Friendly Sea Turtles follow us like puppies. What do they like?

Coming up, Jonathan joins famous IMAX filmmaking team Howard and Michelle Hall for dinner with sea turtles! Welcome to Jonathan Bird's Blue World! Howard and Michelle Hall are a world-renowned underwater filmmaking team. For more than 30 years, they have traveled around the world making animal behavior documentaries. They are most famous for their incredible underwater 3D IMAX films, which are made using an enormous camera system that weighs more than a thousand pounds. It uses two rolls of 70mm film and costs more than $2,000 per minute to run. But the image quality is amazing on the giant screen of an IMAX theater. Howard and Michelle are my heroes. Their films inspired me to become an underwater filmmaker. So imagine how excited I am to be on a dive trip in the Philippines with my heroes! Howard and Michelle have come to Busuanga, Palawan to work on a segment about dugongs with me. But we're also going to explore a dive site famous for sea turtles. It's a long trip from North America to the Philippines, but this is one of the best places in the world to scuba dive. Our captain sets a course for Dimakia Island. Then it's time to suit up! Michelle hits the water first, then Howard, and I. There is no reef here, just a sandy bottom. At first it doesn't look very promising. But our divemaster has already found a sea turtle. This green sea turtle is foraging for food. She has a freeloader in the form of a huge remora sticking to her. She really likes the seagrasses that grow here. There isn't a ton of nutritional value in the grass, so she spends a lot of her time eating. And she digs down to get to the more nutritious roots. Divers come here fairly often, so she's not afraid of us at all. I have to be honest, I never thought I would have Howard and Michelle Hall as Blue World cinematographers! Like land turtles, sea turtles breathe air. They hold their breath underwater, and they need to rise up to breathe every few minutes. A quick breath and it's back to feeding. Michelle demonstrates just how close we can get. Maybe the sea turtle could use a little help. Michelle notices that the sea turtle eats an awful lot of sand while feeding, so maybe she can assist. This sea turtle is no dummy. She knows an easy meal when she sees it. Now this looks like fun to me. Nearby I find another sea turtle and see if she will accept a handout. Pretty soon the sea turtles are following us around like a bunch of puppies. We can even get them to do tricks! All this eating is making me hungry, so I decide to give the seagrass a taste. Salad isn't my favorite food, but sea salad? Disgusting! Michelle likes healthy foods though, and she loves it. If only we had a nice vinaigrette. Meanwhile the turtle has her eyes on a thick ring of seagrass around an anemone. But as she inches closer, she finds out why nobody is eating that seagrass. The anemone fish are protective of their home and drive away intruders. They even attack Howard as he sets up for a shot. Then we notice that the anemone fish are working very hard to move a piece of water-logged bamboo closer to their anemone. The fish are very persistent. Once they get it in position, we look closer and realize what's going on. They've laid their eggs on the bamboo. The largest male aerates the eggs constantly by swishing water over them with his fins. With anemone fish, it's the males that care for the eggs. Go dads! Once we have been watching for a while, the little fish decide we are no longer a threat and stop attacking. Nearby, another anemone. This one harboring a different inhabitant. Michelle coaxes it out to play. A tiny cleaner shrimp, looking for fish to clean. Michelle is an odd customer at this cleaning station. I can't believe how long she can hold her breath. And I think the sea turtle is feeling a little left out. So I go back to helping her harvest some seagrass. But her meal ticket has a finite air supply, and it's time for us to head back to the boat. I'm so excited that I got to dive with Howard and Michelle Hall, and we were lucky to find such cooperative subjects. Sometimes even a shallow sandy seafloor that looks boring can turn out to be an amazing wild animal encounter in the Blue World! Hey Everyone! Thanks for watching our latest episode all the way to the end! Hit that subscribe button now so you won't miss our next episode! And check out our new second channel, Blue World Plus, for some awesome behind-the-scenes, vlogs and extras!