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2017-12-10 23:47:48

Blue Planet 2

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https://videos.trom.tf/videos/embed/xdVPCJZLdmZsofwyCGzj9U?autoplay=0&title=0&warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0

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YEAR: 2017 | LENGTH: 7 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

Blue Planet II is a 2017 British nature documentary series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Like its predecessor, The Blue Planet (2001), it is narrated and presented by naturalist Sir David Attenborough, while the main music score was composed by Hans Zimmer.

episodes:

01. The Ocean

In recent years, our knowledge of life beneath the waves has been transformed. Using cutting-edge technology, One Ocean takes us on a journey from the intense heat of the tropics to our planet’s frozen poles to reveal new worlds and extraordinary never-before-seen animal behaviours.

Starting in the tropical coral reefs – the most diverse ocean habitat – a baby dolphin is taught the secrets of a coral reef, as its family rubs against a particular gorgonian which may have medicinal properties. On another reef, a tusk fish demonstrates a surprising level of ingenuity – tool use – as it uses corals as an anvil to break open clams. In the Seychelles, half a million terns nest on an island. Fledglings must eventually take to the wing, but danger lurks beneath the waves – metre-long giant trevally fish leap clear out of the water to snatch the birds.

The tropical oceans drive our planet’s weather. Sun heats the sea, creating rain, winds and huge storms that drive up towards higher latitudes. Here, unlike the tropics, the seas change with the seasons. In spring thousands of mobula rays gather in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. At night, in a previously unseen event, tiny organisms that light up when disturbed react to their wingbeats, creating an enchanting bioluminescent firework display.

Phytoplankton produce as much oxygen as all the plants on land and lie at the base of marine food chains everywhere. Where the plankton thrive, fish thrive too, and ocean travellers will migrate thousands of miles to take advantage of these productive seas. Predatory false killer whales off the coast of New Zealand are in search of dolphins. But when they find them, the whales team up with the dolphins to form super-pods – a formidable army to take advantage of the bounty of these seasonal seas.

In temperate seas around the globe, spring brings greening oceans. In Japan, a kelp-covered shipwreck is home to the Asian sheepshead wrasse, or Kobudai. At the start of summer a male mates with the females. But when a female reaches both a critical body size and age, it can undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis. Females change gender, and a new male challenges an older male to a face-off.

Toward our planet’s poles, the ocean’s surface is locked in ice. But in the Arctic, a warm current from the south keeps some Norwegian fjords ice-free all year round. Here, in winter, pods of orcas use dramatic tail slaps to stun herring, and humpback whales follow the noises to find the feast.

Ocean currents move heat around our planet and maintain a climate favourable for life. But our ocean system, in relative equilibrium for millennia, is changing at a worrying rate. Deep in the polar north, we meet walrus mothers and their newborn calves, searching for an ice floe to rest on. But with rising temperatures, summer sea ice is retreating – their battles to survive are becoming ever harder. As we begin to understand the true complexity of the lives of our ocean creatures, so do we recognise the fragility of their home.

02. The Deep

The deep is perhaps the most hostile environment on earth, at least to us – a world of crushing pressure, brutal cold and utter darkness. We have barely begun to explore it, and yet it is the largest living space on the planet. Scientists already think that there is more life in the deep than anywhere else on earth.

This episode takes us on an epic journey into the unknown, a realm that feels almost like science fiction. We discover alien worlds, bizarre creatures and extraordinary new behaviours never seen before. We encounter savage hordes of Humboldt squid hunting lanternfish in the depths and coral gardens flourishing in absolute darkness, with more species of coral to be found in the deep than on shallow tropical reefs.

On the desert wastes of the abyss, a whale carcass generates a frenzy as slow-moving sharks as big as great whites fight for what may be their first meal in a year. Food is hard to come by and finding a mate is even harder, but life adapts in ingenious ways. There are fish that walk instead of swim, worms that feed exclusively on bones and shrimps that spend almost their entire lives imprisoned with their mate in a cage of crystal sponge.

The deeper you go, the more extreme conditions become. The sheer weight of water above creates almost unendurable pressures. Yet even eight kilometres down, where the basic chemistry of life was once thought impossible, we find strange species swimming through the darkness. From here we journey on down to the deepest place on earth – the Mariana Trench – almost 11 kilometres from the surface, a vast chasm that ruptures the deep sea floor. Only three human beings have ever reached here, and yet there is still life to be found in these deep sea trenches.

The deep can be a violent place. Tectonic plates rip apart or collide in mighty clashes. And at these volcanic hotspots, extraordinary micro-worlds blossom into life, completely divorced from the energy of the sun. Hair-covered crabs feed on gushing plumes of otherwise toxic hydrogen sulphide. Shrimps hover on the fringes of billowing clouds of volcanic chemicals, so hot they could melt lead. We discover new species every time we visit these strange new worlds.

One of these geysers might even hold the secret to all life on earth. At a hydrothermal vent system in the middle of the Atlantic, seawater and rock react under extreme pressures and temperatures to produce complex hydrocarbons – the building blocks of life itself. Scientists have named this strange place the Lost City, and many believe that it was at a place just like this that life on earth first began, four billion years ago.

03. Coral Reefs

Corals build themselves homes of limestone in the warm, clear, shallow seas of the tropics. Their reefs occupy less than one tenth of one per cent of the ocean floor, yet they are home to a quarter of all known marine species. They are complex, infinitely varied structures providing all kinds of homes for their many residents. There is fierce rivalry for space, for food and for a partner, but the reef is also a place full of opportunity. For those that manage to establish themselves, there can be great rewards.

The broadclub cuttlefish has found its place by using a hypnotic display that apparently mesmerises its prey, causing it to let down its defences. On the Great Barrier Reef a remarkable grouper uses sign language, dubbed the headstand signal, to reach out to an entirely different creature, a reef octopus, to flush small fish out of their hiding holes and into the groupers waiting mouth.

While they might appear to be nothing more than rocky substrate, each coral is in fact made up of hundreds to thousands of tiny, living coral creatures called polyps. Filmed with super macro time-lapse, we bring them to life and reveal their hidden worlds. As these polyps grow and die they lay the limestone foundation for civilisations and superstructures so large that they can be seen from space.

Coral reef cities never sleep, they are constantly noisy worlds where a chorus of submarine song rings out from their many inhabitants. At dawn, one of the reef’s most charismatic inhabitants, the green turtle, heads off to be cleaned at a special health spa. As she approaches the station, she is joined by more of her fellow turtles and is pushed out by the queue-jumping males. She must wait for her opportunity to sneak back in.

Some animals come to reefs for rest and relaxation. In the desert sands of Egypt, coral reefs thrive in the shallows of the Red Sea, providing bottlenose dolphins with a place to rest. For the youngsters, the reef is their playground. These dolphins play by balancing corals and sponges on their nose and in doing so build important life skills.

Every reef has a sharply defined boundary. On the outer side, facing the open ocean, is the drop-off. These ramparts protect the city from the ocean waves, but twice a day the walls are covered by the incoming tide. In the Bahamas, the rush of the water creates a truly strange phenomenon – a whirlpool. In the Maldives, on the biggest tides, one particular coral lagoon becomes so flooded with plankton that it attracts hundreds of manta rays.

On the sheltered side of the reef there are sand flats which provide rich feeding grounds. However, away from the protective structures of the reef there is nowhere to hide. This makes it a dangerous place, especially at night when predators patrol in search of prey caught in the open. The bobbit, a giant carnivorous worm, buries deep in the sand in order to ambush unsuspecting prey. But there is safe accommodation for some out here in these sandy suburbs. An extraordinary species of clownfish has made a home in an anemone away from the reef. But it is up to the big male to find a way for the female to lay her eggs.

Reef creatures go to great lengths to give their young a head start in life and nowhere more so than on the remotest reefs in the world. In French Polynesia, thousands of grouper risk death when faced with hundreds of grey reef sharks in order to reproduce.

Despite their longevity and resilience, increasing ocean temperatures have put coral reefs under unprecedented pressure. The most devastating bleaching event known in recorded history wreaks havoc on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Without the three-dimensional structure of a coral reef, all reef dwellers are affected. The programme unfolds with one of the greatest mass-spawning events in the oceans – corals, fish and invertebrates all releasing a snowstorm of eggs. By sending their young away from the reef, there is hope that they will regenerate new reefs and secure their future for generations to come.

04. Big Blue

The big blue is the world’s greatest wilderness, far from shore and many kilometres deep. It’s a vast marine desert where there is little to eat and nowhere to hide. Yet it’s home to some of the biggest and most spectacular creatures on earth.

This episode reveals what it takes to survive in this savage and forbidding world. We witness feats of incredible endurance, moments of high drama and extraordinary acts of heart-wrenching self-sacrifice.

Every animal in the big blue must find their own unique way to survive. Sperm whales have the largest brains in the world. They live for 80 years, and we are only now beginning to learn the extraordinary complexity of their language of clicks – thought to coordinate the whole family in everything from childcare to hunting. With special pressure-proof cameras, we witness record-breaking feats of endurance as they hunt for squid a kilometre down into the abyss.

Many smaller creatures find sanctuary in this great wilderness. Only recently have we begun to solve the mystery of where baby turtles disappear to in their early years. They leave the crowded waters of the coast and head to the open ocean, where they use floating debris like logs as life rafts. Here they remain until adulthood, adrift on the high seas in relative safety away from coastal predators.

Over half of all animals in the open ocean drift in currents. Jellyfish cross entire oceans feeding on whatever happens to tangle with their tentacles. The jelly-like Portuguese man-of-war can harness sail power to fish with its deadly tentacles. Sometimes there is a brief explosion of food in this marine desert, but ocean hunters must be fast to make the best of this bonanza. We witness super pods of up to 5,000 spinner dolphins racing to herd vast shoals of lanternfish, briefly caught at the surface where it is thought they spawn. New aerial footage reveals, for the first time, the truth to a centuries-old sailors’ legend of the ‘boiling seas’ – the spectacular feeding frenzy of 90kg tuna and dolphins smashing through the lantern fish shoals turning the sea white with foam.

Raising your young in this great wilderness is a huge challenge. The episode follows two very different ocean voyagers that show amazing care. We get closer to solving the mystery of where the biggest fish in the sea, the whale shark, gives birth. The pregnant females make an epic journey across the Pacific to the Galapagos Islands. Scientists now think it might be here that the pregnant females give birth to their pups in the safety of the depths. And in the freezing south Atlantic, a pair of ageing wandering albatrosses give their all to raise their very last chick.

Yet even in the big blue, thousands of kilometres from land, there is evidence of human activity. An estimated eight million tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year. Globe-spanning currents carry it into the heart of every ocean, often with tragic consequences. In the Atlantic waters off Europe we follow a family of pilot whales whose calf has recently died. One possible cause of death is poisoning by its own mother’s contaminated milk. As plastic breaks down it combines with other pollutants that are consumed by vast numbers of marine creatures. In top predators like pilot whales, the toxic chemicals can build up to lethal levels.

05. Green Seas

It’s our green seas, not the blue, that bring life to our oceans. Here sunlight powers the growth of enchanted forests of kelp, mangroves and prairies of sea grass. They are the most abundant but fiercely competitive places in the ocean to live.

The most bountiful kelp forests are found off the tip of southern Africa, where two great oceans collide. Almost a hundred different species of shark patrol these waters, driving one resident – the common octopus – to become the ultimate escape artist. To outwit her nemesis, the pyjama shark, she uses ingenious tactics, never filmed before.

Along the Pacific coast of North America stand, at 60 metres high, the largest and perhaps most diverse kelp forests in the world. In clearings, bright orange male Garibaldi fish guard territories of short turf seaweed. When spiny urchins invade and graze their crops, the Garibaldi desperately pick them off. But urchins can swarm in vast numbers and even attack and fell the kelp forest itself, creating vast ‘urchin barrens’. All is not entirely lost, thanks to the return of a ravenous forest resident – sea otters. Back in the late 1800s, sea otters were hunted for their thick pelts to near extinction. And with them gone, urchin numbers rose, destroying many forests. Today, thanks to protection, sea otter numbers are recovering, along with the health of the forest. In a filming first, we reveal great rafts of sea otters now numbering in their hundreds.

In warmer waters another green sea takes hold. Off Western Australia, vast prairies of seagrass extend to the horizon. Here, grazing green turtles are stalked by tiger sharks. By keeping turtles on the move, tiger sharks prevent the seagrass meadows from being overgrazed. In this way, sharks have become surprising allies in the fight against climate change – as a patch of sea grass is 35 times more efficient at absorbing and storing carbon than the same area of rainforest.

Once a year, one sea meadow in Australia is overrun by an extraordinary invasion. With the first full moon of winter, strange creatures emerge from the deep – spider crabs. The army marches into the shallows and starts to pile one on top of each other, building mounds over a metre high. They then moult. Soft-bodied and weakened, they must avoid the patrolling four-metre-long stingrays.

Further along the coast, the greatest gathering of cuttlefish in the world takes place, as males battle it out for the right to mate. But even among these giant cuttlefish, the largest of their kind, it’s not always size that counts. A smaller, sneaky male uses subterfuge, even pretending to be a female, to confuse rivals and get his girl. Even raising your young can be tough in such a competitive place. A weedy seadragon sets out on an epic quest to give his young the very best start in life.

Vast numbers of the ocean’s baby fish start their lives in the green seas. The richest nurseries of all are the mangrove forests. Straddling the boundary between land and sea, they provide shelter for the juvenile fish. But in the mangroves of Western Australia lives a deadly assassin – the 40cm-long zebra mantis shrimp. In a surprising story of betrayal, a male shrimp will abandon his mate of possibly 20 years, trading up for a larger female.

And there is one other green sea that supports more life than all the rest combined. Unlike the mangrove forests and prairies of sea grass, its existence in the open seas is only temporary. Microscopic algae flourish into vast blooms, providing a feast for plankton-feeding fish like billions of anchovies. In Monterey Bay, California, the giant shoals draw in thousands of dolphins, sea lions and humpback whales who all race to claim their share of the feast.

06. Coasts

On the coast, two worlds collide. Coasts are the most dynamic and challenging habitats in the ocean – that brings great rewards but also great danger. The extraordinary animals that live here must find ingenious ways to cope with two very different worlds.

This episode is a rollercoaster ride of heart-stopping action and epic drama, peopled with characters from the beautiful to the bizarre. We meet fish that live on dry land and puffins that must travel 60 miles or more for a single meal, and witness a life-and-death struggle in a technicolour rock pool.

In a secluded cove in the Galapagos, sea lions feast on 60kg tuna. It should be impossible – tuna are usually far too fast for sea lions to catch. But here the sea lions club together to herd their prey inshore. Once trapped in the shallows, these huge fish are easy pickings.

As the tide recedes in Brazil, lightfoot crabs leap from rock to rock, desperately avoiding the water – their lives depend on it. Moray eels launch themselves from rock pools, jaw gaping. Then octopuses, too. Both crawl across dry rock to set their ambush. Elsewhere, the ever-changing tides create rock pools. But these temporary worlds are a battleground. Predatory starfish turn a magical garden into the stuff of nightmares.

All around the world, immense waves pound the shore, and this episode reveals some of the largest on the planet, over 30 metres high. Over millennia these forces carve exquisite coastal sculptures and cliffs that are home to huge colonies of seabirds. Puffins fly up to 30 miles out to sea to find food for their chicks. A father returns with one precious beakful of food… then pirates attack. Desperate dads must escape the faster and more aerobatic skuas before finally delivering a meal to their young puffling.

Meanwhile, in the remote Pacific islands lives the most terrestrial fish on the planet. It lives in miniature caves above the tide lines and uses its tail like a coiled spring to jump from rock to rock. A male tries to attract a mate, but waves are a constant hindrance. These are fish that seem to hate water!

Once a year, king penguins return to the cold Antarctic shores of South Georgia for a month-long moult. First they must cross the biggest wall of blubber on the planet – thousands of gigantic elephant seals. Then they face a month with no food, before they can return to their natural home, the chilly Antarctic seas.

The planet’s coasts are changing fast as they are among the most built-up areas of the world. Just off the beaches of Miami, the largest gathering of coastal sharks on the planet can still be found. But today they must face the many challenges that come from our world too.

07. Our Blue Planet

While making Blue Planet II, we have explored parts of the ocean that nobody has been to before, encountered extraordinary animals and discovered new insights into how life thrives beneath the waves. But we have also witnessed the profound effects of human activity. The oceans are changing faster and in more ways than at any point in human history and now, for the first time, we understand why.

In this final episode, we uncover the impact that our modern lives are having on our best-loved characters from across the series, including devoted albatross parents unwittingly feeding their chicks discarded plastic and mother dolphins potentially exposing their newborn calves to pollutants through their contaminated milk. Scientists have even discovered that increasing noise levels may stop baby clownfish finding their way home.

Many creatures are struggling to survive in today’s oceans, and some changes in the ocean will require a global effort. While filming the stunning corals on the Great Barrier Reef’s remote Lizard Island, the film crew witnessed a catastrophe. Warmer than normal seas caused the biggest coral bleaching event in human history, killing about 90 per cent of the branching corals at Lizard Island.

But the warming ocean could have an even more devastating effect. We travel to Antarctica on a unique expedition to discover how melting polar ice sheets could one day impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Yet, despite these devastating impacts, there is hope. Every year, billions of herring overwinter in the icy seas off Norway, but just 50 years ago they were almost wiped out by overfishing. Today, thanks to careful regulation, they have returned, creating one of the greatest spectacles in the ocean. Hundreds of giant humpback whales and one of the greatest gatherings of orcas on the planet feast on the herring – an extraordinary story of recovery.

Around the world, individuals are also making a huge difference to the future of the ocean. In the Galapagos, one scientist has devoted much of his life to saving the largest fish in the sea – the whale shark. He is using the latest technology to unlock one of the ocean’s biggest mysteries – where these elusive giants may give birth.

In the Caribbean, a community is reversing the fortune of giant leatherback turtles. Their numbers have dropped dramatically, by up to 90 per cent in some parts of the world, but here, volunteers are risking their lives to get turtle poachers to put down their weapons and instead protect the beach where these magnificent creatures nest. Through these valiant efforts, theirs is now one of the densest leatherback nesting beaches in the world.

SIMILAR TITLES:

The Blue PlanetSouth PacificFrozen Planet 2Seven Worlds, One PlanetFrozen PlanetOcean Autopsy: The Secret Story of Our Seas

British nature documentary series

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trom

2017-12-10 23:47:48

Blue Planet 2

Favorite

trailer

https://videos.trom.tf/videos/embed/xdVPCJZLdmZsofwyCGzj9U?autoplay=0&title=0&warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0

magnet

YEAR: 2017 | LENGTH: 7 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

Blue Planet II is a 2017 British nature documentary series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Like its predecessor, The Blue Planet (2001), it is narrated and presented by naturalist Sir David Attenborough, while the main music score was composed by Hans Zimmer.

episodes:

01. The Ocean

In recent years, our knowledge of life beneath the waves has been transformed. Using cutting-edge technology, One Ocean takes us on a journey from the intense heat of the tropics to our planet’s frozen poles to reveal new worlds and extraordinary never-before-seen animal behaviours.

Starting in the tropical coral reefs – the most diverse ocean habitat – a baby dolphin is taught the secrets of a coral reef, as its family rubs against a particular gorgonian which may have medicinal properties. On another reef, a tusk fish demonstrates a surprising level of ingenuity – tool use – as it uses corals as an anvil to break open clams. In the Seychelles, half a million terns nest on an island. Fledglings must eventually take to the wing, but danger lurks beneath the waves – metre-long giant trevally fish leap clear out of the water to snatch the birds.

The tropical oceans drive our planet’s weather. Sun heats the sea, creating rain, winds and huge storms that drive up towards higher latitudes. Here, unlike the tropics, the seas change with the seasons. In spring thousands of mobula rays gather in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. At night, in a previously unseen event, tiny organisms that light up when disturbed react to their wingbeats, creating an enchanting bioluminescent firework display.

Phytoplankton produce as much oxygen as all the plants on land and lie at the base of marine food chains everywhere. Where the plankton thrive, fish thrive too, and ocean travellers will migrate thousands of miles to take advantage of these productive seas. Predatory false killer whales off the coast of New Zealand are in search of dolphins. But when they find them, the whales team up with the dolphins to form super-pods – a formidable army to take advantage of the bounty of these seasonal seas.

In temperate seas around the globe, spring brings greening oceans. In Japan, a kelp-covered shipwreck is home to the Asian sheepshead wrasse, or Kobudai. At the start of summer a male mates with the females. But when a female reaches both a critical body size and age, it can undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis. Females change gender, and a new male challenges an older male to a face-off.

Toward our planet’s poles, the ocean’s surface is locked in ice. But in the Arctic, a warm current from the south keeps some Norwegian fjords ice-free all year round. Here, in winter, pods of orcas use dramatic tail slaps to stun herring, and humpback whales follow the noises to find the feast.

Ocean currents move heat around our planet and maintain a climate favourable for life. But our ocean system, in relative equilibrium for millennia, is changing at a worrying rate. Deep in the polar north, we meet walrus mothers and their newborn calves, searching for an ice floe to rest on. But with rising temperatures, summer sea ice is retreating – their battles to survive are becoming ever harder. As we begin to understand the true complexity of the lives of our ocean creatures, so do we recognise the fragility of their home.

02. The Deep

The deep is perhaps the most hostile environment on earth, at least to us – a world of crushing pressure, brutal cold and utter darkness. We have barely begun to explore it, and yet it is the largest living space on the planet. Scientists already think that there is more life in the deep than anywhere else on earth.

This episode takes us on an epic journey into the unknown, a realm that feels almost like science fiction. We discover alien worlds, bizarre creatures and extraordinary new behaviours never seen before. We encounter savage hordes of Humboldt squid hunting lanternfish in the depths and coral gardens flourishing in absolute darkness, with more species of coral to be found in the deep than on shallow tropical reefs.

On the desert wastes of the abyss, a whale carcass generates a frenzy as slow-moving sharks as big as great whites fight for what may be their first meal in a year. Food is hard to come by and finding a mate is even harder, but life adapts in ingenious ways. There are fish that walk instead of swim, worms that feed exclusively on bones and shrimps that spend almost their entire lives imprisoned with their mate in a cage of crystal sponge.

The deeper you go, the more extreme conditions become. The sheer weight of water above creates almost unendurable pressures. Yet even eight kilometres down, where the basic chemistry of life was once thought impossible, we find strange species swimming through the darkness. From here we journey on down to the deepest place on earth – the Mariana Trench – almost 11 kilometres from the surface, a vast chasm that ruptures the deep sea floor. Only three human beings have ever reached here, and yet there is still life to be found in these deep sea trenches.

The deep can be a violent place. Tectonic plates rip apart or collide in mighty clashes. And at these volcanic hotspots, extraordinary micro-worlds blossom into life, completely divorced from the energy of the sun. Hair-covered crabs feed on gushing plumes of otherwise toxic hydrogen sulphide. Shrimps hover on the fringes of billowing clouds of volcanic chemicals, so hot they could melt lead. We discover new species every time we visit these strange new worlds.

One of these geysers might even hold the secret to all life on earth. At a hydrothermal vent system in the middle of the Atlantic, seawater and rock react under extreme pressures and temperatures to produce complex hydrocarbons – the building blocks of life itself. Scientists have named this strange place the Lost City, and many believe that it was at a place just like this that life on earth first began, four billion years ago.

03. Coral Reefs

Corals build themselves homes of limestone in the warm, clear, shallow seas of the tropics. Their reefs occupy less than one tenth of one per cent of the ocean floor, yet they are home to a quarter of all known marine species. They are complex, infinitely varied structures providing all kinds of homes for their many residents. There is fierce rivalry for space, for food and for a partner, but the reef is also a place full of opportunity. For those that manage to establish themselves, there can be great rewards.

The broadclub cuttlefish has found its place by using a hypnotic display that apparently mesmerises its prey, causing it to let down its defences. On the Great Barrier Reef a remarkable grouper uses sign language, dubbed the headstand signal, to reach out to an entirely different creature, a reef octopus, to flush small fish out of their hiding holes and into the groupers waiting mouth.

While they might appear to be nothing more than rocky substrate, each coral is in fact made up of hundreds to thousands of tiny, living coral creatures called polyps. Filmed with super macro time-lapse, we bring them to life and reveal their hidden worlds. As these polyps grow and die they lay the limestone foundation for civilisations and superstructures so large that they can be seen from space.

Coral reef cities never sleep, they are constantly noisy worlds where a chorus of submarine song rings out from their many inhabitants. At dawn, one of the reef’s most charismatic inhabitants, the green turtle, heads off to be cleaned at a special health spa. As she approaches the station, she is joined by more of her fellow turtles and is pushed out by the queue-jumping males. She must wait for her opportunity to sneak back in.

Some animals come to reefs for rest and relaxation. In the desert sands of Egypt, coral reefs thrive in the shallows of the Red Sea, providing bottlenose dolphins with a place to rest. For the youngsters, the reef is their playground. These dolphins play by balancing corals and sponges on their nose and in doing so build important life skills.

Every reef has a sharply defined boundary. On the outer side, facing the open ocean, is the drop-off. These ramparts protect the city from the ocean waves, but twice a day the walls are covered by the incoming tide. In the Bahamas, the rush of the water creates a truly strange phenomenon – a whirlpool. In the Maldives, on the biggest tides, one particular coral lagoon becomes so flooded with plankton that it attracts hundreds of manta rays.

On the sheltered side of the reef there are sand flats which provide rich feeding grounds. However, away from the protective structures of the reef there is nowhere to hide. This makes it a dangerous place, especially at night when predators patrol in search of prey caught in the open. The bobbit, a giant carnivorous worm, buries deep in the sand in order to ambush unsuspecting prey. But there is safe accommodation for some out here in these sandy suburbs. An extraordinary species of clownfish has made a home in an anemone away from the reef. But it is up to the big male to find a way for the female to lay her eggs.

Reef creatures go to great lengths to give their young a head start in life and nowhere more so than on the remotest reefs in the world. In French Polynesia, thousands of grouper risk death when faced with hundreds of grey reef sharks in order to reproduce.

Despite their longevity and resilience, increasing ocean temperatures have put coral reefs under unprecedented pressure. The most devastating bleaching event known in recorded history wreaks havoc on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Without the three-dimensional structure of a coral reef, all reef dwellers are affected. The programme unfolds with one of the greatest mass-spawning events in the oceans – corals, fish and invertebrates all releasing a snowstorm of eggs. By sending their young away from the reef, there is hope that they will regenerate new reefs and secure their future for generations to come.

04. Big Blue

The big blue is the world’s greatest wilderness, far from shore and many kilometres deep. It’s a vast marine desert where there is little to eat and nowhere to hide. Yet it’s home to some of the biggest and most spectacular creatures on earth.

This episode reveals what it takes to survive in this savage and forbidding world. We witness feats of incredible endurance, moments of high drama and extraordinary acts of heart-wrenching self-sacrifice.

Every animal in the big blue must find their own unique way to survive. Sperm whales have the largest brains in the world. They live for 80 years, and we are only now beginning to learn the extraordinary complexity of their language of clicks – thought to coordinate the whole family in everything from childcare to hunting. With special pressure-proof cameras, we witness record-breaking feats of endurance as they hunt for squid a kilometre down into the abyss.

Many smaller creatures find sanctuary in this great wilderness. Only recently have we begun to solve the mystery of where baby turtles disappear to in their early years. They leave the crowded waters of the coast and head to the open ocean, where they use floating debris like logs as life rafts. Here they remain until adulthood, adrift on the high seas in relative safety away from coastal predators.

Over half of all animals in the open ocean drift in currents. Jellyfish cross entire oceans feeding on whatever happens to tangle with their tentacles. The jelly-like Portuguese man-of-war can harness sail power to fish with its deadly tentacles. Sometimes there is a brief explosion of food in this marine desert, but ocean hunters must be fast to make the best of this bonanza. We witness super pods of up to 5,000 spinner dolphins racing to herd vast shoals of lanternfish, briefly caught at the surface where it is thought they spawn. New aerial footage reveals, for the first time, the truth to a centuries-old sailors’ legend of the ‘boiling seas’ – the spectacular feeding frenzy of 90kg tuna and dolphins smashing through the lantern fish shoals turning the sea white with foam.

Raising your young in this great wilderness is a huge challenge. The episode follows two very different ocean voyagers that show amazing care. We get closer to solving the mystery of where the biggest fish in the sea, the whale shark, gives birth. The pregnant females make an epic journey across the Pacific to the Galapagos Islands. Scientists now think it might be here that the pregnant females give birth to their pups in the safety of the depths. And in the freezing south Atlantic, a pair of ageing wandering albatrosses give their all to raise their very last chick.

Yet even in the big blue, thousands of kilometres from land, there is evidence of human activity. An estimated eight million tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year. Globe-spanning currents carry it into the heart of every ocean, often with tragic consequences. In the Atlantic waters off Europe we follow a family of pilot whales whose calf has recently died. One possible cause of death is poisoning by its own mother’s contaminated milk. As plastic breaks down it combines with other pollutants that are consumed by vast numbers of marine creatures. In top predators like pilot whales, the toxic chemicals can build up to lethal levels.

05. Green Seas

It’s our green seas, not the blue, that bring life to our oceans. Here sunlight powers the growth of enchanted forests of kelp, mangroves and prairies of sea grass. They are the most abundant but fiercely competitive places in the ocean to live.

The most bountiful kelp forests are found off the tip of southern Africa, where two great oceans collide. Almost a hundred different species of shark patrol these waters, driving one resident – the common octopus – to become the ultimate escape artist. To outwit her nemesis, the pyjama shark, she uses ingenious tactics, never filmed before.

Along the Pacific coast of North America stand, at 60 metres high, the largest and perhaps most diverse kelp forests in the world. In clearings, bright orange male Garibaldi fish guard territories of short turf seaweed. When spiny urchins invade and graze their crops, the Garibaldi desperately pick them off. But urchins can swarm in vast numbers and even attack and fell the kelp forest itself, creating vast ‘urchin barrens’. All is not entirely lost, thanks to the return of a ravenous forest resident – sea otters. Back in the late 1800s, sea otters were hunted for their thick pelts to near extinction. And with them gone, urchin numbers rose, destroying many forests. Today, thanks to protection, sea otter numbers are recovering, along with the health of the forest. In a filming first, we reveal great rafts of sea otters now numbering in their hundreds.

In warmer waters another green sea takes hold. Off Western Australia, vast prairies of seagrass extend to the horizon. Here, grazing green turtles are stalked by tiger sharks. By keeping turtles on the move, tiger sharks prevent the seagrass meadows from being overgrazed. In this way, sharks have become surprising allies in the fight against climate change – as a patch of sea grass is 35 times more efficient at absorbing and storing carbon than the same area of rainforest.

Once a year, one sea meadow in Australia is overrun by an extraordinary invasion. With the first full moon of winter, strange creatures emerge from the deep – spider crabs. The army marches into the shallows and starts to pile one on top of each other, building mounds over a metre high. They then moult. Soft-bodied and weakened, they must avoid the patrolling four-metre-long stingrays.

Further along the coast, the greatest gathering of cuttlefish in the world takes place, as males battle it out for the right to mate. But even among these giant cuttlefish, the largest of their kind, it’s not always size that counts. A smaller, sneaky male uses subterfuge, even pretending to be a female, to confuse rivals and get his girl. Even raising your young can be tough in such a competitive place. A weedy seadragon sets out on an epic quest to give his young the very best start in life.

Vast numbers of the ocean’s baby fish start their lives in the green seas. The richest nurseries of all are the mangrove forests. Straddling the boundary between land and sea, they provide shelter for the juvenile fish. But in the mangroves of Western Australia lives a deadly assassin – the 40cm-long zebra mantis shrimp. In a surprising story of betrayal, a male shrimp will abandon his mate of possibly 20 years, trading up for a larger female.

And there is one other green sea that supports more life than all the rest combined. Unlike the mangrove forests and prairies of sea grass, its existence in the open seas is only temporary. Microscopic algae flourish into vast blooms, providing a feast for plankton-feeding fish like billions of anchovies. In Monterey Bay, California, the giant shoals draw in thousands of dolphins, sea lions and humpback whales who all race to claim their share of the feast.

06. Coasts

On the coast, two worlds collide. Coasts are the most dynamic and challenging habitats in the ocean – that brings great rewards but also great danger. The extraordinary animals that live here must find ingenious ways to cope with two very different worlds.

This episode is a rollercoaster ride of heart-stopping action and epic drama, peopled with characters from the beautiful to the bizarre. We meet fish that live on dry land and puffins that must travel 60 miles or more for a single meal, and witness a life-and-death struggle in a technicolour rock pool.

In a secluded cove in the Galapagos, sea lions feast on 60kg tuna. It should be impossible – tuna are usually far too fast for sea lions to catch. But here the sea lions club together to herd their prey inshore. Once trapped in the shallows, these huge fish are easy pickings.

As the tide recedes in Brazil, lightfoot crabs leap from rock to rock, desperately avoiding the water – their lives depend on it. Moray eels launch themselves from rock pools, jaw gaping. Then octopuses, too. Both crawl across dry rock to set their ambush. Elsewhere, the ever-changing tides create rock pools. But these temporary worlds are a battleground. Predatory starfish turn a magical garden into the stuff of nightmares.

All around the world, immense waves pound the shore, and this episode reveals some of the largest on the planet, over 30 metres high. Over millennia these forces carve exquisite coastal sculptures and cliffs that are home to huge colonies of seabirds. Puffins fly up to 30 miles out to sea to find food for their chicks. A father returns with one precious beakful of food… then pirates attack. Desperate dads must escape the faster and more aerobatic skuas before finally delivering a meal to their young puffling.

Meanwhile, in the remote Pacific islands lives the most terrestrial fish on the planet. It lives in miniature caves above the tide lines and uses its tail like a coiled spring to jump from rock to rock. A male tries to attract a mate, but waves are a constant hindrance. These are fish that seem to hate water!

Once a year, king penguins return to the cold Antarctic shores of South Georgia for a month-long moult. First they must cross the biggest wall of blubber on the planet – thousands of gigantic elephant seals. Then they face a month with no food, before they can return to their natural home, the chilly Antarctic seas.

The planet’s coasts are changing fast as they are among the most built-up areas of the world. Just off the beaches of Miami, the largest gathering of coastal sharks on the planet can still be found. But today they must face the many challenges that come from our world too.

07. Our Blue Planet

While making Blue Planet II, we have explored parts of the ocean that nobody has been to before, encountered extraordinary animals and discovered new insights into how life thrives beneath the waves. But we have also witnessed the profound effects of human activity. The oceans are changing faster and in more ways than at any point in human history and now, for the first time, we understand why.

In this final episode, we uncover the impact that our modern lives are having on our best-loved characters from across the series, including devoted albatross parents unwittingly feeding their chicks discarded plastic and mother dolphins potentially exposing their newborn calves to pollutants through their contaminated milk. Scientists have even discovered that increasing noise levels may stop baby clownfish finding their way home.

Many creatures are struggling to survive in today’s oceans, and some changes in the ocean will require a global effort. While filming the stunning corals on the Great Barrier Reef’s remote Lizard Island, the film crew witnessed a catastrophe. Warmer than normal seas caused the biggest coral bleaching event in human history, killing about 90 per cent of the branching corals at Lizard Island.

But the warming ocean could have an even more devastating effect. We travel to Antarctica on a unique expedition to discover how melting polar ice sheets could one day impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Yet, despite these devastating impacts, there is hope. Every year, billions of herring overwinter in the icy seas off Norway, but just 50 years ago they were almost wiped out by overfishing. Today, thanks to careful regulation, they have returned, creating one of the greatest spectacles in the ocean. Hundreds of giant humpback whales and one of the greatest gatherings of orcas on the planet feast on the herring – an extraordinary story of recovery.

Around the world, individuals are also making a huge difference to the future of the ocean. In the Galapagos, one scientist has devoted much of his life to saving the largest fish in the sea – the whale shark. He is using the latest technology to unlock one of the ocean’s biggest mysteries – where these elusive giants may give birth.

In the Caribbean, a community is reversing the fortune of giant leatherback turtles. Their numbers have dropped dramatically, by up to 90 per cent in some parts of the world, but here, volunteers are risking their lives to get turtle poachers to put down their weapons and instead protect the beach where these magnificent creatures nest. Through these valiant efforts, theirs is now one of the densest leatherback nesting beaches in the world.

SIMILAR TITLES:

The Blue PlanetSouth PacificFrozen Planet 2Seven Worlds, One PlanetFrozen PlanetOcean Autopsy: The Secret Story of Our Seas

British nature documentary series

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2017-12-10 23:47:48

Blue Planet 2

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YEAR: 2017 | LENGTH: 7 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

Blue Planet II is a 2017 British nature documentary series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Like its predecessor, The Blue Planet (2001), it is narrated and presented by naturalist Sir David Attenborough, while the main music score was composed by Hans Zimmer.

episodes:

01. The Ocean

In recent years, our knowledge of life beneath the waves has been transformed. Using cutting-edge technology, One Ocean takes us on a journey from the intense heat of the tropics to our planet’s frozen poles to reveal new worlds and extraordinary never-before-seen animal behaviours.

Starting in the tropical coral reefs – the most diverse ocean habitat – a baby dolphin is taught the secrets of a coral reef, as its family rubs against a particular gorgonian which may have medicinal properties. On another reef, a tusk fish demonstrates a surprising level of ingenuity – tool use – as it uses corals as an anvil to break open clams. In the Seychelles, half a million terns nest on an island. Fledglings must eventually take to the wing, but danger lurks beneath the waves – metre-long giant trevally fish leap clear out of the water to snatch the birds.

The tropical oceans drive our planet’s weather. Sun heats the sea, creating rain, winds and huge storms that drive up towards higher latitudes. Here, unlike the tropics, the seas change with the seasons. In spring thousands of mobula rays gather in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez. At night, in a previously unseen event, tiny organisms that light up when disturbed react to their wingbeats, creating an enchanting bioluminescent firework display.

Phytoplankton produce as much oxygen as all the plants on land and lie at the base of marine food chains everywhere. Where the plankton thrive, fish thrive too, and ocean travellers will migrate thousands of miles to take advantage of these productive seas. Predatory false killer whales off the coast of New Zealand are in search of dolphins. But when they find them, the whales team up with the dolphins to form super-pods – a formidable army to take advantage of the bounty of these seasonal seas.

In temperate seas around the globe, spring brings greening oceans. In Japan, a kelp-covered shipwreck is home to the Asian sheepshead wrasse, or Kobudai. At the start of summer a male mates with the females. But when a female reaches both a critical body size and age, it can undergo an extraordinary metamorphosis. Females change gender, and a new male challenges an older male to a face-off.

Toward our planet’s poles, the ocean’s surface is locked in ice. But in the Arctic, a warm current from the south keeps some Norwegian fjords ice-free all year round. Here, in winter, pods of orcas use dramatic tail slaps to stun herring, and humpback whales follow the noises to find the feast.

Ocean currents move heat around our planet and maintain a climate favourable for life. But our ocean system, in relative equilibrium for millennia, is changing at a worrying rate. Deep in the polar north, we meet walrus mothers and their newborn calves, searching for an ice floe to rest on. But with rising temperatures, summer sea ice is retreating – their battles to survive are becoming ever harder. As we begin to understand the true complexity of the lives of our ocean creatures, so do we recognise the fragility of their home.

02. The Deep

The deep is perhaps the most hostile environment on earth, at least to us – a world of crushing pressure, brutal cold and utter darkness. We have barely begun to explore it, and yet it is the largest living space on the planet. Scientists already think that there is more life in the deep than anywhere else on earth.

This episode takes us on an epic journey into the unknown, a realm that feels almost like science fiction. We discover alien worlds, bizarre creatures and extraordinary new behaviours never seen before. We encounter savage hordes of Humboldt squid hunting lanternfish in the depths and coral gardens flourishing in absolute darkness, with more species of coral to be found in the deep than on shallow tropical reefs.

On the desert wastes of the abyss, a whale carcass generates a frenzy as slow-moving sharks as big as great whites fight for what may be their first meal in a year. Food is hard to come by and finding a mate is even harder, but life adapts in ingenious ways. There are fish that walk instead of swim, worms that feed exclusively on bones and shrimps that spend almost their entire lives imprisoned with their mate in a cage of crystal sponge.

The deeper you go, the more extreme conditions become. The sheer weight of water above creates almost unendurable pressures. Yet even eight kilometres down, where the basic chemistry of life was once thought impossible, we find strange species swimming through the darkness. From here we journey on down to the deepest place on earth – the Mariana Trench – almost 11 kilometres from the surface, a vast chasm that ruptures the deep sea floor. Only three human beings have ever reached here, and yet there is still life to be found in these deep sea trenches.

The deep can be a violent place. Tectonic plates rip apart or collide in mighty clashes. And at these volcanic hotspots, extraordinary micro-worlds blossom into life, completely divorced from the energy of the sun. Hair-covered crabs feed on gushing plumes of otherwise toxic hydrogen sulphide. Shrimps hover on the fringes of billowing clouds of volcanic chemicals, so hot they could melt lead. We discover new species every time we visit these strange new worlds.

One of these geysers might even hold the secret to all life on earth. At a hydrothermal vent system in the middle of the Atlantic, seawater and rock react under extreme pressures and temperatures to produce complex hydrocarbons – the building blocks of life itself. Scientists have named this strange place the Lost City, and many believe that it was at a place just like this that life on earth first began, four billion years ago.

03. Coral Reefs

Corals build themselves homes of limestone in the warm, clear, shallow seas of the tropics. Their reefs occupy less than one tenth of one per cent of the ocean floor, yet they are home to a quarter of all known marine species. They are complex, infinitely varied structures providing all kinds of homes for their many residents. There is fierce rivalry for space, for food and for a partner, but the reef is also a place full of opportunity. For those that manage to establish themselves, there can be great rewards.

The broadclub cuttlefish has found its place by using a hypnotic display that apparently mesmerises its prey, causing it to let down its defences. On the Great Barrier Reef a remarkable grouper uses sign language, dubbed the headstand signal, to reach out to an entirely different creature, a reef octopus, to flush small fish out of their hiding holes and into the groupers waiting mouth.

While they might appear to be nothing more than rocky substrate, each coral is in fact made up of hundreds to thousands of tiny, living coral creatures called polyps. Filmed with super macro time-lapse, we bring them to life and reveal their hidden worlds. As these polyps grow and die they lay the limestone foundation for civilisations and superstructures so large that they can be seen from space.

Coral reef cities never sleep, they are constantly noisy worlds where a chorus of submarine song rings out from their many inhabitants. At dawn, one of the reef’s most charismatic inhabitants, the green turtle, heads off to be cleaned at a special health spa. As she approaches the station, she is joined by more of her fellow turtles and is pushed out by the queue-jumping males. She must wait for her opportunity to sneak back in.

Some animals come to reefs for rest and relaxation. In the desert sands of Egypt, coral reefs thrive in the shallows of the Red Sea, providing bottlenose dolphins with a place to rest. For the youngsters, the reef is their playground. These dolphins play by balancing corals and sponges on their nose and in doing so build important life skills.

Every reef has a sharply defined boundary. On the outer side, facing the open ocean, is the drop-off. These ramparts protect the city from the ocean waves, but twice a day the walls are covered by the incoming tide. In the Bahamas, the rush of the water creates a truly strange phenomenon – a whirlpool. In the Maldives, on the biggest tides, one particular coral lagoon becomes so flooded with plankton that it attracts hundreds of manta rays.

On the sheltered side of the reef there are sand flats which provide rich feeding grounds. However, away from the protective structures of the reef there is nowhere to hide. This makes it a dangerous place, especially at night when predators patrol in search of prey caught in the open. The bobbit, a giant carnivorous worm, buries deep in the sand in order to ambush unsuspecting prey. But there is safe accommodation for some out here in these sandy suburbs. An extraordinary species of clownfish has made a home in an anemone away from the reef. But it is up to the big male to find a way for the female to lay her eggs.

Reef creatures go to great lengths to give their young a head start in life and nowhere more so than on the remotest reefs in the world. In French Polynesia, thousands of grouper risk death when faced with hundreds of grey reef sharks in order to reproduce.

Despite their longevity and resilience, increasing ocean temperatures have put coral reefs under unprecedented pressure. The most devastating bleaching event known in recorded history wreaks havoc on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Without the three-dimensional structure of a coral reef, all reef dwellers are affected. The programme unfolds with one of the greatest mass-spawning events in the oceans – corals, fish and invertebrates all releasing a snowstorm of eggs. By sending their young away from the reef, there is hope that they will regenerate new reefs and secure their future for generations to come.

04. Big Blue

The big blue is the world’s greatest wilderness, far from shore and many kilometres deep. It’s a vast marine desert where there is little to eat and nowhere to hide. Yet it’s home to some of the biggest and most spectacular creatures on earth.

This episode reveals what it takes to survive in this savage and forbidding world. We witness feats of incredible endurance, moments of high drama and extraordinary acts of heart-wrenching self-sacrifice.

Every animal in the big blue must find their own unique way to survive. Sperm whales have the largest brains in the world. They live for 80 years, and we are only now beginning to learn the extraordinary complexity of their language of clicks – thought to coordinate the whole family in everything from childcare to hunting. With special pressure-proof cameras, we witness record-breaking feats of endurance as they hunt for squid a kilometre down into the abyss.

Many smaller creatures find sanctuary in this great wilderness. Only recently have we begun to solve the mystery of where baby turtles disappear to in their early years. They leave the crowded waters of the coast and head to the open ocean, where they use floating debris like logs as life rafts. Here they remain until adulthood, adrift on the high seas in relative safety away from coastal predators.

Over half of all animals in the open ocean drift in currents. Jellyfish cross entire oceans feeding on whatever happens to tangle with their tentacles. The jelly-like Portuguese man-of-war can harness sail power to fish with its deadly tentacles. Sometimes there is a brief explosion of food in this marine desert, but ocean hunters must be fast to make the best of this bonanza. We witness super pods of up to 5,000 spinner dolphins racing to herd vast shoals of lanternfish, briefly caught at the surface where it is thought they spawn. New aerial footage reveals, for the first time, the truth to a centuries-old sailors’ legend of the ‘boiling seas’ – the spectacular feeding frenzy of 90kg tuna and dolphins smashing through the lantern fish shoals turning the sea white with foam.

Raising your young in this great wilderness is a huge challenge. The episode follows two very different ocean voyagers that show amazing care. We get closer to solving the mystery of where the biggest fish in the sea, the whale shark, gives birth. The pregnant females make an epic journey across the Pacific to the Galapagos Islands. Scientists now think it might be here that the pregnant females give birth to their pups in the safety of the depths. And in the freezing south Atlantic, a pair of ageing wandering albatrosses give their all to raise their very last chick.

Yet even in the big blue, thousands of kilometres from land, there is evidence of human activity. An estimated eight million tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year. Globe-spanning currents carry it into the heart of every ocean, often with tragic consequences. In the Atlantic waters off Europe we follow a family of pilot whales whose calf has recently died. One possible cause of death is poisoning by its own mother’s contaminated milk. As plastic breaks down it combines with other pollutants that are consumed by vast numbers of marine creatures. In top predators like pilot whales, the toxic chemicals can build up to lethal levels.

05. Green Seas

It’s our green seas, not the blue, that bring life to our oceans. Here sunlight powers the growth of enchanted forests of kelp, mangroves and prairies of sea grass. They are the most abundant but fiercely competitive places in the ocean to live.

The most bountiful kelp forests are found off the tip of southern Africa, where two great oceans collide. Almost a hundred different species of shark patrol these waters, driving one resident – the common octopus – to become the ultimate escape artist. To outwit her nemesis, the pyjama shark, she uses ingenious tactics, never filmed before.

Along the Pacific coast of North America stand, at 60 metres high, the largest and perhaps most diverse kelp forests in the world. In clearings, bright orange male Garibaldi fish guard territories of short turf seaweed. When spiny urchins invade and graze their crops, the Garibaldi desperately pick them off. But urchins can swarm in vast numbers and even attack and fell the kelp forest itself, creating vast ‘urchin barrens’. All is not entirely lost, thanks to the return of a ravenous forest resident – sea otters. Back in the late 1800s, sea otters were hunted for their thick pelts to near extinction. And with them gone, urchin numbers rose, destroying many forests. Today, thanks to protection, sea otter numbers are recovering, along with the health of the forest. In a filming first, we reveal great rafts of sea otters now numbering in their hundreds.

In warmer waters another green sea takes hold. Off Western Australia, vast prairies of seagrass extend to the horizon. Here, grazing green turtles are stalked by tiger sharks. By keeping turtles on the move, tiger sharks prevent the seagrass meadows from being overgrazed. In this way, sharks have become surprising allies in the fight against climate change – as a patch of sea grass is 35 times more efficient at absorbing and storing carbon than the same area of rainforest.

Once a year, one sea meadow in Australia is overrun by an extraordinary invasion. With the first full moon of winter, strange creatures emerge from the deep – spider crabs. The army marches into the shallows and starts to pile one on top of each other, building mounds over a metre high. They then moult. Soft-bodied and weakened, they must avoid the patrolling four-metre-long stingrays.

Further along the coast, the greatest gathering of cuttlefish in the world takes place, as males battle it out for the right to mate. But even among these giant cuttlefish, the largest of their kind, it’s not always size that counts. A smaller, sneaky male uses subterfuge, even pretending to be a female, to confuse rivals and get his girl. Even raising your young can be tough in such a competitive place. A weedy seadragon sets out on an epic quest to give his young the very best start in life.

Vast numbers of the ocean’s baby fish start their lives in the green seas. The richest nurseries of all are the mangrove forests. Straddling the boundary between land and sea, they provide shelter for the juvenile fish. But in the mangroves of Western Australia lives a deadly assassin – the 40cm-long zebra mantis shrimp. In a surprising story of betrayal, a male shrimp will abandon his mate of possibly 20 years, trading up for a larger female.

And there is one other green sea that supports more life than all the rest combined. Unlike the mangrove forests and prairies of sea grass, its existence in the open seas is only temporary. Microscopic algae flourish into vast blooms, providing a feast for plankton-feeding fish like billions of anchovies. In Monterey Bay, California, the giant shoals draw in thousands of dolphins, sea lions and humpback whales who all race to claim their share of the feast.

06. Coasts

On the coast, two worlds collide. Coasts are the most dynamic and challenging habitats in the ocean – that brings great rewards but also great danger. The extraordinary animals that live here must find ingenious ways to cope with two very different worlds.

This episode is a rollercoaster ride of heart-stopping action and epic drama, peopled with characters from the beautiful to the bizarre. We meet fish that live on dry land and puffins that must travel 60 miles or more for a single meal, and witness a life-and-death struggle in a technicolour rock pool.

In a secluded cove in the Galapagos, sea lions feast on 60kg tuna. It should be impossible – tuna are usually far too fast for sea lions to catch. But here the sea lions club together to herd their prey inshore. Once trapped in the shallows, these huge fish are easy pickings.

As the tide recedes in Brazil, lightfoot crabs leap from rock to rock, desperately avoiding the water – their lives depend on it. Moray eels launch themselves from rock pools, jaw gaping. Then octopuses, too. Both crawl across dry rock to set their ambush. Elsewhere, the ever-changing tides create rock pools. But these temporary worlds are a battleground. Predatory starfish turn a magical garden into the stuff of nightmares.

All around the world, immense waves pound the shore, and this episode reveals some of the largest on the planet, over 30 metres high. Over millennia these forces carve exquisite coastal sculptures and cliffs that are home to huge colonies of seabirds. Puffins fly up to 30 miles out to sea to find food for their chicks. A father returns with one precious beakful of food… then pirates attack. Desperate dads must escape the faster and more aerobatic skuas before finally delivering a meal to their young puffling.

Meanwhile, in the remote Pacific islands lives the most terrestrial fish on the planet. It lives in miniature caves above the tide lines and uses its tail like a coiled spring to jump from rock to rock. A male tries to attract a mate, but waves are a constant hindrance. These are fish that seem to hate water!

Once a year, king penguins return to the cold Antarctic shores of South Georgia for a month-long moult. First they must cross the biggest wall of blubber on the planet – thousands of gigantic elephant seals. Then they face a month with no food, before they can return to their natural home, the chilly Antarctic seas.

The planet’s coasts are changing fast as they are among the most built-up areas of the world. Just off the beaches of Miami, the largest gathering of coastal sharks on the planet can still be found. But today they must face the many challenges that come from our world too.

07. Our Blue Planet

While making Blue Planet II, we have explored parts of the ocean that nobody has been to before, encountered extraordinary animals and discovered new insights into how life thrives beneath the waves. But we have also witnessed the profound effects of human activity. The oceans are changing faster and in more ways than at any point in human history and now, for the first time, we understand why.

In this final episode, we uncover the impact that our modern lives are having on our best-loved characters from across the series, including devoted albatross parents unwittingly feeding their chicks discarded plastic and mother dolphins potentially exposing their newborn calves to pollutants through their contaminated milk. Scientists have even discovered that increasing noise levels may stop baby clownfish finding their way home.

Many creatures are struggling to survive in today’s oceans, and some changes in the ocean will require a global effort. While filming the stunning corals on the Great Barrier Reef’s remote Lizard Island, the film crew witnessed a catastrophe. Warmer than normal seas caused the biggest coral bleaching event in human history, killing about 90 per cent of the branching corals at Lizard Island.

But the warming ocean could have an even more devastating effect. We travel to Antarctica on a unique expedition to discover how melting polar ice sheets could one day impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Yet, despite these devastating impacts, there is hope. Every year, billions of herring overwinter in the icy seas off Norway, but just 50 years ago they were almost wiped out by overfishing. Today, thanks to careful regulation, they have returned, creating one of the greatest spectacles in the ocean. Hundreds of giant humpback whales and one of the greatest gatherings of orcas on the planet feast on the herring – an extraordinary story of recovery.

Around the world, individuals are also making a huge difference to the future of the ocean. In the Galapagos, one scientist has devoted much of his life to saving the largest fish in the sea – the whale shark. He is using the latest technology to unlock one of the ocean’s biggest mysteries – where these elusive giants may give birth.

In the Caribbean, a community is reversing the fortune of giant leatherback turtles. Their numbers have dropped dramatically, by up to 90 per cent in some parts of the world, but here, volunteers are risking their lives to get turtle poachers to put down their weapons and instead protect the beach where these magnificent creatures nest. Through these valiant efforts, theirs is now one of the densest leatherback nesting beaches in the world.

SIMILAR TITLES:

The Blue PlanetSouth PacificFrozen Planet 2Seven Worlds, One PlanetFrozen PlanetOcean Autopsy: The Secret Story of Our Seas

British nature documentary series

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

trom

2022-11-09 23:11:23

Frozen Planet 2

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YEAR: 2022 | LENGTH: 6 parts (~60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

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Life in the extreme. In a fragile world of beauty and hostility, nature finds a way to survive and thrive. Sir David Attenborough explores a planet on the brink of major change.

episodes:

01. Frozen Worlds

Journeying from pole to pole, we reveal the surprising frozen worlds that exist across the planet and the remarkable animals that make them their home.

We begin our journey in the far south, in the most hostile place on earth, the frozen continent of Antarctica. After being raised on the ice in winter, emperor penguin chicks find themselves abandoned by their parents in spring. To survive, they must find their own way across the treacherous sea ice to the rich waters of the Southern Ocean.

The waters surrounding Antarctica may be the richest of all, but they are also home to an exceptionally sophisticated predator, the killer whale. To reach their favoured prey, Weddell seals, a family of killer whales have learnt to generate their own waves, washing the seals off their ice floes. It’s a technique that has been passed down over generations and is coordinated by the family matriarch, who can be over 100 years old.

Leaving Antarctica and travelling north, we discover frozen habitats that are created by altitude. The greatest of these is the Himalaya, the tallest mountain range on earth, which contains so much ice and snow it is known as the third pole. In the shadow of the Himalaya lies a vast frozen grassy plain that is home to the fluffiest cat in the world, Pallas’s cat. It may have extremely dense fur, but if it’s to survive the Mongolian winter, it needs to catch lots of gerbils and voles. Easier said than done when you only have short legs and paws that are sensitive to the cold.

North of the Great Steppe lies the boreal forest, which encircles the continents of North America, Europe and Asia, and remains frozen for six months of the year. Prowling these forests in the far east of Russia is the Siberian tiger, the largest cat in the world. In winter, it is on the lookout for black bears hibernating in caves, a high-risk strategy that only a cat of this size would attempt.

Above the boreal forest, we cross into the Arctic Circle, where conditions become so extreme that trees can no longer grow. This is the tundra. Living here are relics of the last ice age, musk ox. In spring, their calves face a far greater danger than the cold, grizzly bears. Encounters can be brutal, but if just a few calves survive the gauntlet, the herd’s future is secure.

To the north of the tundra is the Arctic Ocean, the only ocean that can completely freeze over. Living here is one of the most peculiar animals on earth, the hooded seal. Males have extraordinary inflatable noses, producing a bright red balloon out of their left nostrils. One male hopes this will make him irresistible.

All of the frozen habitats share one thing in common: the threat posed by today’s climate change. Travelling to the island of Greenland, home to the largest body of ice in the northern hemisphere, we witness how global warming is melting its ice cap at faster rates than ever before, with profound consequences for global sea levels. Lastly, we visit the Arctic’s most iconic resident, the polar bear, as a mother bear struggles to provide for her cubs in a world of shrinking sea ice.

02. Frozen Ocean

At the top of our planet lies a magical realm, the Arctic Ocean. After four months of winter darkness, the sun returns to reveal a frozen ocean covered in ice. Mother polar bears emerge from their hillside dens and lead their cubs down to the sea ice to hunt, while a young male and female bear forge a surprising friendship out on the ice.

For others, the frozen sea is a trap. A pod of beluga whales has been confined to an ice hole for five months, slowly starving to death as the food around them runs out. Their salvation lies in the strengthening sun that comes with spring, melting the sea ice, allowing their escape.

Off the east coast of Greenland, the floating pack ice in spring is a nursery ground for harp seals. Mothers and pups have just a few weeks together for the pup to learn to swim before she leaves him to fend for himself. But in today’s warming climate, storms can tip helpless youngsters into the sea before they are strong enough to fend for themselves.

Summer is a time of plenty in the Arctic Ocean as plankton blooms feed millions of tiny mouths, such as bizarre skeleton shrimps, as well as the biggest: bowhead whales. These ancient and long-lived whales arrive en masse every year at secret locations known as whale spas. But today, with the loss of summer sea ice, their peace is shattered by orcas from the south. These daring predators are bold enough to take on the much larger bowheads, targeting their vulnerable calves.

The 24-hour daylight of the Arctic summer attracts visitors from afar, including huge flocks of seabirds like crested auklets. A male must use both his song and a secret tangerine perfume if he is to attract a mate. For the resident walrus, the summer heat can be unbearable. After hauling himself to the beach to moult, an old male uses an ingenious technique to get himself back to the cool of the water – a roly-poly!

Summers in the Arctic today bring record-breaking heat. With climate change, it is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth. It is predicted that the Arctic Ocean could become ice-free each summer by 2035, raising new challenges for polar bears. Without sea ice, more and more bears are becoming stranded on remote Arctic islands. It’s a dangerous place to be for a mother bear with cubs, surrounded by larger, predatory males.

03. Frozen Peaks

Mountains create frozen habitats on every continent on Earth, and each of these high-altitude worlds holds unique challenges for its surprising and remarkable life.

We begin our journey close to the equator – the furthest point from the poles – in East Africa. Here on the high slopes of Mount Kenya, during the day the tropical sun keeps the cold at bay, but at night the frost descends. During this cycle of freeze and thaw, a pregnant high-casqued chameleon must choose the right time to give birth if her newborns are to escape the deadly night freeze.

Away from the equator in the European Alps, long cold winters give way to short, bountiful summers. For a pair of golden eagles raising their chick, the demand to provide enough food for it drives them to tackle prey five times their size. To catch a goat-like chamois, they risk it all using one of the most daring and breathtaking hunting techniques ever witnessed.

The mountains of Japan are the snowiest place on Earth, providing hostile conditions for a lone male macaque cast away from his troop. His only chance of survival comes with finding another male whose embrace will provide him with life-saving warmth. But in the frozen peaks, the deadliest force is an avalanche whose full destructive power is captured for the first time using high-speed camera racer drones.

The roof of the world is home to an array of unexpected cold-loving creatures. In the remote Southern Alps of New Zealand, a species of parrot – the kea – uses its famed intelligence to feed on the dead. And in the Andes in South America, flamingos thrive in high-altitude volcanic lakes, but their chicks must race to escape the winter freeze or risk becoming trapped in the ice.

Today, due to climate change, our frozen peaks are undergoing rapid change. Using groundbreaking time-lapse photography, we reveal mountain glaciers vanishing before our very eyes and discover what a warming world may mean for our most famous mountain resident of all, the giant panda.

04. Frozen South

Antarctica is the most hostile of all earth’s frozen worlds. Yet even here, amongst some of the most challenging conditions on the planet, life finds a way not just to survive, but thrive.

Our journey begins at the far edge of the continent, on its far-flung sub-Antarctic islands. Here we meet king penguins that, to feed at sea, must face the danger of ferocious leopard seals lurking in the shallows. On another island, we witness for the first time male Antipodean wandering albatross partnering up with each other as the females in their population are disappearing due to fishing activity.

Heading towards the continent of Antarctica, we traverse the roughest seas on earth – the Southern Ocean – where we find the rarely filmed Antarctic blue whale, the largest animal to have ever lived. At the edge of Antarctica, the sea is so cold that it freezes over, creating a vital ice platform for a mother Weddell seal to raise her precious pup. Still, she needs to protect him from aggressive males.

In spring, the coast of Antarctica is free of snow, drawing in thousands of breeding chinstrap penguins. Stones are at a premium to build their elevated nests and protect chicks from meltwater. But stealing is commonplace, and to make matters worse, with climate change we find chicks today shivering with hypothermia – a warming Antarctica means increased meltwater. Other residents are facing an uncertain future too, including wave-washing killer whales. We discover that their favourite prey, Weddell seals, are now harder to reach, so instead they are resorting to targeting much more feisty prey, including leopard seals, an apex predator in its own right. This dramatic encounter has never been filmed before.

Travelling into the interior of the continent – into the frozen heart of Antarctica – we find great surprises. This is one of the most volcanic regions on earth, and one of the driest. We reveal unexpected sand dunes, hidden in a rare ice-free valley. Then, on the exposed mountain tops, sticking out from the otherwise ice-covered interior, we find tiny snow petrels, which raise their chicks further south than any other bird, and defend their territory by projectile vomiting!

The greatest revelation lies deep in the interior, beneath the surface of an ice-covered lake, where we discover ancient alien-like structures – giant stromatolites – built by primitive lifeforms. If life can make it here, in the extremes of Antarctica, it raises the possibility that life can exist elsewhere, including in the frozen lakes of distant planets.

05. Frozen Lands

In the far north of our planet lies the largest land habitat on earth, home to snow-covered forests and the icy open tundra. These are lands of extremes that push animals to their limits: in winter they are so cold that much of the ground has remained frozen since the last ice age. To stand any chance of survival, animals must adapt in extreme ways: here a super pack of wolves, 25 strong, has come together to take on the only large prey available to them in winter, American bison.

On the featureless tundra, an Arctic fox must strike a living alone. She is a wanderer and will roam many hundreds of miles searching for tiny lemmings, hidden deep underground. The only way to reach them is with a head dive. In the remote far east of Russia, a rare Amur leopard prowls the seemingly empty, snow-covered forest. With little prey available, it must use its ingenuity to find a meal. It follows crows in the hope of finding carrion, but it must not stay long, for it shares the forest with a far larger but equally hungry big cat, the Siberian tiger.

As spring arrives, the forests begin to thaw and life returns. Beneath the ground, a nest of tiny painted turtle hatchlings now emerge, having remained frozen in a state of suspended animation throughout winter. To the north, it is a further month before the sun’s warmth baths the frozen ground of the tundra. Tucked away underground lies a tiny snow queen – a Lapland bumble bee. She is the sole survivor of her colony – the rest perished in the winter freeze – but her larger size, her furry body and antifreeze in her blood have allowed her to survive. Now she is in a hurry. She must feed herself and raise a brood in the brief window of summer while the flowers are in bloom.

Snowy owls also use the open tundra to breed: one pair have raised a nest full of fluffy chicks. With 24-hour daylight in which to hunt, the dedicated parents bring back meal after meal for their ever-growing brood. But one day, they return to find the nest empty…

Today, the biggest challenge in the tundra is climate change. Warming summers are melting the permafrost deep within the soil, causing the ground to thaw and, in places, the land to collapse. These changes are impacting the animals too. Caribou arrive in herds of 200,000 individuals to raise their calves in the rich pastures, but warming means mosquitos emerge sooner and bother the calves before they have had a chance to gain strength. The parents drive their young to cooler, mosquito-free land, but to get there they must cross rivers running with increased meltwater and escape hungry grizzly bears. They, like much of the tundra’s wildlife, are adapted to live in the extremes – but the challenge of today’s warming climate could be one extreme too many.

06. Our Frozen Planet

Our frozen planet is changing. In this final episode, we meet the scientists and people dedicating their lives to understanding what these changes mean, not just for the animals and people who live there, but for the world as a whole.

Our journey begins in the Arctic, where every summer huge quantities of ice calve from the edges of Greenland’s melting glaciers. On top of the ice cap itself, glaciologist Alun Hubbard descends into a moulin to try to understand the mechanisms that are driving this historic loss of ice.

Elsewhere in the Arctic, it’s not just land ice that is disappearing. In the Gulf of St Lawrence, Canada, biologists are trying to find out how the loss of sea ice will impact the lives of baby harps. In Arctic Russia, with the loss of summer sea ice, more and more polar bears are arriving on the island of Wrangel. Here, a local ranger and scientists are braving the hungry bears to assess their future survival.

Loss of sea ice impacts not just wildlife but people too. In the remote community of Qaanaaq, Greenland, local Inuit hunters are finding the ice too dangerous to travel and hunt on, risking their traditional way of life. And these changes happening in the Arctic have the potential to affect people far beyond. On Alaska’s open tundra, bubbling lakes hint at the gases being released from the previously frozen soil, including the potent greenhouse gas methane.

There is one place where the full scale of a melting Arctic can be best witnessed – from space. Based in the International Space Station, astronaut Jessica Meir looks down at forest fires across Europe and reflects how our changing weather patterns are interconnected.

Rapid ice loss is also happening across the high mountains of the planet’s continents. Glaciologist Hamish Pritchard uses a sophisticated helicopter-strung radar system to try to quantify how much ice is left in the previously uncharted glaciers of the Himalayas. It’s important as, downstream, some 1.2 billion people rely on glacial meltwater as their primary source of fresh water.

Finally, in Antarctica, we meet Bill Fraser, who has dedicated 45 years of his life to studying the Adelie penguin. Over this period, he has witnessed changes in weather conditions and the extinction of entire colonies. These ‘canaries in the coal mine’ are a sign that all is not well, even in the remotest place on earth. And changes here have the potential to affect all of us, so an international group of scientists is on an urgent mission to assess the stability of a huge body of ice known as the Thwaites ice shelf. If this plug of ice melts and slips into the ocean, it will raise global sea levels, impacting coastal communities across the planet.

The unprecedented changes our scientists are witnessing may be profound, but there is hope that, through a combination of technology and willpower, there is still time to save what remains of our frozen planet.

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Frozen PlanetBlue Planet 2Seven Worlds, One PlanetThe Blue PlanetNature’s Great EventsPlanet Earth

BBC One - Frozen Planet II

How Earth's breathtaking frozen wildernesses are changing before our eyes.

^BBC