Programme Index

Discover 11,128,835 listings and 279,892 playable programmes from the BBC

A View Through a Lens

Series 3

Episode 5: Shearwater Hurricane

Duration: 15 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FMLatest broadcast: on BBC Radio 4 FM

Available for over a year

Wildlife cameraman John Aitchison often finds himself in isolated and even dangerous locations across the globe filming wildlife, and in this series he reflects on the uniqueness of human experience, the beauty of nature, the fragility of life and the connections which unite society and nature across the globe.

5/5 Shearwater Hurricane. Wildlife cameraman John Aitchison travelled with a team filming the BBC series Frozen Planet to the Aleutian islands, a chain of islands which stretches more than a thousand miles in the far west of Alaska. The Aleutians are famous for their strong fickle tides, for their fog and for their storms. The currents rushing between the islands pump nutrients between the Pacific and Bering Sea and where there are nutrients, there are plankton. Plankton are food for krill, and krill are food for Humpback whales. But its not only whales that gather here, so too do herring, and the herring attract birds; Short-tailed shearwaters which fly thousands of miles here from the south of Australia to feed on the herring. These waters are transformed into the scene of an extraordinary banquet; and one of Nature's greatest feeding spectacles.

Producer Sarah Blunt. Show less

About this data

This data is drawn from the data stream that informs BBC's iPlayer and Sounds. The information shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was/is subject to change and may not be accurate. More