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This is the hut at Cape Evans where Captain Scott and his party spent the winter of 1911. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:45 | |
The freezing Antarctic temperatures have kept everything exactly as it was. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:52 | |
Food, equipment, even clothing and the bedding on the bunks as if it was yesterday. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:59 | |
This is how it was on June 6th, 1911, Scott's 43rd birthday. | 0:01:59 | 0:02:06 | |
He and his team were spending the winter here, before starting the trek to the Pole. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:13 | |
They lightened the long, dark days with their own entertainment. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:19 | |
But these were serious-minded men. For some of them, reaching the Pole was of secondary importance. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:27 | |
They were studying geology, biology, glaciology, meteorology and had a well-equipped laboratory. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:34 | |
And that is still here too. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
Photography was in the hands of Herbert Ponting. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:50 | |
He took cine film as well as still photographs, and had his own darkroom. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:58 | |
They had large stocks of tinned food. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
We now know that this was not nearly as nutritious as they thought. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:08 | |
Vitamin deficiencies contributed to the disaster that was to come. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:14 | |
As they waited, they knew that farther along the coast | 0:03:26 | 0:03:31 | |
the Norwegian, Amundsen and his team were waiting to try and beat them to the Pole. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:39 | |
On November 1st, at the beginning of the summer, | 0:03:40 | 0:03:44 | |
Scott and four companions set off on the 800 mile march to the South Pole. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:51 | |
They wore clothes made of wool and cotton like these. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:56 | |
They travelled on long wooden skis with simple bindings | 0:03:56 | 0:04:01 | |
and transported their equipment and food on sledges which they pulled themselves, | 0:04:01 | 0:04:09 | |
instead of using dogs, like Amundsen. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
They reached the Pole on 17th January, | 0:04:12 | 0:04:16 | |
to find that Amundsen had got there 34 days before them. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:21 | |
On the way back they ran short of supplies and died only 11 miles from a food depot | 0:04:21 | 0:04:28 | |
and less than 100 miles from the safety of this hut. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:33 | |
Today, some 80 years later, a great deal has changed. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:39 | |
Modern fabric keeps you warm during the worst of conditions, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:44 | |
satellites make communication and navigation easy, | 0:04:44 | 0:04:49 | |
and every day an aircraft flies directly to the Pole. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:54 | |
Captain Scott marched for 79 exhausting days to reach the Pole. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:10 | |
This plane will make exactly the same journey in less than 3 hours. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:17 | |
As you fly along Scott's route, it is not only the sheer distance that impresses you; | 0:05:19 | 0:05:27 | |
It's also the appalling difficulties of the terrain. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:32 | |
To begin with, Scott used a combination of motor-sledge, ponies and dogs, | 0:05:32 | 0:05:39 | |
but after 409 miles, he and his men hauled the sledges themselves, each pulling 90 kilos. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:47 | |
The decision not to use dogs throughout was probably their undoing. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:56 | |
Amundsen, by doing so, made the journey much more quickly and with less physical effort. | 0:05:56 | 0:06:03 | |
So when Scott and his team reached the Pole, they found Amundsen's tent already there, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:10 | |
with a note for Scott to deliver to the King of Norway should Amundsen himself fail to return. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:18 | |
Scott, when he arrived and found the Norwegian flag already planted by Amundsen | 0:06:21 | 0:06:28 | |
wrote in his journal, | 0:06:28 | 0:06:30 | |
"Great God, this is an awful place." And so it must have been for those five men, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:38 | |
exhausted and bitterly disappointed, with the return journey to face. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:43 | |
Today, some 80 years later, neither explorer would recognise the place. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:51 | |
This summer, over 100 scientists and support staff | 0:06:51 | 0:06:57 | |
will live and work, protected from the worst of the weather by this dome. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:04 | |
Beneath it are smaller insulated buildings, | 0:07:04 | 0:07:10 | |
It stands 16 metres high. It's like a space station, | 0:07:10 | 0:07:16 | |
an isolated capsule floating on slowly-moving ice, nearly 3000 metres above sea-level. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:23 | |
All supplies for the Pole Station have to be brought in by air. | 0:07:25 | 0:07:30 | |
Even in summer, the supply aircraft have to keep their engines running | 0:07:30 | 0:07:37 | |
to stop them from freezing. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
The fuel they bring is transferred to vast bladders | 0:07:40 | 0:07:45 | |
which will last the station through the winter. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:51 | |
The South Pole is the best place on earth to observe the heavens above. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:58 | |
The atmosphere is free from pollution, | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
and the stars don't disappear below the horizon | 0:08:01 | 0:08:06 | |
so they can be observed continuously. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:09 | |
Working in Antarctica demands a special kind of scientist. | 0:08:18 | 0:08:23 | |
You may have the most brilliant mind, | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
but that may be of little use if you can't pitch a tent or re-start a diesel engine. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:34 | |
Most of the stations are built on the edge of the continent, | 0:08:41 | 0:08:46 | |
like the Australian base at Mawson. They stand on rock instead of ever-moving ice. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:54 | |
Here there are other living creatures with which to share your life. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:07 | |
Emperor penguins, like you, will sit out the winter. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:13 | |
The wintering crews will see no other human being for six months or more. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:26 | |
They must find a way of living together. A routine is all important. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:36 | |
There is plenty to do. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
Not only scientific work, but keeping the station running. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:47 | |
Looking after the dogs is a much-sought-after job. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:53 | |
Food becomes hugely important. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:58 | |
The cook is one of the most critically watched members of the team. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:04 | |
Most bases have at least a year's supply of food in reserve, in case of emergencies. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:26 | |
And most also have a building away from these living quarters, | 0:10:26 | 0:10:31 | |
fully stocked with food, in case of the worst disaster of all a fire. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:38 | |
No human being could survive without shelter in these conditions for more than a few hours. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:46 | |
As winter advances and days shorten, the sun skims closer to the horizon, | 0:10:47 | 0:10:53 | |
and eventually drops below it. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:56 | |
Now there will be no sunlight for 37 days. | 0:10:56 | 0:11:01 | |
Mid-winter day. On Mawson Base it is marked with a great party. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:10 | |
Entertainments that have been secretly practised for weeks are now performed in public. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:18 | |
OUT-OF-TUNE SINGALONG "Waltzing Matilda" | 0:11:28 | 0:11:36 | |
Outside, the darkness is broken only by one of Nature's most extraordinary spectacles | 0:11:50 | 0:11:58 | |
the southern lights, the aurora australis. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:04 | |
As the sun returns, so do the Adelie penguins. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:29 | |
They come to one of their traditional colonies only a mile from Mawson Base. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:37 | |
It's now one of the best-studied of all. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
A wire-fenced corridor with an electronic beam ensures that some of the birds, | 0:12:41 | 0:12:49 | |
as they go to and from the sea, are counted and weighed. | 0:12:49 | 0:12:55 | |
A few are caught and measured in detail, to keep a check on the colony's progress. | 0:12:55 | 0:13:03 | |
Some are given prominent markings, | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
so that they can be identified even at a distance. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:22 | |
It is, it must be said, rather disfiguring, | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
but it will disappear at the next moult, | 0:13:28 | 0:13:33 | |
and it hasn't lessened the affection of its partner. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:38 | |
Dogs have been used here since Amundsen's day. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:48 | |
But dogs are ecological aliens | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
and it has been decided that they must go. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:56 | |
Many regret that. | 0:13:56 | 0:13:59 | |
Dogs are great companions, and they can detect one of the major hazards... | 0:13:59 | 0:14:05 | |
a snow-covered crevasse. No motorised sledge can do this. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:11 | |
This team will be sent to Minnesota in the United States. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:16 | |
Its departure will mark the end of a great chapter in the short history of mankind in the Antarctic. | 0:14:16 | 0:14:24 | |
They will be replaced by motorised 'quikes'. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:32 | |
There is a limit to the amount of fuel such vehicles can carry, | 0:14:32 | 0:14:38 | |
so they can't cover such great distances as a dog team. But they do travel faster. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:46 | |
It used to take two days, with dogs, to reach Mawson's Emperor colony. Now it's a three-hour drive. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:53 | |
All year round, scientists visit this colony to monitor its progress as part of a long-term study. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:04 | |
There is a serious scientific purpose behind this rugby tackling. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:24 | |
The bird is to be fitted with a transmitter | 0:15:25 | 0:15:29 | |
that will send regular signals by way of an orbiting satellite to a monitoring station in Tasmania. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:38 | |
If this bird is like others, it is now setting off on a 100 mile march to reach open water. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:49 | |
Once there, it will dive to an astonishing depth of 450 metres to catch fish, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:56 | |
and all the time be recording information to say where it is. | 0:15:56 | 0:16:01 | |
Hundreds of miles to the north, a grey-headed albatross is providing similar information. | 0:16:01 | 0:16:09 | |
It, too, has a transmitter which reveals where it collected the food | 0:16:09 | 0:16:16 | |
which it is bringing back to its hungry chick. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:20 | |
It belongs to a colony that has been studied for 15 years by a British team. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:30 | |
The old method of weighing birds was with a simple spring balance. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:36 | |
But now they have a new device. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:39 | |
The scales are electronic and concealed inside a fibreglass nest. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:45 | |
From now on, there will be no need to man-handle the chick just to get its weight. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:53 | |
The scales transmit a reading every ten minutes to a nearby hut with recording apparatus. | 0:16:55 | 0:17:03 | |
This shows that one of the parents brings back 500 grams of squid, fish, lamprey and krill every 3 days. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:10 | |
The adult has travelled several hundred miles in the process of doing so. | 0:17:12 | 0:17:19 | |
To film this series, we drew heavily on the discoveries | 0:17:27 | 0:17:33 | |
made by scientific teams all over the continent. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:39 | |
We wanted to film just what those albatross and penguins did in the open ocean. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:47 | |
This involved developing cameras and lenses for these hostile conditions. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:54 | |
Swimming in near-freezing seas may be second nature to an albatross, | 0:17:56 | 0:18:04 | |
but it's a daring thing for a cameraman to do. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:09 | |
The reward, for him, is sights that have never been filmed before. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:16 | |
On board our ice-strengthened vessel, the ABEL-J, | 0:18:16 | 0:18:21 | |
we carried boats, diving gear and video apparatus. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:27 | |
As well as free-diving cameramen, we had remote control cameras mounted on the inflatables. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:35 | |
One of our priorities was to find a swarm of krill. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:44 | |
After weeks of searching, we did. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
And so did a pair of humpback whales. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:55 | |
The remotely controlled video cameras gave us unique pictures. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:05 | |
They recorded, in unparalleled detail, the whole of the whales' fishing technique | 0:19:07 | 0:19:14 | |
from the moment they released their curtain of bubbles, | 0:19:14 | 0:19:20 | |
hemming in and concentrating the krill, to the final catch. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:26 | |
We also had another vessel, a small steel-hulled yacht, the Damian II. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:41 | |
She had a retractable keel, and could operate in waters a metre deep, | 0:19:41 | 0:19:48 | |
and go into shallow bays where no other vessel had been. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:53 | |
Jerome Poncet is the skipper and owner of the Damien. | 0:19:55 | 0:20:01 | |
With his biologist wife, he has spent ten seasons | 0:20:01 | 0:20:05 | |
exploring every cove and bay on the Antarctic peninsula. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:11 | |
He knows them in a way no-one else does. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:16 | |
He was able to land camera teams on tiny, remote and uninhabited islands. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:33 | |
A radio hook-up linked the camps and ships, | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
which were often separated by several hundred miles of ice or ocean. | 0:20:37 | 0:20:44 | |
A camera on a jib arm. | 0:20:54 | 0:20:58 | |
It gives a splendid high-angle view of a penguin colony | 0:20:58 | 0:21:04 | |
and enables you to move alongside an individual penguin on its perambulations. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:11 | |
But it weighs 120 kilos and carrying it over rocky cliffs is not easy. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:20 | |
To get un-bumpy pictures on the move, | 0:21:22 | 0:21:26 | |
cameraman Paul Atkins used a special mount and harness called a Steadicam. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:33 | |
He could move smoothly into close quarters with tricky subjects | 0:21:35 | 0:21:42 | |
like these fighting fur seals. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:45 | |
Blizzards often brought land-based operations to a halt but work could be done underwater, | 0:21:57 | 0:22:05 | |
if you can dig out the air cylinders. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:09 | |
Diving under the ice is very different from doing so in the open ocean. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:16 | |
I'm generally a warm weather diver. I like warm weather, sunshine, palm trees and hammocks. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:23 | |
I jumped into a seal hole, and they handed me my camera. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:28 | |
I wasn't too cold, except where my mouth held my regulator. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:34 | |
Suddenly, I found myself looking at one of the most extraordinary scenes I have ever experienced. | 0:22:34 | 0:22:42 | |
I dropped down through a hole in the ice. | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
There was absolsutely no sound except the distant trills of the weddell seals. | 0:22:54 | 0:23:02 | |
Weddell seal researcher Amal Amji works underwater too but she doesn't get wet. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:18 | |
She is suspended from a capsule ten metres down beneath the ice. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:27 | |
From there, she records the sounds of the seals | 0:23:27 | 0:23:31 | |
while noting on a tape recorder the details of their movements. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:37 | |
There's a pair at the hydrophone, probably the loudest animals. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:48 | |
There's one single seal that's on my left, | 0:23:48 | 0:23:53 | |
and it seems to be watching the mother and pup that were near the hydrophone. | 0:23:53 | 0:24:01 | |
Other researchers have been studying a colony of Emperor penguins for many years. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:17 | |
They watch them underwater from within a protective cage, | 0:24:17 | 0:24:23 | |
for there are dangerous penguin hunters leopard seals or killer whales. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:30 | |
This leopard seal is huge, nearly 4 metres long. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:35 | |
A remotely controlled camera will record the exit of the fleeing penguins. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:48 | |
But even out of water they're not out of danger. | 0:24:55 | 0:25:00 | |
Another leopard seal waits for them. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
Many people reckon that the leopard seal | 0:25:26 | 0:25:31 | |
is the most dangerous killer in Antarctic waters | 0:25:31 | 0:25:36 | |
and that it would be suicide to get in the water with one. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:42 | |
But Peter Scoones and Doug Allan wanted to film them without the encumbrance of a cage. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:49 | |
I've been underwater with all the other species of seals and I felt they wouldn't attack... | 0:25:49 | 0:25:57 | |
At least not without some warning. | 0:25:57 | 0:26:00 | |
Peter Scoones and I thought we could recognise if their behaviour was becoming aggressive. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:08 | |
It definitely produces a rush of adrenalin when a 12 foot seal comes out of the hazy distance | 0:26:19 | 0:26:26 | |
and ends up almost taking the entire front of the camera into its mouth. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:33 | |
You have to feel sorry for the young penguins. They don't stand a chance. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:40 | |
It's like a cat with a mouse. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:43 | |
And here I was, the cat owner, being presented with the prey. | 0:26:43 | 0:26:49 | |
But I shouldn't deny the sheer excitement | 0:26:58 | 0:27:03 | |
of filming one of Antarctica's top predators. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:08 | |
This drama is a symbol of Antarctica, and I count myself privileged to have seen it. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:16 | |
It's still less than a century since the first man set foot on the Antarctic continent. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:30 | |
Yet today, hundreds of scientists live and work here, winter and summer. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:37 | |
Increasing numbers of tourists arrive, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
and modern technologies make it increasingly easy for people to survive here. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:49 | |
Despite all that, there are still very few footsteps in the Antarctic snow. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:55 | |
Mining has been banned for a further 50 years, | 0:27:55 | 0:28:00 | |
and the Antarctic Treaty remains relatively effective. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:05 | |
But Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:12 | |
A place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities of the natural world, | 0:28:12 | 0:28:19 | |
almost exactly as they were long, long before human beings ever arrived on this plant. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:27 | |
Long may it remain so. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:31 | |
Subtitles by Wilma Campbell BBC Scotland 1993 | 0:28:49 | 0:28:54 |