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Pictures from the Poles
The BBC recently produced a major new nature documentary, which it describes as the ultimate portrait of Earth's polar regions: the last great wilderness on the planet. The images below are stills taken from the documentary, and are a beautiful reminder of just how amazing the polar regions are.
Images and text from The Guardian, 19 October 2011.
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| The Taiga in Finland is the greatest forest on Earth, containing at least a third of all the world's trees. The vast stretches of forest are restricted to one or two species of tree, usually conifer. Life is scarce in these forests as conifer needles are hard to digest. Some of the trees can be loaded with as much as three tonnes of snow. This is why conifers tend to be cone shaped with sloping sides to encourage the snow to slide off. |
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| Cameramen Dough Anderson and Hugh Miller created a bespoke underwater tripod which they bolted to the ice ceiling. They were able to get extraordinarily stable, macro shots of ice formations or ice chandeliers, which were inhabited by millions of tiny ice fish whose bodies were full of anti-freeze. Under ice diving is not for the faint-hearted – it is the most high risk type of diving. |
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| Male polar bear follows female, showing battle scars. The size difference is clearly illustrated - the male weighs twice as much as she does. The Frozen Planet crew filmed the entire courtship sequence over a fortnight, capturing extraordinary intimate and tender moments. The male had to defend his interests in the female by fighting off at least ten rival males. By the end of the period, he was covered in blood and limped away into the sunset. But at least he had ensured that his female hadn't mated with any other males. This would guarantee that the cubs that she would give birth to in nine months time would be his. He returns to his solitary ways out on the sea ice and will never see his mate again. |
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| Lying belly-down on Antarctic sea-ice at the edge of a small hole, a cameraman gets a shock when a killer whale mother and calf explode out of the water in front of his face. The cameramen said that the only way to get underwater images was to hand-hold a camera on a pole in the icy water, wait and hope. As the orcas came up to breathe they would eye-ball them with curiosity and spray oily breath all over their faces. They added that to be on your stomach precariously perched on the edge of the ice with a killer whale staring down at you was simultaneously terrifying and awe-inspiring. |
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| King penguins silhouetted at dawn, South Georgia. The King Penguin is the second largest species of penguin, weighing up to 16 kgs. They eat small fish - mainly lanternfish and squid, and repeatedly dive to more than 100 metres to find lunch. There are an estimated 2.23 million pairs of King Penguins with numbers increasing. |
| Click here to see more of these images at The Guardian. |
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