Aim of 'Blue Planet II' is to inspire people: Producer

"Blue Planet II: One Ocean and The Deep" executive producer James Honeyborne says he wants to inspire people with the "incredible variety of life beneath the waves" with the series.

"The aim of the series is to inspire people with the incredible variety of life beneath the waves. We might think of the ocean as cold, dark and scary. In fact, the world down there is very much like our own," Honeyborne told IANS in a recorded response.

"If you can spend enough time down there, you will get to know the characteristics, discover more intelligence and sophistication," he added.

"Blue Planet II" is shot over 1406 days with 125 expeditions across 39 countries, and tells unique, untold stories of the ocean's most astonishing creatures. Narrated by ace British broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough, "Blue Planet II" is aired in India on Sony BBC Earth.

Honeyborne says the ambition of the series "was to connect people" to the ocean world.

"In a way that perhaps hasn't been possible before by spending enough time with extraordinary sea creatures we were finding. And to make the companion experience.

"We have new stories. We don't want to just tell the familiar world but show incredible new world, new species. We spent a lot of time researching, collaborating with scientists and expedition leaders to find behaviours which haven't been recorded before."

Honeyborne graduated as a biologist in the early 1990s. Since then, he has mostly worked at the BBC's world-renowned Natural History Unit.

He finds every aspect of the ocean fascinating, and would like to explore more subjects around it.

"There is still so much that we don't know," he added.

--IANS

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