Channels of conservation

TELLY VISION

Back from a cruise, my fiancé commented, "Nothing can intimidate you as much as the ocean can, or make you feel as powerless and insignificant."

Watching a marine documentary on National Geographic Channel with excellent underwater photography by Hugh Beard, I realised how very little we know of marine life.

"The great challenge," said a voice-over in the film, "is for us to understand marine life." It is rather unsettling that we know so little of the daily activities of the millions of beings that exist underwater.

And this documentary (it was an old one, shot somewhere in the Maldives in 1998) gave some extraordinary insights into the colourful life of the marine beauties that exist in the vast oceans and seas of the world.

In one segment of the film an entire school of sea lions spouted bubbles in an attempt to imitate the divers. The film showed a host of female sea lions following a human diver while a male sea lion swam rapidly and angrily ordering his harem to follow him. The response: the female sea lions followed the diver instead!

What is fascinating about documentaries that focus on marine life is the attempt to showcase the daily activities of these underwater residents and showcasing the manner in which sharks and tiny fish live and coexist.

As long as they aren't searching for food, tiny fish can come near the mouth of a whale shark (which is three metres wide, complete with 3,000 teeth) without the world's largest fish gobbling them up.

The real challenge for individuals who dive into deep waters, or trudge into wildlife sanctuaries and forests to film episodes in the lives of these creatures, is to find ways to help them survive in the long run.

The good news is that channels like Animal Planet, BBC and National Geographic have introduced coveted awards given to individuals who are saving the environment and even extending help to communities in need of financial and humanitarian aid.

Take Mayur Kamath. An engineer by profession, Kamath was recently declared the international winner of Animal Planet's contest that invited entries from amateur wildlife filmmakers to shoot documentaries.

Kamath was taken to Shamwari Game Reserve in South Africa where he learnt the nuances of wildlife filmmaking from experts. The channel has now announced its next series and is inviting entries once again from amateurs. Obviously, the idea is to involve many people in conservation.

"Till you don't include communities in preservation, there is little that a handful of us can do," explained Pilai Poonswad, one of the five 2006 laureates of Nat Geo's Rolex Awards, on a special feature shown on Nat Geo. She was referring to her pet project on preserving hornbills, which are fast becoming an extinct specie due to rapid erosion of the forest in Thailand.

Poonswad's success story was to convert poachers (who sold hornbills for $1,000 each) into helping hands for her project.

"We need media attention and television channels have the ability to promote us," she said in an interview on the channel. She is now building artificial nests and even imploring tourists to adopt nests.

If Poonswad has been the voice of hornbills for the past 30 years, there are others like Brad Norman and Rory Wilson who are undertaking complicated studies to study and subsequently conserve marine and animal life respectively.

For the record, the other two laureates include Alexandra Lavrillier, who is fighting to preserve the tradition of a nomadic tribe in Siberia, and Chanda Shroff, who has been providing employment to Kutch women by tapping their embroidery skills.

For once, a whale shark needs to share space with a hornbill. It's for the cause of preservation, after all.

(aojha@business-standard.com)