Wild Caribbean is a four-part BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural and cultural history of the Caribbean Islands and Sea. It was first transmitted in the UK on BBC Two in January 2007. The series was produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and narrated by actor Steve Toussaint. This series also aired in Australia on ABC1 each Sunday at 7:30pm from 15 February 2009.
The series forms part of the Natural History Unit's "Continents" strand. It was preceded by Europe: A Natural History in 2005 and followed by Wild China in 2008.
Episodes
1. "Treasure Islands" UK broadcast 16 January 2007 The first episode gives an overview of the variety of the Caribbean's natural history, revealing the hidden wild side of the islands. Spotted and bottlenose dolphins cruise the shallow sand banks around the Bahamas. The mangrove forests of Barbuda's shallow lagoons provide ideal nest sites for the Caribbean's largest colony of frigatebirds. The birds are filmed jostling over the best locations and collecting floating sticks on the wing. The nearby islands of St Lucia, St Vincent and Dominica have a different character. The thickly forested slopes of their volcanic mountains harbour rare hummingbirds and parrots. Their fertile soils also attract people, but scenes of the Montserrat eruptions of recent years show the threat they live with. The deep waters off Dominica are breeding grounds for sperm whales, filmed engaging in tactile social behaviour at the surface. Caves are a feature of Cuba's limestone geology, and provide homes for millions of bats as well as Cuban boas and secretive hutias, the latter filmed for the first time in the wild. The southerly ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao), swept by dry trade winds, are virtual deserts. Every year, 20,000 Caribbean flamingos arrive to breed on their salt pans. The clear waters around Bonaire have the greatest variety of reef fish anywhere in the Caribbean. The final island to be featured is Trinidad, cut off from South America by rising sea levels 2,000 years ago. Its island fauna include many mainland species such as red howler monkeys, capuchins and scarlet ibis.
2. "Reefs and Wrecks" UK broadcast 23 January 2007 Coral reefs, which thrive in the warm, shallow waters around Caribbean Islands, are the subject of the second programme. Hard corals are the reef-builders, and grow their tough external skeletons by extracting nutrients from algae growing within them. Time-lapse footage shows coral polyps emerging at night to trap drifting plankton. Marine life featured includes Caribbean reef squid, octopus and blue tangs. At Silver Bank, a coral outcrop north of the Dominican Republic, up to 3,000 humpback whales pass through annually. The shallow reefs are an ever-present threat to ships, but each sunken wreck provides a perfect habitat for a new reef to grow. Nurse sharks take advantage of the shelter, and sergeant majors lay their eggs directly on the wreck. Around the mountainous islands, reefs plunge into the deep ocean at drop-offs. A wreck 200m down harbours deep sea life forms including sea lilies and rusticles, formed as bacteria and fungi eat the steel hull itself. Stretching for 180 miles off the coast of Central America, the Caribbean barrier reef is the second largest coral structure on Earth, and home to an abundance of life. By day, large creatures such as loggerhead turtles and the rare Antillean manatees browse peacefully, but at night, tarpon and other predators emerge to hunt. The final scenes show the annual gathering of snappers, triggered by a full moon. As they rise to the surface and release clouds of milt and eggs, whale sharks move in to take advantage of the sudden feast.