Deep blue wonders: New nature series proves many fishermen's tales true

Boiling seas, huge flying fish that snatch birds from the sky and armour-clad octopuses were once thought to be purely the stuff of fishermen's tales.

But remarkable new footage, captured over four years by BBC filmmakers for Blue Planet II, has proved many sailors' myths are true.

Sixteen years after the original The Blue Planet aired, the series returns this month with scientific discoveries and filming firsts that reveal the surprising intelligence and complex social lives of creatures beneath the waves.

Among the most astonishing discoveries was one made in the Seychelles, where filmmakers found that a predatory fish, the giant trevally, leaps into the air to grab sooty terns on the wing.

"A fish that launches itself, missile-like, to take birds from the air, sounded too extraordinary to be true," said Miles Barton, producer for the Coast episode. "Despite it being a fishermen's tale, there was no photographic evidence to back it up. So I was sceptical, to say the least. We arrived and got very excited because, yes, there were splashes everywhere, the fish were leaping out of the water and they did seem to be grabbing birds. They're amazing shots. A genuine bird-eating fish."

The footage proved for the first time that the fish can spot moving birds in the air from underwater and calculate the light shift so they can catch their moving target.

The team has broken such new ground that at least a dozen scientific papers are planned on the back of the series. Behaviours new to science include an octopus that grabs shells and rocks with its suckers, using them as body armour and camouflage against predators.

In the Pacific the cameras caught the phenomenon of the "boiling sea", another sailors' legend, which occurs when millions of lanternfish rise to the surface to spawn, triggering a feeding frenzy.

The Sunday Telegraph