were hunting in a shallow harbour. And this female was coming toward me with a ray that she had started to eat.

“As I got closer, she dropped it in front of me, and I swam down to the bottom. It was only about 30 or 40 feet deep. I knelt on the bottom next to that dead stingray, wondering if she would come back. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw her swimming around my back. She came around my left, got directly in front of me and then just hovered there.

“Then she looked at me, looked at the ray, looked at me, and looked at the ray again, as if to say, ‘Are you gonna eat that?’ When I didn’t, she just gently picked it up and brought it up. I was able to make a picture of this ray in her mouth, and then she turned and shared the food with her family.

“It’s just extraordinary to think that animal may have been, I don’t know, offering me dinner. And when I chose not to partake, she went on her way.

“That’s just a brief glimpse into the world of these animals, enough to make us realize how much we don’t know.”

If Skerry has one hope with Secrets of the Whales, it’s that it will touch the popular nerve.

“I like to think the work we do is about giving voice to the voiceless,” Skerry said. “We're just at the very beginning of trying to figure these things out.

“What we can see and what science is showing us is that these animals have rich lives, much like our own. They babysit; they have food preferences, depending on where in the world they live; they have singing competitions; they share parenting ideas; and they mourn for their dead.

“My hope with all these shows is that we’ll celebrate the celebratory aspect of the ocean, but also sound the cause for concern.”