Sir David’s dazzling return to the seas Blue my mind
Over on BBC1 last night Sir David Attenborough was observing a strange-looking adversarial beast.
“The more bulbous the head, the more it intimidates an opponent.”
No, David wasn’t watching tapes of Donald Trump’s election debates with Hillary Clinton.
He was simply introducing us to the fascinating kobudai fish, on Blue
Planet II – his long-awaited and utterly enthralling follow-up to 2001’s The Blue Planet.
The kobudai wasn’t just fascinating because of the way it looks – imagine the Elephant Man with fins and a tail and teeth that would not look out of place on The Jeremy Kyle Show. As David explained, one of the two male kobudai viciously disputing some territory used to be female.
Apparently, once the bigger females have done with egg-laying they have the ability to change sex and mate with the remaining sisterhood, thus ensuring their genes have the largest presence in the pool.
If that scientific bombshell didn’t take your breath away, there were plenty of other scenes capable of doing the job.
It may not quite have reached the dramatic heights of the snakes versus iguana chase on Planet Earth II, but you can’t grumble at giant trevally fish leaping out of the sea to capture fledgling terns, hungry polar bears stalking baby walruses or false killer whales chasing after bottlenose dolphins.
My favourite bit, though, came as we watched awesome footage of orcas corralling huge shoals of herring by beating their huge tails.
“All this underwater noise attracts others,” David explained.
Then, a giant shimmering curtain of herring parted and TA-DA! “humpback whales”.
Bravo, Sir Dave. Pure theatre. I can’t wait for next Sunday.
The Elephant Man with fins, & teeth that would fit right in on The Jeremy Kyle Show