This watery world inspired the latest Avatar

December 17, 2022
by RJ Hamster

Saturday, December 17, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we talk with James Cameron on his Avatar sequel and go to the Polynesian islands that inspired him. Plus, we examine rising food allergies, slither with NASA’s possible ‘snakes on the moon’ … and see how we got one of our Pictures of the Year.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK FELLMAN

James Cameron wants you to love the ocean like he does—and urgently seek to save it from, well, ourselves.

That’s why he was inspired by the waters and reefs of Polynesia in creating Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to the biggest-grossing movie of all time. It’s a plea, he says, for us to unplug, even briefly, and understand why the undersea world matters.

“The coral reefs will be a thing that exists only in films in 50 to 75 years, in most places around the planet,” the Nat Geo Explorer at Large (pictured above) tells us. “It’s kind of a cri de cœur … to remember, to celebrate and fall in love with again, and therefore remember to protect that which we’re losing.”

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PHOTOGRAPH BY DIDIER MARTI, GETTY IMAGES

Modeling Pandora: The fictional home and culture of the clan in the new Avatarfilm is modeled on Polynesian places such as Rarotonga, the biggest of the Cook Islands. Pictured above is the island’s Muri Beach, which offers mountain hiking as well as excellent diving along the reefs. “[I’ve] had this romance with the ocean my entire life,” Cameron tells us, adding that the movie’s setting is “a celebration of our reefs.” See the islands and reefs that inspired The Way of Water.

STORIES WE’RE FOLLOWING

PHOTOGRAPH BY SPENCER LOWELL

Snakes on the moon? No, these are experimental robots (one pictured above) with lunar ambitions.

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Why food allergies are rising

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WHAT IN THE WORLD?

PHOTOGRAPHs BY MARK THIESSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Grabbing a meal: It seemed like an impossible assignment. Capture an erratically flying bat grabbing a moth mid-flight—in the dark. Nat Geo’s Mark Thiessen kept trying: “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was just, ‘Ah, more moths only. Oh, the bat’s too far out to the side.’ But you just have to keep at it because there’s going to be that one perfect time where the bat’s coming in and it’s hunting the moth. And you gotta be there, ‘cause the bats don’t warn you, they just do it.”

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY LUJÁN AGUSTI

For peat’s sake: Tropical peatlands can store vast amounts of carbon. Showing the value of that land is of huge importance to photographer and Nat Geo Explorer Luján Agusti. Pictured above is a former rainforest bog in Peru’s Amazonian area that gold mining turned into desert and created pools of polluted water. Agusti zooms in on stories deeply rooted in place. She has documented women in Tierra del Fuego weaving with sustainably sourced local wool, spent time with Indigenous Mapuche women trying to preserve ancestral practices, and visited solitary gauchosliving in the steppe and the peatlands.

Also: At the end of the world, the beauty of bogs

LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY ENZO SUMA, ARCHAEOPLASTICA

This museum is trash—literally: Four years ago, naturalist Enzo Suma started collecting trash and now his nearly 300,000 followers on social media don’t want him to stop. Suma gathers plastic that has spent decades in the ocean (like the sunscreen bottle above from the early 1970s) and adds them to his museum, Archeoplastica. “To see a product you may have used 30, 40, or 50 years ago with your own eyes, still completely intact, that’s different. It has an emotional impact,” he says.

GARBAGE COLLECTION

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Sydney Combs, and Jen Tse. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Alec Egamov, Rita Spinks, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea? We’d love to hear from you at david.beard@natgeo.com. Thanks for reading!

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RJ Hamster

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This watery world inspired the latest Avatar

This watery world inspired the latest Avatar

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