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HIDE AND go SEEK
The mystery of the surfing Sea Pandas - Our Oceans’ greatest detective story
Who knew the ocean could be such a wild and mysterious playground? The Our Oceans team certainly found out when they embarked on a mission to capture the antics of some of the ocean's most playful residents - Commerson's dolphins, affectionately known as sea pandas.
It all started with a curious anecdote, when rumors of these diminutive black and white dolphins being chased by South American sea lions in the Falkland Islands caught the team's attention. Were the dolphins being hunted and evading their predators or was there more to this? No one seemed to know, and as amazing as this story sounded, with so little evidence, it was too risky to mount a shoot to film it.
However, when you are as determined as the Our Oceans team to reveal new stories to the world, you can’t let such a potentially wondrous story go without knowing you’ve explored it fully, and the quest to understand the mystery of the sea pandas would become Our Oceans’ greatest detective story.

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Turning Sherlock
Intent on unraveling the mystery, Our Oceans Researcher Ella Potts turned detective and led a scouting expedition to the Falkland Islands to see what clues she could find, and what she found surprised us all. In a beautiful bay in a far flung corner of the Falklands, she found the dolphins living up to their fun loving reputation and surfing the breaks, seeming to love riding the continuous waves supplied by the wild South Atlantic. But this was not what she was searching for, Ella did not just want to find the dolphins, she needed to find the sea lions too. And it turned out she didn’t need to look far, when a large South American sea lion came to surf the very same break!
A twist in the tale
Sure enough, as had been reported, the sea lion began to chase the little dolphins, was she about to witness a murder? But the more Ella investigated, the more she realized this was not a hunt, it was a game of tag! It seemed like the sea lion wanted to play as much as the dolphins, and if the dolphins outran the sea lion, they would wait for it to catch up again! Now this was a story we wanted to tell in Our Oceans! And now we knew more about it, we were confident to commit, but because of the seasonal nature of the South Atlantic we would have to wait a year to return and attempt to film it.
NEW TECH allows Our Oceans exclusive access to the dolphins' underwater playground
A year later, armed with a full crew, the team set out to capture this captivating behavior for the first time, from every angle imaginable. From the air, land, and sea, with cameras both above and below the surface, they were ready to document every splash.
For this ambitious shoot, Our Oceans unveiled an innovative filming tool: a ‘gimbalized pole camera’ designed to offer an exclusive view of the underwater realm and capture intimate moments whilst racing along at speed, providing unique tracking shots alongside the dolphins and sea lion, from their eye-level perspective.
Our Oceans Directors of Photography, Roger Horrocks and Justin Maguire dove headfirst into the action. They marveled at the dolphins' exuberant displays of playfulness. Roger describes it as “like watching a group of mischievous children, barrel rolling in the waves and daring each other to get closer and closer to the big male resident sea lion.”
CAPTAIN’S LOG
Of course, when you're following dolphins in the wild, you're at the mercy of Mother Nature herself. The Falkland Islands are notorious for their severe and changeable weather, here you can experience four seasons in just one day. High winds grounded the team for days at a time. They had to practice patience and wait for a break in the weather. Over one week, the team might be afforded only two filming days, so having a multi-camera crew poised and ready meant that not a moment was missed when conditions allowed them to get out with the dolphins and sea lion.

Photos by Ryan Tidman, LivLife Images and Our Oceans Team ©Netflix 'Our Oceans'