trom

2012-11-01 15:29:43

Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds

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YEAR: 2010 | LENGTH: 3 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

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Richard Hammond’s Invisible Worlds is a BBC television documentary programme presented by Richard Hammond that features state-of-the-art camera technology used to focus on what humans cannot see with the naked eye. It is one series long consisting of three episodes.

episodes:

01. Speed Limits

Richard Hammond explores the extraordinary wonders of the world of detail hidden in the blink of an eye. The human eye takes about fifty milliseconds to blink. But it takes our brain around a hundred and fifty milliseconds to process what we see. We’re not aware of this time lag going on, but in those few milliseconds, there are extraordinary things happening that completely pass us by.

But what if we could break through this speed limit? Bend and stretch time in ways never thought possible. What new marvels would we see? Now, using the latest high-speed cameras, Richard takes us on a journey beyond our eye’s limits, letting us see secrets hidden in every element of our planet. A world where thin air can shatter rock. And water can tear through metal. A world where the fastest thing on earth lies right beneath our feet. And where a spectacular celestial display is finally captured, even though many have claimed it doesn’t even exist.

02. Out of Sight

The human eye is a remarkable piece of precision engineering, but it is also extremely limited. Beyond the narrow range of light that makes up the familiar colours of the rainbow is a vast spectrum of light, entirely unseen.

But what if we could see beyond the narrow boundaries of our eyes and peer into this invisible realm?

Richard Hammond does just that, using groundbreaking new imaging technologies to take the viewer on a breathtaking journey of discovery beyond the visible spectrum, seeing the world, quite literally, in a whole new light.

From death-defying aerial repairmen in the United States using ultraviolet cameras to seek out an invisible force that lurks unseen on power lines, to German scientists unlocking the secrets of animal locomotion with the world’s most powerful moving x-ray camera, to infrared cameras that can finally reveal the secrets within a humble beehive, he shows how new technologies are letting us see our world anew.

03. Off the Scale

The human eye can see extraordinary detail, but the eye of a needle held at arm’s length is pretty much at the limit of our vision. Anything smaller is simply invisible, at least to the naked eye.

But what if we could see this hidden world all around us in greater detail and magnification than ever before? How different would our familiar surroundings then seem?

Richard Hammond explores the astonishing miniature universe all around us, revealing that small is not only beautiful, it can also be very, very powerful.

From seeing the microscopic changes to ice crystals that can trigger an avalanche to watching in horror the invisible aftermath of a sneeze on a commuter train and learning how the surface of an ordinary-looking plant hides an astounding secret that will make walking on the moon safer, Richard harnesses cutting-edge technologies to transport the viewer into a spectacular micro realm.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Richard Hammond’s Miracles of NatureMaking StuffAnimals with CamerasWhat You Can’t SeeThe Genius of InventionBreakthrough

#microscopicLife

BBC One - Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds

Richard Hammond explores the hidden secrets of the invisible world around us

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trom

2013-09-15 19:18:57

Micro Monsters

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YEAR: 2013 | LENGTH: 7 parts (22 minutes each) | SOURCE: DOCUWIKI

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The terrestrial arthropods – the bugs – are the most dominant animals on our planet. They outnumber us in their hundreds of billions and have survived for 500 million years.[ps2id id=’magnet’/]

They have outlived every catastrophe Earth has thrown at them, seen the dinosaurs come and go and even witnessed our own arrival. They are so intrinsic to the natural world that without them we would struggle to exist.For the first time ever in 3D, Sir David Attenborough will take you deep into the macroscopic world of bugs that deeply fascinates him. He will uncover their marvellous adaptability from the primitive evolutionary design of the millipede through to the graceful apex predators that exist today. We will descend into the watery depths to witness aquatic battles, explore intricate spider webs and get closer than ever before to the fangs and claws that create this fascinating world.From the Bafta and Jackson Hole Award winning makers of “Flying Monsters 3D” and “Kingdom of Plants 3D”, this revolutionary film will use pioneering macroscopic 3D techniques to fully immerse the viewer in the lives of Micro-Monsters.

episodes:

01. Conflict
David Attenborough employs the latest technologies to explore the violence, rivalries and deadly weaponry existing within the world of bugs. This first episode examines the survival tactics of its terrifying residents including killer ants, trap-setting spiders and beetles with the ability to shoot boiling chemicals at their enemies.

02. Predator
The broadcaster continues his bug-eyed view of the world of creepy-crawlies, revealing how predators defuse the defences of their prey. Highlights include the cockroach wasp, busy preparing a tasty – and very live – treat for its young, the whirligig beetle, which employs a water-based radar system, and the jumping Portia spider, which feeds on other arachnids.

03. Courtship
It’s sexy time with the arthropods! This week David Attenborough takes a look at the courtship rituals of the creatures beneath our feet. But lovebugs won’t want to take tips from these bugs. The male Chilean rose tarantula, for instance, weaves a silk mat; deposits sperm on it, then sucks that sperm into a finger-like appendage near his mouth before he looks for a mate. Then there’s the gruesome, but surprisingly effective, coupling of praying mantis. The cinematography is as amazing as ever, catching the mating battles of tramp ants and providing luminescent footage of the courtship dance of Tanzanian red claw scorpions.

04. Reproduction
A close-up view of sex, bug-style, as David Attenborough talks viewers through the different ways in which creepy-crawlies reproduce. Size matters for the minuscule male orb spider, creepily sneaking up on its intended and trying to mate without her noticing, while there’s no rest for the lothario-like butterfly, which has plenty of notches on its proverbial bedpost. However, the harvestman spider has no use for sex at all, and reproduces by cloning itself.

05. Family
While most of the series has focused on conflict, this episode is all about co-operation. The suitably named social spiders spin one enormous, 30m web for the whole colony, a queen bee rules her hive with a strict hierarchy and some green ants show great team spirit to help build a nest together. There are no broken societies here. David Attenborough shifts the focus to bugs that prefer cooperation rather than conflict. They include burrowing cockroaches, the suitably named social spiders – which share a 30-metre web.

06. Colony
Watching the fascinating display of leafcutter ants at the Natural History Museum in London is one of my favourite ways to while away a few hours, but David Attenborough is operating on a much grander scale here in the last in the series. In Argentina he observes some cousins of the leafcutters who are part of a community so vast it spans an entire continent. It’s one of the mandible-dropping facts in a look at one of the key inventions of arthropods: colonies. From termites and honey bees to the leafcutters, it seems that if you want to get ahead, you move to the big city.

07. The Making of Micro Monsters
A behind-the-scenes special offering an insider’s look at Sir David Attenborough’s innovative series exploring the macroscopic world of bugs. David reveals how the film-makers got up close with the insect and arachnid world for the innovative documentary series.

SIMILAR TITLES:

MadagascarChased by Sea MonstersBlue Planet 2Frozen PlanetEarth’s Natural WondersAfrica

Madagascar

Favorite trailer magnet YEAR: 2011 | LENGTH: 3 parts (60 minutes each)  |  SOURCE: BBC description: Over 80 per cent …

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trom

2017-12-10 23:47:48

Blue Planet 2

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

description:

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

episodes:

01. The Ocean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

02. The Deep

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

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

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

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

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

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

03. Coral Reefs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

04. Big Blue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

05. Green Seas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

06. Coasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

07. Our Blue Planet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SIMILAR TITLES:

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

South Pacific

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

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trom

2012-10-23 15:06:01

Life

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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

2012-12-13 02:12:04

Frozen Planet

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YEAR: 2011 | LENGTH: 7 parts (50 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

The seven-part series focuses on life and the environment in both the Arctic and Antarctic. The production team were keen to film a comprehensive record of the natural history of the polar regions, because climate change is affecting landforms such as glaciers, ice shelves, and the extent of sea ice. The film was met with critical acclaim and holds a Metacritic score of 90/100. Despite such, it has been criticized for limited coverage of the effects of global warming and attribution of recent climate change.

episodes:

01. To the Ends of the Earth

David Attenborough travels to the end of the Earth, taking viewers on an extraordinary journey across the polar regions of our planet, North and South. The Arctic and Antarctic are the greatest and least known wildernesses of all – magical ice worlds inhabited by the most bizarre and hardy creatures on Earth.

Our journey begins with David at the North Pole, as the sun returns after six months of darkness. We follow a pair of courting polar bears, which reveal a surprisingly tender side. Next stop is the giant Greenland ice cap, where waterfalls plunge into the heart of the ice and a colossal iceberg carves into the sea. Humpback whales join the largest gathering of seabirds on Earth to feast in rich Alaskan waters. Further south, the tree line marks the start of the taiga forest, containing one third of all trees on earth. Here, 25 of the world’s largest wolves take on formidable bison prey.

At the other end of our planet, the Antarctic begins in the Southern Ocean, where surfing penguins struggle to escape a hungry sea lion and teams of orcas create giant waves to wash seals from ice floes – a filming first. Diving below the ice, we discover prehistoric giants, including terrifying sea spiders and woodlice the size of dinner plates. Above ground, crystal caverns ring the summit of Erebus, the most southerly volcano on earth. From here, we retrace the routes of early explorers across the formidable Antarctic ice cap – the largest expanse of ice on our planet. Finally, we rejoin David at the South Pole, exactly one hundred years after Amundsen, then Scott, were the first humans to stand there.

02. Spring

Spring arrives in the polar regions, and the sun appears after an absence of five months; warmth and life return to these magical ice worlds – the greatest seasonal transformation on our planet is under way.

Male Adelie penguins arrive in Antarctica to build their nests – it takes a good property to attract the best mates and the males will stop at nothing to better their rivals! But these early birds face the fiercest storms on the planet.

In the Arctic, a polar bear mother is hunting with her cubs. Inland, the frozen rivers start to break up and billions of tons of ice are swept downstream in the greatest of polar spectacles. This melt-water fertilizes the Arctic Ocean, feeding vast shoals of Arctic cod and narwhal. The influx of freshwater accelerates the breakup of the sea ice – an area of ice the size of Australia will soon vanish from the Arctic.

On land, a woolly bear caterpillar emerges from the snow having spent the winter frozen solid. Caterpillars normally become moths within months of hatching, but life is so harsh here that the woolly bear takes 14 years to reach adulthood. Once mature, it has only days to find a mate before it dies! Alongside the caterpillars, white Arctic wolves race to raise their adorable cubs before the cold returns.

In Antarctica, vast numbers of seabirds arrive on South Georgia joining the giant albatross and king penguins that have been there all winter. Elephant seals fight furious battles over females on a beach that contains the greatest mass of animals on the planet.

Finally, the female Adelie penguins arrive, chased from the water by killer whales. Mating and chick rearing lie ahead of them.

03. Summer
It is high summer in the polar regions, and the sun never sets. Vast hordes of summer visitors cram a lifetime of drama into one long, magical day; they must feed, fight and rear their young in this brief window of plenty. Summer is a tough time for the polar bear family, as their ice world melts away and the cubs take their first swimming lesson. Some bears save energy by dozing on icy sun beds, while others go egg-collecting in an Arctic tern colony, braving bombardment by sharp beaks. There are even bigger battles on the tundra; a herd of musk oxen gallop to the rescue as a calf is caught in a life and death struggle with a pair of Arctic wolves. But summer also brings surprises, as a huge colony of 400,000 king penguins cope with an unlikely problem – heat. The adults go surfing, while the woolly-coated chicks take a cooling mud bath. Nearby, a bull fur seal is prepared to fight to the death with a rival. Fur flies as the little pups struggle desperately to keep out of the way of the duelling giants. Further south, a minke whale is hunted amongst the ice floes by a family of killer whales. The dramatic chase lasts over 2 hours and has never been filmed before. The killers harry the minke whale, taking it in turns to wear it down. Eventually it succumbs to the relentless battering. Finally, comical adelie penguins waddle back to their half a million strong colony like clockwork toys. The fluffy chicks need constant feeding and protection as piratical skuas patrol the skies. When an unguarded chick is snatched, a dramatic “dogfight” ensues.

04. Autumn

For the animals in the polar regions, autumn means dramatic battles and epic journeys. Time is running out – the Arctic Ocean is freezing over and the sea ice is advancing at 2.5 miles per day around Antarctica.

Polar bears gather in large numbers on the Arctic coast as they wait for the return of the ice. Soon, tempers fray and violent sparring contests break out. Meanwhile 2,000 beluga whales head for one special estuary, a gigantic ‘whale spa’ where they will thrash their snow-white bodies against the gravel and exfoliate. Inland, the tundra undergoes a dramatic transformation from green to fiery red. Here, musk ox males slam head-first into each other with the force of a 30mph car crash as they struggle to defend their harems. Frisky young caribou males play a game of ‘grandma’s footsteps’ as they try to steal the boss’s female.

Down in Antarctica, Adelie penguin chicks huddle together in creches. When a parent returns from fishing, it leads its twins on a comical steeplechase – sadly there’s only enough for one, so the winner gets the meal. Two months later and the chicks are fully feathered apart from downy Mohican hairdos – they’re ready to take their first swim – reluctantly though, as it seems penguins are not born with a love of water! And with good reason – a leopard seal explodes from the sea and pulls one from an ice floe, a hunting manoeuvre that has never been filmed before. As winter approaches and everyone has left, the giant emperor penguin arrives and makes an epic trek inland to breed. The mothers soon return to the sea leaving the fathers to hold the eggs and endure the coldest winter on earth.

05. Winter

There is no greater test for life than winter, as temperatures plummet to 70 below and winds reach 200kph. Darkness and ice extend across the polar regions and only a few remarkable survivors gamble on remaining.

We join a female polar bear trekking into the Arctic mountains to give birth as the first blizzards arrive. Out on the frozen ocean, the entire world’s population of spectacled eider ducks brave the winter in a giant ice hole kept open by ferocious currents. Arctic forests transform into a wonderland of frost and snow – the scene of a desperate and bloody battle between wolf and bison, but also where a remarkable alliance between raven and wolverine is made. Beneath the snow lies a magical world of winter survivors. Here tiny voles dodge the clutches of the great grey owl, but cannot escape the ultimate under-show predator – the least weasel.

Midwinter and a male polar bear wanders alone across the dark, empty icescape. Below the snow, polar bear cubs begin life in an icy den while fantastical auroras light the night skies above. In Antarctica, we join male emperor penguins in their darkest hour, battling to protect precious eggs from fierce polar storms. Weddell seals escape to a hidden world of jewel-coloured corals and alien-looking creatures but frozen devastation follows as sinister ice stalactites reach down with deadly effect.

The sun finally returns, and with it comes the female emperor penguins, sleek and fat, ready to deliver the first meal to their precious chick. Having survived winter, this ultimate ice family now have a head start in raising baby. The Adelies flood back and as the ice edge bustles with life, male emperor penguins can finally return to the sea.

06. The Last Frontier

The documentary series reveals the extraordinary riches and wonders of the polar regions that have kept people visiting them for thousands of years. Today, their survival relies on a combination of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science.

Most Arctic people live in Siberia, either in cities like Norilsk – the coldest city on earth – or out on the tundra, where tribes like the Dogan survive by herding reindeer, using them to drag their homes behind them. On the coast, traditional people still hunt walrus from open boats – it is dangerous work, but one big walrus will feed a family for weeks. Settlers are drawn to the Arctic by its abundant minerals; the Danish Armed Forces maintain their claim to Greenland’s mineral wealth with an epic dog sled patrol, covering 2,000 miles through the winter. Above, the spectacular northern lights can disrupt power supplies so scientists monitor it constantly, firing rockets into it to release a cloud of glowing smoke 100 kilometres high.

In contrast, Antarctica is so remote and cold that it was only a century ago that the first people explored the continent. Captain Scott’s hut still stands as a memorial to these men. Science is now the only significant human activity allowed; robot submarines are sent deep beneath the ice in search of new life-forms, which may also be found in a labyrinth of ice caves high up on an active volcano. Above, colossal balloons are launched into the purest air on earth to detect cosmic rays.

At the South Pole there is a research base designed to withstand the world’s most extreme winters.

07. On Thin Ice

David Attenborough journeys to both polar regions to investigate what rising temperatures will mean for the people and wildlife that live there and for the rest of the planet.

David starts out at the North Pole, standing on sea ice several metres thick, but which scientists predict could be open ocean within the next few decades. The Arctic has been warming at twice the global average, so David heads out with a Norwegian team to see what this means for polar bears. He comes face-to-face with a tranquilised female, and discovers that mothers and cubs are going hungry as the sea ice on which they hunt disappears. In Canada, Inuit hunters have seen with their own eyes what scientists have seen from space; the Arctic Ocean has lost 30% of its summer ice cover over the last 30 years. For some, the melting sea ice will allow access to trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals. For the rest of us, it means the planet will get warmer, as sea ice is important to reflect back the sun’s energy. Next David travels to see what is happening to the ice on land: in Greenland, we follow intrepid ice scientists as they study giant waterfalls of meltwater, which are accelerating iceberg calving events, and ultimately leading to a rise in global sea level.

Temperatures have also risen in the Antarctic – David returns to glaciers photographed by the Shackleton expedition and reveals a dramatic retreat over the past century. It is not just the ice that is changing – ice-loving adelie penguins are disappearing, and more temperate gentoo penguins are moving in. Finally, we see the first ever images of the largest recent natural event on our planet – the break up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, an ice sheet the size of Jamaica, which shattered into hundreds of icebergs in 2009.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Frozen Planet 2Blue Planet 2The Blue PlanetSeven Worlds, One PlanetPlanet EarthSouth Pacific

#earth #fish #life #mammals

BBC One - Frozen Planet

The ultimate portrait of the Polar regions - the last great wildernesses on the planet.

^BBC

trom

2013-09-22 00:36:44

The Dark: Nature’s Nighttime World

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YEAR: 2012 | LENGTH: 3 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

This illuminating natural history series reveals a totally new perspective on wildlife at night. Over six months, a team of biologists and specialist camera crew explore the length of South and Central America to find out how animals have adapted to life in the dark.[ps2id id=’magnet’/]

The expedition starts in the jungles of Costa Rica where the team are after some of the most frightening nocturnal predators. Alone in the dark, nighttime camera specialist Justine Evans has an exceptionally close encounter with a large male jaguar. Biologist Dr George McGavin is on the trail of the most ingenious predator of the jungle – the net casting spider. And cameraman Gordon Buchanan finds ruined temples deep in the jungle as he searches for the bizarre creatures that rule the jungle canopy at night.

episodes:

01. Central American Jungle

This illuminating natural history series reveals a totally new perspective on wildlife at night. Over six months, a team of biologists and specialist camera crew explore the length of South and Central America to find out how animals have adapted to life in the dark.

The expedition starts in the jungles of Costa Rica where the team are after some of the most frightening nocturnal predators. Alone in the dark, nighttime camera specialist Justine Evans has an exceptionally close encounter with a large male jaguar. Biologist Dr George McGavin is on the trail of the most ingenious predator of the jungle – the net casting spider. And cameraman Gordon Buchanan finds ruined temples deep in the jungle as he searches for the bizarre creatures that rule the jungle canopy at night.

02. Amazon Flooded Forests
Now the expedition travels south to a flooded forest in the heart of the Amazon. Large mammal expert Bryson Voirin encounters a curious sloth whilst camerawoman Sophie Darlington spends stormy nights precariously perched high in the jungle canopy, attempting to film the only nocturnal monkey in the world. Further south, Gordon Buchanan heads to the largest wetland on Earth in search of giant anteaters and enters a strange deserted house that’s been taken over by vampire bats. And Dr George McGavin abseils deep into the perpetual darkness of a giant cave system – cut off from the light for millions of years. Deep inside, he and the team discover species new to science.

03. Patagonian Mountains
Natural history series about wildlife at night culminates at the wild and windswept tip of South America. Coming face-to-face with the widest-ranging cat in the Americas – the puma – camerawoman Justine Evans attempts to film their nocturnal hunting behaviour for the first time. Even further south, Gordon Buchanan dives into the icy waters of the Strait of Magellan to solve a mystery – scientists have heard humpback whales moving close to the shore at night but have no idea what they could be doing. And Dr George McGavin attaches a miniature tracking device to a vampire bat’s back to discover whose blood it is feeding on.

SIMILAR TITLES:

Seven Worlds, One PlanetMadagascarSouth PacificEarth’s Tropical IslandsAmazon AbyssOcean Autopsy: The Secret Story of Our Seas

BBC Two - The Dark: Nature's Nighttime World, Central American Jungle

In Costa Rica, the team encounter some of the most frightening nocturnal predators.

^BBC

trom

2019-07-25 13:56:11

Big Pacific

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YEAR: 2017 | LENGTH: 1 season, 4 parts (43 minutes each) | SOURCE: PBS

description:

Plunge into the Pacific with researchers and cinematographers and see the ocean’s rare and dazzling creatures in a way never before seen on television. The show examines an ocean that covers a third of the Earth’s surface.

episodes:

01. Voracious

There is plenty of food in the Pacific Ocean, but it is the challenge of finding that food that drives all life in the Pacific. In the voracious Pacific we meet a destructive army of mouths, a killer with a hundred mouths, and the biggest mouth in the ocean.



02. Violent

Surrounded by the Ring of Fire, the Pacific Ocean is the epicenter of natural mayhem. Violence is part of life in the Pacific, and creatures that live here must choose whether to avoid conflict…or rise to meet it.

03. Passionate

In the Pacific, the quest to multiply has spawned a stunning array of unusual behaviors and adaptations. There are forest penguins with a tenuous marriage, the secret rendezvous of great white sharks, and the tale of male pregnancy.

04. Mysterious

Man has explored land, the ocean’s surface, and large parts of the solar system…and in the 21st Century we are just beginning to explore the depths of the Pacific Ocean. We yearn to unravel the mysterious Pacific – but she does not give up her secrets willingly.

SIMILAR TITLES:

South PacificBlue Planet 2The Blue PlanetFrozen Planet 2Nature’s Great EventsDeep Ocean

Big Pacific

Plunge into the Pacific with researchers and cinematographers.

^www.pbs.org

trom

2012-10-28 22:40:55

Nature’s Great Events

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

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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 …

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trom

2012-10-23 17:19:18

The Great Rift, Africa’s Wild Heart

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YEAR: 2010 | LENGTH: 3 parts (60 minutes each) | SOURCE: BBC

description:

The Great Rift: Africa’s Wild Heart (released in the US as The Great Rift: Africa’s Greatest Story) is a British nature documentary series, which began airing on BBC Two on 24 January 2010. ABBC/Animal Planet co-production, the three-part series focuses on the landscape and wildlife of theGreat Rift Valley in East Africa.

The series received its US broadcast premiere in August 2010 on Animal Planet, where it was screened as a two-hour special under the shortened title Great Rift. Narration for both the BBC and Animal Planet versions was provided by Hugh Quarshie.

episodes:

01. Fire

Visible from space, Africa’s Great Rift Valley runs three thousand miles from the Red Sea to the mouth of the Zambezi. It’s a diverse terrain of erupting volcanoes, forest-clad mountains, spectacular valleys, rolling grasslands, huge lakes and mighty rivers, and is home to crocodiles, hippos, lions, elephants, flocks of flamingos and a diversity of indigenous peoples.

Using state-of-the-art high definition filming techniques, this series investigates the geological forces which shaped East Africa’s Great Rift, and which make it one of the world’s most wildlife-rich landscapes.

The valley is the product of deep-seated geological forces which have spewed out a line of cloud-wreathed volcanoes stretching from Ethiopia to Tanzania. Their peaks provide a refuge for East Africa’s most extraordinary wildlife, including newly discovered and previously unfilmed species which have evolved surprising survival strategies to cope with their challenging mountain environment.

02. Water

Visible from space, Africa’s Great Rift Valley runs three thousand miles from the Red Sea to the mouth of the Zambezi. It’s a diverse terrain of erupting volcanoes, forest-clad mountains, spectacular valleys, rolling grasslands, huge lakes and mighty rivers, and is home to crocodiles, hippos, lions, elephants, flocks of flamingos and a diversity of indigenous peoples.

Using state-of-the-art high definition filming techniques, this series investigates the geological forces which shaped East Africa’s Great Rift and which make it one of the world’s most wildlife-rich landscapes.

The Great Rift Valley channels a huge diversity of waterways – rivers, lakes, waterfalls, caustic springs and coral seas – spanning from Egypt to Mozambique. Some lake and ocean deeps harbour previously unseen life-forms, while caustic waters challenge life to the extreme. But where volcanic minerals enrich the Great Rift’s waterways, they provide the most spectacular concentrations of birds, mammals and fish in all Africa.

03. Grass

Visible from space, Africa’s Great Rift Valley runs three thousand miles from the Red Sea to the mouth of the Zambezi. It’s a diverse terrain of erupting volcanoes, forest-clad mountains, spectacular valleys, rolling grasslands, huge lakes and mighty rivers, and is home to crocodiles, hippos, lions, elephants, flocks of flamingos and a diversity of indigenous peoples.

Using state-of-the-art high definition filming techniques, this series investigates the geological forces which shaped East Africa’s Great Rift and which make it one of the world’s most wildlife-rich landscapes.

The Great Rift Valley provides the stage for an epic battle between trees and grass – its course influenced by volcanic eruptions, landscape and rainfall. On its outcome rests the fate of Africa’s great game herds. In the Rift’s savannas, grazers and their predators struggle to outwit each other, forcing one group of primates to develop a social system that paved the way for the evolution of mankind.

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BBC Two - The Great Rift: Africa's Wild Heart

Series investigating the geological forces which shaped East Africa's Great Rift Valley

^BBC