David Attenborough's New Documentary Uses Penguin Body Doubles

Reuters

Alexander Abad-Santos / Dec 15, 2011

In the wake of claims of staging adorable polar bear cub scenes in his Frozen Planet series, David Attenborough and his team have (sadly) come clean about penguin body doubles in his new 3-D film, possibly ruining the whole idea of his latest nature documentary.

Attenborough's new flick, The Bachelor King, follows one King Penguin in Antarctica, but it's actually more like a synthesis of multiple penguins--which kind of stretches and bends, if not breaks, the truth-telling factor that's integral to documentary film-making. "A lot of penguins were used, I don't think we counted them," said one of his producers at last night's screening while The Guardian adds that, "Sir David, who narrates the heavily anthropomorphic film, which is also geared to the American market, said it was made to be a theatrical experience."

Doesn't "theatrical experience" sound awfully close to fiction? The Guardian does note that there's an advisory about the multiple penguins during ~~a part where no one watches~~ the film's final credits. Attenborough's and his team's admissions come days after news broke that Attenborough's nature show, Frozen Planet,filmed polar bear cubs in captivity and tried to pass them off as wild Arctic ones--which, at the time, seemed like a learning moment for the world's most famous naturalist, but now seems like one for his audience as well.

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Can one EVER get enough of "Cute?"

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Birds, quakes lead Norwell talks

Water Watch lecture series to start Jan. 18

December 15, 2011|By Robert Knox, Globe Correspondent

Dyan deNapoli, author of The Great Penguin Rescue, will speak Jan. 18 on… (Marc Dove)

WHAT:
2012 Water Watch Lecture Series South Shore Natural Science Center, 48 Jacobs Lane, Norwell
Wednesdays, Jan. 18 through March 21, 7 p.m.
Free
www.nsrwa.org

This winter’s “2012 Water Watch Lecture Series’’ in Norwell mixes topics already on our minds and those likely to be there once we’ve heard about them.
The schedule of talks by scientists and authors passionate about their subjects begins next month and runs through March. The first three topics on the schedule - penguins, seabirds, and earthquakes - illustrate the program’s range of citizen-scientist interest.

Like many others, the program’s planners - the North and South Rivers Watershed Association, the Audubon Society Regional Headquarters in Marshfield, and the South Shore Natural Science Center - felt the earth move under their feet earlier this year.

As a result, the likelihood of regional earthquakes topped the series planners’ list, said Samantha Wood, director of the North and South Rivers Watershed Association.

“We’re as interested in earthquakes as anyone is who felt one. Should we be concerned? How often could they happen?’’ Woods said.

John Ebel, the director of Weston Observatory at Boston College, will try to provide some answers in his Feb. 1 talk, “The Past, Present and Future of Earthquakes in New England.’’ Ebel will explore where New England earthquakes have occurred in the past and what caused them, and evaluate the potential for the region’s earthquake future.

The series will lead off on Jan. 18 with a story drawn from another hemisphere. A dynamic speaker who styles herself “The Penguin Lady,’’ Dyan deNapoli will speak about her book “The Great Penguin Rescue: 40,000 Penguins, a Devastating Oil Spill, and the Inspiring Story of the World’s Largest Animal Rescue.’’
The effort to save half of the world’s population of African penguins from the effects of an oil spill off South Africa 11 years ago remains an inspiring story because the lessons learned can be applied to other rescues, deNapoli said last week.

“It was the largest animal rescue ever undertaken,’’ deNapoli said, “and achieved an unexpectedly high success rate. We were able to save 95 percent of the penguins.’’

The major lesson is “if you work together you can have incredible results,’’ she said, noting that penguin specialists and rescue staff relied on the help of some 12,500 volunteers.

After a ship foundered off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, spilling 1,300 tons of oil and contaminating the habitat of the penguins, an animal especially vulnerable to oil spills, deNapoli served as a rehabilitation manager. Drawing on 15 years of working with penguins at Boston’s New England Aquarium and in the wild, she helped organize a volunteer effort to de-oil, nurse back to health, and release back to the wild almost all the affected birds.

Her book received a Nautilus Book Award, which recognizes books that promote individual efforts to produce positive social change. The Massachusetts Book Awards selected it as a 2011 “must read’’ book, and Library Journal chose it as one of the year’s “best sci-tech books.’’

Today, deNapoli talks about penguins and rescue efforts through her business, The Penguin Lady.
“I teach, I travel,’’ she said. “I do on-site programs at schools and libraries and nature cruises and conferences. I give presentations. My mission is to raise awareness and funding to protect penguins.’’ She said she donates 20 percent of the proceeds of her programs and from the sale of her book to penguin protection efforts.

From penguins, the series returns closer to home on Jan. 25 with “Sighting! Surveying Seabirds on Stellwagen Bank,’’ by Anne-Marie Runfola, volunteer coordinator for the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

The sanctuary, headquartered at the Coast Guard station on First Cliff in Scituate, is a vast underwater plateau at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay. It’s a rich fishing ground for groundfish species such as cod, haddock, and flounder, and also home for some giant Atlantic bluefin tuna, sharks, and large schools of herring. These days, it’s also where the whale watch boats go.

According to Water Watch Series planners, research conducted by the sanctuary staff in its 20-year history has changed the way scientists look at the 842-square-mile sanctuary. And this year, staff and volunteers began a nationally replicated system for surveying ocean-going seabirds - such as gannets, storm-petrels, jaegers, and numerous species of shearwaters - that relies on citizen bird surveyors flexing “their citizen science muscles at sea,’’ series planners state.

Planner Paula Christie of the watershed association warns that programs in the series are sometimes victims of their own popularity. “In some cases,’’ she said, “it’s standing room only, so people should arrive early.’’

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