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A new generation of spy cameras enter the dolphins’ world shedding light on the hidden lives of the cleverest animals in the ocean. This time all the cameras are designed as ‘Spy Creatures’ most with cameras for eyes. They include Spy Dolphin, Spy Nautilus, Spy Turtle and a variety of other denizens of the deep. Working alongside the human dive team, they captured the most intimate views of dolphins that had ever been captured and filmed an array of new and remarkable behaviour.
In Mozambique, the Spy Creatures follow the story of a newborn bottlenose dolphin and, for the first time, show what it’s like to grow up in a dolphin pod. Alongside his mother, baby experiences a mysterious gathering of stingrays and then watches the pod as they hunt huge kingfish. He soon gets to grips with his sonar and discovers the knack of ridding himself of pesky suckerfish.
Nearby a pod of male dolphins live a playboy lifestyle; playing chicken with a supertanker, visiting a coral health spa and surfing the waves with SpySquid.
The Spy Creatures also capture many other extraordinary events such as dolphins using mud rings to catch fish and the incredible courtship rituals of bottlenose dolphins as they woo females with bouquets of seaweed.
In Costa Rica, Spy Dolphin and Spy Tuna encounter spinner dolphins. These extraordinary animals perform incredible corkscrew leaps andcongregate in huge gatherings known as superpods. The Spy Creatures film one of the greatest and rarest sights in nature as two superpods come together to create a megapod comprised of thousands of individuals. They also join the spinners as they hunt huge shoals of lanternfish, while dodging the gaping mouths of giant rays
There’s humour too when Spy Turtle catches real turtles in an amorous close encounter and Spy Squid comes face to face with a hungry potato bass.
The adventures continue as a young male leaves the security of his mother’s pod to set up life alone. He forms a strange friendship with a humpback dolphin, joins a teenage gang and discovers the narcotic effects of a hapless pufferfish. In Australia, the Spy Creatures encounter dolphins that appear to have taken to wearing hats as well as those that travel so fast they hydroplane across the water surface. In South Carolina, Spy Dolphin joins a pod that have learnt to safely strand themselves on mud banks as they drive fish shoals ashore.
The King of the Dolphins, the Orca, shows us the value of family life as they use shock and awe tactics to catch fish, and speed and stealth to pursue the fastest dolphin in the world – Dall’s porpoise. In Patagonia, their family skills reach a peak as they drive themselves ashore chasing sea lion pups.
In the Caribbean, a real life dolphin secret agent carries its own spy cameras into the pod, to uncover the mysteries of dolphin interactions and communication.
In this extraordinary undersea voyage into the dolphin’s world, much of the behaviour has never been seen before. Seen though the camera eyes of thirteen different Spy Creatures this is dolphins up close and irresistible.
For the series, 900 hours of intimate behaviour were recorded over the course of 1 year, in countries as diverse as Mozambique, Canada, Florida, South Carolina, Honduras, Costa Rica, Australia, South Africa and Argentina. Dolphins are highly intelligent and often nervous in the wild, making them hard to approach. This makes filming their intimate behaviour extremely difficult; especially as they are always on the move.
The Spy Creatures were designed to infiltrate the dolphins’ hidden lives by looking like the marine creatures a dolphin might encounter in their everyday lives. The intention wasn’t to fool them, they’re far too clever for that! These novel devices tweaked the curiosity of the dolphin pods, encouraging the dolphins to let them into their lives, allowing them to capture behaviour that has never been seen before.
Working alongside the spy creatures was an elite team of underwater cameramen who not only filmed them in action but also helped maintain and operate them below the surface. In the course of the filming period, they dived over 1500 times and spent nearly 3000 hours at sea filming with the Spy Creatures and dolphins in all weathers. Over half of the filming took place via free diving (as opposed to using scuba gear), in depths ranging from shallow coral reefs to nearly 70 feet deep!
Each Spy Creature was intended to fulfill a different role and habitat within the marine world, and get the kind of shots that were impossible for the crew to capture with conventional underwater cameras. They allowed the Spy team to follow the dolphin activity no matter where they went or what they did- whether it was above the surface or just below, around a coral reef or diving into the depths.
The bottlenose dolphins had a special affection for the Spy Pufferfish and Spy Nautilus, often balancing them on their noses or chins and bouncing them like footballs. Spy Nautilus was once hit so hard by a boisterous young male it flooded and sunk to the bottom, but its cameras kept rolling. Tunacam had complete motor failure at a depth of nearly 40 metres. It would have sunk into the deep abyss if the cameraman hadn’t abandoned filming to dive in after him! Spy Squid was the only Spy Creature to be damaged beyond repair, finally losing his tentacles to a huge Potato Cod.
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