Episode 4 The First Eden

The Suez Canal.

An immense ditch nearly 100 miles long, cut through the desert,

linking the eastern end of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea

and beyond the Indian Ocean.

It was designed and promoted by a French diplomat, Count Ferdinand de Lesseps,

in the 19th century, and its advantages were obvious.

A vessel in the Mediterranean port of Marseilles,

bound for Bombay and India, for example,

could cut 5,800 miles off its voyage

if only it could cross the isthmus of Suez.

Inevitably, there were doubters.

Some people said that the difference in level between the two seas was such

that if the canal was cut, one would drain into the other.

But in the end, it was decided to go ahead

and the work started in 1859.

Thousands of locally recruited labourers

set about the job quite straightforwardly

with picks, shovels and baskets.

Some shallow lakes lay in the middle of the isthmus

and de Lesseps' plan was to link them

so that less than half the total length had to be dug from dry land.

Even so, it was ten years before the work was completed

and the first ships were able to sail through the canal.

Travelling from the ports of western Europe,

they entered the canal at portside,

on the far eastern corner of the vast triangular delta of the Nile,

here in the foreground dark with cultivation.

They sailed down to the lakes in the centre of the isthmus

and then on to the Red Sea.

This is a tropical sea, an arm of the Indian 0cean,

and it swarms with fish.

There are far more species of marine organisms here

than there are in the Mediterranean,

which by comparison is something of an impoverished backwater.

There are no locks on the Suez Canal, so when that waterway was opened,

there was nothing to prevent species from these overcrowded waters

from swimming into it, and they did.

First, they established colonies in the canal itself,

and then, eventually, they began to appear in the Mediterranean.

This, the red soldier fish, is one of them,

and it's very good eating.

And since the cooks of the Mediterranean

are always ready to welcome something new to the kitchen,

they provide a very good record of the spread of this fish

through the Mediterranean.

In the 19th century, it was unknown here.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was being eaten in Suez,

and by the 1930s, it was on the menu here in the island of Cyprus.

Now, it's found in Tobruk, 1,000 miles west of Suez.

The rabbit fish is another of these immigrants.

And it's not just fish that have made the trip.

This crab, too, comes from the Red Sea.

In fact, over 100 species of one kind or another

have travelled into the Mediterranean by courtesy of the Suez Canal,

and the number is still growing.

But while some immigrants in the Mediterranean

greatly added to the variety of food,

there was one that very severely damaged

that other essential for the Mediterranean meal...

the drink.

Grape vines grow wild in many parts of the world.

There are several species in North America

and they are afflicted by a tiny aphid called phylloxera

whose saliva, when injected into the leaves of a plant,

induces galls.

Inside each gall sits a female phylloxera,

with her mouth parts sunk into the leaf tissue, drinking its sap,

and at the same time laying eggs more or less nonstop.

Without any contribution from a male,

these eggs hatch into other females, which eventually leave the gall

and crawl away to create homes of their own.

But some, instead of crawling to another leaf,

clamber down the stem into the ground and attach themselves to the roots.

The galls they produce there kill the rootlets

and therefore eventually the whole vine.

0ne generation produces another

and aphids spread to the roots of vines nearby,

without necessarily returning to the leaves.

Somehow, in the middle of the 19th century, these insects arrived in France,

probably on the roots of North American vines

that were being imported for the breeding of hybrids.

And in the summer of 1863, French vineyards began to die.

For some reason, the leaves of the French vines

were not to phylloxera's taste,

and the insects concentrated almost entirely on the roots.

They were so small that for some time they were not even noticed

and no-one was sure why the vines all over France were dying.

It was a national disaster.

Then, a scientific committee found the culprit and the solution.

Some species of American vines were immune to attacks on their roots.

They should be brought across the Atlantic

and the stems of French vines, with their immune leaves,

grafted onto them.

It was a drastic solution, but it worked.

So, the situation was saved,

but there are some connoisseurs who will tell you

that the taste of the Mediterranean wines has never really recovered.

So, during the 19th century, there were many invaders

into the Mediterranean.

From the east, like the red soldier fish.

From the west, like the phylloxera aphid.

But perhaps the most influential and lethal of all

came down from the north.

At the beginning of this century, the Mediterranean coasts of France and Italy

were quiet and sleepy, basking in the warm sun.

The French painters at the time were among the first

to recognise and celebrate their charms.

Soon, the fashionable rich began to travel down there for the summer,

even though the journey from the cloudy, rainy north,

which for most was by rail, was long and expensive.

As the popularity of the French Riviera grew,

the wealthier and the more adventurous

moved across to the southern side of the Mediterranean

to Tangier and Morocco

and there they discovered more romantic villages

and exotic peoples.

Throughout the '20s and the '30s,

the popularity of the Mediterranean grew

and then came a development

that made it an even more exciting and attractive place

to a whole new group of holiday-makers.

40 years ago,

the Mediterranean world that lies just a few yards beyond the shoreline,

was about as unknown and unexplored as the remote Amazonian jungles.

True, men had floated across the surface of the sea

and dangled lines with hooks on down into it,

and they'd dragged nets blindly across the bottom of it,

but that was really about all.

And then, in the 1940s,

Jacques Cousteau invented this...

the demander.

And, suddenly, a whole new world was on our doorstep.

The sensation of being able to move effortlessly

in not just two dimensions but in three...

of being, in effect, weightless... was intoxicating.

And so was the sight of so many totally new creatures

that seemed to bear no relation whatever

to the pallid corpses one might occasionally see

on a fishmonger's slab.

To add to the marvel, these creatures had never before seen

two-legged, two-armed mammals trailing plumes of bubbles

moving around in their world,

and many were not in the least alarmed by them.

As swimmers became braver,

they dived deeper and found more and more excitements.

Our reaction, considering our past record,

was only too predictable.

ALL SHOUT

0f course, the people of the Mediterranean, from prehistoric times,

have reaped a rich harvest from their sea.

Fish like these, for many centuries, were caught in great quantities

by traditional methods.

Men in small boats,

relying on their intimate knowledge of their own patch of sea,

and their understanding of the creatures that lived in it,

would sail out one day and return the next with rich catches.

The sea seemed inexhaustible.

But as more people came to settle on the coast,

as villages grew into towns,

in order to accommodate the increasing flood of summer visitors,

so the demand for fish grew greater

and the number of fishing boats increased.

Gradually, the catches from the inshore waters got smaller.

They were being badly over-fished.

So, bigger boats that could go farther out and find fresh grounds

were introduced-boats like these.

It's a trawler, which fishes by scraping the bottom of the sea with this board,

and they're very efficient.

And for many years, the catches were good.

But then, again, they began to fail.

These new grounds were being over-fished.

So, then, they introduced even bigger boats...

boats like these.

These boats can stay out at sea for weeks on end.

But they are so expensive to run they're not interested in the less valuable fish.

Those are just thrown back into the sea, dead,

and they can be as much as 70% of the catch,

so boats like these are devastating indeed.

But the solution of getting bigger and bigger boats

to go farther and farther out to sea

can't work for long in a sea as small as the Mediterranean.

And these ships, in this harbour in west Sicily,

are now sailing so far south, they're getting into Tunisian waters.

100 or so of them are arrested every year,

so there's a very big problem.

And this...is another.

The opening of the Suez Canal

turned a sea that, in terms of world trade, had been, for 400 years,

no more than a blind alley leading off the Atlantic 0cean

into a major international highway.

Then oil was discovered in the Middle East

and a major new element was added to the traffic.

Today, a procession of gigantic tankers like this one, over 1,000 feet long,

ferry oil from the eastern end of the Mediterranean

to the industrial centres of western Europe.

An accident to one of these could devastate the seas for miles around

and accidents happen every year.

In 1979, one of these huge tankers collided with a freighter

at the mouth of the Bosphorus, close to Istanbul.

Its cargo of oil, leaking onto the sea, caught fire.

Flames leapt from the water 300 feet into the air.

For over a month, the cargo continued to burn.

Eventually, it was put out,

but oil, even now, is still seeping from the wreck.

By the beginning of the 1970s,

800,000 tonnes of oil were being spilled into the sea every year,

either accidentally from collisions or wrecks

or deliberately by tankers washing out their tanks at sea,

and all round the Mediterranean, the rocks were being coated with black, sticky tar.

This is not oil.

This is untreated sewage,

floating in the water just off the French city of Toulon,

25 miles or so from some of the most fashionable and expensive holiday beaches

in the world.

Most living organisms are poisoned by such filth.

Only few can survive.

Among them, mussels.

They feed on particles, which they filter from the water.

But they also absorb bacteria that can cause virulent diseases in human beings.

Elsewhere, on the bare rocks, where no plants or other encrusting organisms grow,

are other scavengers.

Black sea urchins.

They too are eaten. But if they're gathered from such a place as this,

they will poison you.

A third scavenger typical of these polluted areas

is perhaps, fortunately, not edible -

the black brittle star.

In the filthier parts of this sea,

it's almost the only large organism that survives in any numbers.

And with no competitors, it swarms over the sea floor.

Healthy coastal waters can look like this.

A rich meadow of sea grass, posidonia, thronged with fish.

The thickets are even richer than they seem at first sight.

For these are the nursery grounds

where the young of many Mediterranean fish can hide from predators

and find the tiny microorganisms on which they feed.

Some species of fish, like this scorpion fish,

which is camouflaged to match the sea-grass roots,

live almost nowhere else.

Scallops lie, with shell agape, filter feeding.

Sea urchins nibble algae.

The biggest shell to be found in European waters, the pinna, also lives here

and indeed nowhere else.

Grey mullet prospect and rummage among the vegetable debris,

looking for edible particles.

And there's a great deal here that's good to eat.

And there are sea horses.

They, too, depend on an abundant and healthy concentration of microorganisms

such as are generated around the sea-grass thickets,

which they take in through their pipe-like mouths.

It's only a few inches long, a pipefish that has elected to swim upright,

so freeing its tail to be hooked onto twigs of coral

or twined around posidonia leaves

so that the sea horse can maintain its position in the swirling currents of the coastal waters.

The whole meadow is a single, complicated community

of a multitude of species, all dependent on the posidonia.

But all round the sea, stretches of posidonia are dying.

Sewage is only part of the problem.

Sediment, too, can be a killer.

This was once all green weed.

But sediment coming down and settling upon it

is slowly killing it with this blanket of filth...

..so that, on it, grows algae.

And everything...

..disappears.

By the early 1970s, it was clear that the Mediterranean was dying.

Something had to be done.

The United Nations called a conference

to which all states with a Mediterranean coastline were invited.

They declared that they would take action.

Ten years later, in 1985, they reassembled in Genoa.

Here, in one room, brought together by the crisis,

were gathered capitalists and communists, Muslims and Christians,

rich and poor.

Conferences can, of course, be nothing more than talking shops.

What, in practical terms, has this one actually done?

Well, it's established over 200 research stations right round the Mediterranean,

which are finding out exactly what the pollution is, where it comes from,

how it circulates in the sea and how to measure it,

all of which you have to do

if you're going to establish international laws and agreements to control it.

Secondly, it has totally outlawed the dumping of oil or any other waste at sea,

and thirdly, it has created procedures to deal with a big emergency,

such as a wrecked oil tanker.

But there's a lot more that's got to be done yet

if we're going to control pollution in the Mediterranean.

And what about the lands around this polluted sea?

They have been maltreated by man for much longer.

The Greeks and the Romans began the process 3,000 years ago.

They built great cities in North Africa from wealth produced by the soil,

but in seeking more and more, they cut down more and more of the forests.

The cities fell to ruin, the aqueducts dried

and the rich farming land was wrecked.

Today, it can only provide meals of thorns to a few sheep and goats.

BLEATING

The waters of the Nile enabled Egypt to escape these misfortunes.

But now even it is imperilled.

This beautiful temple of Philae once stood on an island lower down the Nile

and was brought here, farther upstream,

and meticulously reconstructed only a few years ago.

And if it hadn't have been, it would have been submerged.

Because, during this century, engineers have built two great dams across the Nile,

one just below stream and one five miles upstream,

which have greatly raised the level of the water.

Indeed, the dam upstream has flooded the valley for 300 miles

and 100,000 people who lived there have had to abandon their fields and their homes

and be resettled elsewhere.

The benefits brought by the high dam have been colossal.

Its turbines provide about half of Egypt's electrical power

and it does control the extent of the floods,

which in the past, in some years, were catastrophic.

But it's not added to the size or the fertility of the cultivated lands

that lie lower down the valley, in the way its builders promised.

As the waters of the Nile flow into the lake,

they drop the sediments which fall onto the lake floor.

And as they lie in the sun spread over a vast area,

they evaporate very quickly.

So when the Nile flows out through the turbines of the dam,

it has lost nearly a third of its water

and nearly all of its silt.

Downstream, in lands that were cultivated in the times of the pharaohs,

there is now less water to irrigate the land.

And the soil is no longer as well fertilised as it was.

So artificial fertiliser has now to be used.

Manufacturing it requires electricity

and that uses a significant part of the power the dam was built to provide.

The seaward edge of the delta before the dam was built

used to advance every year as the annual deposit of silt was added to it.

That growth has now stopped and in places the delta is actually being eroded away.

Nor is that the end of the cost.

Since the Nile carries so much less sediment into the Mediterranean,

there is much less there for the fish to feed upon.

In consequence, Egypt has lost its sardine fishery

and the country gets less than half the tonnage of fish from the sea

than it did before the dam was built.

Chemical fertilisers are now being used all round the Mediterranean

to increase the productivity of the land,

together with pesticides and insecticides.

But those poisons are very stable chemically.

They accumulate in the bodies of birds that feed on the insects

and eventually poison them.

The total cost of their use is even now not fully apparent.

Almost certainly, it will include the death and total extinction of these birds.

They are bald ibis.

0nce, they lived on cliffs in Germany and Austria,

Syria and Algeria.

Now, there are only two colonies of them left.

A pathetic group of eight nesting outside a small village in Turkey

and this slightly larger colony on remote sea cliffs in Morocco.

Other birds, the sacred ibis, the imperial eagle, the black vulture,

are being driven from the Mediterranean by man's activities,

but these species still survive in wild parts of Africa and central Europe.

But this bird seems only to thrive in the warm, dry climate of the Mediterranean.

It has nowhere else to go.

If it dies here, it's gone for ever.

The creation of fertility does not necessarily depend on the use of artificial fertilisers.

Land like this, that bakes beneath a cloudless sky throughout the year,

may seem irredeemable,

but even this can be brought to life.

Down by the Dead Sea,

in the Biblical wilderness of Sodom,

the Israelis have had spectacular success.

This kibbutz has been a leader in finding ways to make the desert bloom.

By irrigating in the right way, by selecting the right kind of plants,

they produce a succession of rich crops through the year.

This is a pomelo, a kind of giant grapefruit.

Beside that plot stands a group of date palms.

Their huge long bunches of fruit,

bagged with black plastic netting to catch it if it falls and protect it from birds,

are now being gathered and will fetch excellent prices.

Young mango trees properly tended also do well

and will add to the variety of fruit that now comes from a land that was once considered

the most barren and inhospitable desert anywhere around the Mediterranean.

Mediterranean man has always hunted for meat,

and the forests around the shores were originally extremely rich

in game of one sort or another.

The Romans were great hunters,

as much for the excitement of the chase as for, one suspects, the meat it produced.

That tradition continued right through the Middle Ages.

Hunting was a masculine attribute, a reflection of a man's virility.

And that attitude persists,

even though the targets now are rarely eaten.

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

Every year, honey buzzards migrate north across the Mediterranean to Sicily,

and as they arrive, guns await them.

The hills along the coast are lined with bunkers,

built on sites that have been the jealously guarded possessions

of particular families for centuries.

There is little attempt to conceal them.

The birds have to come this way.

It's the shortest route across the Mediterranean

and there are so many shooting platforms

that avoiding one simply puts them within the range of another.

Another honey buzzard.

A dead honey buzzard.

This hunt is illegal.

People concerned for the welfare of the birds come up to the hills to monitor their numbers

and to check their progress.

The forestry authorities responsible for the upholding of the law

do their best to stop the shoot

but this slogan says "Long live the hunt"

and while local report remains so strong,

it's nearly impossible to suppress this longstanding tradition.

Mechanical lures attract songbirds.

A few hunters maintain that these tiny corpses make a tasty pate,

but the impulse to kill seems a more likely explanation for their actions.

The slaughter is at its most intense not in the poorer countries of the Mediterranean

but in the rich south-west - Spain, France and, worst of all, Italy.

Each year, several hundred million wild birds die at the hand and the whim of man.

The forests themselves are now endangered.

Fires rage through the summer.

Some are doubtless started by accident -

a cigarette end, a campfire that got out of control.

But the authorities say that as much as 80% are started deliberately

by those who want a legally protected forest destroyed

so the land can be used for profitable development.

Even by people who just take pleasure in seeing trees burn.

Putting them out requires all the ingenuity and technical muscle that man can muster.

And even then, it may not be enough.

Seaplanes scoop up sea water 1,000 gallons at a time.

Some add special fire-extinguishing chemicals to their load.

In 1986, in the south of France alone,

170 square miles of land were devastated by these fires.

We burn the land, we strip it of its forests, we poison it,

we also drain it.

Wetlands and marshes around the sea

have been the one place where you could rely on finding an abundance of wildlife.

They survived that way because people thought they were not worth the cost of reclamation.

That is no longer the case.

Modern machinery now makes drainage much easier and cheaper

and the wetlands are disappearing fast.

Some of the drained land is used for agriculture,

although the extra crops may not be needed and may even be left to rot.

Other stretches along the coast are being turned into holiday complexes

to cater for the huge number of us

who now make the annual migration south to the sea and the sun.

Today, hotels stand beside almost every beach

and an almost continuous line of buildings runs for 200 miles

along the coast of southern France and Italy.

No marshland, no quiet reed bed

can any longer be considered safe from development.

At the last detailed census in 1973, 60 million people visited the Mediterranean shores

during the short few months of the holiday season.

The figures now are astronomic,

for every year more and more come

and more and more facilities are built to accommodate them.

Foundations for yet another jetty,

yet another marina.

Sun, it seems, is the prime reason most of us have for coming here,

yet this is a recently acquired enthusiasm.

0nly a century ago, the wealthy ladies who strolled here

prided themselves on their milk-white complexions

and wore clothes of elaborate awkwardness

to make it clear that they were totally unacquainted with the outdoor life.

Today, just the same kind of people

strive to get a skin colour that gives the impression

that their entire lives are spent out of doors,

even though the process of getting it is often painful,

certainly runs the risk of skin cancer,

and even when successful, only lasts for a week or two.

Amidst all this,

wildlife strives to maintain a place.

A loggerhead turtle,

looking for a nesting site off the beach in one of the Greek islands.

SPEEDBOAT APPROACHING

Loggerheads come up to lay under the cover of darkness

and a few will brave the flashing lights and the near continuous noise

to dig their nests.

POP MUSIC PLAYS

The turtles' needs are no secret.

The beaches that were once theirs are well known

and this is the most important of those they still use.

A notice asks visitors to keep away and give the turtles the privacy they need.

It's used for target practice.

Many of the turtles that are brave enough to climb up the beach

turn around, repelled by the noise, and go back to the sea with their eggs unlaid.

In just a few places,

the rich wild world of the Mediterranean does still survive.

The northern coast of Majorca has no beaches

and remains quiet even during the hubbub of the holiday season

and a few pairs of black vultures can still nest there.

It's one of the biggest of all vultures,

with a wingspan of over seven feet.

It once lived in many parts of Europe

but it feeds on carrion, and, apart from anything else,

the improvement of farming practices

has deprived it of food over much of its former range.

Now, only a few hundred pairs are left in all western Europe.

The shallow lakes and lagoons that were once common around the coast have now largely gone.

But drive west, from Bizerte airport in Tunisia, just before dawn in winter

and you will find half a million birds.

SQUAWKING

They have assembled on a rare stretch of water, Lake Ishkul,

and are busy feeding in the first light.

SQUAWKING

Virtually the entire European population of wild greylag geese

come down here to feed.

In the shallower parts, there are waders -

avocets and redshanks and many other species.

For many of the geese and ducks,

this is a vital wintering ground.

For the waders, an essential staging post

on their long migration route between southern Africa and Europe.

But others want the precious waters of Lake Ishkul.

Local people would like to build dams across the rivers that feed it

and use the water to irrigate their farms

and to supply the hotels that are now being built

in order that Tunisia should get its share of the tourist bonanza.

But if the lake is starved of water,

then these birds can no longer feed

and no-one knows how or if they will survive.

This is one of the last patches of truly natural forest

to be found around the sea.

The southern shores in North Africa were deforested by the Romans,

the northern shores by later people

who wanted more farmland and more timber.

This area, around the Plitvice Lakes in Yugoslavia in the east

has therefore become specially precious.

It has spruce and fir growing alongside beaches

and among the trees wander most of the big animals

with which man shared the forest during prehistory.

The rivers flow over limestone and dissolve it away to form deep caverns.

Then, lower down their course, they deposit the lime again as travertine,

which dams the streams and forms a series of spectacular waterfalls and lakes.

Elsewhere in Europe, otters are under threat because, of course, they catch fish

and men want to do that.

But here, they are allowed to take their share.

The deltas of Mediterranean rivers were once tangled wildernesses.

Around the mouth of the River Nestos in Greece,

you can see what they were originally like.

It's a place of great fascination, for it was in such swampy woodlands as this

that men first found the wild grapevine,

and it grows here still.

It's also a place of great beauty.

BIRDSONG

Damselflies mating.

The male has seized the female's head with the tip of his tail

and fertilised her.

Now, while he still clings to her,

she will deposit her eggs into the water.

A striped grass snake, hunting for tadpoles and frogs.

In these warm waters, terrapins flourish.

Only two species - the pond terrapin and the stripe-necked - occur in Europe

and they both live here.

Islands in the Mediterranean are popular places.

But a few are so difficult to reach

that they have remained virtually uninfluenced by man.

The Sporades stretch eastwards from the Greek mainland

and this is one of the most remote of them.

There's no safe anchorage here and severe storms can blow up with little warning.

There was once a small monastery, but that has now been abandoned

and the birds have the place almost to themselves.

Two of them are Mediterranean specialities.

Audouin's gull, the Mediterranean's unique version of the herring gull,

so common farther north.

It differs from it mainly in coloration,

having greenish legs and a scarlet beak tipped with black and yellow.

Eleonora's falcon is the other of the island's unique birds.

Eleonora was a princess who ruled in Sardinia, where this falcon also lives,

during the 14th century,

and she passed the law protecting falcons from human interference during the breeding season.

A law, it must be said, that was made largely for the benefit of falconers,

rather than a concern for conservation in general.

This bird was named in her honour when it was first recognised by science

during the 19th century.

It winters down in Madagascar but it comes up to the Mediterranean to breed.

For most of the year, it feeds on insects

but now it has extra mouths to feed.

Its nests are strategically placed on migration routes across the sea

and it catches warblers and other small birds for its chicks.

But the island's rarest inhabitant lives in the clear seas around its coast.

The monk seal.

Fishermen have always regarded it as their enemy.

It took their fish-worse, it sometimes got entangled in their nets

and caused expensive damage.

Anyway, its soft skin fetched good prices

so they killed it whenever they got the chance.

Today, there are probably less than 350 left,

but even now, it is still hunted.

The cliffs of the island are of limestone

and the pounding waves have tunnelled a few caves deep into them,

close to the water line.

And this is one of the last places

where this rarest of the Mediterranean mammals can find safety.

Many seal species can go to sea for months on end

but this animal is very much a coastal animal

and it needs to have quiet beaches where it can haul itself up for rest.

But more than that, it needs to have gently shelving beaches

where it can have its pups.

This little creature, for the first two weeks of its life,

can't swim.

And unless the beach is gently shelving,

then there's a danger that a big wave may come in

and sweep it away and drown it.

The sunny, sandy beaches have now been claimed by others.

Now the seals must use places like this.

A tiny cave that can only be reached from the sea

and only entered by boat in a flat calm

which is why this little pup has been born in safety

and survives.

And now, it's just old enough to play in the break.

It was in the lands around this sea

that some 10,000 years ago

human beings first discovered how to tame animals and cultivate plants.

Could it be here too

that they also first learned from the mistakes they made during that process?

That nations, no matter what their political philosophy or economic circumstance,

or religious beliefs,

recognised that they simply had to get together and agree

if they were to save these wild landscapes and the animals and plants that live in them.

That that perhaps is just one more lesson

that the Mediterranean could offer to the world.

For surely these things are among our most precious possessions,

the last glimpses we have of mankind's first Eden.