BBC Wildlife - UK (2019-12)

Seven Worlds, One Planet

WALRUSES

9

Gentle10m-longwhale

sharksarehandfed

bygratefulfishermen

inNewGuinea’s

CenderawasihBay.

ASIA

FIELD NOTES

Whale shark: Jason Isley/Scubazoo.com/BBC Studios

“I had not seen a whale

shark in the wild

before,” reflects Lucy

Wells, “so, when I saw

our first one, I was like

a kid at Christmas.

They look beautiful

from the surface, but

underwater they were

something else. I was

as big as their tail fin

• nobody can prepare
  you for that! They
  generally ignore you
  when in the water with
  them. With eight of
  these giants swimming
  around, you inevitably
  get bumped.
  But it was not only
  the shark that made
  this film trip special.
  I spent some time on
  the bagans [sea fishing

platforms] getting to

know the fishermen.

They were incredibly

gentle and lovely men

of various ages, who

spent almost their

entire lives on these

platforms. Though we

didn’t share a

language, most

communication was by

hand signals or

through a translator,

and from sitting side by

side with them as they

fed the sharks, to

watching Bruce Lee

films (in Chinese)

together, and showing

them the footage we’d

just shot (to their great

delight), it was a true

privilege and one I’ll

never forget.”

FielddirectorLucyWellson

theIndonesiancommunity

helping the world’s biggest sh.

overing about 30 per

cent of the world’s land surface, Asia

is by far the largest of the continents.

From east to west, it stretches across

11 time zones, and from north to

south it encapsulates wildlife habitats

as diverse as the Arctic tundra, the

forested taiga, vast areas of steppe,

high mountain chains, tropical forests,

mangroves and coral reefs. It is a

continent of wide-open spaces and

extremes of weather and climate.

Asia’s most northerly point is

Cape Fligely on Rudolf Island in the

Arctic Ocean. It is only 911km from

the North Pole. At this latitude the

air temperature regularly drops

below –50°C and, on the mainland

to the east, the town of Oymyakon

once experienced –67.7°C, the

coldest official temperature in the

Northern Hemisphere, although a

monument in the town square claims

a temperature of –71.2°C in 1924.

By contrast, unusually high

temperatures of 54°C have been

recorded in Kuwait and Pakistan

in 2016 and 2017, the highest air

temperatures on continental Asia, with

satellite observations recording even

hotter ground temperatures in the

deserts of southwest Asia. The record

holder currently is the Lut Desert of

Iran, where a ground temperature of

70.7°C has been reported.

From desert to icebox

The wettest place on Earth is also in

Asia. Mawsynram in tropical India has

an average annual rainfall of 11,871mm

(compared to 4,635mm in the wettest

place in the UK), and the deepest

C