Big Pacific

Filming the big Pacific, an ocean that covers a third of the planet, was a grand idea that became a gigantic undertaking. Follow the adventures of the filmmakers behind the series. This "Making Of" special explores the highlights and challenges of wildlife filmmaking.

With the best crews and the latest technology, the Big Pacific series travels to 20 countries, 77 different locations, filming an ocean that covers one third of our planet. Find out how the crews made this ambitious project possible.

Follow behind the scenes with the Big Pacific film crew to Amami Oshima, off the coast of Japan. Cameramen Peter Kragh and Ernie Kovacs set out to film a mysterious pufferfish. They must find creative ways to film without destroying the pufferfish’s delicate sand circles.

The Big Pacific crew travel to Shedeo, or Snake Island, to film pit vipers preying on migrating songbirds. The essential shot for the story, or money shot, is the moment a pit viper captures a bird. Cameraman Scott Snider searches for that moment among 20,000 snakes. While under the concealment of a hide, cameraman John Betz captures an unexpected encounter instead.

In the Pacific, the quest to multiply has spawned a stunning array of unusual behaviors and adaptations. There are forest penguins with a tenuous marriage, the secret rendezvous of great white sharks, and the tale of male pregnancy.

In the Pacific, the quest to multiply has spawned a stunning array of unusual behaviors and adaptations. There are forest penguins with a tenuous marriage, the secret rendezvous of great white sharks, and the tale of male pregnancy.

Yellow-eyed penguins care for their young together. Nesting in the dense New Zealand forest, the pair will take turns fishing so one parent is always watching over their chicks. But when the breeding season ends and the offspring leave, the partnership will dissolve – until the next mating season.

For some life in the big Pacific, mating can be the kiss of death: Along the California coastline sea otters’ courtship is a wrestling match with no holds barred and females can be drowned in the process.

A mass spawning event happens on an empty shoreline high in the Gulf of California: the grunion run. Thousands of silvery bodies flicker in the shallows in an explosion of life and death. No other fish spawns so boldly, in the open air, under blazing sun. This is a tidal wave of reproduction.

There is plenty of food in the Pacific Ocean, but it is the challenge of finding that food that drives all life in the Pacific. In the voracious Pacific we meet a destructive army of mouths, a killer with a hundred mouths and the biggest mouth in the ocean.

Manta rays stretch to 15 feet across. To reach this size, they must nearly constantly feed on prey so minute it is just a haze in the water. A rich patch of plankton starts a feeding frenzy amongst the manta rays. They gracefully glide though the water while filtering the plankton with feather-like "rakers" deep within its gills.

On the Galapagos Islands, marine iguanas have developed new behaviors to make the most of the rich meadows of algae offshore. They can hold their breath up to an hour while feeding on the algae. After the excursion, a gland in the marine iguana’s nose filters out excess salt that it unavoidably ingests while foraging in the ocean. Then all the iguana has to do is sneeze.