CBC The Nature of Things, Mar 4, 2010: One Ocean, Episode 1: Bir

CBC The Nature of Things with David Suzuki - Mar 4, 2010: One Ocean, Episode 1: Birth of an Ocean

Premiering: Thursday March 4 at 8 pm on CBC-TV



The Series Description: One Ocean

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 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.

Series webpage:

http://oneocean.cbc.ca

One Ocean, Episode 1: Birth of an Ocean

We live on a planet that is almost all ocean - a water planet that is unique among the cosmos.



The ocean is what transformed the Earth into the livable, blue planet it is today. However, in the earth’s earliest history there was no ocean – it was a red-hot planet of molten magma flashing through space.

The Ocean, Oxygen and Life

Where did all this water come from and how has the ocean shaped this planet over the last 4 billion years? The first episode in the One Ocean series, The Birth of an Ocean, reveals the transformative power of the ocean on this planet – and how the ocean drives everything on the Earth - from our temperate climate, to the air we breath to the land we walk on. No living creature could be here today if this dramatic event had never taken place.

The ocean changed our atmosphere by slowly filling it with life-giving oxygen. Peter Ward, a paleontologist with the University of Washington, takes us to Shark Bay in Western Australia to discover stromatolites – an incredible bacterial formation which helped fill the ocean and later the atmosphere with oxygen.

Oxygen would change everything by allowing multi-cellular life to evolve and then flourish in the watery depths. The Birth of an Ocean explores how a deadly chain of events was put into motion that caused oxygen to all but disappear from the ocean and atmosphere, launching a mass greenhouse extinction. As it turns out, most of the mass extinctions that have occurred were not caused by a massive asteroid, but by a tiny bacterium!

The Beginning of Life on the Planet

The story of the ocean is the story of the beginning of life on the planet, mass extinctions and astonishing survival in one of the most beautiful and mysterious parts of the planet. One of the most astonishing stories of endurance is that of the nautulis - a 500 million year old living fossil - an incredible species that managed to survive all of the mass extinctions. It’s an incredible story of survival but what are the adaptations and selective advantages that have allowed the nautilus to survive for so very long?



The Birth of an Ocean joins paleontologist Ted Daeschler as he reveals the secrets of the fossil Tiktaalik, the critical transitional species that first crawled out of the ocean and onto land. We see just how much of our own anatomy we share with this amazing creature.

Ted Daeschler –“We’re looking at Tiktaalik, we're looking at an animal that's really at the base of the branch of the tree of life that leads to all limbed animals, and we're a limbed animal.”

Ultimately The Birth of an Ocean reveals that the history of the ocean is our own history… and that today we are just beginning to understand its complexity and the immense influence it has on the planet and our own survival.

The series One Ocean is produced by CBC’s the nature of things and Merit Motion Pictures, in association with National Geographic Channels International. The Birth of an Ocean is directed and written by Mike Downie and produced by Tina Verma. The Series Producer is Caroline Underwood and the Executive Producer is Michael Allder.

Episode webpage:

http://oneocean.cbc.ca/series/episodes/1-birth-of-an-ocean

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CBC.The.Nature.Of.Things-One.Ocean.Part1.2010.HDTV.XviD-YT

Country : CA
Language : English
Network : CBC
Pack Date : 2010-03-05
Length : 00:44:25
Video : 967 kbps XviD MPEG-4
Audio : 119 kbps 48KHz 2ch MP3
Resolution : 624x352
Scan : Progressive
Framerate : 29.970
Size : 350 MB

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CBC - The Nature of Things with David Suzuki

Rare wildlife, unique perspectives, cutting-edge science and tech--Canada's longest running documentary series, the award-winning The Nature of Things with David Suzuki, cuts through the hype to bring you the latest stories from the frontlines of science and the environment.

CBC's The Nature of Things with David Suzuki website:

http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/