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

South Pacific

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2010 | LENGTH: 6 parts (60 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA description: South Pacific (Wild Pacific in …

^VideoNeat

trom

2012-10-23 15:06:01

Life

Favorite

trailer

https://videos.trom.tf/videos/embed/5554qBHm1tE4Fnowud4KHp?autoplay=0&title=0&warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0


magnet

YEAR: 2009 | LENGTH: 10 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

Life is a nature documentary series made by BBC television, first broadcast as part of the BBC’s Darwin Season on BBC One and BBC HD from October to December 2009. The series takes a global view of the specialised strategies and extreme behaviour that living things have developed in order to survive; what Charles Darwin termed “the struggle for existence”. Four years in the making, the series was shot entirely in high definition.

The UK broadcast of Life consists of ten 50-minute episodes. The opening programme gives a general introduction to the series, a second looks at plants, and the remainder are dedicated to some of the major animal groups. They aim to show common features that have contributed to the success of each group, and to document intimate and dramatic moments in the lives of selected species chosen for their charisma or their extraordinary behaviour. A ten-minute making-of featureLife on Location aired at the end of each episode, taking the total running time to 60 minutes.

Life is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in association with the Discovery Channel, Skai TVand the Open University. The original script, used in the British and Canadian versions of the series, was written and narrated by David Attenborough.

episodes:

01. Challenges of Life

In nature, living long enough to breed is a monumental struggle. Many animals and plants go to extremes to give themselves a chance.

Uniquely, three brother cheetahs band together to bring down a huge ostrich. Aerial photography reveals how bottle-nosed dolphins trap fish in a ring of mud, and time-lapse cameras show how the Venus flytrap ensnares insect victims.

The strawberry frog carries a tadpole high into a tree and drops it in a water-filled bromeliad. The frog must climb back from the ground every day to feed it.

Fledgling chinstrap penguins undertake a heroic and tragic journey through the broken ice to get out to sea. Many can barely swim and the formidable leopard seal lies in wait.

02. Reptiles and Amphibians

Reptiles and amphibians look like hang-overs from the past. But they overcome their shortcomings through amazing innovation.

The pebble toad turns into a rubber ball to roll and bounce from its enemies. Extreme slow-motion shows how a Jesus Christ lizard runs on water, and how a chameleon fires an extendible tongue at its prey with unfailing accuracy. The camera dives with a Niuean sea snake, which must breed on land but avoids predators by swimming to an air bubble at the end of an underwater tunnel. In a TV first, Komodo dragons hunt a huge water-buffalo, biting it to inject venom, then waiting for weeks until it dies. Ten dragons strip the carcass to the bone in four hours.

03. Mammals

Mammals dominate the planet. They do it through having warm blood and by the care they lavish on their young. Weeks of filming in the bitter Antarctic winter reveal how a mother Weddell seal wears her teeth down keeping open a hole in the ice so she can catch fish for her pup.

A powered hot air balloon produces stunning images of millions of migrating bats as they converge on fruiting trees in Zambia, and slow-motion cameras reveal how a mother rufous sengi exhausts a chasing lizard. A gyroscopically stabilised camera moves alongside migrating caribou, and a diving team swim among the planet’s biggest fight as male humpback whales battle for a female.

04. Fish

Fish dominate the planet’s waters through their astonishing variety of shape and behaviour.

The beautiful weedy sea dragon looks like a creature from a fairytale, and the male protects their eggs by carrying them on his tail for months. The sarcastic fringehead, meanwhile, appears to turn its head inside out when it fights.

Slow-motion cameras show the flying fish gliding through the air like a flock of birds and capture the world’s fastest swimmer, the sailfish, plucking sardines from a shoal at 70 mph. And the tiny Hawaiian goby undertakes one of nature’s most daunting journeys, climbing a massive waterfall to find safe pools for breeding.

05. Birds

Birds owe their global success to feathers – something no other animal has. They allow birds to do extraordinary things.

For the first time, a slow-motion camera captures the unique flight of the marvellous spatuletail hummingbird as he flashes long, iridescent tail feathers in the gloomy undergrowth. Aerial photography takes us into the sky with an Ethiopian lammergeier dropping bones to smash them into edible-sized bits. Thousands of pink flamingoes promenade in one of nature’s greatest spectacles. The sage grouse rubs his feathers against his chest in a comic display to make popping noises that attract females. The Vogelkop bowerbird makes up for his dull colour by building an intricate structure and decorating it with colourful beetles and snails.

06. Insects

There are 200 million insects for each of us. They are the most successful animal group ever. Their key is an armoured covering that takes on almost any shape.

Darwin’s stag beetle fights in the tree tops with huge curved jaws. The camera flies with millions of monarch butterflies which migrate 2000 miles, navigating by the sun. Super-slow motion shows a bombardier beetle firing boiling liquid at enemies through a rotating nozzle. A honey bee army stings a raiding bear into submission. Grass cutter ants march like a Roman army, harvesting grass they cannot actually eat. They cultivate a fungus that breaks the grass down for them. Their giant colony is the closest thing in nature to the complexity of a human city.

07. Hunters and Hunted

Mammals’ ability to learn new tricks is the key to survival in the knife-edge world of hunters and hunted. In a TV first, a killer whale off the Falklands does something unique: it sneaks into a pool where elephant seal pups learn to swim and snatches them, saving itself the trouble of hunting in the open sea.

Slow-motion cameras reveal the star-nosed mole’s newly-discovered technique for smelling prey underwater: it exhales then inhales a bubble of air ten times per second. Young ibex soon learn the only way to escape a fox – run up an almost vertical cliff face – and young stoats fight mock battles, learning the skills that make them one of the world’s most efficient predators.

08. Creatures of the Deep

Marine invertebrates are some of the most bizarre and beautiful animals on the planet, and thrive in the toughest parts of the oceans.

Divers swim into a shoal of predatory Humboldt squid as they emerge from the ocean depths to hunt in packs. When cuttlefish gather to mate, their bodies flash in stroboscopic colours. Time-lapse photography reveals thousands of starfish gathering under the Arctic ice to devour a seal carcass.

A giant octopus commits suicide for her young. A camera follows her into a cave which she walls up, then she protects her eggs until she starves.

The greatest living structures on earth, coral reefs, are created by tiny animals in some of the world’s most inhospitable waters.

09. Plants

Plants’ solutions to life’s challenges are as ingenious and manipulative as any animal’s.

Innovative time-lapse photography opens up a parallel world where plants act like fly-paper, or spring-loaded traps, to catch insects. Vines develop suckers and claws to haul themselves into the rainforest canopy. Every peculiar shape proves to have a clever purpose. The dragon’s blood tree is like an upturned umbrella to capture mist and shade its roots. The seed of a Bornean tree has wings so aerodynamic they inspired the design of early gliders. The barrel-shaped desert rose is full of water. The heliconia plant even enslaves a humming bird and turns it into an addict for its nectar.

10. Primates

Primates are just like humans – intelligent, quarrelsome, family-centred.

Huge armies of Hamadryas baboons, 400 strong, battle on the plains of Ethiopia to steal females and settle old scores. Japanese macaques in Japan beat the cold by lounging in thermal springs, but only if they come from the right family. An orangutan baby fails in its struggle to make an umbrella out of leaves to keep off the rain. Young capuchins cannot quite get the hang of smashing nuts with a large rock, a technique their parents have perfected. Chimpanzees, humans’ closest relatives, have created an entire tool kit to get their food.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Prehistoric ParkBlue Planet 2Frozen Planet 2Nature’s Great EventsThe Blue PlanetSpy in The Wild

#animals #life

BBC One - Life

A look at the extraordinary ends to which animals and plants go in order to survive.

^BBC

trom

2012-10-28 22:40:55

Nature’s Great Events

Favorite

trailer

https://videos.trom.tf/videos/embed/td569G1nAC5hW39gF6skEz?autoplay=0&title=0&warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0


magnet

YEAR: 2009 | LENGTH: 6 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

description:

Nature’s Great Events is a wildlife documentary series made for BBC television, first shown in the UK on BBC One and BBC HD in February 2009. The series looks at how seasonal changes powered by the sun cause shifting weather patterns and ocean currents, which in turn create the conditions for some of the planet’s most spectacular wildlife events. Each episode focuses on the challenges and opportunities these changes present to a few key species.

Nature’s Great Events was produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in association with the Discovery Channel and Wanda Films. The British version of the series was narrated by David Attenborough. In the USA, the series was shown under the alternative title Nature’s Most Amazing Events beginning on 29 May 2009[1] and was narrated by Hasani Issa.[2] In Australia, this program began airing on ABC1 each Sunday at 7:30pm from 14 June until 19 July 2009.

The title Nature’s Great Events was previously used by Reader’s Digest for a unrelated VHS series released in 1996

episodes:

01. The Great Melt
The opening episode shows how different species respond to the annual summer thaw of sea ice in the Arctic. The extent of the melt has been increasing in recent times, and this could be disastrous for polar bears. A mother emerges from her winter den with cubs, and leads them on to the sea ice to hunt. As the ice breaks up, the bears have difficulty walking and resort to swimming between floes. For others, it’s a race to breed in the short summer season. When guillemots arrive at their nesting cliffs, the rocks are still cloaked in ice. A few short weeks later, the young launch themselves on their maiden flights, but those that crash before they reach open water present an easy meal for an Arctic fox mother and her cubs. Aerial footage shows the arrival of belugas and narwhals at the edge of the sea ice. The narwhals navigate their way along leads, but can become trapped if the ice ahead is still unbroken. In the height of summer, large parts of the Arctic Ocean are virtually ice-free, leaving some polar bears stranded on the few remaining icebergs. Those that reach dry land must wait for the winter ice to return before they can start hunting again. As the bears congregate, fights break out between the males. Nature’s Great Events Diaries follows the camera team’s attempts to locate narwhals in “Quest for Ice Whales”.

02. The Great Salmon Run
The subject of the second programme is the annual salmon run on the west coast of North America. Hundreds of millions of Pacific salmon return to the mountain streams in which they were born, where they will spawn and then die. Their passage upstream is fraught with danger, from rapids, waterfalls and hungry grizzly bears. The programme begins at the arrival of spring, with a grizzly mother leading her cubs down from their winter den in the Alaskan mountains. The bears congregate in the forested valleys, where they forage for whatever food they can find. Survival is tough for all, as shown by a pack of hungry wolves attacking an adult grizzly. It is not until July that the salmon arrive in great numbers. Other predators join the feast, including Orcas, Stellar sea Lions, Salmon sharks and the Bald headed Eagle. Those that make it past the bears risk becoming trapped in shallow reaches as the water level subsides. Relief comes as a summer storm replenishes the streams, triggered by moist ocean air rising over the coastal mountains. As they reach the spawning grounds, the salmon change body shape and colour in preparation for spawning. When it is over, the fish are close to exhaustion and they die en masse, providing an easy meal for birds and lingering bears. Their deaths are not in vain, for the nutrients from their decaying bodies help to fertilise the soil, sustaining the forests of tall pines. The diary piece, “Close Encounters of a Grizzly Kind”, reveals how footage of the bears fishing using their feet was obtained.

03. The Great Migration
The third installment follows a year in the life of the Ndutu lion pride, which occupies a territory on the short-grass plains of the Serengeti. Their lives are dictated by the annual migration of one million wildebeest and zebra around the Serengeti. As the herds move north following the rains, the Ndutu pride’s four lionesses and seven cubs are left behind to face the dry season without their main prey. The grass dies off leaving the lions without cover, making hunting what few animals remain even more difficult. The pride must keep moving to find food, but gradually the starving cubs weaken. A female cub and her brother, both in very poor condition, cannot keep up with the adults, and their fate seems sealed. However, when the pride is relocated the following month, the two cubs have somehow survived and been reunited with the adults. The lions face a further challenge as the active volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai erupts for the first time since 1967, raining ash down on the plains. These cyclical eruptions play a crucial role in the Serengeti ecosystem. The ash fertilises the earth, and with the arrival of the first storms, the plains become green and lush. The wildebeest herds return and give birth to their young, and the Ndutu pride can enjoy the good times again. In “Pride and Peril”, the diary segment, cameraman Owen Newman’s long and lonely vigil watching the Ndutu pride is rewarded with a story of hardship, loss and fortitude.

04. The Great Tide
Along South Africa’s east coast, the right combination of winter weather and ocean currents trigger the sardine run, one of the most impressive events in the world’s oceans. In recent years, the sardine run has become less predictable, for reasons which are still unclear, bringing into jeopardy an entire food chain which it supports. The fourth programme follows the largest gathering of predators on the planet as they hunt down billions of sardines pinned to the cold water along the coast. They include Cape gannets, which time their breeding to coincide with the arrival of the huge sardine shoals. They are filmed at their breeding colony on Bird Island and in super slow motion breaking the surface on their plunge dives. In the water, a super-pod of 5,000 common dolphins also hunts down the sardines. A 15-mile long shoal is located by the predators, and the ensuing feeding frenzy is filmed from the air, the surface and underwater. Dolphins herd the sardines into the shallows, where they come within reach of the diving gannets. Thousands of sharks arrive to join the attack, but the largest predator of all is the lunging Bryde’s whale. “Life on the Run” follows the fortunes of the film crew as they track the hunters. In 2007, the sardine run didn’t happen at all, but their patience was rewarded the following year.

05. The Great Flood
The fifth installment is set in Botswana, where the arid plains of the Kalahari are transformed into a lush wetland by the annual flooding of the Okavango Delta. The Okavango River is charged by rain falling in the Angolan highlands, but it is months before the water arrives at the delta. Meanwhile, thousands of animals follow ancient migration routes across the desert, braving dehydration and punishing heat. New elephant behaviour is filmed as they skim their trunks delicately across the surface of a stagnant pool, siphoning clean water from the upper layers. The transformation of the desert into a green oasis is filmed using time-lapse photography, whilst sequences shot with macro lenses show the changes in much finer detail. For the first time, vast clouds of dragonflies are observed emerging to mate and lay their eggs. Larger animals make the most of the sudden riches the new landscape offers. Male hippos plough through the newly-formed waterways and battle for dominance, red lechwe bound through the shallows and huge flocks of wading birds arrive to breed. Elephants and buffalo face one final challenge before they reach the delta; a pride of hungry lions. The lions attack in broad daylight, bringing down an elephant calf. The making-of featurette, “Mission Impassable”, follows the crew as they struggle to cross ever-deepening waters to reach and film the front line of the advancing flood.

06. The Great Feast
The final episode features the summer plankton bloom along the coast of British Columbia and Alaska. In winter, the coastal fjords and inlets are relatively lifeless, and the resident Steller sea lions must dive deeper and further from the coast to catch the widely-dispersed herring. Humpback whales overwinter in the warm Pacific waters off Hawaii, where new mothers suckle their calves. They begin their 3,000 mile journey north in early spring, when the sea lions also give birth to their young. Spring storms are a hazard for the sea lion colonies and some pups are inevitably lost, but these same storms disturb nutrients in the water which, together with the strengthening power of the sun, act as the catalysts for the plankton bloom. Huge shoals of herring arrive to spawn, turning the shallows milky white. The herring sift plankton from the water. In their wake come larger predators, including Pacific white-sided dolphins and killer whales. The latter are filmed attacking a male sea lion. Common murres dive under the herring shoals and pick off the fish from below, pinning them to the surface. Their defence is to form a bait ball, but gulls gathering on the surface attack them from above. The finale to the programme features unique underwater footage of humpbacks engulfing whole bait balls, and reveals their co-operative hunting behaviour called bubble-netting. The diary segment, “Swallowed by a Whale”, looks at the challenges of filming the humpbacks and sea lions underwater.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Frozen PlanetFrozen Planet 2Blue Planet 2The Blue PlanetSeven Worlds, One PlanetThe Great Rift, Africa’s Wild Heart

#birds #earth #fish #insects #life #mammals #nature

Frozen Planet

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2011 | LENGTH: 7 parts (50 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: BBC description: The seven-part series focuses …

^VideoNeat

trom

2012-10-20 22:34:10

Prehistoric Park

Favorite

trailer

https://videos.trom.tf/videos/embed/6yvBWA3Ssgr5zAhyKgDvCE?autoplay=0&title=0&warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0


magnet

YEAR: 2006 | LENGTH: 6 parts (50 minutes each) | SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

description:

Prehistoric Park is a six-episode Docu-fiction television mini-series that premiered on ITV on 22 July 2006 and on Animal Planet on 29 October 2006. The program was produced by Impossible Pictures, who also createdWalking with Dinosaurs.

The program is narrated by David Jason and presented by Nigel Marven. The fictional component is the theme that Nigel goes back to various geological time periods through a time portal, and brings back live specimens of extinct animals back to the present day, where they are exhibited in awildlife park named Prehistoric Park, which is a big area between high steep mountains and ocean, with varied environments.

The story, which is told in the style of a documentary, focuses on naturalist Nigel Marven leading missions to find and collect extinct animals from the distant past by use of a time machine. The animals are then placed in the confines of Prehistoric Park, a private wildlife park that is situated in a dry, mountainous region of an unspecified part of the world. Marven’s core motivation in the series is to defy extinction and to give select extinct species a second chance at life.

episodes:

01. T. Rex Returns

The episode starts with the crew erecting the prehistoric animal enclosures. Nigel immediately knows which animal he wants to bring back first: the huge dinosaur Tyrannosaurus.Nigel goes through the time portal, aiming to bring back a Tyrannosaurus. He finds a flock of Ornithomimus and tries to catch one by putting a sock over its head to quieten it, but must let it go when three Tyrannosaurus arrive. Nigel is pursued by the Tyrannosaurus, but they give up when he heads into the deeper forest where they cannot pursue as they are so top-heavy, tripping could kill them.

He tracks the Tyrannosaurus to the middle of their territory. He finds some Tyrannosaurus eggs, hoping to bring some back for hatching, but they are broken and empty, either hatched or eaten. As he returns to camp, in the sky are meteors running ahead of the asteroid which will wipe out the dinosaurs.

The next day he finds a herd of Triceratops. The pride of Tyrannosaurus attack the Triceratops herd. A femaleTyrannosaurus is gored in the thigh during the attack. The male Tyrannosaurus back off, leaving the woundedTyrannosaurus to catch her prey alone. It goes after a 3-ton young male Triceratops, Nigel opens the time portal and leads the Triceratops through it by waving his jacket at it matador-fashion. It follows him through but the Tyrannosaurus does not follow. The Triceratops is named Theo and becomes the park’s first exhibit. Theo starts persistently charging the same tree, and his neck frill changes color. Susanne thinks that it is rutting. This gives Bob an idea.

Nigel heads back through the time portal and finds a Tyrannosaurus track in volcanic ash, and sees by the dragged toes that it is the female with the gored thigh. Nigel sees that the Tyrannosaurus is walking alongside a river following a driftingTriceratops carcass. The carcass gets stuck in rocks in the riverbed. She cannot reach it and carries on downriver. Nigel and others build a crude stockade wall alongside the river out of local fallen timber, trying to funnel her through the time portal. A flock of Ornithomimus appear and run ahead, and the Tyrannosaurus chases them through the time portal into the park. TheTyrannosaurus catches a straggler, a young Ornithomimus near Nigel and turns back. Instead of eating it there, she carries it towards the volcano despite her injured thigh. Nigel follows.

Back at the park, Bob puts the Ornithomimus into their new paddock and gets back to his plan for Theo.

Meanwhile, Nigel continues to follow the wounded Tyrannosaurus until he finds that she has two babies. Nigel plans to bring the Tyrannosaurus mother and her babies back to the park with him, but a male Tyrannosaurus attacks the female for her kill. In the ensuing battle, the male Tyrannosaurus smashes the female’s head against a rock formation, an injury that results in the mother’s death.

At this point, a 6-mile-wide asteroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 20,000 mph (32,000 km/h) and hits the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion is 7 billion times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, and its blast column can be seen in Montana. It leaves Nigel with three minutes while the blast front travels from Chicxulub to Montana at 200 times the speed of sound (c 245,000 km/h) and reaches him. Under a sky full of bright meteors, he uses the only meat that he has (what appears to be a ham sandwich) to entice the two young Tyrannosaurus through the time portal with a second to spare; a bit of the impact blast chases him through the Time Portal. In the park, they are put in an observation pen and named Terence and Matilda.

The head keeper copes with Theo’s rutting by making a “rival” for Theo by using old tires and oddments attached to a tractor to build a crude mock Triceratops head and neck on the front of a tractor, providing something for Theo to take his aggression out on. Later, Terence and Matilda are moved to their new enclosure. The Park takes into account that keeping the pair under control is going to be a major challenge.

02. A Mammoth Undertaking

In the park, the dinosaurs are settling in. The Tyrannosaurus are being fed. Nigel goes to visit a herd of African elephants in the park: there are at least four including a young calf. He now wants to rescue a mammoth from extinction.He goes through the Time Portal to 10,000 BC northwest Siberia just east of the Ural Mountains where the last mammoths lived. It is early spring but the land is still under snow. He drives a snowmobile over a frozen lake. He sees nothing but densetaiga forest and rocky mountains: as the land became warmer as the Ice Age ended, trees replaced tundra grass and Mammuthus lost their grazing; they cannot eat pine needles. This reduced their numbers, then prehistoric Cro-Magnon humans finished them off by hunting them for food.He explores a nearby cave and comes face to face with a muscular male cave bear; he had disturbed its hibernation. He had thought that the cave bear would already be extinct by this point. It chases Nigel and the cameraman away. Without the equipment to transport it safely, Nigel cannot save it, so he decides to get back to saving a mammoth.

Nigel goes up a rocky slope to scout the area. He sees what a gap in the trees: it may be open land, and perhaps there are mammoths there. He decides to check.

He finds two adolescent female mammoths. The older mammoth is dead in a pit. The younger mammoth makes rumblings in her stomach, trying to communicate with her dead companion. She looks ill. She staggers and falls to the ground. She is so weak that she can barely lift her trunk. She is staying with the fallen mammoth; they may be sisters. Nigel sees a spear wound in her left shoulder. He brings in his team to help.

In the park, the Ornithomimus are not eating the grass, nor the beetles living there. Bob realises that they have duck-like mouths: rough like sandpaper. He decides to put them into an enclosure with a pond. The Ornithomimus thrive in their new home.

Nigel needs to get the mammoth strong enough to walk through the Time Portal. He gives her an antibiotic injection. Evening comes and the palaeolithic hunters are back. The Park men put up a line of big burning torches stuck in the ground. The men plan to guard in turns, but Nigel decides to sit up with the Mammuthus all night, to keep her company. Wolves prowl about at a distance all night.

Morning comes and the mammoth is strong enough to stand. It shows no aggression, and stays with her dead sister, but the team must get her back to the park. They set up the Time Portal. Nigel leads the mammoth back to the present and cals on awalkie-talkie for urgent medical help.

In the park, Susanne gives sedative and antibiotic to the mammoth, treats the wound, and after some pulling extracts a stone spearhead from it. She is on the road to recovery. They name her Martha.

Martha is healthy, but is not eating, and needs to eat for strength to recover. They put Martha in an enclosure labeled “Mammoth Mount”. Suzanne looks at an African elephant molar and a mammoth molar, and sees that they are designed to chew about the same sorts of food. Maybe Martha is not eating because she needs a specific diet.

To solve the mystery, Nigel goes through the Time Portal to the same place in Siberia 150,000 years ago at the peak of theice age. Mammoths range across from Europe to northeast Asia. He finds a large herd of adult female mammoths. The land is cold but dry and has many kinds of grass and no trees. Each herd follows a matriarch, who is 50 or 60 years old. He collects a large sample of grass and mosses to bring back and analyse. A male mammoth on musth comes, looking for females ready to mate. All the mammoths are thriving on the grassland diet.

He sees a sub-adult male Elasmotherium by the snowmobile. It is downwind from him. but there is a risk of it seeing him, and if it sees anything unexpected it may charge. Nigel is between the Elasmotherium and the musth male mammoth. He drops the bag of vegetation and runs to the snowmobile and drives to a safe distance. Nigel decides to bring theElasmotherium back, riskily using himself as bait, as Elasmotherium will soon be extinct due to climate change. Nigel runs to the sample bag. The Elasmotherium charges at him. Nigel picks the bag up and runs. The Elasmotherium chases him through the Time Portal into the entrance stockade in the park.

Back at the Park, Nigel offers Martha the Ice Age grass, but Martha still refuses to eat. Whilst he admits it isanthropomorphic to say so, Nigel thinks that she looks lonely; in the wild female mammoths are always in groups.

The Elasmotherium, which is accustomed to being alone, is settling in but Martha is accustomed to being with relatives. There is a council, to decide on putting Martha with the elephants. It is risky: elephant matriarchs have been known to kill new elephants that tried to push into an established herd but they decide to try it.

At Mammoth Mount, the elephants come up to Martha’s enclosure. Martha and the elephants’ matriarch approach each other, curious, and non-aggressively. Nigel calls to open the gate. Martha follows the elephant matriarch. Martha is now eating well.

03. Dinobirds

This is a rescue mission just before the site area’s dinosaurs were wiped out by a volcano. It is aimed at getting specimens of Microraptor, which is threatened by volcanoes and with being out-competed by the coming birds. (Note that unlike the other dinosaurs in the episode, Microraptor was not present in the Lujiatun Beds of the Yixian Formation, and did not live along side Mei and Incisivosaurus. In reality, it lived several million years later, and hails from the Jiufotang Formation, 120-110 million years ago).In the park, there are now more than 24 animals. The two juvenile Tyrannosaurus often threaten each other. There is a heat wave and Martha themammoth with her small ears and long hair and blubber is affected by the heat, as she had been brought from an Ice Age winter.

Nigel and four other people go on foot through the time portal to the site. A large threatening volcano stands over the area. There are hot springs, and a risk of natural carbon dioxide seepage. There is a small earthquake. They get away onto higher ground.

They come to an apparently non-volcanic lake. Pterosaurs fly in and fly with their lower jaws skimming in the surface of the lake for fish. When they get back to camp they find that something had raided their camp and torn much of their equipment apart looking for the meat that was part of their rations. This loss of food supplies causes a crisis. As they walk through a forest, something follows them through the fern undergrowth, then goes away.

In the park, Martha the Mammuthus is led to stand between two jeeps, and several members of the team stand on one of them to clip her hair short to avoid the overheating. During this Martha sneezes over everybody and the camera.

On site, four Mei long attack one of the party, who gets them off him by jettisoning his pack, which contains the meat which they were after. Due to the nature of the attack, it is implied that the Mei long were responsible for the destruction and raid of the camp. Nigel finds an Incisivosaurus. It displays at him and then charges, and bumps the camera with its nose, leaving spit and snot on its lens. It has short quill feathers on its arms, too short for flight, and also quill feathers on the sides of the ends of its tail. It was thought that dinosaur feathers first arose for insulation for warmth, then the quill feathers arose for displaying and later got big enough for gliding.

In the park, Bob is looking at the Ornithomimus from a hide and sees that one of the Ornithomimus starts to go off by itself looking in undergrowth, and there are fears about its health.

On site, Nigel using binoculars sees some Microraptors going in the same direction, and follows them. This brings him to a herd of titanosaurspushing through the dense forest making a trampled track as if a convoy of trucks had gone that way. That is not a usual habitat for titanosaurs, and it turns out that they are looking for somewhere to lay eggs safely hidden from egg-eaters. 12 Microraptors come: they were after insects disturbed by the titanosaurs pushing through vegetation and tearing up the ground and treading on insect-ridden rotten logs. Nigel tries to catch someMicroraptors, but they are all too quick for him.

Nigel makes an enclosure of net, with inside it a hollow baited with insects, as Microraptors can only glide and cannot take off from flat ground. TheMicroraptors see the insects but mistrust the net. Out of nowhere, two male Incisivosaurus, one chasing the other, run into the net and flatten it and get away. Then the Microraptors land and eat the insects. Nigel runs at them but catches nothing. The men go back through the time portal to the park.

In the park the one Ornithomimus has started lying about in the shade. Nigel has seen this behavior in birds, and guesses that the Ornithomimus isbroody.

Nigel and at least four others go back through the time portal to the site. Nigel now has a net gun (which he has tested on Bob), and a carbon dioxidedetector. Each man has a gasmask in his pack, as volcanic ash in the air damages the lungs. In a forest Nigel comes across a pair of Incisivosauruswho seem to be courting, by calling and displaying at each other close up.

In the park, the Ornithomimus is taken into the vet’s examination room. A bag is put over its head, to quieten it. Medical ultrasound shows that it has two fully developed functioning oviducts, each containing an egg. (Modern birds only have a left oviduct.)

The two Tyrannosaurus are threatening each other.

On site Nigel sees that the titanosaur trail goes downhill towards the volcano, but he must follow it. They find several Mei long which had gone to sleep in a flat-bottomed hollow. Nigel plans to avoid the hollow to avoid waking them, but something seems wrong. He claps a few times, but nothing happens. He pokes one with a stick, but it does not wake. He realizes that the Mei longs are dead from gassing by carbon dioxide of volcanic origin. He looks at his carbon dioxide detector, which gives a reading. He calls out ”carbon dioxide!” and tells everybody to go to higher ground.

In the park the two Tyrannosaurus start to fight. They are separated by water blast from a watercannon mounted on a large water tanker truck and put in separate small pens while a partition is built dividing their enclosure. Both growl and roar in frustration.

On site, Nigel and his party finds the titanosaurs laying eggs in ground warmed by underground volcanic heat, a good place for incubation. He picks up one of the eggs and puts it back in the nest. Unlike with a hen’s egg, it must always be the same way up, to avoid damage to the embryo. He reflects that the hatchling would grow to 30,000 times the weight to become adult. The Microraptors arrive, and with his netgun Nigel catches 4 of them. The strongest quake yet happens, and the top of the volcano explodes violently with an ash cloud. This spooks the titanosaurs, which stampede. Some titanosaurs are coming straight at Nigel, who curls up on the ground wrapped around the Microraptors until they pass. He is uninjured but one of the Microraptor has a simple broken left forearm bone. The volcano erupts, blasting out a huge ash cloud. The dinosaurs stampede. Nigel and his team put their gas masks on and quickly set up the time portal in the falling volcanic ash. It comes active just in time, and nine titanosaurs come through it, surprising the men in the park, who have to find somewhere to put them; Bob says “I don’t believe it.” seeing them come through the time portal.

In the park the broody Ornithomimus starts to lay eggs: it has laid six eggs (one pair per day) in a part circle when the episode ends. The injuredMicroraptor’s arm is splinted under anaesthetic; one of the staff refers to it as “she”. Bob erects a new fence which he believes will keep the Titanosaurs contained: however, the dinosaurs beg to differ…

04. Saving the Sabretooth

Nigel is shown walking with a tame cheetah. He comments that specialization has threatened the cheetah, and later that it may have wiped out theSmilodon. In the park the titanosaurs break their fence and have to be let wander around the park. They go towards the park’s main gates. Bob follows one in a tractor. During this he shouts at a titanosaur ”Get back, you great lummox.” To his disgust it discharges runny smelly faeces in front of him: its gut clearly does not like some of the modern vegetation. At the same time, Nigel radios to Bob that he will need a birdcage for a bird standing 10 feet high, but due to tractor engine noise and titanosaur noise, Bob only hears part of the message, and provides an ordinary parakeet-sized birdcage. Nigel explains to Bob what is needed.Nigel goes through the time portal to South America 1 million years ago when the sabre-tooth species known as Smilodon were in their prime (having recently entered South America after the Panama land bridge formed), but the terror birds (Phorusrhachids) were dying out; before that South America had been cut off from the other continents for 30 million years. He drives through a moving herd of Toxodon; he follows them to find where they were going, and he sees that they were going to water to swim or wallow in: he sees that they lived like modern hippopotamus, and thus may be dangerous like hippos. A huge male Toxodon chases Nigel’s jeep, and he has to drive fast and far before it gives up the chase.

In the park the female Ornithomimus had laid more eggs. Two of them have rolled out of the nest and she leaves them there, so Susanne must rescue them for artificial incubation, as all those eggs are precious. Susanne stalks up to them and picks them up; the Ornithomimus does not chase, but demonstrates, causing a flurry among some white egrets. Bob puts the 2 eggs in an incubator at 33 °C, as this is best temperature forcrocodile and ostrich eggs.

On site Nigel sees a female Smilodon stalk a Toxodon and then after a short chase, jump on its head and bite its throat to kill it. More Smilodoncome, including some 6 to 8 week old cubs. While waiting Nigel has a coffee and the Smilodon eat their fill and go away. A Phorusrhacos starts to eat from the carcass. Another Smilodon appears and chases it away, forcing it to drop a lump of meat which it had pulled off. That sort of pressure is why the Phorusrhacos were dying out. Nigel stalks up to that dropped piece of meat and picks it up. The Smilodon on the kill demonstrates at him but does not charge at him. Nigel tows the piece of meat behind his jeep and entices the Phorusrhacos to chase it through the time portal into the park.

In the park the eggs incubated by the Ornithomimus hatch and the resulting young run about (the first baby dinosaurs for 65 million years), but the two eggs in the incubator do not hatch. The young Ornithomimus are covered in downy feathers.

Accompanied by big cat expert Saba Douglas-Hamilton, Nigel goes through the time portal to South America in 10,000BC when the sabertooth species were dying out. They find a drier climate and no big game. Nigel and Saba separate, on foot. Saba hears animals’ alarm cries, but Nigel finds nothing.

Saba finds a deposit of fresh Smilodon faeces. She pulls it apart with a knife and fork and finds that it is full of hair and bone and bits of animal hide, as if hunger had forced the Smilodon to scavenge old remains of carcasses.

Nigel hears vegetation noise from an animal near him. He finds, catches and releases an ordinary modern-type armadillo and remarks that a million years earlier there were giant armadillos about.

Saba later finds something in the grass; sadly, it is a dead Smilodon cub. Nigel cannot find any signs of ill health and realises that the cub must have died from starvation. This has at least given them a hint. A female Smilodon cannot be far away. However, she must be in very poor condition.

Nigel has a videocamera with a movement detector: he leaves it overnight watching over a trail. In the morning he plays it back and finds that a male Smilodon had investigated it and knocked it over, urinated on it and left a musky mammal smell.

Saba watches the female Smilodon hunting. It sees her and confronts her. She backs off. Nigel meets Saba. Due to lack of prey the femaleSmilodon is hunting unsuitably light fast prey, a deer: when she charges, the deer runs away easily. Later they see her suckling a live cub, but she is making little or no milk for it. A male Smilodon turns up: there is risk that it will kill the cub to bring its mother into oestrus sooner. In the jeep they anaesthetic-dart the male Smilodon and start to wait 10 minutes while the dart drug works. The Smilodon charges out of bushes and jumps on the front of the jeep; they back off.

In the park the men have finished building a partition across the Tyrannosaurus enclosure, and put a Tyrannosaurus on each side. Matilda keeps threatening Terence but now cannot reach him.

On site, they find the male Smilodon and load it up on the back of the jeep. Then they go for the female, planning to anaesthetic-dart her and load her and her cub. When they reach her, the cub has starved to death. The female Smilodon is badly underweight from trying to lactate on too little food, and is dying as well, so Saba anaesthetic darts the female Smilodon. A little while later, Nigel and Saba load the female into the jeep, but both are upset that the cub could not be saved.

The two Ornithomimus eggs in the incubator hatch, late but successfully: Bob guesses that the incubator’s temperature had been set a little too low. The two resulting hatchlings see Bob and imprint on him, thinking that he is their mother and follow him about. They eat food pellets out of his hand.

With good food and no need to lactate, the two Smilodon and the Phorusrhacos recover from their hunger over the next fortnight. However, tensions remain high, as Matilda’s increasingly aggressive behaviour could spell danger for the Park.

05. The Bug House

In the park, Bob puts the two imprinted baby Ornithomimus in an enclosure with the other baby Ornithomimus and tells them to stay there, one nips his leg. The Smilodon are in adjacent enclosures. The male wants the female, but the more mature female is not interested, either ignoring him or acting aggressively towards him.Nigel goes to modern Arran (in a large RIB[disambiguation needed] with an A-frame and a steering wheel), and sees a fossil Arthropleura track in rock. He talks about what Arran was 300,000,000 years ago.

He goes back to the park to serious trouble among the Tyrannosaurus: Matilda has broken into Terence’s enclosure: Terence has refused to allow his sister to intrude on his territory and a fight has broken out, in which Matilda is gaining the upper hand, soon knocking him down. Terence has been badly wounded on the face and is losing blood. Bob has drug-darted Matilda, but these drugs take time to act on reptiles. When Terence is badly injured by his sister, Nigel arrives in a roofed jeep and encourages her to chase his jeep. When he comes to dense woodland, he can drive no further and climbs a tree. Matilda pulls the cloth cover off the top of the jeep, and then collapses due to the tranquilliser.

The injured Terence is in good hands, so Nigel, with assistants, drives in the jeep through the time portal to Upper Carboniferous Arran, where the land is covered with coal forest. He had aimed at an island of dry land, but drives out of the Time Portal’s field into a swamp over his jeep’s axles. The jeep’s engine gets wet and stops and will not start. The forest is very quiet, as there is no bird song or tree-frog noise, only wind and insects. AMeganeura flies over.

In the park, Terence is in the animal clinic, anaesthetized, and Susanne is operating on the wounds. She prefers absorbable sutures to surgical clips, since Terence would need to be anaesthetised again for the clips to be removed. She sews the wounds with the skin edges sticking out a bit, as is sometimes done when operating on reptiles.

On site, Upper Carboniferous air is 35% oxygen, not 20% as now, and that is why the insects are so big. Nigel climbs a 150-foot-tall tree (Sigillariaor Lepidodendron or similar): it has no branches until near its top, and he must use a loop of strap around himself and the tree, to climb. He reaches its top and sees a wide view, and patches of open water: the place to look for Meganeura. A Meganeura flies over.

In the park, an enclosed building to contain a 35% nitrox atmosphere for the coal forest wildlife is being built, with airlock doors. A titanosaur goes past, knocks a partly built wall down with its head, looks at the rubble, then goes away. Bob says that the titanosaurs cannot seem to settle in one area. Bob offers the titanosaur a cycad leaf, but it does not eat.

On site, Nigel wades through a swamp. Something big moves about underwater and makes bubbles. Nigel hears something big moving about in undergrowth on land, and chases it, and finds an Arthropleura. It rears and confronts him. It is 10 feet long and has big dangerous-lookingmandibles. Some modern millipedes (see Harpaphe haydeniana) can squirt cyanide, which smells of almonds, and Nigel fears that Arthropleuramay also.

In the park, Susanne has put climbing poles in the Smilodon enclosures: this is environmental enrichment, which will hopefully make them happier so she will be more accepting of the male.

Bob suspects that the titanosaurs are looking for stomach stones, and collects stones for them.

On site, the Arthropleura has gone, leaving a track. Nigel says that that may be the same track that he saw fossilized on modern Arran. He sees two male Meganeura have a dogfight. Afterwards, one flies away and the other looks for food. Nigel has a butterfly net, but a butterfly net big enough to catch a Meganeura is cumbersome. As Nigel makes a move to catch a Meganeura, something in the water bites his right ankle. He says “Animal bites for us wildlife folks are just a badge of courage.” They look for a dry area to camp. Evening is coming. The crew camp for the night. They have head lights strapped to their heads. Nigel warns them never to walk without boots on in case of stinging animals. Someone by force of habit putsmosquito net up, and Nigel tells him to take it down, as mosquitoes have not evolved yet. Nigel sleeps under a waterproof sheet in a hammock slung between two giant lycopsid trees in the coal forest. There is a thunderstorm in the night.

In the park, Bob brings a wheelbarrow full of the stones to some titanosaurs; one of them investigates it.

In an observation enclosure, Terence is lethargic, and blood tests show Susanne that Terence has septicaemia, and she reluctantly gives himantibiotic (not knowing how the drugs will react with a prehistoric reptile). While it is risky giving antibiotics to an unknown species, Suzanne knows if she does not, the infection of his injuries will probably kill Terence.

On site, the thunderstorm stops, and it is still night, and animals tend to become active after rain. Nigel goes about with a large ultraviolet light. He finds a Pulmonoscorpius nearly a meter long, by its shell fluorescing. He films it, but his camera work is shaky and he would need the team’s cameraman to take good footage. The Pulmonoscorpius then begins crawling onto Jim’s bed, and looks as if it may sting him when he twitches in his sleep. Nigel grabs it by the tail end, and it nips him with its pincers. He lets it go away from the camp. This wakes Jim, and Nigel explains to Jim what happened.

In the park Sabrina, the female Smilodon, seems happier, and as if she will accept the male. Susanne wonders whether to raise the door between their enclosures.

On site, Nigel tries to catch a Meganeura by a technique known for catching modern dragonflies, by filling a long two-handed hand-pumped water-gun with detergent solution to squirt on a Meganeura so that it will fall in the water and become wet, so it can be caught easily. The Meganeura are very fast and agile, but after many failed attempts, he hits one perched on a floating log. Nigel gets his net and catches the Meganeura. In the water he sees a big amphibian. He passes the net with the Meganeura in to a companion and swims underwater (without a diving mask) and catches the amphibian after a struggle, as it is very strong and slippery. He shows that it is an underwater ambush predator. It has two rows of teeth in its upper jaw and one in its lower jaw. He sees that it is a Crassigyrinus, whose fossils have only been found in Scotland; he nicknames it a “swamp monster” as it has no common name. That is what bit his ankle earlier. He has to let it go, as he has no way to transport it safely. He holds the Meganeuravertically by its thorax so its wings fan his face, as the forest is very hot and damp, then puts the Meganeura in a net cage.

In the park Susanne lifts the door between the Smilodon enclosures. They have a water jet ready to separate the two if they fight. The male goes into the female’s enclosure. They growl somewhat at each other, but do not fight.

On site, Nigel looks for the Pulmonoscorpius. He finds one nearly a meter long under a half casing of a rotted-out fallen lycopsid log. It has thin claws, so Nigel is worried, because with scorpions small claws mean big sting. He holds its attention with a thin stick and works his a hand behind it and grabs its telson just in front of its sting. As he puts it in a dog carrier, it stings the back of his right hand as he lets it go. But a worse danger is coming.

In the park, Bob has filled the insect house with 35% nitrox atmosphere and has realized the resulting increased fire risk. He lights a thin piece of wood to show the fire risk.

The lightning storm has started a forest fire, which is spreading fast towards them, and in the 35%-oxygen air vegetation is much more inflammable than in modern air. They run towards the jeep. Nigel trips over a big Arthropleura hidden in ground litter. It rears to confront him. Nigel, who was wanting to get away quickly, was not thankful for this delay, but says he must rescue it, else it will be burned alive. After a struggle, he and another man wrap it in a plastic sheet and tie red cord around it. They load everything on the jeep and set up the Time Portal just in front of the jeep, whose engine still will not start. Nigel runs through the Time Portal, comes back with the end of a tow rope, and ties it to the jeep, which is towed out of the coal forest swamp back into the modern age. They see that the tow rope was being towed not by a towtruck or other vehicle, but by a titanosaur, which Bob was enticing with the wheelbarrowfull of gastrolith stones. (This seems to imply that someone went back through the Time Portal earlier to tell the park staff to arrange a tow.)

The Arthropleura, the Meganeura, and the Pulmonoscorpius are put in the high-oxygen building. Terence is recovering well from his injury and infection but wrecks Suzanne’s surgery once he wakes up from anaesthetic: Susanne had not restrained him, not realising he would come around so fast. Terrence is taken back into his enclosure, since he seems likely to make a full recovery. Nigel’s sting site has swollen but still shows no serious symptoms, so either the Pulmonoscorpius’s venom does not affect mammals (it came from a time before mammals), or it did not inject any venom, or he pulled his hand away before it could inject. Bob seems to take a liking to the Arthropleura and hand-feeds it ferns. He says that he likes it because “it isn’t some kind of creepy-crawly bug, it’s more like a proper animal.” At the end of the episode is shown Terence is roaring at the Sunset.

06. Supercroc

In the park, near the Time Portal site there is a crocodile enclosure. There is a suspension bridge across it (the simple sort where the footway follows the catenary); Bob walks across it to feed the Nile crocodiles in the lake. Nigel plans to add a Deinosuchus, an ancient species of giant crocodilian (more closely related to alligators than crocodiles) which weighs up to 9 tons, to the park. Bob mutters that Nigel may have bitten off more than he can chew this time.In a jeep, Nigel goes through the Time Portal to the Cretaceous in Texas, where Dallas is now. At this time North America is divided into three land areas by a Y-shaped internal epicontinental sea. The land around the Time Portal exit point is dry: gravelly sand with patches of trees and bushes. Two half-size juvenile Parasaurolophus go by and stop about 10 m away. Nigel chases them towards the jeep. Then two Albertosaurus appear. TheParasaurolophus honk and run away. Nigel revs his jeep’s diesel engine: that makes the Albertosaurus back off, but not for long and they get accustomed to the noise (and presumably to diesel exhaust smell). He drives away. They chase him, at speed up to 30–38 mph, but they tire and turn away.

In the park, Bob is planting young trees to help feed the titanosaurs: he says that he will have to plant 2000 trees each year for this. The titanosaurs, of course, are no help whatsoever at this, and keep trampling trees down.

The Smilodon have bred and now have two cubs. Susanne sees that their mother is not making enough milk for the cubs, so she has to take the cubs and bottle-feed them, thus breaking the natural mother-cub link. If she were to put them back into their mother’s enclosure, they would be killed.

On site, Nigel drives onto a sea beach, and looks out to sea for signs of Deinosuchus which could survive for a limited time in salt water like modernsaltwater crocodiles. He stops. A herd of Parasaurolophus run past. They are each 10 meters long. He shouts at them to clear off in case they damage his jeep’s paintwork. He finds a conch-sized gastropod shell and makes a hole in it and blows it to try to have an exchange of vocalizations: they make noises using their hollow crests.

Nigel, with binoculars, sees 5 Nyctosaurus fly in from the sea. They fish by skimming the lower jaw through the water surface. Nigel has brought amicrolight with him: he uses it to fly with the Nyctosaurus. A Deinosuchus reaches its head out of the sea and grabs one of the Nyctosaurus. Nigel sees another Deinosuchus swimming from the sea up a river, and decides to head in that direction.

In the park, Susanne visits Martha the Mammuthus. Martha tries to be an “auntie” to the elephant herd’s matriarch’s calf. The frightened matriarch drives Martha away. Martha is becoming isolated again, and there is fear that she will again stop eating.

On site, Nigel paddles in a red inflatable boat on the river. A Deinosuchus bites the boat’s stern, does not like the taste of rubber, and lets go. It snaps out of the water again by the boat, then disappears. Nigel paddles two miles upstream to a freshwater lake, where he sees someDeinosuchus on a sandbank, and a herd of Parasaurolophus forced by thirst to come to the lake to drink. Nigel paddles. He mentions thatDeinosuchus will (geologically) soon be wiped out when sea floods the area, as they have a specialised lifestyle, so he must rescue one. An unwary young Parasaurolophus goes to the lake to drink. A Deinosuchus rockets out of the lake and grabs it by the chest. The two roll over and over in the lake. More Deinosuchus swim in. They take turns to hold the kill while another tears at it.

In the park, the Phorusrhacos has developed a habit of dust bathing near its enclosure’s fence, undermining it. Each time, Bob fills the resulting hole with big stones. He realises that this tactic is only “firefighting” and that he will have to make a new fence with the bottom ends of all its posts buried four feet deep.

On site, Nigel has made a long double row of wooden posts ending in a blind end. He plans to entice a Deinosuchus with meat up the fenced route to the blind end. To get back to the jeep, he walks through a dense forest, but he is worried about dangerous predators. Something is following him. He feels relieved when a Troodon sticks its head up out of bushes and shows that it is much smaller than an Albertosaurus. When he reaches the jeep, he sees that three Troodon are eating the meat that he had brought as bait. He chases them away using a portable aerosol-like horn.

In the park Bob is shoveling up Elasmotherium dung when he sees the Phorusrhacos looking at him through a fence. He calls on his walkietalkiethat the Phorusrhacos has escaped again. A keeper comes in a jeep, and by towing some meat behind the jeep leads the Phorusrhacos back to its enclosure.

On site, Nigel plans to use the rest of his meat to bait a Deinosuchus up the stockade. He sets the bait at the stockade’s end. They rig hammocks. It gets dark. With their helmet headlights they see that some a Troodon was pulling away his bait. When Nigel chased after it, another came and ran off with the rest. The meat that was left was not enough to lure a Deinosuchus. They go to bed.

They are woken in the morning by the noise when three Albertosaurus kill a Parasaurolophus. Three Deinosuchus come out of the lake to steal the kill. There is noisy confrontation and some biting, and tugs-of-war over the flesh. The Albertosaurus admit defeat and back off.

In the park Martha the mammoth is still isolated from the elephant herd.

On site, Nigel must use himself as bait. He wades into the water and splashes it hard with a paddle until a Deinosuchus investigates. He backs off too soon; the Deinosuchus backs off. He splashes again. The Deinosuchus charges out of the sea and chases Nigel, who runs up the stockade path and at its blind end squeezes between two of its posts. He and 4 men with him struggle to hold the stockade posts upright, until theDeinosuchus tires, as cold-blooded reptiles tire quickly. They set up the time portal close outside the blind end of the stockade. Nigel in the jeep tows three of the end stockade posts out and through the Time Portal; the Deinosuchus is confined too closely to turn round, so it must follow him through the portal. It is enticed with a piece of meat to its pond (made close by the time portal), which it goes into.

In the park Bob as usual has to “pick up the pieces”. He drives the jeep to his next job, and mutters that Prehistoric Park needs more keepers, as they have so many problems: the Phorusrhacos escaped its enclosure again; the Smilodon cubs have had Suzanne up half the night, the titanosaurs eat too much, and to make matters worse, their digestive systems cannot handle the modern vegetation resulting in bad diarrhea, and Nigel constantly bringing back more creatures is not helping. Suddenly, a Troodon emerges from the kit on the back of the jeep: enticed by the meat in the jeep intended to lure the Deinosuchus, it has stowed away. It snaps at Bob, and the swerving jeep runs straight at a titanosaur, causing it to stampede through several enclosures, causing the Ornithimimus flock, Phorusrhacos, Elasmotherium, and, worst of all, Matilda theTyrannosaurus, to flee through the broken fences and run around freely through the park. Paying no attention to the titanosaur lumbering through her enclosure, Matilda walks right out into freedom, getting the scent of an easy meal. Bob manages to stop the jeep, and the Troodon leaps out and escapes into the undergrowth nearby. Bob runs off to try to capture the escapees. When trying to round up a group of escaped Ornithomimus and the Elasmotherium, Bob is warned that Matilda is on the loose and closing in on him, so he must flee. Matilda then heads for the elephants – she separates the calf from the rest of the herd and quickly runs it to the ground. But Martha, although the herd earlier drove her away, instinctively defends the calf, and with some trumpetings, growls, roars, and waving of tusks, her attack stops Matilda. Nigel then arrives and runs away on foot, trying to lure Matilda away to follow him. Matilda, seeing the prospect of an easy meal, turns away from Martha and starts chasing Nigel.

Nigel runs past the Nile crocodile pond, across an open area, and along a jeep track past theDeinosuchus lake, with Matilda closing the gap behind him. The Deinosuchus, accustomed to fighting giant theropods, surges out of the lake at Matilda, who swings around just in time to dodge the attack. This delay buys time for Nigel, who runs into the Time Portal’s entry stockaded enclosure and climbs out of it by a ladder. Matilda’s jaws are only about a foot distance from one of his feet as he climbs to safety. Nigel shuts the enclosure and Matilda is contained.

A few weeks later, extra keepers have been hired. The escaped animals are back in their enclosures. Bob catches the Troodon in a long tunnel trap with droppable doors at both ends, and presumably finds somewhere to keep it. The elephants, thankful for the help and rescue, let Martha join them as a full herd member and be an “auntie” to the elephant calf. The Smilodon cubs have been weaned and are eating meat, but they have not grown visible saber teeth yet.

At the end of the episode we see Nigel at his headquarters planning his next mission before travelling through the time portal, suggesting that a future series will be made.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Walking with DinosaursPlanet DinosaurSea Monsters: A Prehistoric AdventureWalking with MonstersLife in the UndergrowthThe Giant Claw

#dinosaur #Prehistory

trom

2012-11-10 01:42:47

Walking with Dinosaurs

Favorite

trailer

https://videos.trom.tf/videos/embed/7qD5UBSNzNiDAvJNWUpBDM?autoplay=0&title=0&warningTitle=0&peertubeLink=0


magnet

YEAR: 1999 | LENGTH: 8 parts (30 minutes each) | SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

description:

Walking with Dinosaurs is a six-part documentary television miniseries that was produced by BBC, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, and first aired in the United Kingdom, in 1999. The series was subsequently aired in North America on the Discovery Channel in 2000, with Branagh’s voice replaced with that of Avery Brooks. It is the first entry of the Walking with… series and used computer-generated imagery and animatronics to recreate the life of the Mesozoic, showing dinosaurs and their contemporaries in a way that previously had only been seen in feature films. The programme’s aim was to simulate the style of a nature documentary and therefore does not include “talking head” interviews. The series used palaeontologists such as Michael Benton, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., Peter Dodson, Peter Larson and James Farlow as advisors (their influence in the filming process can be seen in the documentary The Making of Walking with Dinosaurs).

Scientific inaccuracies:

Michael J. Benton, a consultant to the making of the series (and Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at Bristol University), notes that a group of critics gleefully pointed out that birds and crocodiles, the closest living relatives of the dinosaurs, do not urinate; they shed waste chemicals as more solid uric acid. In the first episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, Postosuchus urinates copiously.

However, Benton notes that nobody can prove this was a real mistake: copious urination is the primitive state for tetrapods (seen in fish, amphibians, turtles, and mammals), and perhaps basal archosaurs did the same. He believes many other claims of “errors” identified in the first weeks fizzled out, as the critics had found points about which they disagreed, but they could not prove that their views were correct. Ornithocheirus was depicted as far larger than it actually was. In the book based on the series, it was claimed that several large bone fragments from the Santana Formation of Brazil possibly indicate that Ornithocheirus may have had a wingspan reaching almost 12 metres and a weight of a hundred kilogrammes, making it one of the largest known pterosaurs.However, these specimens have not been formally described. The largest definite Ornithocheirus specimens known measure 6 metres in wingspan. The specimens which the producers of the program used to justify such a large size estimate are currently undescribed, and are being studied by Dave Martill and David Unwin. Unwin stated that he does not believe this highest estimate is likely, and that the producers likely chose the highest possible estimate because it was more “spectacular.” However, no other Early Cretaceous pterosaurs reached its size. Similarly, Liopleurodon was depicted as being 25m long in the series, whereas the adult size known to have been reached by Liopleurodon is around 7m.

episodes:

01. New Blood

220 million years ago, Late Triassic (Arizona)
Filming location: New Caledonia

The episode follows a female Coelophysis as she tries to survive during the dry season in what will become the North American Southwest. The Coelophysis is shown stalking a herd of Placerias (a giant synapsid or mammal-like reptile), looking for weak members to prey upon. A male mammal-like cynodont is shown downstream, returning to his burrow from the river. A female rauisuchian Postosuchus (one of the largest carnivores alive in the Triassic) is shown attacking the Placerias herd, and bites one of the members, driving the rest of the herd to retreat and leave the wounded and weakened member of the group to the carnivore. Early pterosaurs called Peteinosaurus are depicted feeding on dragonflies and cooling themselves in what little water is present during the drought. Still searching for food, the Coelophysis are shown discovering the cynodont burrow (and are initially frightened away by the emerging male). Eventually, one young cynodont strays too close to the entrance and is eaten before the father can drive the predators away.

At night, the pair of cynodonts are shown eating their remaining young, then moving away, while during the day, the Coelophysis work to expose the nest. The female Postosuchus is later shown to have been wounded by Placerias’s tusks (the wound is on her left thigh), and after being unable to successfully hunt another member of the Placerias herd she is beaten out of her territory by a rival male Postosuchus. Wounded, sick and without a territory, the female dies and is eaten by a pack of Coelophysis. As the dry season continues however, food becomes scarce and extreme measures are taken by all animals. The Placerias herd embarks on a trek through parched wasteland in search of water and are not seen again, meanwhile the Coelophysis start killing and cannibalising their young. The cynodont also resorts to hunting baby Coelophysis during the night. Finally, the wet season comes, and the majority of the Coelophysis have survived (including the female), along with the cynodont pair, who have a new clutch of eggs. The episode ends with the arrival of a herd of the prosauropod Plateosaurus, foreshadowing the future dominance of the giant sauropods after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event.

Animals: Coelophysis · Cynodont · Placerias · Postosuchus · Peteinosaurus · Plateosaurus · Dragonfly · Lungfish · Lacewing

02. Time of the Titans

152 million years ago, Late Jurassic (Colorado)
Filming location: California State Parks, Chile, Tasmania, New Zealand

This episode follows the life of a young female herbivorous sauropod Diplodocus beginning at the moment when her mother lays a clutch of eggs at the edge of a conifer forest. Months later, some of the eggs hatch and the young sauropods are preyed upon by Ornitholestes. After hatching, the young female and her siblings retreat to the safety of the denser trees. As they grow, they face many dangers, including repeated predation by Ornitholestes and Allosaurus. Even the herbivorous Stegosaurus kills one of her siblings while swinging its tail. In parallel, adult herds of Diplodocus are depicted as titanic eating machines that use their massive weight to topple trees in order to get at the leaves of cycads in between trunks. The Diplodocus are also shown to host their own small mobile habitats that include damselflies, Anurognathus and dung beetles.

Close to adulthood, the group of five-year old Diplodocus grow to 13 meters and are nearly all killed by a huge forest fire. In the end only three, then two, survivors including the female make it onto the open plains, where they find a herd and safety. Years later, the protagonist female mates, but not long afterwards is attacked by a bull Allosaurus. She is saved when another Diplodocus strikes the allosaur with its tail. In the end it is commented that her kind will only get bigger. In the DVD release, most of the narration from the original broadcast is missing.

Animals: Diplodocus · Allosaurus · Ornitholestes · Stegosaurus · Brachiosaurus · Anurognathus · Dryosaurus · Dung Beetle · Damselfly · Ornithopod

03. Cruel Sea

149 million years ago, Late Jurassic (Oxfordshire)
Filming location: The Bahamas, New Caledonia

The opening portrays a Liopleurodon snatching a Eustreptospondylus from the land, but there is no evidence of this ever occurring (according to the producers, they were influenced by similar attacks by killer whales on land creatures, such as sea lions). Meanwhile, the ichthyosaur Ophthalmosaurus live-breeding ceremony is the main event taking place, as hundreds of Ophthalmosaurus arrive from the open ocean to give birth. In the midst of the birthing sharks and other predators, including the pliosaur Liopleurodon, are on the hunt, and when one mother has trouble giving birth, a pair of Hybodus sharks go after her, but are frightened off by a male Liopleurodon, which eats the front half of the Ophthalmosaurus, leaving the tail to sink down. Meanwhile a Eustreptospondylus swims to an island and discovers a turtle carcass that it must contend for with another Eustreptospondylus. Later during the night, a group of horseshoe crabs gather at the shore to lay their eggs, which attracts a flock of Rhamphorhynchus in the morning to eat the eggs. However two or three of the pterosaurs are caught and eaten by a Eustreptospondylus. While the Ophthalmosaurus juveniles are growing up, they are still hunted by Hybodus, which in turn, are prey for the Liopleurodon.

At one point, while the male Liopleurodon is hunting for prey, he is encountered by a female Liopleurodon. After biting one of her flippers, she retires from his territory. A typhoon then strikes the islands, and kills many animals, including several Rhamphorhynchus. The Liopleurodon is washed ashore and lays upon the beach, eventually suffocating under his own weight. The carcass then becomes the banquet of a group of hovering Eustreptospondylus. At the end of the episode, the juvenile Ophthalmosaurus that survived the storm and are now large enough to swim off to live and breed in the open sea.

Animals: Ophthalmosaurus · Liopleurodon · Eustreptospondylus · Cryptoclidus · Rhamphorhynchus · Hybodus · Ammonite · Leptolepis · Horseshoe Crab · Squid · Bark Beetle · Turtle · Jellyfish · Fish · Coral

04. Giant of the Skies

127 million years ago, Early Cretaceous (Brazil)
Filming location: New Zealand, Tasmania

The story begins with a male Ornithocheirus (pterosaur) dead on a beach. It then goes back six months to Brazil, where the Ornithocheirus, resting among a colony of breeding Tapejara (pterosaur) flies off for Cantabria where he too must mate. He flies past a migrating column of Iguanodon and a Polacanthus (all herbivorous dinosaurs). He reaches the southern tip of North America, where he is forced to shelter from a storm. To pass the time, he grooms himself, ridding his body of Saurophthirus fleas while his snout begins to show color changes. He then sets off across the Atlantic (which was then only 300 kilometres wide) and after a whole day on the wing, reaches the westernmost of the European islands. He does not rest there however, as a pack of Utahraptor are hunting Iguanodon. He flies to the outskirts of a forest to rest, but is driven away by Iberomesornis birds. Flying on, he reaches Cantabria, but due to the delays and his exhaustion he cannot reach the centre of the many grounded male Ornithocheirus, and consequently he does not mate. After hours under the sun trying to attract a mate, and worn out by his travels and advanced age, Ornithocheirus dies from exhaustion. In the end, a young Ornithocheirus is seen feeding on his carcass.

Animals: Ornithocheirus · Utahraptor · North American Iguanodon (now known as Dakotadon) · Iguanodon · Tapejara (now known as Tupandactylus) · Polacanthus · Iberomesornis · Pteranodon · Plesiopleurodon · Saurophthirus · Pterosaur · Fish · Wasp

05. Spirits of the Ice Forest

106 million years ago, Middle Cretaceous (Antarctica)
Filming location: New Zealand

A few hundred kilometres from the South Pole, a clan of herbivorous Leaellynasaura are seen emerging to activity after months of total darkness. Now with the coming of spring, the members of the clan are shown feeding on the fresh plant growth and building nests so they can lay their eggs. A male amphibian Koolasuchus has also woken up from hibernation and heads to a river where he will stay during the summer. Out on the rocky river banks, migrating herds of herbivorous Muttaburrasaurus have arrived to feed on the fresh vegetation and lay their eggs. By summer, many of the Leaellynasaura clan’s eggs have been eaten, but those of the matriarch hatch successfully. A male polar Allosaur is shown hunting the Leaellynasaura and Muttaburrasaurus, but fails and must resort to scavenging, refusing to share the carcass with a female Allosaur. The Leaellynasaura clan continues to prepare for the winter, as well as raising the young that have now grown.

When autumn arrives, the Muttaburrasaurus herd begins head back north, and the Koolasuchus leaves the river to find a pool in the forest to hibernate through the winter. However, during the migration some Muttaburrasaurus become lost in the forest and create a ruckus in the process of trying to get back to the herd. In the confusion, the male Allosaur manages to catch and kill the matriarch of the clan, while only one of the hatchlings survives the year. After the last day passes in a matter of minutes, winter descends, and the forest becomes almost completely darkened. The Leaellynasaura clan is able to stay active, using their large eyes to help them forage for food. During this time, the clan and other fauna use various methods of dealing with the cold, including suspended animation, hibernation or using group body temperature to maintain heat. Finally, spring returns, and two Leaellynasaura males challenge one another for the right to mate, and after a short confrontation, the clan establishes a dominant pair once again. In the end it is accepted that the shifting of the continents will soon pull the landmass closer to the South Pole, and that the forests, and all these dinosaurs will soon disappear.

Animals: Koolasuchus · Leaellynasaura · Polar Allosaur· Muttaburrasaurus · Steropodon[note 1] · Giant Weta · Tuatara · Unidentified Pterosaur · Giant Mosquito

06. Death of a Dynasty

65.5 million years ago, Late Cretaceous (Montana)
Filming location: Chile, New Zealand

This episode starts months before the extinction of the dinosaurs. The last dinosaurs are depicted living under intense environmental stress due to excessive volcanism. Many of the dinosaurs species still in existence are the largest and most developed of their respective generas, including Ankylosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, and Tyrannosaurus rex. The story focuses on a female Tyrannosaurus who abandons her nest, the eggs rendered infertile due to volcanic poisoning. Her calls for a mate are answered by a smaller male who has kills a young Triceratops to appease her. Later, after repeated copulation, she eventually drives him off. The mother fasts for an extended period as she tends to her nest, dealing with raids by dromaeosaurs and marsupial Didelphodons. As the female tends to her vigil, the hadrosaur Anatotitan herds wander from islands of vegetation among fields of volcanic ash, while Torosaurus males rut for the right to mate and lose their young to attacking packs of dromaeosaurs.

Meanwhile, the mother Tyrannosaurus sees only three of her twelve eggs hatch and brings down an Anatotitan to feed herself and her brood. While defending her two surviving offspring several days later, the mother tyrannosaur is fatally injured by an Ankylosaurus who swings its clubbed tail and cracks her femur and ruptures internal organs. The chicks remain next to the carcass of their mother the next morning until they, and the rest of the non-avian dinosaurs in this region, are killed when an asteroid slams into the Earth, a catastrophe that triggers the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. A short final sequence shows the present-day Earth, dominated by large mammals, but still populated with numerous forms of dinosaurs: the birds.

Animals: Anatotitan (now known as Edmontosaurus annectens) · Ankylosaurus · Deinosuchus · Didelphodon · Dinilysia · Dromaeosaurus · Quetzalcoatlus · Torosaurus · Tyrannosaurus · Triceratops (carcass) · Unidentified ornithopods

07/08. The Ballad of Big Al

The Ballad of Big Al (distributed as Allosaurus: a Walking with Dinosaurs Special) is a combination biography-sequel for Walking with Dinosaurs . It focuses on an Allosaurus (Allosaurus fragilis) named Big Al and his constant struggle to survive in a world filled with danger. The special begins at the University of Wyoming, showing the bones of a sauropod followed by an Allosaurus named Big Al. After the ghost of Big Al wanders the museum for a bit, the film then travels back in time to 145 Mya showing a nest containing some eggs. Al and his siblings hatch and are helped out of the nest by their mother. She brings them to a river bank and the hatchlings start to hunt for insects. When the mother leaves the hatchlings temporarily, a year-old Allosaurus comes and kills one of them (fortunately, Al isn’t the victim).

Al is then shown at two years old. He is trying to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus. He hasn’t yet learned how to ambush so he fails to kill one of the swifter, smaller dinosaurs. Later, he snatches a lizard from a branch. Al comes across a dead Stegosaurus and an Allosaurus waiting for death in a pit of sticky mud. Meanwhile, a female Allosaurus, attracted to the Stegosaurus carcass, also gets stuck. She struggles to free herself, but fails. Al luckily avoids the same fate as he had learnt to avoid carrion. The trapped Allosaurus pair are stuck forever and die, their corpses left to Anurognathus. Five years pass, and a herd of Diplodocus are migrating across the prehistoric salt lake. Al is joined by several other Allosaurus and they attempt to bring a weak member of the herd down. Once the herd leaves the sick Diplodocus, the Allosaurs gather. Al is struck down by the neck of the Diplodocus. The pack wait for a few hours until the Diplodocus is brought down by heat exhaustion and his illness. Though they feed, within the hour an adult female Allosaurus scavenges the kill. A year passes by, and Al is shown drinking at a pond. His prescense however makes others around the pond nervous and the smell of blood he brings with him puts off a pair of Stegosaurus who were attempting to mate. Away from the pond, he discovers the scent of a female Allosaurus. She is not interested, but the inexperienced Al gets too close. She finally injures his right arm, deforms his right claw, and breaks his ribs, though Al is lucky enough to escape with his life. Later the dry season comes, and Al is attempting to hunt a flock of Dryosaurus. Whilst ambushing them, he trips on a log and badly breaks something in his right foot. As the dry season turns to a drought, Al’s limp from the fall gets worse and his right middle toe -which he broke in the fall- has become badly infected. Soon, unable to hunt, he dies in a dried-up riverbed, where two hatchling Allosaurus are hunting for bugs and come across his emaciated carcass. He is said not to have reached full size, dying as a mature adolescent and his fossilisation preserved even his injuries including the healed ribs and the infection on the toe.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Prehistoric ParkPlanet DinosaurWalking with MonstersLife in the UndergrowthThe Blue PlanetLife

#Dinosaurs #fossil #fossils #Prehistory

Prehistoric Park

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2006 | LENGTH: 6 parts (50 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA description: Prehistoric Park is a …

^VideoNeat

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

South Pacific

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2010 | LENGTH: 6 parts (60 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA description: South Pacific (Wild Pacific in …

^VideoNeat

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

South Pacific

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2010 | LENGTH: 6 parts (60 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA description: South Pacific (Wild Pacific in …

^VideoNeat