 Some shots of the whales were in fact four foot long animatronics  models. Four models were created, and were so realistic that after  release of the film, US fishing authorities publicly criticized the  film makers for getting too close to whales in the wild. The scenes  involving these whales were shot in a pool underneath a Paramount  parking lot. The shot of the whales swimming past the Golden Gate  Bridge were filmed on location, and nearly ended in disaster when a  cable got snagged on a nuclear submarine and the whales were towed  out to sea.