Sonic Sea

Fallen whale carcasses, abundant in the deep-sea, form ecosystems of their own. As it decomposes, different stages support a succession of marine biological communities. It is these complex and fascinating stages that are here explored.

Coral biologists are concerned about the genetic health of many endangered coral. This short film follows a team of Smithsonian scientists as they attempt to use cryopreserved coral sperm to introduce DNA to new populations of elkhorn coral. If this technique works, it could have lasting impacts on how we are able to protect and restore endangered coral species from near extinction.

There is a mystery there and the answer lies somewhere between Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Miami. Hundreds of boats and planes have disappeared in the ocean with little or no trace at all. Most of these cases can be explained quite easily by human error or bad weather. But there are some that defy all explanation. Theories abound on these causes: Aliens, massive gas eruptions and freak waves. The documentary reveals that the boats and planes face a real danger in a triangle, but the true threat is often as strange as the wildest theory.

The movie follows today’s beachcombers in Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Japan. The same endless piles of trash left by humans cover all the shores. Our shared ocean is loaded with time travelers made of plastic, the fruit of our throwaway culture and our indifference. They are the seeds of destruction, as they end up in the entrails of creatures living in the sea. Most of the beachcombers share the same worries about the environment. Beside the plastic trash, many travelers drift between continents, such as various plants’ seeds. Like all species, they look for new living environments where they could survive on a warming planet.

The Smog of the Sea chronicles a 1-week journey through the remote waters of the Sargasso Sea. Marine scientist Marcus Eriksen invited onboard an unusual crew to help him study the sea: renowned surfers Keith & Dan Malloy, musician Jack Johnson, spearfisher woman Kimi Werner, and bodysurfer Mark Cunningham become citizen scientists on a mission to assess the fate of plastics in the world’s oceans. After years of hearing about the famous “garbage patches” in the ocean’s gyres, the crew is stunned to learn that the patches are a myth: the waters stretching to the horizon are clear blue, with no islands of trash in sight. But as the crew sieves the water and sorts through their haul, a more disturbing reality sets in: a fog of microplastics permeates the world’s oceans, trillions of nearly invisible plastic shards making their way up the marine food chain. You can clean up a garbage patch, but how do you stop a fog?

Oceanographers have been gripped by a new spirit of discovery and have undertaken the biggest population census of ocean species ever conducted - a "Census of Marine Life". The quest: to find out when and where it all began. Where did the water come from? How was life created in the oceans? And how did it evolve to the enormous diversity we see today? Join National Geographic as we travel more than 4 billion years into the past to uncover how oceans and marine life came to exist.

Blue Whales: Return of the Giants 3D takes viewers on a journey of a lifetime to explore the world of the magnificent blue whale, a species rebounding from the brink of extinction. Following two scientific expeditions—one to find a missing population of blues off the exotic Seychelles Islands, the other to chronicle whale families in Mexico’s stunning Gulf of California—the film is an inspirational story that transforms our understanding of the largest animal ever to have lived.

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.

In 2009, the underwater world around the Central Polynesian Sporades in the eastern Pacific was intact. But a few years later, the corals died massively. Now they have recovered.