CBC The Nature of Things - One Ocean (2010)Part 2 Footprints in the Sand

One Ocean

The Series Description One Ocean is an ambitious, provocative and stunning four-part documentary series that portrays the ocean more completely than ever before, revealing its awesome beauty and extraordinary power. The series, special effects and striking pictures shot in HD explores how it is that the ocean holds the very key to all life within its silent and shadowy depths. In each breathtaking episode we bring to life a vast, interconnected ecosystem: from the diversity and significance of microscopic plankton, to the sleek power of the Ocean’s top predators. One Ocean joins expeditions of discovery that take us to tropical coasts, to the deep, churning sea, and to meet strange and mysterious marine life that most of us will never get to see. We reveal a secret world beneath the water’s surface: energized with purpose, order, and the drama of survival. Complex environments inhabited by an astounding array of life forms, alternately splendid and graceful, are revealed like never before. Disarming, bizarre and plainly profound – One Ocean bears witness a world that is at once intricately beautiful and achingly vulnerable.

Part 2: Footprints in the Sand

In our second episode, Footprints in the Sand, we take measure of humanity’s impact on the sea since we first settled along its coasts over 150,000 years ago. We travel to the Mediterranean Sea with local Spanish fishermen in search of the magnificent bluefin tuna, the most prized fish in the ocean. It’s also one of the most overfished. As fishermen try to maintain their centuries-old method of fishing, conservation scientists are desperate to find hard evidence to support their side in the heated debate over quotas. Human activity through history – first overfishing, then over-development of the world’s coastlines, and the continuing pollution that we pour into the sea – have had unexpected consequences. But as Footprints in the Sand reveals, marine protected areas can have a huge impact on an ecosystem’s ability to recover. Zanzibar is a place where the people have always depended on fish for their survival. There, locals are finding ways to live in balance with the ocean by using more sustainable approaches to their harvests, and also by creating a sense of communal ownership and stewardship. In New Zealand, we discover that ocean areas which are now protected have experienced an extraordinary turn-around – where once sea urchins had taken over and destroyed the reefs and kelp forests, top predators have returned and the stunning reef has been restored to its full glory.

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