Documentaries
The titles Violent, Mysterious, Passionate and Voracious may sound like chapters in a selfhelp book, but they are actually the names of four out of five episodes of new natural-history series Big Pacific (Prime, Sunday, 7.30pm).
After all, how do you tackle an ocean that covers onethird of the Earth’s surface and whose border is known as the Ring of Fire? It starts with violence, although for the featured creatures, this is business as usual: near Maui, there are humpback whales competing for mating rights in something known as a heat run; in China’s Bohai Sea, 20,000 pit vipers on “snake island” eagerly await the arrival of songbirds from Siberia, snatching them from branches as they come in to
rest; in Lembeh Strait, Indonesia, sea creatures conceal themselves in numerous intricate ways to hunt for their prey.
There is violence on New Zealand’s White Island, too, and a reminder that it is deadly. In 1914, a crater rim collapsed, causing a lahar that killed 10 sulphur miners. Typically, their cat survived.
The programme also reminds us of the violent history of the Pacific, with a visit to Bikini Atoll, where 23 nuclear bombs were tested after World War II. The following episodes tackle mysterious animal behaviour, the quest to multiply and the challenge of finding food. The fifth episode goes behind the scenes of the show.