Saturday, October 01, 2016
Planet Earth
The series offers a seemingly unending glimpse of the wonders of the world. Ranging from the highest mountains to profound ocean depths, steaming jungles to frozen arctic ice sheets and glaciers, volcanic eruptions to spectacular water falls, spiraling cyclonic weather patterns to millions of migrating birds and mammals, beautiful flowers to nightmarish feeding frenzies. Little can be more intimidating than the sight of a great white shark tossing a one-ton seal into the air and opening that massive tooth encircled jaw to engulf it in one bite like some teenage boy tossing a french fry.
The wonder is that organizations such as the BBC still exist and receive funding that allows them to support the scientific research and talent that makes series such as this possible. Surely allowing people to see the wonders of their planet is more rewarding than the development of more efficient means of waging warfare and money better spent. Mind you the two butted heads in Afghanistan where conflict hampered filming.
Film crews spend weeks, months, and even years gaining footage that sometimes occupy only seconds on screen. The enthusiasm, dedication, and skill of these crews is immeasurable. Be it diving the murky Amazon to film pirrana, waiting in frigid hides for an illusive feline to appear, racing uneven terrain to catch a wild dog hunt, or flying in turbulent air pockets; there are dangers involved.
Organizations such as the BBC provide unique resources for projects such as this. The orchestra that provides the background music, film processing and editing resources, and the voice of natural history, Sir Richard himself. Time-lapse photography speeds things up and high speed slows them down up to 40 times.
The whale shark is a 30-ton fish because it has gills, the 150-ton Blue Whale and the Orca are mammals because they have lungs.
Watching sea creatures such as the rays and even the whales swim reminds me that moving through water distinctly resembles flying through air though being denser water is eminently more supportive. Studying whale fins has led to breakthroughs in wing flight technology that also makes propellers and wind turbines quieter and more efficient. Microscopic plankton in our oceans accounts for 2/3rds of the oxygen we breath, the arboreal forest in the taiga nearly 1/3rd, all other sources are infinitesimal by comparison.
The final disk highlights the need for preservation. When watching footage of millions of birds migrating in seemingly limitless numbers we must remember that the passenger pidgeons once wondered the skies in similar numbers and now there are none. The millions of bison that once wandered our great plains indeed creating that environment are now but a token herd. This prospect is depressing and this final disk in the series constitutes a plea to save the creatures the team spent so many months and years capturing on film in the hopes that theirs won't be the last time these animals have been seen in the wild.
Ironic that I be reading Prince Charles' Harmony while I watch this. Although conservation efforts focus on the cute and cuddly--the WWF's Panda for example; and the majestic lions, tigers, elephants; every creature is important including the microbes we cannot see but may be even more important to our well being in the long run. Conservation cannot be solely the concern of rich Western Nations at the expense of the third world poor. If we are to save species and habitats we must find the means to fight poverty so that local populations to not destroy habitat for temporary farmland, hunt bush meat, or poach tusk, horns, pelts to make a meagre living.
