Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 22, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The film shows an epic struggle for survival in a place where whales, sharks, dolphins, seals, seabirds and billions of fish converge and encounter the ocean’s most voracious predator: humanity. WILD OCEAN 3D explores the economic and cultural impact of the oceans and follows local projects aimed at protecting marine resources.
Billions of sardines migrate to the KwaZulu-Natal coast each year. For countless generations, these migrations have provided an important source of food for people living on the African coast, while marine predators travel from far offshore to feed. Bottlenose dolphins form enormous pods and use sonar to move along the coastline. Sharks detect blood in the water and join the hunt. Seals and dolphins drive the fish out of cooler currents and into warmer tropical waters. Diving birds such as Cape gannets join the battle with aerial attacks. Together, these animals create one of the most incredible mass-feeding spectacles in the natural world: eat or be eaten.
Unfortunately, such abundance has become rare. For centuries, the world’s oceans were regarded as an inexhaustible resource. With the industrialization of fishing during the twentieth century, entire fish stocks began to collapse off the coasts of North America, Europe and Asia. The fish hauled aboard ships by the ton were an essential part of complex marine ecosystems and a vital link in the food chain on which many predators depend. Entire fish species may already have been eradicated, while marine-predator populations have declined dramatically. A new threat has now emerged: global climate change, which threatens to cause further damage to marine ecology. As WILD OCEAN 3D examines the causes and effects of human influence, it also looks optimistically toward the future, taking viewers into an untouched wilderness that reveals how oceans around the world once looked. The film advocates the need for marine reserves—and South Africa is leading the way.
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