“STATE OF THE OCEAN'S ANIMALS” A NEW EPISODE OF THE ACCLAIMED PBS SERIES JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH PREMIERES MARCH 28, 2007 AT 8 P.M. ON PBS, HOSTED BY MATT DAMON -- SPECIAL LOOKS AT THE CRISIS TO THE WORLD'S MARINE ANIMALS

“Given the size of the oceans, it’s amazing how great the human impact has actually been on them.” – Tom Lovejoy, The Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment

WASHINGTON, D.C.— STATE OF THE OCEAN’S ANIMALS is the tenth installment of public television's award-winning Journey to Planet Earth series.  Join Academy Award® winner Matt Damon as he takes a hard look at why nearly half the world's marine animals may face extinction over the next twenty-five years.  Case studies focus on how global warming, sea-level rise, over-fishing, and habitat destruction are beginning to empty the world's oceans.  The one-hour episode also features inspiring stories of hope and courage that celebrate of the beauty and diversity of the natural world. 

Damon's dramatic journey takes us to the Pacific Northwest, (salmon and sea otters), New England (coastal fisheries), Florida (sea level rise and its effect on loggerhead turtles), Japan (the slaughter of dolphins), China (shark fin trade), the Antarctic (threats to Emperor Penguins), the Caribbean and Indonesia (coral reefs), and Africa (whales and coastal fisheries).  

Along the way, viewers will come to appreciate the diversity of our planet's marine life: the beauty, the incredible animals, and the dangers that threaten them all.  The sobering reality is that our oceans are becoming dead zones.  What was once ablaze with color has become a world without life.  The question that lies at the heart of the documentary is this: how could one of our planet’s most abundant resources face such peril that its very existence may be in jeopardy?  And most important, how can we repair the damage we have already created?

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Sharks

"I call it the last buffalo hunt.  Just as at the end of the great buffalo hunt, people were killing buffaloes just for their tongues.  We now kill millions of sharks just for their fins." -- Carl Safina, Marine Biologist

In 1975, the world’s attitude towards ocean animals changed radically.  That’s when a film based on Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws tapped into the most primordial of human fears and changed the way we view sharks forever, unintentionally putting an entire species on the verge of extinction, and turning one of the most extraordinary predators of the ocean into prey. 

From fishing boats all over the world where over 100 million sharks are slaughtered each year- often by cutting off their fins and then throwing their bodies back into the ocean where they are allowed to drown or bleed to death - to China where shark fins are selling for over $300 per pound, scientists are now telling us that the shark may become the first marine animal to become extinct because of man.  “If there is one thing I know for dead certain, it’s that I couldn’t possibly write Jaws today.  I could not turn this beautiful beast into a villain,” said the late Peter Benchley.

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Over-Fishing

“Our capacity now to find, to capture and to market a wide range of wildlife taken from the sea is unparalleled in human history.  Imagine sitting down to a dinner somewhere in Iowa and eating a fish that’s been caught in Antarctic waters.  Or to be in a restaurant in Tokyo and get a fish that was swimming two days ago in the North Atlantic.” -- Sylvia Earle, Former Chief Scientist, NOAA

It isn’t just sharks that are falling victim to our over-reliance on oceans for food.  Today, there are over 3.5 million fishing vessels operating in the world’s oceans.  Like floating fish factories--or killing machines -- giant 400-foot trawlers stalk marine animals.  Each of these enormous trawlers can take in as much as one million pounds of fish in a single day. 

But what does the globalization of the world's fisheries really mean?  Scientific studies now tell us that by the middle of this century --in less than fifty years -- fishermen may have almost nothing left to catch.  Simply put, the global abundance of fish -- the wealth of seafood found in the local markets of the world -- are in reality an environmental illusion.  Says Sylvia Earle: “In half a century, we have lost on the order of 90 percent of the big fish in the ocean.  We’ve captured them.  We’ve consumed them.  We’ve eaten them.”  Though our fish markets may give the impression of an inexhaustible resource, what we are really seeing is the harvesting of the final 10 percent of the world’s fisheries.

Worldwide, about150 million people make all or a major part of their living from fishing.  Many work in coastal waters on small boats powered by paddles, sails or sometimes outboard motors.  They all depend upon healthy oceans and abundant fish populations.  When the fish go, the jobs go too.  And it's a problem not limited to the poorer nations of the world.

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Coral Reefs

"If you have a space where fish can live and you don’t kill them, there should be more.  If you have a space where they can live until they grow to maturity and lay their millions of eggs, it stands to reason there should be more fish in that space.  They will grow and they will become more abundant."  Charles Kennel - Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Located in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago -- a nation of over 17,000 islands and 34,000 miles of coastline.  And beneath its waters is the most biologically diverse coral reef system on the planet. 

A few years ago, marine scientists from the Nature Conservancy surveyed these waters.  What they discovered was astounding -- this was home to 75% of all reef-building coral species in the world, providing shelter to more than 3,000 species of fish.  It was a natural resource of such abundance that it provided jobs to millions and eased the hunger for over a hundred million.  But when an abundance of riches combined with an expanding and needy population, the results became devastating.  After years of blast fishing and extreme over fishing, environmental abuses began to overwhelm Indonesia's reef system.

Fortunately, the Indonesian government and local communities recognized the problem before their fisheries collapsed.  Today, they are looking for new ways to manage their reefs and fisheries -- ways that are both socially responsible and economically viable.  One of the models they have been using was developed halfway around the world.  In Belize, where the Western Hemisphere’s largest barrier reef seemed like nothing less than a tropical paradise, fisherman were once catching tons of spawning fish before they had a chance to reproduce.  Today that part of the world is a marine reserve that protects the fish and provides a new source of income for the local population – ecotourism.

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Whales and Dolphins

“Hump backed whales are the species I think which has the greatest shot at sort of saving us from our own folly.  Years ago when I started working on my own, humanity was killing about 33,000 large whales every year.  We got that down to 33 we thought, wow, we won…but we haven’t won.  In fact, whales are in the worst danger since I got started in this field.” -- Roger Payne, Marine Biologist

Both whales and dolphins -- mammals that have more in common with man than with fish -- are not threatened with extinction on a global scale but are at the heart of a moral and ethical controversy about how we should be treating the world’s wildlife.  The debate centers around the Japanese government's approval of the round-up of over 20,000 dolphins and pilot whales each year.  The youngest and fittest dolphins are sold to aquariums and the rest have their throats slit and then are butchered and sold as dolphin meat.  Local fishermen maintain that dolphins are depleting their fisheries -- while marine scientists say that these claims are unsubstantiated.

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Sea Otters

"Along here [Monterey bay] in the early 1900s you’d see all these beautiful rocks but you wouldn’t’ see any kelp and you wouldn’t see very many of these birds and you wouldn’t see a lot of the other life.  And by 1968 only four years after the otters came back we were teaching kelp forest ecology classes on this shore.  It was so vibrant and so thick." -- Steve Palumbi, Stanford University

On the coastline of California’s Monterey Bay, sea otters are a major tourist attraction.  Once nearly hunted into extinction because of their fur, federal protection laws help bring the sea otter population recover from 50 animals to over 2,500.  This has had an enormous impact on the health of the local ecosystem.  Without the sea otters to eat abalone and sea urchins, these creatures proliferated and threatened to destroy the kelp forest that is home to thousands of fish and marine animals.

But recent discoveries have uncovered an alarming trend.  Otters have been mysteriously dying off due to infectious disease – and Monterey Bay has lost 20% of its population.  Since sea otters are critically important to the health of the kelp forest ecosystem, they offer an accurate read on the health of the oceans.

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Penguins

“Penguins are the most ice-dependent vertebrate that I know of.  Emperors have to have sea ice; they can’t get along without it.  They are probably the only species that may never set foot on land because they don’t need to.” -- Gerald Kooyman, Scripps Institute of Oceanography

From March of the Penguins to Happy Feet, the Emperor penguins of the Antarctic have been getting a lot of attention lately.  They are the only species of Penguins that is sturdy enough to survive the polar winter.

However, scientists working in Antarctica have discovered that global warming has led to reductions in sea ice.  Shrinking sea ice means Emperor penguins may not survive -- it seems that they need sea to reproduce and raise their young.  If the ice goes, so goes the Emperor penguin.

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Sea Turtles

"The sea turtle nesting habitat is between the jaws of a vice – the jaw on the right is the rising sea level, the jaw on the left is the constant effort to build higher and higher sea walls and to hold out the sea.  -- Lew Ehrhart, University of Central Florida

Sea turtles are one of nature's most enduring creatures.  They have being wandering the oceans of the world for over 200 million years.  They have survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and were there at the dawn of civilization.  But now, like most other marine animals, sea turtles are trying to survive the perils of the industrial age: drowning in fishing trawls or taken as by-catch by the commercial fishing industry. 

But there is one bright spot and it can be found in Melbourne Beach, Florida.  This is the largest loggerhead sea turtle nesting site in the world.  Every spring sunbathers share the sand dunes with tens of thousands of turtles who lay over two million eggs.  It's a story about how scientists and local communities can work together to save a species from extinction.

But there are issues.  Around 70 days after the eggs are laid, hatchlings begin their march to the sea.  In about thirty years when the females come back to these shores to lay their eggs, will these shores be under water?  Will the water be too warm?  Will 200 million years of survival skills help the sea turtle find a way to adapt?  Or will they go the way of their prehistoric cousins -- the dinosaurs.

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Pacific Salmon

"It’s really hard on the native people here.  I was born and raised on this river and I fought for the fishing rights here and I've seen a lot of things happen in this river.  A lot of things."  -- Raymond Mattz, Yurok Tribal Elder

For tens of thousands of years the Pacific Northwest's Klamath River was lined with ponderosas and redwoods and its crystal clear waters helped make it the West's third-richest salmon river.  It sustained the indigenous people who fished along its shores 

The Klamath was a healthy ecosystem in balance with nature; until about 100 years ago.  That's when government agencies decided to rewire the Klamath watershed.  The river and its tributaries were dammed and diverted to generate electricity and to provide irrigation water for tens of thousands of homesteading farmers.  Fortunately there was enough water for both agriculture and salmon.

But then, in 2001 and 2002 an historic drought hit California and Oregon.  Suddenly there wasn't enough water to satisfy the needs of farmers and Native American fishermen.  Anger and frustration reached the boiling point.  Ultimately the Yurok tribe lost the political battle -- the farmers got the water -- and the Klamath River became a trickle. 

On the morning of September 19, 2002 the Klamath salmon started their upstream migration.  Within hours they began suffocating in the waters sapped of oxygen.  And then they began to die -- their bodies lining the shores of the river for miles.  By the third day over 33,000 fish had been killed in one of the largest salmon die-offs in U.S. history.

Once hundreds of thousands of salmon entered the river to spawn, today that number has been diminished by over 90 percent.  A way of life, centered around one particular species, is in serious jeopardy

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Additional Information

In addition to the broadcast, Matt Damon also directs viewers to the Journey To Planet Earth website www.pbs.org/journeytoplanetearth, where he introduces visitors to a variety of interactive features.  In conjunction with the PBS broadcast, museums and science centers around the country will be working under the guidance of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to offer exhibits and activities that complement the case studies profiled in the one-hour special.

The most recent episode of JOURNEY TO THE PLANET EARTH – State of the Planet’s Wildlife — was broadcast in April 2006, to critical acclaim and strong ratings.  Produced by Emmy® Award-winning filmmakers Hal and Marilyn Weiner of the Washington, D.C. production company, Screenscope, JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH is presented on PBS by South Carolina ETV.  State of the Ocean’s Animals is underwritten by the National Science Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

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ABOUT THE SERIES - JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH

Produced by Emmy Award winning filmmakers Marilyn and Hal Weiner and in association with South Carolina ETV, Journey To Planet Earthis the only continuing primetime television series that deals exclusively with the most critical environmental and sustainable development issues of the 21st century. 

Each episode of the series is supported by an educational outreach initiative featuring leaders guides and teaching materials for informal and formal education, a comprehensive web site hosted by PBS (www.pbs.org/journeytoplanetearth/), a companion web site for children hosted by the New York Hall of Science (www.tryscience.com) strategic partnerships with science museums and environmental organizations, and a publicity campaign to raise public awareness of the series and its complementary outreach activities.

Journey To Planet Earth episodes are also broadcast in major overseas television markets, including those in Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, China, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Brazil and Canada.  The series currently yields a worldwide audience of over 40 million people per episode. 

Thanks to strong reviews and recommendations by the School Library Journal, Booklist, The Journal Of Academic Librarianship, and the California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse, over 7,000 videos or DVDs of the series have been acquired by college and school media libraries throughout North America, with an annual audience of approximately 650,000 students. 

The most recent episode of JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH—The State ofthe Planet’s Wildlife—was broadcast in April 2006.  The State ofthe Planet and Future Conditional, broadcast in April 2005, were selected from over 1,300 submissions from 30 countries as the best environmental films at the U.S. International Film and Video Festival. 

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ABOUT THE HOST AND NARRATOR—MATT DAMON

MATT DAMON is one of Hollywood’s most sought-after talents.  He is currently starring in The Good Shepherd for director Robert DeNiro, with Angelina Jolie.  Earlier this year he was seen in The Departed for director Martin Scorsese, starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson.

 Last year audiences saw Damon in Syriana, directed by Stephen Gaghan and in The Brothers Grimm, co-starring with Heath Ledger for director Terry Gilliam.  He also recently reprised his roles as Linus Caldwell in Ocean’s Twelve for director Steven Soderbergh, and as Jason Bourne in the box office hit The Bourne Supremacy, the second installment in the series following The Bourne Identity.

In 2004, Damon starred with Greg Kinnear in the Farrelly Brothers comedy Stuck On You, and in 2002, in Gerry with Casey Affleck for director Gus Van Sant. 

In 2000, audiences saw Damon star in The Legend of Bagger Vance, for director Robert Redford and in the film version of the Cormick McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses for director Billy Bob Thornton.

In 1999, Damon starred in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor.  That same year he rejoined Chasing Amy director Kevin Smith and pal Ben Affleck in Dogma, a film about a pair of outcast angels.

In 1998, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with longtime friend Ben Affleck for the critically-acclaimed drama Good Will Hunting, a coming-of-age story about a young mathematical genius who, due to his upbringing in inner-city Boston, can’t live up to his potential.  Damon also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his work in the title role.  In addition, both he and Affleck received a Golden Globe Award for their screenplay, and Damon also garnered a Golden Globe nomination for his performance.  The film, directed by Gus Van Sant, received seven additional Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture and a win for Robin Williams for Best Supporting Actor. 

In the same year, Damon starred in the title role of the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan for Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg, and in John Dahl’s Rounders, about a reformed gambler who is drawn back into New York’s underground poker world to help a recently paroled friend pay off loan sharks.

In 1997, Damon made a cameo appearance in Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy.  In the same year, he starred as an idealistic young attorney in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker, based on the best-selling novel by John Grisham.

Damon first gained the public’s eye in 1996, when he gave a vivid performance in Courage Under Fire, in which he portrayed a guilt-ridden Persian Gulf War soldier tormented by an incident that happened in the heat of battle.

The versatile young actor made his feature film debut in 1988 in a small role in the critically well-received Mystic Pizza.  He went on to play Brian Dennehy’s medical school dropout in the TV movie Rising Son (TNT, 1990) and gained further attention when he returned to the big screen as a fascist preppy in School Ties (1992).

For director Walter Hill, Damon enjoyed a sizeable supporting role as the green second lieutenant new to the West who narrates Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) and in 1995, he appeared in The Good Old Boys, directed by Tommy Lee Jones for TNT. 

In 1998, Damon and Affleck partnered with Good Will Hunting associate producer and longtime friend Chris Moore to form Pearl Street Productions, now known as LivePlanet.  This unique company produces feature films, television series and new media projects.  LivePlanet has produced three Emmy-nominated seasons of Project Greenlight, the documentary series chronicling the making of an independent feature films by a first time writer and director.  The three Project Greenlight films produced for Miramax/Dimension have been Stolen Summer, The Battle of Shaker Heights, and Feast.  Damon’s latest LivePlanet project is Running the Sahara, a documentary about three men running across the Sahara Desert, directed by Academy Award winner James Moll.

Damon, who attended Harvard University, first gained acting experience at the American Repertory Theatre as well as other Boston-based theatre venues.

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ABOUT THE PRODUCERS—MARILYN & HAL WEINER

Through their Washington, DC production company (Screenscope), Marilyn and Hal Weiner have produced, written and directed over 225 documentaries and four public television series (Journey To Planet Earth, Women At Work, Faces Of Man and The World Of Cooking).  They have also produced three feature films (Family Business, The Imagemaker, and K2).

The Weiners have won Emmy Awards for The Earth Summit Pledge, commissioned by the United Nations to open the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and Streets of Sorrow, an NBC documentary about a support group that helps people cope with the violent death of a family member.

They are recipients of the National Academy of Television Arts and Science's Silver Circle Award for "outstanding contributions to the television industry."  Marilyn Weiner is the winner of Women-In-Film's "Women of Vision Award" for creative excellence.  In a contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Hal Weiner won first prize at the 18th annual Larry Neal Writers' Competition for his dramatic screenplay, The Jerusalem Syndrome.  He also won first prize in the Washington, DC screenwriting contest for his screenplay, Shadows.  The Weiners have won over 130 top international awards, including 39 CINE Golden Eagles.  Their films have been shot on location in more than 30 countries on five continents, translated into numerous languages and broadcast throughout the world.

Marilyn Weiner was appointed by Mayors Anthony Williams and Marion Barry to serve as a DC Commissioner for the Arts and Humanities.  She is on the Board of Directors of Washington's Filmfest DC.  Ms. Weiner served on the Board of Directors of the Committee To Promote Washington, DC, the Washington Urban League, Women-In-Film and the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company.  She has been President of the Washington Film Council, Vice-President of Women-In-Film, consultant to the National Commission on Working Women, Chairperson of the Advisory Committee to the Washington Office of Motion Picture Development, and Panelist for both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Hal Weiner is on the Board of Advisors of the Institute for Mental Health Initiatives and founder of the Independent Media Producer's Association.  He served on the Board of Directors of the Council on Non-Theatrical Events and the Washington Urban League and was an Honorary Advisor to American University's School of Communications.  Two years ago he was invited to testify before the House of Representative's Commerce Committee about national security issues and the availability of the world's drinking water. 

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ABOUT SCETV

South Carolina Educational Television brings non-commercial, inspiring public television not only to the citizens of South Carolina, but through its national productions, to the rest of the United States and the world.  Recent and upcoming presentations include Making Schools Work with Hedrick Smith, JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH, hosted by Matt Damon (the only continuing environmental series on PBS), and Dooley and Pals, an educational children’s show.  Past productions include World@ Large with David Gergen and Children in America’s Schools with Bill Moyers.  South Carolina Educational Radio produces Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, NPR’s longest running performance program.

For over 40 years, education has been SCETV’s primary mission, harnessing television’s enormous power to inform and stimulate young minds.  The Network’s educational commitment now extends from early childhood to adult education.  Distance learning and telecourses let students earn college credit or a GED without leaving home.  Teachers and other professionals, including childcare providers, regularly update job skills through SCETV.  Adults also learn to read through the easily accessible services of SCETV’s literacy campaign.  SCETV’s knowitall.org educational web portal provides on-line classroom materials that meet state curriculum standards.

South Carolina ETV is South Carolina's statewide network with 11 television stations, eight radio stations and a closed-circuit educational telecommunications system in more than 2,000 schools, colleges, businesses and government agencies.  SCETV uses the power of TV, radio, satellite and the Internet to advance education, culture and citizenship.