UK Edition
Blue Planet II: fishermen's tales of bird-eating fish and boiling seas are true
Boiling seas, huge flying fish which snatch birds from the sky and armour-clad octopuses were once thought to be purely the stuff of fisherman’s tales.
But remarkable new footage, captured over four years by BBC filmmakers for Blue Planet II, has proven that many sailors’ myths are actually true.
Sixteen years after the original The Blue Planet aired, the series returns this month, promising a raft of new scientific discoveries and filming firsts, which reveal the surprising intelligence and complex social lives of creatures beneath the waves.
Among the most astonishing discoveries was made in the Seychelles where filmmakers found that predatory Giant Trevally fish leap into the air, to grab sooty terns on the wing.
“A fish that launches itself, missile-like, to take birds from the air, sounded too extraordinary to be true,” said Miles Barton, Producer for the Coast episode.
“Despite it being a fisherman’s tale there was no photographic evidence to back it up. I haven't been out on a shoot in 20 years where I haven’t had at least a still picture of the behaviour to go on. So I was sceptical, to say the least.
“We arrived and got very excited because yes, there were splashes everywhere, the fish were leaping out of the water and they did seem to be grabbing birds. They’re amazing shots. A genuine bird-eating fish.”
The new footage proved for the first time that the fish have the intelligence to spot moving birds in the air from underwater, and calculate the light shift so they can leap at just the right time to catch their moving target.
The team has broken such new ground that there at least a dozen scientific papers are already planned on the back of the series.
Behaviours completely new to science include an octopus which grabs shells and rocks with its suckers and uses them as body armour and camouflage against predators.
Submersibles carrying extreme low-light cameras, which did not even exist before filming began, allowed the filmmakers to capture packs of Humboldt squid hunting together at depths of 2,600 feet (800m) for the first time.
‘The Deep’ team also spotted eels swimming in an methane underwater lake, which then erupted like a volcano, 2,100 feet (650m) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Sir David Attenborough, who narrates the new series was full of surprises, ‘from minute one.’
“I’m absolutely astounded really, there was so many new things in this,” said Sir David. “When I saw those eels diving into what was a lake at the bottom of the sea in The Deep episode.
“It takes a bit of time to get your mind around that sort of thing. How can there be a lake at the bottom of the sea? And then it explodes like a volcano. I couldn’t believe what I saw.”
In the Pacific, the cameras caught the phenomenon of the so-called ‘Boiling Sea’, another fishermen’s tale, which occurs when millions of lanternfish rise to the surface to spawn, triggering a feeding frenzy.
Sarah Conner, Assistant Producer, said: “As predators attack the lanternfish, it can turn the sea white making it look like the sea is boiling. The team had tried and failed to film this in the Coral Sea, off Australia in December 2014.
“So when, 18 months later, the team heard of sightings of a ‘boiling sea’ from the other side of the Pacific Ocean, off Coast Rica, they reacted quickly.”
In coral reefs, filmmakers recorded ingenious coral grouper – a fish that uses sign language to enlist the help of an octopus to hunt little fish hiding amongst coral branches – as well as the industrious tusk fish, which uses an anvil to crack open his clams.
They also encountered an enormous army of giant spider crabs and super-pods of false killer whales that team up with families of bottlenose dolphins to hunt.
Venturing into the deep seas, they found fish that walk instead of swim, worms that feed on bones, shrimps that spend their lives imprisoned in a cage of crystal sponge, and hair-covered crabs which feed on gushing plumes of hydrogen sulphide.
Filmmakers took advantage of the latest marine science and cutting-edge technology to mount 125 expeditions across 39 countries, and spent more than 6,000 hours diving.
New suction-cams enable the viewer to ride on the back of large creatures such as whale sharks and orcas while Ultra High Definition probe cameras has allowed the team to get eye-to-eye with the smallest of creatures.
They also took advantage of new ‘rebreather’ diving technology which allows camera crews to sit silently and watch without bubbles disturbing wildlife.
Drones helped the team move silently overhead to capture events like the ‘cyclone’ feeding strategy of manta rays over the coral reef.
The team has also built extraordinary split-screen lens called the ‘megadome’, which allows us to clearly contextualise the worlds above water, and below, at the same time.
Blue Planet II starts Sunday 29 October 8pm on BBC One.