Coming up, Jonathan joins famous IMAX filmmaking
team Howard and Michele Hall for dinner with sea turtles! Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World. Howard and Michele Hall are a world-renown
underwater filmmaking team. For more than 30 years, they have traveled
the world, making animal behavior documentaries. They are most famous for their incredible
underwater 3D IMAX films, which are made using an enormous camera system that weighs more
than 1,000 pounds. It uses two rolls of 70mm film and costs more
than $2,000 per minute to run. But the image quality is amazing on the giant
screen of an IMAX theater. Howard and Michele are my heroes—their films
inspired me to become an underwater filmmaker. So imagine how excited I am to be on a dive
trip in the Philippines with my heroes! Howard and Michele have come to Busuanga,
Palawan to work on a segment about Dugongs with me. But we also are going to explore a dive site
famous for sea turtles. It’s a long trip from North America to the
Philippines, but this is one of the best places in the world to scuba dive. Our captain sets a course for Dimakya Island. Then its time to suit up. Michele hits the water first. Then Howard and I. There is no reef here, just a sandy bottom. At first it doesn’t look very promising. But our divemaster has already found a sea
turtle. This green turtle is foraging for food. She has a freeloader in the form of a huge
remora sticking to her. She really likes the sea grasses that grow
here. There isn’t a ton of nutritional value in
the grass, so she spends a lot of her time eating. And she digs down to get to the more nutritional
roots. Divers come here fairly often, so she is not
afraid of us at all. Howard and I can get up really close to film. I have to be honest, I never thought I would
have Howard and Michele Hall as Blue World cinematographers! Like land turtles, sea turtles breathe air. They hold their breath underwater and need
to rise up to breathe every few minutes. A quick breath, and its back to feeding. Michele demonstrates just how close we can
get. Maybe the sea turtle could use a little help? Michele notices that the sea turtle eats an
awful lot of sand while feeding. So maybe she can assist. This sea turtle is no dummie. She knows an easy meal when she sees it. This looks like fun to me. Nearby I find another turtle and see if she
will accept a handout. Pretty soon the sea turtles are following
us around like puppies! We can even get them to do tricks! All this eating is making me hungry. So I decide to give the seagrass a taste. Salad isn’t my favorite food, but sea salad? Disgusting. Yech. Michele likes healthy foods though, and she
loves it! If only we had a nice vinaigrette. Meanwhile, the turtle has her eyes on a thick
ring of grass around an anemone. But as she inches closer, she finds out why
nobody is eating that seagrass. The anemonefish are protective of their home
and drive away intruders. They even attack Howard as he sets up for
a shot! Soon we notice that the anemonefish are working
very hard to move a piece of waterlogged bamboo closer to their anemone. These fish are very persistent. Once they get it in position, we look closer
and realize what’s going on. They have laid their eggs on the bamboo! The largest male aerates the eggs constantly,
by swishing water over them with his fins. With anemonefish, it’s the males that care
for the eggs. Once we have been watching for a while, the
little fish decide we are no longer a threat and stop attacking. Nearby, another anemone, this one harboring
a different inhabitant. Michele coaxes it out to play. A tiny cleaner shrimp, looking for fish to
clean. Michele is an odd customer at this cleaning
station. I can’t believe how long she can hold her
breath! And I think the sea turtle is feeling a little
left out. So I go back to helping her harvest some sea
grass. But her meal ticket has a finite air supply,
and its time for us to head back to the boat. I’m so excited that I got to dive with Howard
and Michele Hall. And we were lucky to find such cooperative
subjects. Sometimes even a shallow sandy sea floor that
looks boring, can turn out to be an amazing wild animal encounter in the blue world. Hey Everyone! Thanks for watching our latest episode all
the way to the end! Hit that subscribe button now so you won’t
miss our next episode! And check out our new second channel, BlueWorld_plus
for some awesome behind-the-scenes, VLOGs and extras!
How can someone so experienced at diving be so bad at it?