VOLCANIC VOYAGERS
Tracking Mysterious Pumice Rafts in the Vast Pacific
Photos by Jason Isley ©Netflix 'Our Oceans'
How our global strategy allowed us to capture the seemingly impossible
During the filming of Our Oceans, the team faced seemingly insurmountable challenges, none more daunting than capturing the unpredictable volcanic activity of the Pacific Ocean.
Undeterred, and inspired by the magnitude of this challenge, the Our Oceans team embarked on a journey to document this elusive natural wonder and reveal for the first time how these floating volcanic rocks have far-reaching positive effects on Pacific life.
Two years into production and the breakthrough finally came through our team's global approach. Establishing remote teams across the Pacific enabled us to adopt a reactive strategy toward capturing volcanic eruptions. When Ollie Deppert, our Malaysian-based Assistant Producer, received news from Masahiko Sakata of our Japan remote team about a subsurface volcano eruption 1000 miles off the coast of Japan, we sprang into action. Observing the eruption live via satellite footage, Ollie and Masahiko meticulously tracked the volcano's activity over several weeks.
Early on, we set our sights on a particularly ambitious goal : to film a giant raft of pumice - a rare phenomenon previously observed only via satellite imagery and never filmed underwater.
At first, this could seem relatively simple, as the Pacific holds the status as the world’s volcanic hotspot, accounting for 75% of global activity. However, the sheer expanse of our largest ocean, covering a third of our planet, coupled with the hidden nature of underwater volcanoes and unpredictability of eruptions, made filming this natural spectacle a more than daunting challenge.
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The eruption birthed a pumice raft spanning 300 square kilometers -a colossal spectacle akin to 56,000 football fields! Tracking its movements, we anticipated its collision course with Okinawa island off Japan. Leveraging a local team led by Masahiko, we filmed the raft's arrival using drones, capturing its immense scale in unprecedented detail. Descending into the pumice-rich waters, Masahiko likened the experience to "swimming through a thick soup of rocks." The majority of pumice rocks were the size of rice but they created an ocean crust 2-4 inches thick, blocking the sunlight.
This achievement goes to show that even the seemingly impossible was no barrier to what we could film and this success helped lead to one of our team sayings :
“THE ONLY WAY WE’LL HAVE NO CHANCE OF FILMING SOMETHING, IS IF WE DON’T TRY!”
But our ambition did not stop here. An incredibly rare opportunity presented to us as the Okinawa raft journeyed toward the Great Barrier Reef and the Indo Pacific. Clownfish, meticulous guardians of their homes, became central characters in this story. Any time sand, shells or plastic would arrive at their home anemone they were fast to react, so we knew these little fish would have a lot to say about an entire raft of volcanic rocks! Their reactions to the pumice offered insights into how marine life adapts to such natural phenomena, showcasing their resilience and adaptation in the face of environmental shifts.​
IMPACT FILM: Nemo and Noise Pollution
5 MINS 48 SECONDS
Baby Nemo needs to leave the reef. He needs time to grow in the open Blue. Once he’s big and strong enough to handle the busy reef he’ll return to the exact place he was born. How does he know where to go? The particular sounds of his birth place are imprinted in his memory. He’ll be listening for that when it’s time to return. But now these sounds are being drowned out by human noise pollution. Is Nemo destined to drift in the wide open ocean forever?
