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One Strange Rock Nyale Worms

Project Summary

One Strange Rock Nyale Worms Poster
Genre
Documentary
Featured Content
Palolo Worms, Underwater, Wildlife
Islands
Lombok
Regions
West Nusa Tenggara
One Strange Rock Poster

FORMAT

TV Miniseries

RELEASED

2018

Overview

A mind-bending, thrilling journey exploring the fragility and wonder of planet Earth, one of the most peculiar, unique places in the entire universe, brought to life by the only people to have left it behind – the world’s most well known and leading astronauts.

Jungle Run Production Services

Once a year, certain southern beaches of Sumba and Lombok host a strange phenomenon of biosynchronicity. Some days before a full moon, on some month between February and April, the sedentary polychaetes known as palola worms eject half their body, including their gonads, into shallow coastal waters. The timing of the one-night spawning event may fall once every 11, 12 or 13 months, based on the alignment of lunar and solar cycles, but the worms somehow always know just when to pull it off en masee.

With recent reseach suggesting that worms in the same genus could be induced to spawn shortly before the main event, Nutopia asked Djuna to investigate filming possibilities. Working with a researcher, Djuna ventured to Lombok where she and Dr. Imam Bachtiar tried coaxing worms to climax via temperature and salinity changes, as other worms could. Alas, the worms could not be budged. So Djuna hedged bets for the shoot by outfitting an elaborate tank studio set-up inside a room at the Novotel Resort. On the night, the crew stood ready to pivot from studio to field-filming because... would our tank worms go off without moonlight or the reef as cues? Who knew??

To great surprise, our tank worms did, in fact, jettison their epitokes in sync with friends on the reef. This fostered one-of-kind footage of a rare phenomenon, while raising yet more irksome questions about what the heck triggers palola worms to spawn.

Sadly, it was just weeks later that Covid-19 reached pandemic status. Nutopia was forced to scrap filming of the cultural component of this shoot, and with it, the whole palola worm sequence. Next time!

Locations

Lombok

West Nusa Tenggara

Kuta Mandalika

Production Companies

Overbrook Entertainment
Nutopia
Protozoa Pictures

Distributors

Disney+
National Geographic Channel