Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Netflix's new nature documentary series Our Oceans Coming to the streaming service in November 2024. Narrated by former US President Barack Obama, Our Ocean promises to deliver some of the most incredible footage captured across all five oceans and seven continents.
Our Oceans It is a Netflix Original nature documentary series narrated by Barack Obama. The series is produced by Wild Space Productions, Freeborn Media, and Higher Ground Productions, with James Honeyborne and Barack and Michelle Obama as executive producers.
Our Oceans It consists of five episodes, each with a runtime of approximately sixty minutes. Each episode is produced and directed by different people: Rachel Scott, Joe Tuck, Nick Lyons, Caroline Menzies, and Abraham Joffe.
When is it? Our Oceans Coming to Netflix?
Netflix has announced that “Our Oceans” will premiere on the streaming service on November 20, 2024.
What is Our Oceans About this?
Netflix has provided a longer synopsis for Our Oceans:
“Our planet's five oceans are powered by a single, omnipotent engine: the “Global Ocean Current,” a thousand-year-old phenomenon that connects their diverse ecosystems into a colossal life force that fuels existence as we know it. From the tiny, tenacious cuttlefish to the graceful giant blue whale, every ocean-dwelling creature depends on that current to provide the resources it needs to survive. A lonely puffin waiting for its mate in the North Atlantic is linked to the bioluminescent spectacle off Southern California; bottlenose dolphins in the Indian Ocean frolic in the same waters with polar bear cubs in the Arctic. When this current flows from clownfish circling over colorful coral reefs in the Western Pacific to the cold Antarctic ice floes of chinstrap penguins and crabeater seals, it brings with it precious nutrients, newborn life, man-made threats, and hope for the future.
Narrated by President Barack Obama, this five-part documentary from Freeborn Media – the Emmy Award-winning team behind our great national parks – takes viewers on a 75,000-mile journey up and down today's oceans, giving us unprecedented access to some of the most undiscovered regions of our planet. Using cutting-edge scientific research and newly-developed underwater filmmaking technology, the series is packed with stunning action sequences, eye-popping drone footage, intimate ocean floor closeups, and countless never-before-seen animal behaviors: sea bream playing tennis? humpback whales staging a robbery? An octopus packing heat? It's a truly deep dive into the emotional, relatable lives of the most magical, resourceful, and resilient creatures on Earth. Our oceans invite us to care about these courageous heroes, with whom we have astonishingly much in common – and it's not a moment too soon, because their fate is inextricably intertwined with ours.”
Episode Breakdown
Episode 1 Pacific Ocean
The world's largest ocean, the Pacific Ocean, takes up 1/3 of our planet. The first episode will take us to the far end of the world, to the incredible Pacific Ocean. It's a spectacle of life, from mighty whales to humble cuttlefish, from underwater volcanoes to the Gulf of California.
Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Episode 2 Indian Ocean
The second episode will take us to the unique and vibrant Indian Ocean; from the coast of India to Western Australia, we'll look at everything from the incredible intelligence of dolphins and their hunting skills to the world of the bumphead parrotfish and their bone-crushing battles.
Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Episode 3 Atlantic Ocean
In the third episode, we will see a beautiful herd of orcas at the “Orca Training Academy”, where the young learn the challenges of hunting as they begin to specialize in complex stealth strategies and work as a team. This episode will also take us to the shores of the Falkland Islands, where two puffins who mate for life take us on an incredible romantic saga.
Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Episode 4 Arctic Ocean
One of the most dangerous places on Earth, the Arctic Ocean is home to incredible animals such as walruses, polar bears and narwhals. In this episode, we'll see the awe-inspiring journey of a polar bear mother and her two cubs. We'll also see the majestic narwhal in action and a beluga pool party!
Episode 5 Southern Ocean
Taking us to the far south of the world, we will once again be given a look into the world of the orcas, as the production team have spent years following an incredible and intelligent group of killer whales.
Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
The incredible statistics behind our oceans
It took a lot of time, effort, personnel and money to create our oceans.
- 'Our Oceans' was filmed in 33 countries, all seven continents and all five oceans.
- The production teams were spread across six different time zones and separated by four continents.
- More than 100 campaigns were conducted.
- The team spent 53,000 hours in the field.
- In total, over 40 years (353,688 hours) were spent in the field creating the series.
- The team spent over 4,000 hours underwater.
- Over 1,000 different species were filmed in all five oceans.
- 20 new scientific publications have been written thanks to discoveries made by the Our Oceans team.
Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Groundbreaking new technology and filmmaking?
Our Oceans broke incredible new ground in filmmaking with some astonishing achievements:
- The first documentary team to successfully document black smokers
(Hydrothermal Vent) was located using an ROV at an altitude of 4,000 metres beneath the ice at 83.5°N. - First crew to use FPV filming techniques in both polar regions.
- The crew filmed in a variety of ecosystems, including an active volcano and on an actively forming ice surface.
- The team filmed in temperatures ranging from -35 to 46 degrees
Celsius / -31 to 115 °F. - The series continues to push technology into new areas when it comes to underwater filming. New technology developed and used in the series includes gimbalised pole cams, underwater ROVs, animal-mounted underwater cameras, underwater motion-controlled rigs, underwater camera traps and long-deploy underwater cameras.
- This series includes the deepest survey ever undertaken beneath Arctic sea ice – taken by 4K cameras to a depth of 3,000 metres.
- The team filmed species smaller than a grain
From rice (ostracods) to the largest animal in the ocean (the Atlantic blue whale). - The team filmed everything from the most endangered species on the planet (spotted handfish, wedgefish) to some of the largest groups of species (sardine runs, dugong groups, elephant seals in South Georgia and chinstrap penguins in Zavodovsky).
- The team spent more than 70 hours underwater with a single animal – the veined octopus – to get a deeper look at it, and found that they use small stones to protect themselves from fish.
Image: Our Oceans. Credit: Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
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