“Big Blue Half-Live” might have been a more accurate title, and only the humpback whales seem to have gotten the memo for the initial East Coast broadcast, but at least give PBS credit for trying something different.  On Monday, PBS, in partnership with the BBC, began a three-night experiment called “Big Blue Live,” in which it is trying to document the annual convergence of marine life in Monterey Bay, off Northern California’s coast. The program lasts an hour each night, but the initial East Coast broadcast (the West Coast was given its own during its prime time) was live only intermittently. Much of the hour was taken up by recorded segments devoted to otters, sea lions, the history of whale hunting and so on.  Was that because the live cameras weren’t capturing anything interesting, or because the producers wanted to start viewers off with some basic information, or a combination of the two? It was impossible to tell, but the approach made for a choppy experience. Yet it did convey just why the bay deserves all this attention: It’s because some of the species making the migratory journey there to feed were, not so long ago, in danger of extinction.  People caused a lot of the problems that threatened them, and now people have helped bring them back. As the scientist M. Sanjayan, a host of the program, eloquently put it in a segment about otters, “This really is a story of redemption, not just for the otters, but for us as well.”  As for the live shots on Monday, the various hosts repeatedly assured viewers that the bay was teeming with life, but mostly, we had to take their word for it. A helicopter camera crew did eventually locate some humpback whales, which near the hour’s end obliged with impressive breaching.  Nothing, though, quite matched the moment the BBC snagged in one of its “Big Blue Live” broadcasts, when Steve Backshall, another of the hosts, learned that a blue whale had been caught on camera.  He cut off an interview subject in midsentence and did a wonderful live call, full of awe and excitement, as footage of the gigantic whale filled the screen. That’s what the PBS version of the program is hoping to match. Now if someone will just tell the wildlife.  A version of this review appears in print on September 2, 2015, on page C4 of the New York edition with the headline: Hoping Sea Otters Surface and a Whale Shows Up. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
PBS turns its cameras on Monterey Bay in California, hoping to catch glimpses of otters, sea lions and even whales while highlighting efforts to save species from extinction.