Damn fascinating -- this finally solves a mystery I've grappled with since elementary school. My 4th grade year (in the mid-early 2000s) was themed heavily around... whales. We watched the first season of "The Voyage of the Mimi" over the course of the year and learned all other sorts of whale facts. This was in a public school outside of Philadelphia; I had just transferred from a private Quaker school and was thoroughly confused. Somewhat by the whole public school experience, but mostly by the focus on whales. By the time we were watching it the curriculum had lost all focus on math, science, or computers; the original software materials were probably totally out of date at that point, so it makes sense.

Thanks for posting this @curtis; I had no idea that it was funded by the Department of Education.

If you had said your sixth grade year I would have sworn we went to the same district. I grew up not far from Quakertown, pa and we had a rather rambling unit on whales where we would watch the Voyage of the Mimi. I say rambling, because our regular teacher was in and out that year with an illness. The long term sub would have us watch Voyage of the Mimi at what felt like irregular intervals.

Yeah, it's Mental Floss, but I still found this write-up pretty interesting, even though I never saw The Voyage of the Mimi myself.

Thirty years ago this month, The Voyage of the Mimi debuted on PBS. The groundbreaking educational science series, part of the curriculum of many elementary and high school students (including this writer!), captivated kids throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, spawned a sequel, and kicked off Ben Affleck’s career. Here are 30 things you might not have known about the show.

I did see The Voyage of the Mimi, and enjoyed it very much as a kid. I watched some of the clips now, and it is still very good.

I particularly liked the story (#13) about the "difficult" scene where they needed to film a scientist tagging a whale with a transmitter. The weather was good and the whales showed up right on time, and the real scientist (standing in for the fake scientist played by an actor) made a great shot with a crossbow to tag one of the whales. The whole scene only took a couple of hours to shoot.

My buddy's granddad was Pete Marston sr. We always joke that means Ben Alleck got his start pretending to be him.

Great, now I'm going to have the theme music stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

Heh, yeah, Ben Affleck as a kid on an adventure.