Parts of David Attenborough's latest series filmed in fish tank, BBC admits

Telegraph

2 days ago

The BBC has admitted that part of Sir David Attenborough's latest nature series was filmed in specialist 'tanks' rather than in the wild.
Key segments in the corporation's new Parenthood series, narrated by Sir David, could not be filmed 'in situ' in order to protect the species involved, according to the producers.
Skeleton shrimp, boxer crabs and Banggai cardinalfish were among the animals filmed in 'a specialist filming environment' to ensure family bonds and habitats were not disturbed.
Specialist tanks and 'incubation units' were therefore used – in part – to help the BBC capture 'the intimate relationships between parent and their offspring '.
Jeff Wilson, the series producer and director, and Olly Scholey, its producer, insisted that the balance in these relationships could 'be easily upset' by interference.
Writing in an online article about the series for the BBC, they explained: 'In the world of wildlife filmmaking, affecting the behaviour of your subjects is a line we work hard not to cross, and these parenting relationships are incredibly fragile.
'In many cases, across the series, we are also dealing with species that are no bigger than a thumbnail … [meaning] that we needed to design the sequences with specific macro-technologies and careful use of light.
'So often, teams filming in these situations needed to tread carefully, or in this case, paddle carefully – and at times, we were forced to use specialist filming tanks to ensure that we got the balance absolutely right.'
One such example featured in the opening of the Freshwater episode, which sees hundreds of thousands of Amazon river turtle hatchlings following their mothers to the water.
However, the moment of actual hatching could not be captured in the wild because of the 'sensitive condition of the unhatched eggs underground'.
'To do so would mean risking the survival of the young themselves,' Wilson and Scholey explained.
Instead, the filming crew for the natural history series worked 'hand-in-hand' with Brazilian scientific researchers and their incubation unit to 'create a specialist environment' where hatching could be captured.
Similarly, producers needed to create 'a specialist filming environment' of see-through tanks to tell the parenting stories of skeleton shrimps as well as Banggai cardinalfish.
Previous fakery claims
The decision to film in specialist tanks rather than disrupt the animals' natural habitats follows wildlife filming's unofficial non-intervention rule.
The BBC has previously been embroiled in accusations of fakery in its natural history documentaries, including a Frozen Planet sequence in 2011 in which a polar bear appeared to give birth in the Arctic, but was in fact filmed in a Dutch zoo.
The corporation also admitted that a sequence filmed for an episode of Human Planet, also in 2011, misled viewers by giving the impression the tallest treehouses built by Papua New Guinea's Korowai people were used as homes.
However, the broadcaster has said since these incidents it has strengthened training for its Natural History Unit in 'editorial guidelines, standards and values'.