Original air date: 22 March 1984
Selected material:
The seed of one of the mangrove trees is very strange (13’20)
It has a sharp end to it and if the tide is in when it falls it will float away (centre) but otherwise it will get stuck in the ground
A crab with a puddle of water (19’45)
The crab uses this puddle of water (shown in circle, above) to breath through
A soldier crab constructing an igloo (24′)
In a hurry to construct an igloo before the tide returns
An archerfish shooting at insects (or spiders as seen in online videos, 25’15-26’40)
The archerfish shooting at an insect (top left), with a direct hit (top right and bottom left). If there’s a crowd of fish, who could race you for the fallen prey, you might be better off with a direct assault – jumping for it.
Coming up: “…Very few sea creatures venture above the limit of the highest tide and survive. One group of animals is compelled to do so by the nature of their ancestry, and on this one beach in Costa Rica, they stage an astonishing invasion. Turtles. They are Ridleys, the smallest of the sea-going turtles, only a couple of feet long. Turtles are descended from land-living reptiles, and, like all reptiles, they lay eggs that only develop and hatch in air. Every year, adult females, having mated at sea, must move onto dry land. They arrive at a rate of up to 5,000 an hour. They use only one or two of the thousands of beaches that seem to be suitable. ..Today, however, there are more people than ever here, and the eggs are plundered more seriously, so undoubtedly, this huge and extraordinary creature is in danger. But maybe the leatherback turtle has other breeding grounds that we don’t know about. Maybe it goes to small, tiny coral islands in the emptiness of the ocean to find beaches far away from man. That, indeed, is where we ourselves will be going in the next programme.”