Cullum and his crew spent seven days on the island, working from dawn to dusk, before they got their payoff — capturing for the first time on camera one of the snakes leaping out of a tree to catch its prey. The scene is one of the most iconic images from Big Pacific, the five-part documentary Cullum produced for PBS, which seeks to demystify one of the most vast, yet least explored parts of our planet. The series aired last summer.
“The Pacific Ocean is a third of our planet — every single continent can fit within it,” says Cullum. “Yet we’ve barely scraped the surface of it.”
In addition to the spellbinding pit vipers, he captured many other rare scenes, including saltwater moray eels that come up on land to hunt crabs, and puffer fish in Japan that create underwater art to attract mates.
“Our goal is to get people to see the Pacific in a new light and inspire them more to care,” Cullum says. “If they can watch something and say, I had no idea that kind of thing is out there, that’s what it’s all about.”