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Customer Reviews of The Blue Planet - Seas Of Life (Part 3)

As always in this series, aggressive proximity of close-up detail is so harsh, it's perverse. For instance, in 'Seasonal Seas' is contained a piece about the elusive salmon shark, which, heretofore, I had never ever heard of, much less seen. This segues into another beneficial aspect of Blue Planet. Complementing its unholy vivid cinematography is the rare find of being exposed to something utterly new and unprecedented, which may have been completely stagnated in the dark of unenlightenment for you. A smaller relative of the Great White (the shark, not the nightclub-fire setting band) that measures 10 feet long, these fish fit well under a "seasonal" heading because every year they return to the same Alaskan inlets to attack salmon, as the producer of this episode described at the end of this show's regular insights into the filming of these episodes.

Or how about another segment, concerning female spawning lobsters which move to warm shallows to look for a place to incubate their eggs in, wherein attention to the minutest detail is so hardened, it's perverse. They followed one particular lobster that, upon it's arrival, discovered that many craters in the sand had already been occupied by rivals. Blue Planet shows the fearsomely overlookable fight between the two, which is more of the smaller lobster yielding to the larger female with her eggs. Not to mention the preceding, yet torturously brief, feature relating to the basking shark. They have such an impressive shot of the fish, with it's mouth wide agape as it just propels itself through the water collecting plankton, almost like a loathsomely colossal sieve. This was after Attenborough had established that the plankton was some of the most microscopic ocean life.

Another curious facet was when they showed California otters surrounded by seaweeds. To sleep, these sea otters use the strands of kelp, coming up from 100 meters beneath them from the ocean's floor, as anchors to wrap around themselves to keep themselves from drifting off with the current. Successively, Blue Planet showed the otters' hunting methods, which consisted of diving down for shellfish, then bringing them back to the surface for consumption while swimming. Additionally, interesting was the sight of dolphin----in early autumn----appearing in B.C. to "play" with seaweed, as the crew caught them. It's doubtful whether this really was a game----one dolphin would carry the seaweed by its mouth or flipper and then desert it for the next dolphin to take, who promptly resumes this----because when animals move, they don't possess any dexterity.

In 'Coral Seas', again citing the grudging let down of the theme of much sadder animals in this pack, it starts off exploring corals, catastrophically predictably. However, what's quite fascinating in this piece is the time-motion camera they use to illustrate the narrator's points concerning coral survival of the fittest. Namely that as coral beds grow atrociously, increasingly near each other, they tend to fight for space by one consuming the other, rival coral, because of overcrowding. They do this at night.

Other aspects are consistently the same warring mix of inferior animals together with the most obscurely witnessed, and probably heretofore, filmed, perversely specific acts of nature. Such as threats to corals, like the crown-of-thorns starfish, that attempts to eat corals live by sucking them outrightly through it's stomach, on it's outside. Blue Planet particularly shows this harshly magnified, as do they the next pertaining scene, where small crabs that inhabit the coral will emerge to defend their home, by pinching the thorns of the starfish, causing it's retreat. Also factually immaterial, yet new to me, was the revelation of parrotfish having jaws so ornery, they'll not only eat coral but also rocks. Parrotfish erode corals, yet surprisingly, they aid in the development of beaches----by defecating this coral and rock they ingest as the fine sand on beaches.

They also cover how nighttime in reefs is supplanted by nocturnal hunters like Moray eels and Whitetip sharks, which hunt using electrical senses. When their prey (fish) are hiding in the dark inside the corals, they use these senses to detect movement of these fish, since Whitetips are impeded visually because of the dark. In another one of this series' closing features where they interview camera people for their techniques, the divers disclosed their methods for shooting the feeding frenzy, once the Whitetips found their prey, occurring in what would be cloudily black water, at night. They created artificial lighting using colossal floodlights connected to a portable generator they took underwater with them, in turn connected to miles of cable going to the surface. The divers confessed they were distraught that their imposing lighting would disrupt the natural occurrence of the Whitetips' feeding, but then explained that the instinct of them was grievously powerful, that they would single-mindedly focus on their kills, and nothing else.

Closing 'Coral Seas' out romantically is talk of turbulent ocean storms. Intimidating footage of the most tumultuous tempests is delivered severely close-up, with the animosity of waves and winds crashing in full fury to highlight the fact that, supposedly, in just such chaos, coral reefs hundreds of years old can be wiped out in hours. Contrastingly, out of such devastation emerge new coral larvae to re-colonize the ruined landscape where the storm just hit.

Out of our usual world
Just like I said, out of our usual world. Is it really like that under the water. The Blue Planet team not just filmed it, but brought it to life for all those of us who don't spend their lives under the sea. Excellent script, perfect photography, flawless sound mixing, magical music. A multiple thumbs up.

stunning
The photography was the best I've seen,the story line was highly interesting and informative,I was awed by the ability of the film crews to capture scenes that must rarely occur...one of the best series I have ever seen