BBC film looks at the natural history of the Pacific

First Friday Films will be featuring BBC’s Wild Pacific: Ocean of Islands on Nov. 4, 2011, at the American Memorial Park Visitors Center.

BBC’s Wild Pacific: Ocean of Islands presents an overview of the natural history of the region. The South Pacific covers a vast area, and less than 1 percent is land, ranging from the Hawaiian Islands north of the equator to New Zealand in the south. On Macquarie Island, the most southerly outpost before Antarctica, springtime sees the arrival of huge numbers of elephant seals. Cold ocean currents flow all the way to the Galápagos Islands, 8,000 miles away, enabling sea lions and penguins to survive on the equator. Isolation has enabled the region’s wildlife to evolve in unusual ways. On Metoma, robber crabs, the world’s largest terrestrial invertebrates, are filmed massing at night to feed on coconuts. In Hawaii, the most isolated archipelago of all, the caterpillars have turned carnivorous. There is an incredible diversity of human cultures and customs too, despite colonization taking place relatively recently. The men of Pentecost Island leap from timber scaffold towers with only a vine tied to their ankles to break their falls. On small islands such as Anuta, people have fostered strong communities and sustainable hunting, farming, and fishing practices to make up for the limited availability of food. The story of Easter Island, where a whole civilization brought about their own downfall through over-exploitation of their resources, is a lesson from history.

First Friday Films is a monthly film series brought to you through a partnership with the National Park Service and the Division of Environmental Quality, with generous support from community groups such as the Mariana Islands Nature Alliance.

The Pacific Historic Parks (formerly the Arizona Memorial Museum Association) Bookstore, located inside the visitor’s center, will be open until 8:30pm. All proceeds go to community education programs.

For planning purposes, the movie runs about 80 minutes long. As always, First Friday Films is free and open to the public. Find more information about the film at www.firstfridayfilmssaipan.blogspot.com. Subscribe to the blog for regular updates on upcoming events.