#THE BLUE PLANET SEAS OF LIFE SERIES#

With a top speed of over 120km/h, it herds the fleeing fish with its unique sail before gunning them down with ease. A school of spotted dolphins herd mackerel, but the noise of their sonar attracts one of the most glamorous fish in the sea, a sailfish. Sir David Attenborough says: 'Predators and prey are locked in a deadly three-dimensional contest of hide and seek, played out over immense distances.' None are better at tracking down food than dolphins. The commotion attracts juvenile yellowfin tuna and then a 14-metre Sei whale scoops up the remains. Gulper eels can swallow prey as big as themselves.Īn unfortunate shoal of sardines is first attacked by three-metre-long striped marlin with metre-long, needle-sharp javelins on their heads. The fangtooth has the largest teeth in the ocean for its size - so big it can't close its mouth. The hairy angler is the size of a beach ball and its body is covered in long antennae designed to pick out the movements of any prey foolish enough to venture close to its terrifying teeth. Predators here have massive teeth and enormous mouths as food comes along so rarely that they have to grab prey of any size. In a world where red light does not exist, dark red jellyfish and shrimps float by, confident that they are almost completely invisible. A fish called winteria looks like an underwater bushbaby with its two tubular eyes designed to look up at the surface to spot the silhouettes of potential prey.īelow 1,000 metres you enter the dark zone and an alien world. Hatchet fish have flattened bodies and silvered sides that reflect any light and make them invisible. Most are transparent, hoping to pass unnoticed. The carcass sinks to the bottom of the ocean where it attracts scavengers that live exclusively in the deep oceans.Ī thousand metres down, in the twilight zone, animals play a constant game of hide and seek. The killers only eat the tongue and lower jaw, but this much energy never goes to waste. A 15-strong pod of killer whales takes six hours to run down the calf and drown it. Off Monterey, California, a grey whale is cruising slowly with her calf and this makes them vulnerable to attack. Grey whales take a 12,000 mile round-trip migration from their breeding grounds in Mexico up the entire coast of North America to the Arctic Sea. Over the course of three or four nights, 400,000 turtles come to one beach, just a mile long, and lay an estimated 40 million eggs. On a last or first quarter moon, up to 5,000 female Ridley's turtles hit the beach each hour to lay their eggs in the sand. Every year on the coast of Costa Rica there is an extraordinary event called the arribada, which is closely linked to the tides. The moon's gravitational pull controls the ebb and flow of the tides. Almost as soon as they appear they disappear back into the deep or die. One thousand million tonnes of deep sea creatures journey up towards the surface in search of food.įor a few days each year, a squid spectacle is seen off the Californian coast as millions of squid come up from the deep to breed and lay their eggs. A Bryde's whale appears and polishes off the feast.Įvery evening, as the sun sets, the largest migration on the planet takes place in the oceans. As the predators gorge, the dolphins work together and release walls of air bubbles that corral the sardines into tight bait-balls for an easy catch. It attracts thousands of cape gannets, hundreds of bronze whaler sharks and thousands of common dolphins. The blue whale is the perfect symbol for the oceans - a vast blue expanse that dominates the planet yet remains largely unexplored and mysterious.Įvery summer on the eastern coast of South Africa, a living black 'slick' of millions of sardines is whipped up by the coastal currents.

This is the largest animal that has ever lived, and yet absolutely nothing is known about where it goes to breed. Some of its blood vessels are so wide that a human could swim down them. Its tongue weighs as much as an elephant and its heart is the size of a car. It's far bigger than even the biggest dinosaur,' says Sir David Attenborough. 'A blue whale, 30 metres long and weighing over 200 tonnes. Exploring every aspect of marine ecosystems, from coastal marshes to deep-sea trenches and from polar waters to tropical reefs, The Blue Planet is thorough and informative, yet never less than thrilling.

#THE BLUE PLANET SEAS OF LIFE SERIES#

Programmes include: The Blue Planet, The Deep, Open Ocean, Frozen Seas, Seasonal Seas, Coral Seas, Tidal Seas, Coasts, Making Waves, Deep Trouble.Īn epic, eight-part series that took five years to complete, The Blue Planet firmly re-establishes the BBC as the world's pre-eminent producer of top quality nature documentaries. The definitive story of the blue section of our planet - the oceans - which run from the shores to the open depths of the sea. Documentary narrated by David Attenborough and published by

The blue planet seas of life