National Geographic Video

Su Jing
I watched a video on the National Geographic website. The headline is Giant Fish Faces Big Trouble in China. It is about the endangered status of Chinese sturgeon and Chinese paddle fish.
I think the video story does a good job to combine sound bits, news copy and footage together.
At the beginning of the story is the footage about the appearance of the Chinese sturgeon. The detailed pictures of the sturgeon’s mouth and fin and how it breaks loose from the biologist’s hand are very interesting. And the news copy here matches the footage very well, which reads “biologist Zeb Hogan of the National Geographic Society's Megafishes Project takes a close look at the powerful fish”. The ending of the story shows a good match of news copy sound and video also again. At the end, we see the footage of the biologist looks at a paddle fish specimen in a museum and hear the news copy sound: ”This may be the closest we’ve ever got to see the Chinese paddle fish again.”
However, I don’t get the purpose of some of the footage, such as three scientists lift a cover on the motorboat. I don’t understand the meaning of the shot here. Maybe other shots need to be added here to make it more clear.