Fish feast frenzy caught on film

By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

A sardine feeding frenzy has been captured on camera in remarkable detail.

A BBC crew filmed thousands of sharks and dolphins, as well as elusive Bryde's whales, feasting on shoals.

The footage also revealed gannets' deft underwater hunting skills as they dived to catch sardines.

Each winter, cool ocean currents drive millions of the small fish northwards along the eastern coast of South Africa.

These immense shoals, squeezed into this narrow cold-water corridor, provide an incredible feeding opportunity for the predators that live in and around these waters.

The sardine run forms part of the BBC Natural History Unit series: Nature's Great Events. However, despite the epic scale of this spectacle, filming it was not easy.

Hugh Pearson, who produced The Great Tide, said: "It is an annual event, but by its nature it is not predictable and it is very difficult to find - the shoals are found over such a vast expanse of sea."

The team used microlites to track down the sardines, allowing helicopter, boat-based and underwater crews to capture the feeding frenzy in extensive detail.

Mr Pearson said: "You have to be on the water, waiting and waiting and waiting for the ideal conditions.

"But when it happens, and you have the best action and the best predators in clean water - once you get all of those in one place, you can just clean up.

"It happened to be the best year for baitballs in a long time."

Underwater cameraman Didier Noirot, who has worked with Jacques Cousteau for more than a decade, managed to capture armies of sharks, dolphins and seabirds as they gorged on the swirling shoals.

For full story plus video footage see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7921119.stm