Whales, the largest creatures on Earth, get a close look in filmmaker Ric Burns's latest documentary, "Into the Deep: America, Whaling, and the World."

For hundreds of years, the whaling industry was intricately bound up with American commerce and culture. Beginning off the coast of New England and Cape Cod, the American whaling industry grew to command more than two-thirds of the world's 900 whaling ships during the mid-1800s, before all but disappearing in the five decades after the American Civil War.

Watch video of Martha and Ric Burns discussing the environmental impact of the whaling industry.