The High Seas

This is my summary on the Netflix “Our Planet”

The largest mammal that roams this planet is the blue whale. Yet there are less than a few thousand left when there used to be 300,000 Blue whales in the wild. People were hunting blue whales till 1966 to the point to where they disappeared. The Blue whale weighs up to 200 tons and can be almost 30 meters long. A baby blue whale can be 8 meters long and 6 tons. A Baby blue whale is also called a calf. The calf usually swims under its mother’s shadow or right below her. The calf would only come up to the water when it needs to breath. Whale blowholes look a lot like human nostrils, but the difference is that we do not open and close our nostrils. Though the whales aren’t the only mammals that roam the Pacific.

              Spinner dolphins. The reason they were named Spinner dolphins is because of how they jump out of the water and dive back in. The soar through the air while spinning in circles. The pods split up into groups to round up lantern fish. The fish are known to flee away into the deep when threatened so a pack of dolphins go under the fish. They looked like decent sized minnows but with large beady eyes swimming in a school of millions. After the dolphins are done feasting, they poop that is good for the ocean and attracts Phytoplankton.

              Phytoplankton are an important part of our ecosystem. These microscopic creatures are everywhere around the world. All Phytoplankton are made in very weird shapes; they all look like something from an alien planet with the light green rough textured and the weird designs printed on them. These little creatures help our planet in two very important ways and are one of the only reasons the planet is surviving. To begin with, the phytoplankton produce clouds that control the weather. Even more interesting is that they produce half the world’s oxygen. Without them our planet as we know it would be in a similar to Mars.

While Phytoplankton live in bright blue waters, the creatures that live below them look like they are from another world where the water looks like deep space without stars. You can see nothing without a light down there, and that is why some creatures have bioluminescence in them.

All of the animals that live down in the deep do not get any sunlight so they are pale or transparent. In the pitch-black water an Oarfish appears, this 10-meter-long fish stretches vertically like a ruler. They have shiny silvery type scales that are in a straight line. In addition, there are pure white coral reefs with sea worms that live inside the corals. The worms are fascinating creatures. Unfortunately, because of deep sea net fishing half of the deep-sea corals have died.

Giant Petrels are the vultures of the sea and they are usually the first animal to arrive to a carcass for food. Black Albatross on the other hand can stay on a scent from 20 kilometers. The Giant petrels bully the Albatross whenever they are trying to possess the food.

Afterwards many other kinds of seabirds join too. Down beneath the sea birds are Bluefin tuna, these fish can weigh up to half a ton and grow more than 3 meters long. The tuna hunt schools of anchovies in packs of hundreds. They round the fish up at the surface and attack from below, that helps some Albatross and other sea birds grab the anchovies when they get pushed out of the water. Bluefin tuna are extremely valuable in Japan selling one is up for more than a million dollars, that is a reason why the Bluefin Tuna are being pushed to extinction. Many fish are on the brink of extinction for example sharks and many other fish too. Squid on the other hand are slowly replacing fish. The Humpbacks hunt the Krill for food, Seals too come to get their share of Krill. Humpback whales are always moving around the globe but last century there were more than a hundred thousand whales in the oceans but last century they were hunted down almost to extinction only some thousand whales survived.