BLUE PLANET SEAS OF LIFE SERIES

Herring initiate the most productive food chain, providing sustenance for humpback whales, and Steller's and California sea lions.Lunar phases can also have a bearing on events and the mass arrival of Ridley sea turtles on a Costa Rican beach is shown.Phytoplankton forms the basis of all sea life, and every night some 1,000 million tonnes of creatures ascend from the deep to search for food.These feeding grounds have led to the world's largest albatross breeding colony, on Steeple Jason Island, west of the Falklands. The South Atlantic waters are the roughest, and storms also churn up nutrients to the surface.Off South Africa, a similar situation occurs every June when sardines migrate and are pursued by a caravan of various predators.This in turn attracts other fish to the area that are higher up the food chain, like tuna, and those that are higher still, such as silky sharks. Near a Pacific seamount, there is a large concentration of marine animals because when the current makes contact with the submerged rock, it forces upwards plankton and other organisms.

'The Blue Planet' īroadcast 12 September 2001, the first episode looks at how ocean life is regulated around the globe by currents and the varying position of the sun. David Attenborough, from episode one 1.

BLUE PLANET SEAS OF LIFE SERIES

This series will reveal the complete natural history of our ocean planet, from its familiar shores to the mysteries of its deepest seas.'

You can fly across it non-stop for twelve hours and still see nothing more than a speck of land. The Pacific Ocean alone covers half the globe. 'Our planet is a blue planet: over seventy percent of it is covered by the sea. Upon its first transmission on BBC One, over 12 million people watched the series and it regularly achieved an audience share of over 30%. One of them enabled the crew to dive over a mile into the San Diego trench, where the carcass of a 40-ton grey whale had been placed to attract a large variety of scavengers. Filming in the deep ocean required the use of special submersibles. Meanwhile, in Monterey Bay, orca were documented trapping grey whales and killing a calf.

Near the coast of Natal in South Africa, the team spent two seasons attempting to film the annual sardine run, a huge congregation of predators such as sharks and dolphins that assembles to feast on the migrating fish by corralling them into 'bait balls'. Off Mexico, the behaviour of a flock of frigatebirds guided the cameramen to a group of sailfish and marlin: the fastest inhabitants of the sea. After six weeks, the crew chanced upon a school of spinner dolphins, which in turn led them to a shoal of tuna. The open ocean proved more difficult and over 400 days were invested in often unsuccessful filming trips. The camera team spent three years on standby, using a microlight to land on the water nearby when they finally caught up with the creatures in the Gulf of California. The producers were helped by marine scientists all over the world with state-of-the-art equipment.īlue whales - whose migration routes were previously unknown - were located by air, after some of the animals had been given temporary radio tags. Besides witnessing animal behaviour for the first time, the crew also observed some that were new to science. The fact that most of the ocean environment remains a mystery presented the production team with many challenges. The series took almost five years to make, involving nearly 200 filming locations.

Blue planet seas of life