Dolphin Reef (2018) and Diving with Dolphins (2020)

Breathtakingly gorgeous! Dolphin Reef is the official Disneynature documentary and Diving with Dolphins is a documentary about making Dolphin Reef. Both were released in time for Earth Day in April 2020. They would make an excellent double feature with the first running only one hour 18 minutes and the second 1:19.

Natalie Portman narrates Dolphin Reef, which focuses on, among others, a bottlenose dolphin calf named Echo and his mother, but there are other creatures, including humpback whales and a brilliantly colorful mantis shrimp in the brilliantly colorful coral reefs, which, as we all know, are endangered by climate change. The locations are worldwide.

Keith Scholey is credited as director and story writer, Alastair Fothergill as co-director, and David Fowler wrote Portman's narration.

Steven Price's soundtrack can be streamed on Apple Music and probably elsewhere.

Three cinematographers are listed for Dolphin Reef–Paul Atkins, Mark Gerasimenko, and Roger Horrocks–although many other photographers are shown in Diving with Dolphins. Martin Elsbury does the editing.

Diving with Dolphins is narrated by Céline Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques Cousteau–one of the world's underwater diving pioneers–and herself an environmentalist and filmmaker.

As above, Scholey directs and wrote the story with Fowler providing the rest of the script.

The music by Barnaby Taylor does not seem to be available online, but as I write I'm listening to Price's delightful soundtrack to Dolphin Reef.

The cinematographers listed for the second movie are Atkins, Horrocks, Doug Anderson, Jamie McPherson, Didier Noirot, and Helen Sampson. It was edited by Elsbury and Sampson.

Portman was last blogged for Annihilation, Scholey for African Cats (though I neglected to cite him as director of Bears), Fothergill and Fowler for Polar Bear (below), Price for Baby Driver, Horrocks for My Octopus Teacher, and Taylor for Born in China. Atkins has dozens of credits, many but not all of which are nature docs. Gerasimenko has been aerial director of photography on over 100 titles and most likely did those honors here. Elsbury's long resume, dating back to 1981, includes Earth and African Cats but I left him out of those posts. Anderson and Noirot worked on Earth and many others, McPherson on lots of nature docs, including many TV series, and Sampson graduated from field assistant on Bears to assistant producer on Dolphin Reef to one of eight producers on Diving with Dolphins.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics have floated Dolphin Reef up to 100% with its audiences' average just below the surface at 89. Diving with Dolphins isn't on that site but is definitely worth watching. Jack and I think you should see it second.

We saw them both this week, streaming on Disney+. You can also rent them on iTunes/Apple TV or Amazon Prime Video.

Now this is going on my Disneynature documentary list, updated right this minute. Note to my email subscribers: the Disneynature documentary list you get in your inbox will not have live links to today's posts but the list will be updated on the web version.

And milestone alert: I've just passed the 1400 mark–number of movies about which I have written on the blog since September 3, 2008, listed in my alphabetized index.