Sharks of Lost Island

Release Date: November 1, 2013

Watch Date: May 9, 2023

"A team of explorers led by marine ecologist Dr. Enric Sala sets out to explore the sea and land of the remote Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific. These mysterious islands, settled by mutineers, could provide a portal back in time to a marine ecosystem teeming with life and the top reef predator - sharks."

    I'm going to be honest, Bob and I were pretty sure this was the same description from our last shark movie. I mean, Dr. Sala makes an appearance again, it's about once again determining the health of coral reef systems on `remote islands. We were pretty positive they'd just released the exact same documentary twice, just under different names. And I'm not saying they did, but it comes pretty close.

    The one thing Bob can say he learned, probably the one thing we both 'learned' but definitely the primary thing he retained, is that unlike in other ecosystems, coral reefs are healthiest when there's a heavy top predator population. This seems incredibly counterintuitive, but the ocean is weird. It's animals are often weird, and it runs by rules that would make no sense out of the water, so why should the way it's ecosystems function be any different.

    While the last film was more about research into what makes a healthy reef system, this one takes the knowledge they learned from that first expedition and applies it to helping the people of Pitcairn rescue their reef, and preserve their entire island system from being damaged by foreign fishing and mining companies. The Pitcairn Islands have now become one of the world's largest marine reserves on the globe, a fact that made me extremely happy.

    And, actually, this documentary was pretty good at getting us engaged in the material because we did want to look up what happened to the Pitcairn Islands when the film ended, and we did fall in love with the place and despite the extremely complicated steps it takes to go visit, I do very badly want to go visit there. You can even see the site of the HMS Bounty if you have previous experience scuba diving, and I'm pretty sure I could get that if I tried hard enough. They advertise lessons locally all the time. Bob will be reading this review and coming to the realization that we're getting scuba lessons. Oh well. How else were we ever going to swim with great white sharks?

    Did we learn a lot about any particular subject? Not really. It hits extremely similar themes from the last one, and really only further drives home the point about how an increased shark population is a sign of health in a coral reef. But, we did fall in love with a place, we did engage with the material after watching the special - and if the point of a documentary about conservation is to get you engaged in and wanting to preserve the world around you, then I'd say it did a fantastic job of it.