Big Blue Blue Planet II

The world's greatest wilderness, the open ocean.

It covers over half the surface of our planet.

Here, there is nowhere to hide and little to eat.

It's the marine equivalent of a desert.

CLICKING AND SQUEAKING

And patrolling this desert, spinner dolphins.

They stick together...

..in a super-pod, 5,000 strong.

That maximises their chances of finding something to eat.

Like all who live here, they must go to extraordinary lengths

to make their home in the big blue.

There are rare moments when these empty seas can explode with life.

Lanternfish, off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

They're scarcely bigger than minnows,

but what they lack in size they make up for in numbers.

They are one of the most numerous fish anywhere.

Normally, they only come to the surface at night,

to feed on plankton,

but this immense shoal has risen during the day,

almost certainly in order to spawn.

For the dolphins, this would be a bonanza.

CLICKING AND SQUEAKING

They have located the shoal using their echo-sounding calls.

But they have to get to it quickly.

They are not the only hunters here.

Yellowfin tuna have also detected the shoal.

And behind them, with their two-metre wingspans, mobula rays.

Now sailfish, one of the fastest fish in the sea,

have joined the chase.

The lanternfish may return to the deep at any moment.

But now the dolphins have got here.

They swim beneath the shoal, pinning it to the surface

and forcing the lanternfish to pack more closely together.

CLICKING AND SQUEAKING

And now the sea begins to boil.

The tuna charge into the shoal at over 40mph.

The slower-swimming rays arrive at last.

With their immense mouths agape,

they scoop up the lanternfish by the hundred.

The shoal has now been largely dispersed,

and the sailfish pick off the survivors.

In just 15 minutes,

all that's left is a silvery confetti of scales.

But here, such feasts are only too infrequent.

Whilst the dolphins perform great feats of endurance,

others are driven to even greater extremes

to find food in this ocean desert.

A sleeping giant.

A sperm whale.

This family is resting between bouts of feeding.

Who knows what the owners

of the biggest brain in the planet dream about.

CLICKING

One has a calf.

It's about two weeks old but still dependent on its mother's milk.

It's hungry.

CLICKING

It communicates with its mother using a pattern of clicks.

CLICKING CONTINUES

But its mother slumbers on.

The calf, covered in sucker fish, of which it can't yet rid itself,

has to be patient.

Sleep over and refreshed, the whales move on.

Sperm whales don't wait for their prey to rise to the surface.

They swim down into the depths to find it.

They take a series of heavy breaths...

..to saturate their blood with oxygen.

Then down they go.

This entire family dives together in search of squid.

A mother will push her body to the limits of her endurance,

and already it's hard for her calf to keep up with her.

CLICKING

The calf sticks to its mother as closely as it can...

..touching her frequently, as if for reassurance.

FASTER CLICKING

But 300 metres down,

it seems the calf can't hold its breath any longer.

CLICKING CONTINUES

In their early years, calves are forced to sit out the hunt.

The adults continue their dive.

CLICKING

The mother changes her calls

into a series of louder and more rapid clicks.

She's now using sonar to hunt down shoals of squid.

At 800 metres, a burst of clicks.

CLICKING BECOMES VERY FAST

CLICKING STOPS

Then silence.

She's made a catch.

A calf can have a long wait at the surface.

A mother returns from the deep after as much as an hour.

She has a stomach full of squid.

Finally, this hungry calf can take some milk.

It's one of the richest produced by any mammal,

and the calf guzzles a bathful of it a day.

It may be six years before a calf masters the art of deep diving

and is able to find food for itself.

The emptiness of the big blue is what makes life so hard for hunters.

But it's this emptiness that makes it comparatively safe for prey.

A baby turtle, hatched just days ago, is leaving the crowded,

dangerous waters of the coast and heading for the open ocean.

To start with, they fill their little stomachs with plankton.

But soon they need something more substantial.

Only recently have we begun to solve

the mystery of where baby turtles disappear to in their early years.

Hundreds of miles offshore, in every ocean,

there are communities of young castaways.

So anything that floats attracts them.

A log.

It may have been at sea for several years,

and it has already become the centre of a small community.

Young puffer fish are here for the same reason.

A floating log is just the kind of refuge

this young turtle has been looking for.

Here, there's not only seaweed on which to graze, but barnacles.

But it's important to stay under cover.

A young ocean-going silky shark is here, too.

It's learning what tastes good.

And what doesn't.

We now know that many young turtles stay in such places

for several years, until adulthood.

Even if it means facing the full force of the high seas.

The sun beating down on the deep blue

warms the surface waters so that they evaporate.

As the vapour rises, it condenses into clouds.

They rapidly build into gigantic, burgeoning towers,

which eventually generate violent storms, some 1,000 miles across.

Hurricane-force winds sweep across the open ocean,

building waves that can rise to 30 metres tall.

Out here, ships have been known to sink without trace.

130 million containers are shipped across the oceans every year.

And on average, four of them fall into the sea every day.

In 1992, a few were lost

that contained a consignment of bath toys...

..including 7,000 plastic ducks like these.

They started their travels 1,000 miles off Alaska.

Some drifted right across the Pacific Ocean and reached Australia.

Others were carried north

and landed on shores between Russia and Alaska.

They even found their way into the High Arctic.

One duck, having been at sea for 15 years

and crossing three oceans,

eventually landed on the west coast of Scotland.

Their travels vividly illustrate how a network of currents

connects all our oceans into one gigantic circulatory system.

Many of the inhabitants of the big blue rely on these currents

to carry them to feeding grounds.

The blue shark.

It travels over 5,000 miles a year,

riding on the currents, supported by its broad wing-shaped fins.

This one may not have eaten for two months.

But the currents can carry promising traces of fatty oils

from many miles away and will lead it to its next meal.

After days of travel, the smell of food gets stronger.

A dead whale, recently struck by a ship.

This could be a real feast,

but the blue shark must be cautious.

Great white sharks...

..ten times heavier than a blue...

..are highly possessive around a whale carcass.

Great whites are eager to feed on energy-rich whale blubber,

which we now know forms a major part of their diet.

Once the great white has had its fill,

smaller sharks, like the blue shark, tackle what's left of the carcass.

As the oils from this dead whale spread more widely,

more and more blue sharks appear.

Within days, the carcass will be stripped of its blubber.

Then, no longer kept buoyant by its oil,

it will sink into the depths below.

The blue, with its reserves of fat replenished,

can now survive for another two months without eating.

Over half of all animals in the open ocean drift in currents.

Jellyfish cross entire oceans

feeding on whatever happens to tangle with their tentacles.

Some can grow to a metre, even two metres, across.

And when, by lucky chance,

they encounter a patch of sea rich in plankton,

their numbers explode.

It's such a successful strategy

that jellies are one of the most common life forms on the planet.

But among the jellies, and looking somewhat like them,

is a rather more complex and sinister creature.

The Portuguese man-o'-war.

It floats with the help of a gas-filled bladder,

topped by a vertical membrane.

With that serving as a sail,

it maintains a steady course through the waves.

Long threads trail behind it, some as much as 30 metres long.

Each is armed with many thousands of stinging cells.

A single tentacle could kill a fish or, in rare cases, a human.

But among its lethal tentacles lurks

a man-o'-war fish that feeds by nibbling them.

Whilst this fish has some resistance to the stings,

it must still be extremely careful.

Most other fish are not so lucky.

A tentacle has caught this one and reels it in.

It's already paralysed.

Specialised muscular tentacles transfer the victim to others

that digest the catch, liquefying it with powerful chemicals.

Eventually, all that is left...

..is a scaly husk.

This voracious man-o'-war

may collect over 100 small fish in a day.

For the most part, the big blue seems featureless...

..a place where the winds blow, uninterrupted by land.

But beneath the surface there are long mountain ranges,

deep trenches and isolated volcanic peaks

that make it far more varied than the human eye can see.

We are only just discovering in any detail

how the inhabitants of the big blue exploit that.

A lonely whale shark on a special journey.

She is as long as a small aircraft and she weighs over 20 tonnes.

Like many sharks, she does not lay eggs but gives birth to live young.

She carries up to 300 of them in her swollen belly.

She may be the biggest fish in the sea,

but the place where whale sharks give birth has not yet been found.

Today, however, we may be a step closer to solving this mystery.

We have known that great numbers of whale sharks,

at certain times of the year, appear around the Galapagos Islands.

Here they assemble around a tiny islet

that rises abruptly from particularly deep water.

It's known as Darwin Island.

Here, swirling currents bring up nutrients from the deep,

so enriching these waters that they attract

great concentrations of fish from far and wide.

Thousands of hammerhead sharks also assemble here.

They are nearly all female.

They, too, it seems, have come here to breed.

The whale shark receives an extraordinary welcome.

Silky sharks, themselves three metres long,

bounce against her rough skin...

..perhaps to scrape off any parasites they might have.

These sharks could be a danger to any newly born young.

So, perhaps to avoid them,

the whale shark dives...

..down to around 600 metres.

And there she may release her young.

In these great depths,

away from the predators that hunt in the waters above,

and with abundant food,

her babies could grow and eventually disperse.

No-one, it is true,

has ever seen young ones in these little-visited depths.

But the fact that hundreds of expectant whale sharks

come here every year

is strong evidence that somewhere here

lies the nursery of the biggest fish in the sea.

There are almost 30,000 sizeable islands

scattered across the world's oceans.

One of them is South Georgia...

..an ideal place for those ocean dwellers

who are compelled to land in order to breed.

The wandering albatross.

It may spend as much as a year continuously at sea.

Searching for food,

gliding on wings that are 3.5 metres across -

the biggest of any living bird.

The entire world population of 16,000 wanderers

nest on South Georgia

and half a dozen or so of the other smaller islands

that lie in the Southern Ocean.

It's spring and this bird is returning

to the nest site it's always used.

THEY CALL TO EACH OTHER

Its lifelong partner is already here.

THEY CALL AND CLUCK

In South Georgia,

individual birds have been studied for their entire lives,

revealing that older pairs, in their late 30s,

will go to extraordinary lengths to give their young

the best possible start in life.

This chick is now several weeks old,

but still has its warm, downy coat.

The chick will need a regular supply of regurgitated fish and squid.

With food so scarce in the open ocean,

both parents may have to scour thousands of square miles

just to provide enough for one meal.

Ageing parents struggle on all through the Antarctic winter

to raise a chick that is big, strong and healthy.

After some 130 days,

the youngster begins to replace its down with flight feathers.

Finally, nine months after their egg was laid,

this chick is ready to leave.

Of all the chicks they've reared in recent years,

such a favoured chick will have the best chance of survival.

But it will also be their last.

Elderly parents never recover from their exertions.

They will soon leave this island, never to be seen again.

Surviving in the open ocean

has always tested animals to the limit...

..but today they face a new additional threat.

Plastic.

Just over 100 years ago,

we invented a wonderful new material

that could be moulded into all kinds of shapes

and we took great trouble to ensure that it was hard-wearing,

rot-proof and virtually indestructible.

Now, every year,

we dump around eight million tonnes of it into the sea.

Here, it entangles and drowns vast numbers of marine creatures.

But it may have even more widespread and far-reaching consequences.

A pod of short-finned pilot whales.

THEY CLICK AND BUZZ

They live together in what are, perhaps,

the most closely knit of families in the whole ocean.

Today, in the Atlantic waters off Europe, as elsewhere,

they have to share the ocean with plastic.

A mother is holding her newborn young.

It's dead.

She is reluctant to let it go

and has been carrying it around for many days.

In top predators like these,

industrial chemicals can build up to lethal levels...

..and plastic could be part of the problem.

As plastic breaks down,

it combines with these other pollutants

that are consumed by vast numbers of marine creatures.

It's possible her calf may have been poisoned

by her own contaminated milk.

Pilot whales have big brains.

They can certainly experience emotions.

Judging from the behaviour of the adults,

the loss of the infant has affected the entire family.

Unless the flow of plastics and industrial pollution

into the world's oceans is reduced,

marine life will be poisoned by them for many centuries to come.

The creatures that live in the big blue are perhaps more remote

than any animals on the planet.

But not remote enough, it seems,

to escape the effects of what we are doing to their world.

The biggest challenge of filming in the vastness of the open ocean

is to find your subject...

..and the Blue Planet team wanted to film

one of the most elusive of them all,

the rarely witnessed "boiling sea".

Until now, this feeding frenzy has been the stuff of legends.

After some promising sightings off the north-east coast of Australia,

the team heads out to investigate.

We know it's a phenomenon, we know it's out there,

the scientists have documented it,

the fishermen have told us about it,

so we know it's happening, but no-one has been crazy enough

to attempt to go out there and actually film it - except for us.

The team start their search 100 miles out in the Pacific Ocean.

The reason it's called a "boiling sea" is that the tuna

are actually coming out of the water

and attacking lanternfish and it creates a lot of white water.

To film the boiling seas,

the team must first find a large shoal of bait fish,

most likely to be lanternfish

rising to the surface at night to spawn.

A few days out,

Adrian thinks he may have spotted a giant shoal on the echo-sounder.

What we're seeing is a very, very dense layer

at about 200 metres' water depth.

And so, the fact that we've got this would suggest

that we have a very deep and dense layer of fish.

One of the best ways to film at such depths in the open ocean

is to use an ROV - a remotely operated vehicle -

carrying a light-sensitive camera.

But working with such heavy equipment in the high seas

is a risky operation.

CLANK, LOUD THUD

Fortunately, a team of technicians is on hand,

and 24 hours later, they're ready to relaunch.

Adrian drops them on top

of what he hopes is a large shoal of lanternfish.

Good news is, we've just put the ROV down,

we're down at 250 metres,

which means we've gone to almost the end of the cable

and nothing's blown up so we're back in business.

But there's almost nothing there,

just a thick layer of plankton.

Over the next three weeks,

they don't find a single lanternfish.

This trip is the perfect illustration

of why we know so little about the ocean -

we came out looking for something,

we've searched and searched and searched,

and we still haven't found it

even with every single tool you could wish for.

As it turned out, the team had been filming

at the very start of El Nino -

an unpredictable climatic event

when sea temperatures can suddenly rise

and disrupt the spawning behaviour of fish.

It would be 18 months before conditions would improve

and the team could continue their quest.

The other side of the Pacific Ocean, off Costa Rica.

This time, rather than searching for their prey,

the team are looking for their predators.

BUZZING AND CLICKING

But in the endless blue,

even finding a massive pod of dolphins isn't easy.

20 miles offshore, series producer Mark Brownlow

leads an aerial filming team

scanning thousands of square miles of ocean...

..but there's not a dolphin in sight.

Day three, no spinner dolphins.

Getting worried now...

Finally, after ten days on the open ocean,

they get their reward.

OK, dolphins!

Woohoo!

Yes!

Spinners!

With dolphins in sight, the dive team race to intercept them.

Spinners, look!

The plan is to film the dolphins' feeding frenzy from underwater.

Several hundred dolphins jumping all over the place,

it looks like this could be it.

They catch up with the dolphins.

But they're too late.

Ah, dear.

-Nothing, Rog?

-Just...nothing.

Just fish scales and bones,

it's like turning up at a battle

just to see all the dead bodies left over.

To stand a chance of filming the dolphins' feeding,

the dive team need to be more proactive.

Rachel hitches a ride, following them underwater,

searching for any clue to where they might go next.

Finally, after three weeks of searching,

the dive team catch a huge feeding event,

a massive shoal of lanternfish

being rounded up by hundreds of spinner dolphins.

That was incredibly intense.

A very large bait ball

spread over probably the size of a football field.

Things coming in and over your shoulder, over your head,

it was incredible.

For the first time,

the aerial team can record the epic scale of this spectacle.

You know, we heard these stories of boiling seas, but it's real!

They're huge.

The vastness of the ocean wilderness

made capturing this extraordinary event a great challenge.

But this is the reward,

a moment of unparalleled drama

in the immense expanse of the big blue.

Next time, we journey into the bountiful green sea.

These are enchanted worlds, home to strange creatures...

..where only the most ingenious will triumph.

To find out more about our oceans with this free poster, call...

or go to...

and follow the links to the Open University.