The Blue Planet

I just started a new nightime class where we are watching a series production titled "The Blue Planet". I can't remember if it was done by the Discovery Channel or National Geographic or someone else, but the first episode was very impressive. It's all about the ocean and contains some really impressive scenes. The first episode was a general overview that took us up the food chain from phytoplankton to the great whales.

It was really cool to watch sharks swim through huge masses of sardines and how the sardines would scatter in the immediate vicinity to create pockets of space around where the sharks were swimming. The sardines were so dense that you could follow the path of the sharks from an arial view by watching the streaks of clear water that wove through the sardine mass. It's amazing those fish never run into each other. We also learned about how the dolphins use fences of air bubbles to herd the sardines into even tighter groups and force them to the surface where it's easier for the dolphins to eat them. We also saw the birds that would follow along the surface and then dive down to catch the sardines after the dolphins had herded them to the surface. It was impressive to watch hundreds of birds dive all at the same time into the ocean. It looked like it was raining birds. It was sad though to watch a pod of killer whales work together to first separate a grey whale calf from its mother and then drown it so they could eat it.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.