'Born to be Wild' travels to Thailand for all-new series on elephants

BORN TO BE WILD’s all-new series

“Elephant World” and “Shipwreck Mystery”

Wednesdays beginning July 4, 2012

 

This July, Born to be Wild launches an exciting new series. 

 

Doc Nielsen Donato travels to Thailand to visit a rescue center for elephants. About fifty adult and juvenile elephants are housed inside the rescue center. Most of them were saved from abusers. Some of the elephants were made to beg for money in the streets of Bangkok while some of the juveniles’ parents were killed by poachers, leaving them orphaned.   Elephants are endangered around the world. In Thailand, where elephants are considered sacred creatures, laws were implemented for elephant protection.

 

Doc Nielsen Donato in Thailand’s elephant rescue center and sanctuary.

 

Doc Nielsen meets an elephant confined in the rescue center’s hospital after it accidentally stepped on a land mine in the forest. To better understand the conditions of these elephants, our wild vet observes how elephants live in a sanctuary and learns more about their fascinating ways. Doc Nielsen also meets a juvenile elephant who seems just as curious about Doc Nielsen and his camera crew.

Meanwhile, Mariz Umali is back for another underwater adventure.  This time, she travels to Malapascua in Cebu for an extreme assignment—to explore wrecks resting on the deep ocean floor. Four wrecks can be found in the area, each lying at different depths. While some can be observed with sunlight, closer to the shore, others can be found in the dark recesses of the ocean, where natural light cannot penetrate. Mariz and the team they call “Malapascua Six”, composed of expert technical divers and explorers, take on the wrecks one by one.

 

One of the Philippines’ best technical divers, Pobi Han, takes a shot of a sea snake in Malapascua’s famed dive site. Mariz Umali prepares to enter a dark shipwreck passage.

 

One wreck is the famous M/V Doña Marilyn, a passenger ship which sank in the 1980’s taking with it the lives of about 200 people.  With little traces of exploitation because of its reputation for being “haunted”, the wreck remains intact. Mariz and the team squeeze into the wreck’s hallways and crevices and find traces of the tragedy. Passenger bags and cargo boxes are still visible, solemn reminders of the lives that were lost at sea. Amidst the darkness, Mariz and the team are startled by movement inside the wreck. They find that many years later, there is life inside the ship in the form of new marine “residents”.

 

But there is one wreck, the deepest wreck, lying one hundred seventy feet below sea level. It has long been debated whether this wreck is the World War II war ship “Pioneer” or the Japanese vessel “Mogami Maru”. No one knows for sure. The story of this silent vessel is yet to be told. For the first time, experts try to reconstruct what the wreck might have looked like, and how it sank, to solve the mystery behind this giant sleeping in the sandy bottom.

 

Don’t miss the first episode of “Elephant World” and “Shipwreck Mystery,” an all-new series on BORN TO BE WILD beginning Wednesday after Saksi!