Local coral spawn clip featured in BBC’s Blue Planet series

Locally-filmed footage of a once-a-year natural phenomenon is stealing scenes in the BBC’s celebrated Blue Planet documentary series.

The latest episode premiered this Sunday, and footage highlighting the elusive reproductive rites of Cayman’s reef-building corals made the cut. Dusty Norman of DNS diving says the coral spawn takes place over a three night period once a year, and for only 15 to 20 minutes each night.

So getting a shot worthy of legendery Blue Planet narrator Sir David Attenborough was no easy task.

“Getting positioned on the right coral head for just a perfect shot, you’re looking to make sure everything is exposure-wise just exactly the way you want it. It’s hours of setting up before it even happens, and you have 15 minutes to nail that shot, to get it, three times a year,” said Mr. Norman.

He told Cayman 27 the BBC purchased around five minutes of his video after seeing it posted on his Vimeo page. He said only about ten seconds aired in the fast paced feature.