BBC Oceans: Indian Ocean

This episode the oceanographic explorers take us to the waters of East Africa. First, marine biologist Tooni Mahto goes swimming with manta rays off the coast of Mozambique. These mantas suffer from shark bites, but remain healthy by taking advantage of the butterfly fish and moon wrasse that clean their wounded skin. Quite expectedly, environmentalist Philippe Cousteau Jr. investigates a threat to one of the ocean’s greatest predators – the shark (just as in the previous episode). Philippe and Lucy Blue look on as one fisher boat returns with several baby sharks. The fishermen cut off the fins, from which they’ll earn about $50 a day (in a country where an average day’s wage is a single dollar). Just this one boat catches about a thousand sharks in a year. Philippe is fuming with rage and disgust. All this just for shark fin soup!

The team then goes in search for the ever elusive dugong (sea cow). Tooni is visibly excited when they finally spot a group. Off Zanzibar, Philippe and Lucy inspect the health of the coral reefs only to find a great many sea urchins (again, just as in the Southern Ocean) and worse, the crown-of-thorns starfish that eats the coral alive. They visit a “coral nursery” where coral fragments are grown in a man-made underwater garden in hopes of reversing the reef’s decline. Maritime archaeologist Lucy Blue dives for the wreck of the Paraportiani that sank in 1967 (forced to circumnavigate Africa when the Arab-Israeli conflict closed the Suez Canal). She is particularly disturbed to find that many wrecks are not protected and are plundered for bronze scrap. They discuss the importance of archaeological sites, but show little sympathy for the plight and poverty of the locals. Overall, not a particularly impressive episode.