Restless Shores Wild West - America's Great Frontier

CHURCH BELL CHIMES

In the far west of America,

there's a legendary land.

The haunt of cowboys...

..and home to great Native American civilisations...

SNAKE RATTLES TAIL

..where the promise of gold drew those seeking their fortune.

Here, over millions of years, powerful forces have forged

some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.

From the continent's hottest deserts

and red rock canyons...

..to towering mountain worlds cloaked in snow...

..and the most mysterious and magical coastline.

It takes a special breed,

with bold ambition and a pioneering spirit...

..to tame this fabled place and make it home.

The Wild West.

The Wild West is ruled by giant mountain ranges,

vast deserts and canyon lands.

The backdrop for epic Hollywood westerns.

But there's another side to this land.

Within its far southwestern corner

lies a lesser-known frontier that hides many secrets.

A remote desert canyon shelters murals thousands of years old.

No-one knows who drew them or why,

but strangely, within this portrait of desert life

are marine creatures.

Fish, turtles...

..and even a giant whale.

Since ancient times, people have been drawn to a Wild West

where the land and sea unite.

In the 16th century,

Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes

heard rumours of gold along the coast of the Wild West.

He never found his fortune,

but as he sailed the barren desert shores,

he discovered riches of a different kind.

A strange and slender sea,

brimming with natural wonders.

It's now known as the Sea of Cortez.

This mysterious desert sea

is a magnet for ocean giants.

Blue whales, the largest animals on Earth.

They weigh nearly 200 tonnes...

..and can grow 90 feet long.

Every winter, around 300 blue whales visit this curious place.

Many are females, nursing their young.

This new calf needs to drink around 15 pints of milk an hour.

To provide this phenomenal amount,

the mother needs sheltered, nourishing waters.

Surprisingly close to shore,

the seabed plummets two miles into a dark abyss.

Down here, recent scientific exploration

has uncovered one of the most extreme worlds on planet Earth.

Superheated mineral-rich water,

nearly 300 degrees centigrade, boils through cracks in the Earth's crust.

These conditions can only be tolerated

by seemingly alien creatures

like giant tube worms and ghostly crabs.

Vents and black smokers, some a hundred feet high,

are evidence of powerful tectonic forces at work.

Forces that define this whole region of the Wild West.

Over millions of years, they have transformed both land and sea

by ripping this huge peninsula away from the mainland

at a speed of two inches a year.

Water has flooded into the chasm

and now reaches 700 miles into the desert.

This sea's unique setting,

shape and depth all generate a rich soup of nutrients...

..inviting a wealth of marine life

to this special corner of the Wild West.

Mobula rays.

No-one knows for sure why they perform these great circus leaps.

But it's likely to be to attract a mate.

Some jumps can be six feet high.

The sound of each landing reverberates through the water...

..and the commotion doesn't go unnoticed.

Orcas, out hunting.

In all the panic, some rays splinter from the shoal.

Their only defence is speed.

When the rays regroup,

they can form mega-shoals 100,000 strong.

The Sea of Cortez is home to

the largest aggregations of mobula rays in the world.

Cortes had stumbled across one of the richest seas on Earth,

home to over 6,000 species of animals.

Its warm waters are so bountiful,

the famous undersea explorer

Jacques Cousteau called it, "The aquarium of the world."

Shoals of sardines move as one, but can be millions strong.

They are an enticing prospect for the Wild West's

most agile of predators.

California sea lions.

They refine their hunting skills

in one of nature's great acrobatic displays.

FLAMENCO MUSIC PLAYS

While the Sea of Cortez nurtures an abundance of life,

the shores that flank it couldn't be more hostile.

As the land opened up and the sea flooded in,

it turned ancient volcanoes and mountaintops into islands...

..with very little shade, no fresh water, and relentless heat.

Tough if you get stranded on one.

One of the creatures left high and dry on this single island

is the oddly-named swollen-nosed side-blotched lizard.

It has had to adapt to this desolate place,

not least to the challenge of finding enough to eat.

But at low tide comes an unexpected invasion.

Marine isopods.

These cockroaches of the sea emerge from the shoreline

to feed on exposed algae.

They reach plague proportions.

Great news for the lizards.

If only they can catch them.

Tricky.

Success at last.

Lizards would normally be poisoned by food this salty,

but these lizards have developed a trick,

and it's up their nose.

Their bulbous noses have glands that can excrete excess salt,

which they wipe away on the rocks.

Or, sometimes they just sneeze it out.

Thousands of these salt-tolerant lizards now thrive here.

The abundant Sea of Cortez

brings life to more than just its barren islands,

it also has a dramatic impact on the mainland coast.

Where the sea reaches furthest into the desert,

powerful tectonic forces continue to unzip the Earth's crust...

..opening up a low valley.

Here the Wild West's most famous river, the Colorado,

ends its journey.

Over millions of years, this river has filled the valley

with vast amounts of fine sediment,

carved from deserts far inland.

Dwindling veins of water create an otherworldly shoreline.

These beaches are so flat

that the tides here rise unusually far...

..and are the stage for a bizarre event...

..timed to just after the highest of high tides.

Brown pelicans start together.

They seem to know something extraordinary is about to happen.

Gulf grunion scout the beach.

Then, in their hundreds,

females surf in on the waves,

shadowed by eager males.

They are here to spawn.

But it's not going to be easy.

Each female tries to propel herself

as high up the beach as she can,

to lay just beyond the reach of the waves.

Drilling herself into the sand

is the cue for the male grunion to move in.

They wrap themselves around her,

jostling to fertilise the eggs.

In the frenzy, many eggs are dislodged.

Once flicked out of the sand, they won't survive.

Although these fish out of water might seem vulnerable,

the mass of flickering bodies confuses predators.

The greatest danger comes as they wriggle back to sea.

This is the moment the pelicans have been waiting for.

Slightly deeper water means they can get their bills underneath

to scoop out their victims.

This female runs the gauntlet and makes it through.

Her eggs will develop quickly in the warm desert sand

and be ready to hatch in two weeks,

on the next spring tide.

In just a few hours,

the sea retreats so far, it exposes nearly two miles of sand and mud.

Now, at low tide, fiddler crabs take to the stage.

There's no time to hang about.

This male cleans his claw, ready for action.

It's his lure to seduce a female.

The bigger and bluer, the better his chances.

It shows he's a healthy crab.

He waves to woo her,

but he's up against stiff competition.

As a female enters the arena,

the beckoning becomes increasingly urgent.

The tide is turning. Time is of the essence.

This blue-clawed Romeo catches her eye

and escorts her into his underground lair.

He firmly shuts the door

just in the nick of time.

These beaches block the Sea of Cortez from reaching any further

into the deserts of the Wild West.

But the huge split in the Earth's crust continues north...

..pulling the land apart and creating

one of the lowest-lying and most inhospitable places on Earth.

Underground gases escape through the cracks in the land

building mini volcanoes that spew hot mud.

These mud pots flank the shores of a curious miniature sea,

cradled in the heart of the desert.

The Salton Sea.

Over millennia, water has come and gone from this sunken hollow.

Today, this giant puddle

is 35 miles long and 15 miles wide,

but rarely deeper than a swimming pool.

Water is so scarce in this desert that it's become

an important stopover for migrating birds to feed and drink.

Over 400 different species have been recorded here,

more than in any other wildlife refuge in America.

It may look peaceful,

but this is one of the most restless and unsettled places

in the whole Wild West.

What does man seek?

Whatever it is, it's here at Salton City.

Here is all that you and your family,

your children and your childrens' children...

50 years ago, it was a fashionable resort for American holiday-makers.

Guaranteed sunshine and glassy, calm waters were irresistible.

You have been present at the birth of a city.

Some chose to settle by the enticing water.

Deano McAfee has lived here since he was a teenager.

When my dad bought the lot here, there was an outhouse on it.

There was no streets, no water, no electricity.

But we got to go out here and go fishing, swimming, water skiing.

All that good stuff.

They'd be lined up for four blocks, two cars abreast, waiting to get

down to the marina to launch their boats.

It was just a great place to grow up.

But the glory days weren't to last.

Under the baking hot sun,

the shallow water recedes fast.

As it shrinks, it gets saltier

and increasingly toxic.

Algae thrive, starving the water of oxygen,

causing the fish to suffocate.

You could sink a boat with fish years ago, in here.

Back in the '70s and '80s, you'd go out there

and catch all the fish that you wanted to.

But now, all around the Salton Sea, it's dying,

because the water's dead.

If the Salton Sea keeps receding like it is right now, why it...

the salt content is going to be so bad in a year or two

there'll be nothing left here.

Within just 30 years of its heyday,

most of the settlers had moved on,

leaving behind a modern-day ghost town.

Some people come and go.

They actually moved out of here, and left their houses sitting.

We used to have, like, 1,600 people here.

Now we've got 150, 200 at the most.

That's the Luck Of The Irish,

where that big pile of sand was, right there.

That was the place they had

country music and dancing and all that stuff.

I don't know how a lot of the birds are going to survive if they don't

do something with the water.

But the birds seem more resilient to change than people.

For them, the Salton Sea still provides enough water,

food and welcome relief from the surrounding desert.

A lot of birds.

Boy, a big flock running right over the top of the water out there.

I like it here. It's been an awesome place to live.

Who knows what the next 30 years will bring

to this fast-changing place?

The same massive tear in the Earth's crust

that created the Salton Sea and the Sea of Cortez

here forms a spectacular scar across the surface of the land.

This is the San Andreas Fault,

the most famous faultline in the world.

Ten miles deep and more than 800 miles long,

it highlights the boundary between the world's biggest tectonic plates.

The ultimate source of all the turmoil

that shapes this part of the Wild West...

..stretching from the Sea of Cortez

all the way up to beyond San Francisco.

Here, the faultline cuts away from the land

and into the Pacific Ocean,

twisting and crumpling the shoreline into a jagged, threatening world.

Restless and weather-beaten,

at times, this place is more like a polar landscape than the Wild West.

Yet the boundary between land and sea is still a magnet for life.

SEALS GRUNT AND BARK

Northern elephant seals.

These hardened travellers of the high seas come here

from icy Alaskan waters.

This old male is the beach master.

He defends a harem of females,

here to give birth on this raised sandy beach.

HE GRUNTS

For the beach master, it's an opportunity to mate.

He'll fight anyone who dares come close to his harem.

With a colossal 2½ tonnes behind him,

what he lacks in looks, he makes up for in brawn.

The beach master wastes no time in making the most of his victory.

He'll have to fight battle after battle

to continue to hold the fort.

Where these rugged headlands jut out into the ocean,

they intercept strong winds that stir up the water

causing nutrients to well up from deep.

These upwellings feed great undersea forests of kelp,

one of the fastest growing plants on Earth.

The fronds can grow ten inches a day.

They are highly productive

and conceal an irresistible delicacy

for those brave enough to search for it.

How big are they?

Huge.

Like many families,

the ancestors of Kelly and Dennis, and their grandpa Gene,

moved west in search of a better life,

and they found themselves drawn to the coast.

Four generations later,

it's now become a family tradition to freedive for red abalone.

These giant snails thrive on the nutritious kelp,

so are packed with goodness.

Abalone have been harvested from these waters

for over 8,000 years.

They were one of the first food sources from the shores

of the Wild West to be used by Native Americans.

Today, harvesting is carefully controlled to protect numbers.

Only the biggest can be taken.

Unfortunately, they tend to be found where the water is roughest.

This is an activity best left to the young and agile.

Been quite a few fatalities this year.

You know, people that have travelled long distance to come here

and take an abalone.

They go regardless of the weather and ocean conditions,

and that's bad.

You know, if you're along the shoreline and a swell comes in,

it can just cram you right in against the shoreline

and beat you up pretty good.

Yeah, it's been about 15 years since I dove.

I miss it.

His family, and many others who settled on this coast,

are united by the ocean.

For generations now, we've been here in this area,

and the ocean is what brought our family here

and it's what has kept our family here.

It's family. It's... It's our...

heritage. It's just...

It's where I feel like my heart belongs, is here.

The Pacific Ocean has a profound effect on life here.

By easing heat inland

and bringing moisture to the shores...

..where cold ocean currents greet warm summer air

they form blankets of heavy fog.

The fog is carried inland on the sea breeze

until it is blocked by high mountains

and held over the canopy of great coastal forests.

It brings welcome moisture,

particularly important for one of the quirkiest creatures

in the Wild West.

The wandering salamander.

He has no lungs and breathes through his skin,

so must stay damp to survive.

To reach the moisture, he has an enormous challenge.

Climbing the tallest trees on Earth.

Giant redwoods.

These trees can live over a thousand years

and grow more than 300 feet tall.

Luckily, the wandering salamander is an expert climber.

He has to be. It's a long way down.

A really long way down.

Near the top, the broad branches trap fallen leaves,

creating just enough soil to support pioneering plants, like ferns.

Over time, these weave together to form huge mats,

which soak up the fog like a sponge and provide a damp hideout for the

little salamander, all year round.

And it isn't just the salamanders

that benefit from this gift from the ocean.

The colossal trees themselves can harvest nearly half of the water

they need from fog, absorbing it through their lofty leaves.

The whole forest depends on it.

The influence of ocean fog reaches all the way down the Pacific shores

to the great peninsular torn from the mainland.

Here, the fog bathes the edges of a hot subtropical desert, and supports

the strangest habitat in the Wild West...

..home to the desert's strangest trees.

They've been called many things by intrepid explorers.

Boojums, desert candles or cirios.

Contortionists.

Even upside-down carrots.

This far south, the sun will quickly burn off any lingering moisture.

But by sunrise,

the boojums' spiny branches have already caught

a few drops from the air,

and can channel it down their long stems to the root.

Boojums can grow over 50 feet tall.

It might be a century before they produce their first flower.

They have adopted the same slow way of life

as their giant cactus neighbours.

These shores seem otherworldly, almost alien...

..but there can be surprising rewards here for those

adventurous enough to live life differently.

Towards the end of the peninsular is a small fishing village called

Laguna San Ignacio.

The last true outpost of the Wild West.

And the meeting point of the brave and inspirational.

Grey whales hold the record for the longest migration of any mammal...

..travelling over 12,000 miles from rough Arctic waters

to sheltered lagoons like this one.

It's here they choose to nurse their newborn calves.

Today, they live in peace.

But in the 19th century,

whalers hunted them here in their hundreds.

And the whales fought back.

Nicknamed devil fish, they used to surface under the boats,

capsizing them.

One whaler wrote,

"Many an expert whaleman has suffered in his

"encounters with them, and paid the penalty with his life."

But now, there's a dawn of a new era.

Jesus Mayoral sees these whales in a different light,

thanks to the extraordinary courage of his late father, Pachico.

Pachico's bravery was to kick-start a new opportunity here.

And a new chapter in our relationship with grey whales.

Little by little, the news spread.

What makes these whales exceptional is that the mothers actually

encourage their young towards the boats.

They seem to seek out physical contact with people, and enjoy it.

Jesus started captaining boats aged just 13.

Hola!

He's often noticed that the whales go to one person

on the boat more than the others.

One, two...

Jesus continues his father's legacy

by introducing people to his whale compadres.

Today, these extraordinarily friendly whales,

and the way we respond to them,

shows that the Wild West can still offer pioneers a new way of life.

People were first drawn to the Wild West

in search of riches from the land.

But here, along these restless shores,

it is the sea that provides the greatest rewards.

The Wild West is much more than a land of myths and Hollywood legends.

Today, it's a place where people and wildlife,

with extraordinary resilience and ingenuity,

embrace a demanding, ever-changing landscape.

They embody the true spirit of the Wild West.

The mysterious Sea of Cortez.

One, two, three, go.

One of the richest seas on Earth.

Full of some very friendly animals.

And if there's one creature that symbolises the productivity of this

amazing sea more than any other,

it's perhaps the blue whale.

These ocean giants come here for two months every year.

The mothers even bring their calves.

The glassy, calm waters of the Sea of Cortez tempt

the Wild West team to aim high...

..filming from the air as well as from the boat.

Not only is it the best way to reveal the whales' true size,

but also to show the mother and calf side-by-side -

a sight few have captured before.

So, they have enlisted the help of Manolo Mendieta,

with a specialist bit of kit - a drone.

He's teamed up with wildlife cameraman Tom Fitz,

whose job it is to capture shots of the whales from the boat.

Their guides, Michael Fischbach and Alberto Davis,

have between them worked with blue whales in these waters

for over two decades.

The team, together with producer Felicity Lanchester,

are ready for action.

First task - find a whale.

We seem to be spending quite a long time bobbing around

in the middle of the sea, waiting to hear a whale blow.

I never hear them. Michael seems to be able to hear

from about six miles' distance.

It's quite odd to think, any minute now,

the biggest animal on Earth

could surface right beside our little boat.

Whale! Ballena, ballena! Vamos!

Just seen him over here.

So, Michael's going to position the boat near the whale,

and Tom's going to try and get a shot.

There he is.

This whale is so comfortable near the boat

that it makes for a brilliant start for Tom.

That was lovely.

The whale was calm. If we can have a couple more times like that,

where we're just hanging with it as it's moving along, it sure helps me.

It was nice.

Now, as it moves away, Manolo gets his chance.

But the whale dives before he can even get the drone in the air.

-He's gone.

-It's frustrating.

The enormity of the task is starting to sink in.

No, no.

It looks like Manolo has the hardest job of all.

Michael and Alberto give Manolo many more opportunities

to fly with the whales over the next few days.

But it's tricky filming a moving target from a moving boat,

and, once in the air, he only has a tiny 2D view of the huge 3D world.

He needs eyes in the back of his head.

-Where is it?

-It's out here. Out here.

-11 o'clock.

-Ah, OK.

Luckily, the crew are always on hand to help him.

OK, he's going right towards you.

You need to go a little further, the way you were going.

The whales are only briefly at the surface.

He's at about seven o'clock, he's only taken one breath.

As each battery only lasts for eight minutes,

Manolo can't just hover around searching.

-Oh, right here. It's behind us. You've had four minutes.

-OK.

Timing is critical.

It was a bit tricky, the wind was picking up.

But Manolo is learning from every encounter he has,

and the shot of his dreams is tantalisingly close.

Out of nowhere, this ideal filming location turns on the team,

when storm suddenly closes in.

It's frustrating, but there's no choice - they have to head for land.

As they journey back, typically, Alberto spots a blue whale.

Tom, Tom.

He's right in front.

And despite the storm, they can't resist trying to film it.

-Calabaza!

-Calabaza!

-Yes!

-THEY LAUGH

Having known Calabaza for 18 years,

he is a favourite of Michael and Alberto's.

He is an easy-going whale with a spectacular fluke.

That was the nicest fluke up we've gotten today and...

..most of the week.

And there was just a flash of lightning behind Tom's head.

You're kidding? What?!

In the mountains.

It's maddening to have only found him in the midst of a storm,

and the crew are forced to leave.

As soon as the weather clears, the team are back out on the water.

There isn't much filming time left,

and they need to make the most of it.

Having filmed lots of blue whale images from the boat,

Manolo's aerial filming is now top priority.

All eyes and ears are scanning the sea.

Calf, calf!

It's the cow-calf blow whale.

Hey!

-Whoohoo!

-Yeah...

The crew don't know how long they will have with this duo,

so they all need to be prepared.

Manolo, do you want to get ready as well?

Perfecto, Alberto, perfecto!

-Yep, they're coming up to your left.

-Where?

-Right in front...

Steady...

The mother and calf are so relaxed with the boat,

they even decide to approach it.

Stay the same speed...

Coming too close for Manolo...

..but perfect for Tom.

Then, at last, as they move away...

..Manolo gets his chance.

OK, we're going to get Manolo up in the air.

Everything he has learned over the last few days helps Manolo to get

stunning images of this mother and calf, as they cruise along together.

Well, finally, we've got a shot of

the mum and the calf together.

And then they went down just at the same time - beautiful.

It was a blessing, this shot.

Amazing.

Manolo's drone has been able to reveal a rarely-seen perspective of

the greatest animal on Earth...

..a blue whale and her calf, side-by-side,

just off the desert shores of the Wild West.