#dont watch tom cruise tho
there is nothing like watching movies on a plane to induce “not like other girls” syndrome for me. you’re watching a tom cruise movie, a brad pitt movie, another fucking marvel movie, the princess diaries, the office. I’m watching Blue Panet and crying about baby sea turtles (again). we are not the same.
anyway here are some times I gasped aloud watching Blue Planet on the plane and getting way too invested:
- lady who goes down to the bottom of the ocean wearing chainmail to hang out with sharks they lie on her lap and she pets them and takes hooks out of their mouths that was the first time I started crying
- there’s a PLASTIC BAG at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. a plastic bag!!! it will never decompose! there’s so little oxygen down there! I hate us! also I wonder whose plastic bag that is. imagine being the person whose plastic bag made it to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I would throw myself into it out of guilt. become marine snow and let the creatures there feed on me.
- African Penguin colony in South Africa is losing numbers because the fish near their breeding ground moved further north due to climate change etc etc so…they are trying to convince the penguins to also move, to where the fish are…by building decoy penguins. that look nice and fat and happy. I. had the hardest time not losing it laughing at the penguins inspecting the decoys and then. imitating them. I hate us but I also love us.
- Another “I love us” moment was we are trying to regrow the Great Barrier Reef by releasing sperm & eggs from coral that survived the bleaching events elsewhere on the reef–the catch is that the coral only releases it for a few nights a year and the night they were doing so was a massive thunderstorm so these scientists were out on tiny boats (extremely dangerous!) in the ocean in a thunderstorm collecting coral reproductive matter and I just. humans! we fuck up so much but we also try so hard!
- whale snot helicopter in action. if you didn’t know whale snot helicopters were a thing, you should. also a guy got caught in the middle of a whale discharging its blowhole and was very happy about it (he said it tasted like “mild cabbage soup”) … my dude. my dude.
- they are doing shark tourism in the Bahamas to help people be less afraid of them! as well as whale tourism & science in other places that interferes with the whales less and it means they come to the surface more and are less nervous around people! they are also coming up with fishing traps that use less lines–computerized signals to bring them up, etc.–so that whales & other animals don’t get caught in them as much.
- I don’t really get all “ethical food” on people because industrialized food/corporations is a really tricky subject to navigate but because certain species in the ocean are limited, fishing practices affect endangered animals, and the specific resource of seafoodwatch.org exists, I highly recommend looking up the seafood you like before you eat it to make sure you’re getting it from good sources.
- I really thought I’d seen enough baby sea turtles hatching to not cry at the sight of how cute they are and how brave they are clambering to get to the ocean. …. I had not. it will make me cry every time I guess.
anyway I didn’t get to liveblog so there’s a mini one of what I remember. and what I remember is being extremely emotional at 4 in the morning about human beings trying so hard to save the planet from themselves. also whale snot. I can’t identify with being excited to be covered in whale snot but I do absolutely want to watch someone operate a whale snot drone in person. a++++
