Blue Planet II proves fishermen’s tales true
Sarah Knapton in London BOILING seas, huge flying fish which snatch birds from the sky and armour-clad octopuses were once thought to be purely the stuff of fishermen’s tales.
But remarkable new footage, captured over four years by BBC film-makers 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 with 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 one made in the Seychelles, where film-makers found that predatory fish, the giant trevally, leaps 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 fishermen’s tale, there was no photographic evidence to back it up. 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 footage proved for the first time that the fish are able to spot moving birds in the air from underwater and calculate the light shift so they can catch their moving target.
The team has broken such new ground that 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 film-makers to capture packs of Humboldt squid hunting together at depths of 2,600ft (800m) for the first time. ‘The Deep’ team also spotted eels swimming in an underwater lake of methane, which then erupted like a volcano, 2,100ft (650m) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. “I’m absolutely astounded, there were so many new things in this,” said Sir David Attenborough, who narrates the series. “[Like] 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 “boiling sea”, another sailors’ legend, 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.” ‘Blue Planet II’ starts on Sunday, October 29 at 8pm on BBC One.