11- The Open Ocean

Original air date: 5 April 1984

The images shows the construction of the programme. A more detailed timeline is below.

Selected material:

There are various kinds of deserts (32’05)

Not all deserts are sandy like the Sahara, this one is wet

Humpbacks using bubble netting (48’40)

By, at least some scientist, this is regarded as tool use – blowing bubbles that together work like a fishing net made by humans.

Coming up: “… During this century, man has fished so skillfully, so intensively, so unrelentingly, that he has begun to change the pattern of life in the sea. Some kinds of fish have been forced to change their habits, others have been driven close to the edge of extinction. This little port in Newfoundland, close to what was once the richest of all seas, now brings in fewer catches, and modern fish-processing plants like that one are mostly standing idle. So man has changed the sea, just as he’s changed almost every environment in the world. But he’s done something else, too. He’s created new environments, environments of brick and concrete, and chromium and plastic. It’s the latest of the world’s environments, and the ways in which plants and animals have adapted to live in them, that we’re going to look at in the last of these programmes.”

More episodes

01- The Building of the Earth
02- The Frozen World
03- The Northern Forests
04- Jungle
05- Seas of Grass
06- The Baking Deserts
07- The Sky Above
08- Sweet Fresh Water
09- The Margins of the Land
10- Worlds Apart
12- New Worlds