The polar bear has become a popular icon of climate change; clinging forlornly to the shrinking ice, waiting for the end. Early on Dynamic Planet, we meet some bears who aren’t taking it lying down.
The first episode of the four-part docuseries features the polar bears of Seal River in northeastern Canada, which, faced with ever-shortening seasons of sea ice – when they would normally eat sufficient seals to tide them through the summer – have begun to adapt their diets and their hunting methods.
The circumstances that let them do so are unique – the boulders strewn over the river’s mouth on Hudson Bay have been adopted by the bears as perches from which to prey on the beluga whales that migrate there en masse – but it’s entirely new behaviour, driven by a changing world. The effect of seeing it is to introduce a little optimism into the bleak narrative of climate change and to emphasise that startling changes to the face of the Earth are taking place right now. “It’s not your regular kind of doom-and-gloom climate-change show with icebergs melting and factory chimneys spewing out waste,” says Ben Lawrie, who produced the series for Natural History New Zealand and PBS. Global warming is not a notion for debate. “We just get on with looking at how warmer conditions are changing the world.”
Dynamic Planet also features many more humans than your standard natural history programme. A key thread is the way indigenous communities are responding to changes in their natural environments, often drawing on traditional knowledge to do so.
In northern Mexico, the Comcáak people have organised to support the population of sea turtles, which feature prominently in their mythology, but whose nesting grounds are being destroyed by a warmer, stormier ocean. In Fiordland, Ramari Stewart – a childhood whale rider and now a respected whale researcher – explains the role of migratory humpback whales, and their poo, in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle.
UK migrant Lawrie says the presence of actor Cliff Curtis as narrator was helpful in conveying the meaning of mātauranga Māori, “and he was so particular about representing the indigenous communities he was talking about. We went back to our communities and got audio recordings, if they hadn’t been done on location, of exactly how names, places and events were pronounced. He took the time to get it right.”
Shooting the series – shot on all seven continents over three years – was also a little different. “When you’re doing a project about climate change, you’re a little more mindful about the air miles and the amount of gear you’re shipping around the world,” says Lawrie. “We worked hard to use remote crews where possible. For most of the stories, we sent a single person from New Zealand.”
It’s not all in the wild; the series’ second episode, Fire, opens in Athens, birthplace of the modern Olympic Games, which, before the end of the century will simply be too hot to safely host such an event.
“Experiences like that can help the audience understand that changes might affect us in surprising ways. Adaptations are not always what you want or expect.”
Dynamic Planet premieres on Neon on Sunday, February 4. Episodes then screen weekly on Sky Open from Sunday, February 25, 7.30pm.
