New David Attenborough series Asia is even BETTER than Planet Earth 3 as crew spot rare animal for the first time
THE series promises a deep dive into Asia's diverse and vibrant ecosystems, highlighting conservation efforts and showcasing rare species.
BBC confirmed the release of Asia, a groundbreaking natural history series presented by legendary Sir David Attenborough.
This show marks the first time the world's largest continent has been the focus of a major BBC wildlife production.
From the scorching sands of the Gobi Desert to the lush jungles of Borneo, Asia will showcase the breathtaking variety of environments that make the continent so unique.
It took four years to get the footage for the seven episodes which will make up Asia, each of them an hour long.
Show bosses have used cutting edge filming techniques to capture Asian wildlife in its natural habitat.
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They have teased there are some fantastic stories to be told in some countries that we just don't often get the chance to go to.
They said Asia's just got this fantastic breadth. It's colossal. As we know, it's the largest continent on the planet.
They have also teased the most special moment was spotting the Moorish idols for the first time, which was an enormous event
with hundreds and hundreds of sharks.
They sent over some very grainy GoPro footage of what the Moorish idols and sharks might look like.
The team were all enthralled with the excitement of what could be.
On location, we had to film from the boat, underwater and from the air simultaneously whilst moving at ten knots of speed through the middle of the Pacific Ocean from the reef.
The team working on planet Earth 3 have been trying to capture them.
It was kind of like they did a lot of our pre-production research and we shared that information.
Especially since a lot of them get eaten by sharks, no one's ever followed it before.
Sir David noted that he really enjoyed the Moorish Idols sequence, which is the highest praise anyone in this industry can get.
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They added that it's the tiny moments, the sea bunny, the little guy who finds his way through the reef.
He has this amazing way of avoiding predators by making himself
poisonous.
And the sea snakes were fantastic as well. But it's filming in those kind of really intricate environments. That's super, super hard. The challenge is as much as how do you get a camera in there?
The answer is, it was shot by the talented underwater cinematographer.
The shots to get something like the sea snakes took around two years.
They had a month on the water, two years in a row to get that sequence at the end of the film.
The whole series has taken over four years to film and develop.
When it came to filming whales and dolphins in the show, they used was a directional underwater microphone, which is effectively a set of two metal food bowls stuck together with gaffer tape.
The hydrophone is an underwater microphone taped to the middle of it or suspended on elastic bands in the middle of it.
And it means that wherever you point that, it collects, like a satellite dish, it collects the sound coming in.
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Technology like drones and the pole cam helped them to film the Moorish Isles and film the whirlpools in the first episode.
The little scooters that you can strap cameras on and go underwater allows them to navigate the currents and things like that.