Coastal Britain The Nature of Britain

Come rain or shine, there really is no more exciting place to be than the British coastline.

The wind in your hair, the tang of salt air, the endless horizon...

Oh, it makes you feel glad to be alive,

close to the forces of nature.

That's because here, where the land meets the sea, you can feel the power

of the elements more keenly than anywhere else in the British Isles.

These elemental forces influence the life of every living thing that makes its home here.

But they also define the character of the coast itself.

Just how these primeval forces make our coast the place that we know and love

is a fascinating story.

A story that'll take us from one end of our pattern of islands

to the other, to meet some amazing plants and animals.

It's an incredible journey to discover the natural wonders of coastal Britain.

Our journey begins at sea,

where I'm on the hunt for something rather special.

Ooh, this'll blow the cobwebs away.

I'm on a boat in the Sound of Sleet...lovely name...

off the west coast of Scotland.

That's the Isle of Skye over there.

And I've come to look at one of our most magnificent wild animals.

But where to start?

The trouble is, up here the ocean all looks much the same.

Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack...

But beneath the waves it's a different story...

all because of the power of the tide.

The ebb and flow of tidal currents over the seabed

creates food-rich hotspots

and these attract fish.

If I can find one of these tidal hotspots I'm in with a chance.

There you go. There's a little flurry of birds here, shearwaters.

They've come for the fish.

More birds are flying in.

There are razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes.

But they're just the warm-up act.

There's something much bigger on the way.

There we are!

A minke whale! And that's what we've come here to see.

Wow! That was so close! So close. Look, look there!

At 30 feet long, these cousins of the blue whale

really are monsters of the sea.

With such a whale-sized appetite, the fish don't last long!

And then they're gone

and everything's calm again.

But a real thrill to see them that close too. Just amazing.

And it just goes to show how, even a long way out at sea,

the power of the tide affects the lives of our coastal wildlife.

In fact, Britain has some of the biggest tides in the world.

Twice a day they completely transform our coastline,

making it really tough for anything

living in the no-man's-land between high and low water.

And there's no better place to see that than here.

This extraordinary, almost extra-terrestrial landscape

is on the south coast of Jersey,

and it has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world

at fully 12 metres, that's 40 feet,

between the highest and the lowest tides.

When the tide goes out here the island almost triples in size,

and it reveals an environment so harsh and so challenging

that it almost looks like another planet.

Under the blazing sun, these rocks roast

and rockpools shrink.

With all that to contend with you might think that nothing could live on the seashore.

But there are actually millions of living things here

in getting on for a thousand different species.

It's just that they're all hiding.

But if you look more closely you'll find creatures

every bit as bizarre as the alien environment in which they live.

OK, it's a crab...

But have you ever thought just how odd they really are,

with their armour-plated shells, eight legs and sideways walk?

And some creatures are even more bizarre.

The bootlace worm.

At 30 metres, one of the longest creatures on earth, and more elastic

than elastic.

They really could be the cast of a sci-fi special!

Here are two beauties.

The squat lobster, which doesn't grow

any more than three inches long.

It can hide in the tiniest of rocky crevices.

And here, the clingfish,

whose two pelvic fins are fused to form a kind of sucker

so that it can stick itself to the rock when the tide beats against it,

and that way it won't fall off.

Just like that!

The question that pops into your mind, though, is if this is such a challenging place to live,

and you have to spend half your day hiding under a rock, why is so much living here?

It's all about balance between the good times and the bad times.

If you're tough enough to survive when the tide's out...

..then there's a very big payoff when it comes back in.

With the returning tide comes a whole load of food!

What seemed a barren wasteland now bursts with life!

For other seaside creatures, though, it's not just the tide that influences their lifestyle

but something we probably take for granted.

The cycle of night and day.

Long after we've packed up our deckchairs

and are tucked up in bed...

..shadowy figures emerge at the tideline,

in search of a midnight feast.

SNUFFLING

The sand itself seems to come alive

as tiny sandhoppers emerge into the cool night.

But these scavengers must beware.

CROAKING

Toads! Sharpshooters of this night-time world.

They breed in freshwater pools behind the dunes,

and come the night they mosey on down to the beach.

With excellent night vision... and the fastest tongue in the west,

they ambush anything that moves.

And on the tideline dinner is, quite simply,

popping up all over the place!

But there's always one slippery little customer.

Toads tend to be nocturnal wherever they live,

but there are some creatures of the night who,

when they live on the coast, become creatures of the day.

To find them, I'm heading right to the far north of the country.

Shetland has more than its fair share of coastline,

900 miles in all, composed of rocky crags and little inlets.

If you wanted to walk all round it, it would take you weeks and weeks.

It's washed by the cold waters of the Atlantic and the North Sea,

creating this bleak but beautiful landscape

and yet it's home to one of Britain's most elusive animals.

Elsewhere you'd seldom see it by day

and even here you've got to have a keen eye and bags of patience.

It's one of the few creatures that's as happy on land as it is in water.

And there it is. An otter!

A mother with her cub.

The story is that they came here introduced by the Vikings

and they've lasted ever since,

so they've got pretty good squatters' rights, I'd have thought.

They're on the move.

Don't suppose they get many days like this to sunbathe.

After you've sunbathed, well, you fancy a swim, don't you?

It's a great treat to get within 100 yards of two otters

who don't know you're there.

Forget your big game in Africa,

this will do me nicely!

Otters like to catch their prey by surprise.

Inland, where otters live on rivers,

they tend to hunt at night, when the fish they eat are sleeping.

But here, on the coast, some fish rest during the day,

so otters are out and about hunting during daylight hours.

We've always had a love affair with the otter.

Whether or not it's because it's such a beautiful animal

or because it has such an expressive face, I don't know.

But the good news is that otters are becoming more common

throughout mainland Britain.

So perhaps sights like this will become more frequent.

But, from my point of view,

it can't be more special.

Between them the sun and the moon

drive the rhythm of life along the coast,

whether it's the cycle of night and day

or the rising and falling of the tide.

But the sun has another, and even more important role to play,

and the evidence for that is about to emerge all around me.

The sun's energy is the fuel of life

on our coast just as in the rest of Britain.

And it's plants that harness that energy.

The result in the month of May

is a clifftop that's as bright as any garden.

Sheets and sheets of bright yellow birdsfoot trefoil and horseshoe vetch,

perforated with the delicate white flowers of the sea campion.

And then clump after clump of sea pinks, also known as thrift.

It used to be on the back of the old threepenny bit.

Called thrift I think because it can make do with very, very little soil in the crevices among these rocks.

It's a sight that'll gladden anybody's heart,

but all these plants and flowers are also vital for wildlife.

Having captured the sun's energy, they pass it on to insects...

..and insects pass it on to birds.

As any schoolboy knows,

it's a classic food chain.

And though we can't see it as clearly

exactly the same process is happening underwater.

Seaweeds aren't plants in the true sense of the word,

but they harness the sun's energy in much the same way.

Look at this lot over here.

Instead of roots they've got a holdfast which enables them

to cling on to the rocks

and then the foliage floats ever upwards towards the sun,

held by these gas-filled bladders.

We have over 800 different kinds of seaweed

in such varied shapes and colours

that they can be as beautiful as any garden on land.

But even seaweeds aren't the most important part

of this underwater food chain.

That distinction belongs to another group of sun lovers

that are far stranger and much harder to spot than seaweed.

These tiny green jewels are phytoplankton

and there are billions of them in our oceans.

Feeding on them, rather like cows grazing on grass,

is a whole array of microscopic animals called zooplankton.

Together they form the basis of a food chain

which has Britain's coastal waters

teeming with an incredibly rich variety of life.

Weighing in at 300 kilograms, you might think that the grey seal

is top of Britain's underwater food chain.

But occasionally, just off the coast of Scotland,

they're dwarfed by a much larger and more famous predator.

These are the true lords of our seas.

And they're hungry.

The grey seals are a favourite prey.

Killer whales are on the prowl.

HONKING

As the seals head for the rocks and safety,

the whales try to block their escape.

Choosing a victim, they work together to close the net.

It's an astonishing spectacle, and who'd have thought you could

watch killer whales hunting right next to the British coast?

And there are other creatures in our coastal waters

just as extraordinary,

but to see them you have to go a long, long way out to sea.

Funnily enough, to a place where the sun doesn't shine.

I'm heading out northeast from Aberdeen on the northeast coast of Scotland,

for about a hundred miles, out into the open ocean.

But these seas are still an important part

of our natural British environment.

We're, if you like, responsible for them and yet we know so little of what they contain.

Now, somewhere here there's a landing site.

There she is! Transocean Sedco 712.

And am I pleased to get here!

An oil rig is an amazing feat of human ingenuity and engineering.

Some of the technology used here has given us an insight

into parts of the natural world that we would otherwise never have seen.

To keep an eye on the well-head and the pipework hundreds of feet below, the rig uses an ROV,

a remotely operated vehicle. It's this yellow thing here.

It's basically a miniature submarine armed with lights and cameras

and it's what those cameras can see that I've come here to look at today.

I'll get a better view from the control room.

We're about 200 feet down now, nothing much at the moment except bubbles.

Probably going too fast to see much at the moment, aren't we?

Zooming past life.

Yeah, it's a bit murky as well.

Yes, this is the North Sea, not the Caribbean.

Exciting, this, cos you just don't know what you're going to find.

OK, that's us stopped just there. Secure the winch, please.

It's just like space exploration in its way, isn't it?

Is it my imagination or is something coming out of the gloom?

Something's coming out of the gloom!

What this camera and others like it around the North Sea have picked up

are some quite extraordinary images

of creatures living in the murky depths.

It's a privileged view of some alien-looking beings

few people have ever seen,

but they're all part of our British wildlife.

Back on terra firma, this is more like the seaside I love,

and you just can't beat it!

We Brits are drawn to it like magnets to soak up some rays,

take a swim, generally relax and recharge.

But beneath this holiday resort

is something created by another, vital force of nature.

This is Southport in Merseyside,

one of Britain's first coastal resorts.

People have been flocking here in their millions since the end of the 18th century,

and I bet you anything quite a few of them complain about the wind.

But if it weren't for wind Southport wouldn't exist.

You see, this is all built on sand dunes, and sand dunes are formed... by wind.

And, boy, is there a lot of it!

To build really good dunes you need a gently shelving shore,

acres of sand and of course lots of wind.

It's once the sand's dried out that the wind can really get to work.

At a critical speed it starts to carry the sand up the beach

and it does so by a fascinating process.

It's happening here, right now.

The wind picks up a single grain of sand, carries it for a few feet,

then, as it drops onto the beach,

so it dislodges several more grains of sand.

They fly up and as they land they dislodge even more,

starting this enormous chain reaction, until,

as you can see, the entire beach is on the move.

And it will continue to move until it hits a stationary object,

and when that happens it starts to build up

and it turns into a sand dune.

But the wind can't build a full-size sand dune alone.

It works in partnership with some highly specialised plants.

First into the fray is this one, sea rocket.

It's fast growing. It has to be here.

It's tolerant of saltwater, even its seeds can float, but it's not

terribly tall-growing, which means that the little dunes around this

can only make it to about a foot.

To get that little bit higher, they need a plant that's capable

of growing taller and which has a dense root system.

And that's this. Couch grass.

Now the dunes are what they call embryo dunes,

growing five feet high.

But they can get bigger.

And for that they need the help of one more plant.

And this is it - marram grass!

Capable of surviving in the teeth of a maritime gale.

Its roots go down for several yards, and its top growth

is capable of piercing 3ft of sand dumped on top of it.

Try doing that to your back lawn.

These dunes can last for decades.

Gradually they become more stable, ultimately creating new land.

And new life moves in.

Arctic terns fly all the way from Antarctica

to nest in our sand dunes.

Making their nests on the ground, they use these dune grasses

to hide their young chicks from the prying eyes of gulls and foxes.

But if you're tiny, living in these windswept dunes isn't so easy.

Some bees lead solitary lives

and the females build nests in small holes in wood or rocks.

But here on these dunes both are in short supply.

So one species of bee has come up with an ingenious solution.

Scattered all around are hundreds of empty snail shells...

..and for a female snail bee they make the perfect seaside home.

After selecting a shell she gathers nesting material,

rather like a bird.

She chews up bits of leaf to make a soft pulp,

then uses this to line the inside of the shell.

Then she collects pollen and nectar

to provide food for her larvae when they hatch.

After laying her eggs she seals the shell

and flies off to begin all over again.

This clever little bee

can nest in as many as five different shells in a season.

She gets my vote for the busiest bee in Britain!

Wind and sand give us sand dunes,

creating new land along our coastline,

but wind and water combine to make

a completely different coastal feature.

Waves!

Waves are made as wind ripples the surface of the ocean.

The really big ones we get

have swept across the Atlantic growing up to 30 feet high.

And it's the coasts of southwest Britain

that feel their greatest force.

They make the coves, the headlands and the caves

for which this coastline is famous.

SHRIEK

There are salty tales of the sea from times gone by that tell

of sailors being lured toward the rocks by the calls of mermaids,

beckoning them to an early grave.

The mermaids may have been imagined,

but those sounds most certainly were not.

This looks like a passageway to the centre of the Earth,

it was carved out by thousands of years of wave activity.

You do get the distinct feeling...

..that you're being watched.

MOANING

The deeper you get into the cave,

the more that strange sound...

gets closer.

And there it is.

It's not a mermaid at all.

It's a baby grey seal.

Perhaps just two or three days old, no more.

And its mother's left it in the safety of the cave while she goes off to feed.

She suckles it for about 18 days. Insatiable appetite, those.

During which time its body weight increases dramatically.

After that time she pushes off and it's left to fend for itself.

It really is a case of sink or swim.

Amazing sight!

Good luck.

Time we left it alone, I think.

One way or another, wave power has a big influence

in shaping the lives of coastal wildlife,

but this destructive power isn't just making caves,

it's constantly re-sculpting our coastline,

creating many of our best known landmarks.

From the chalk cliffs of Dover

to the towering granite crags of Scotland,

you'll see a landscape carved by the power of wind and waves.

And these cliffs give us something else for which the British coastline

is justly famous.

Millions of nesting seabirds.

Stac Lee is on St Kilda in Scotland's Outer Hebrides,

the remotest part of the British Isles.

For a few months in summer,

Britain is home to the largest colony of gannets in the world.

BIRDS SQUAWKING

For them, our cliffs make the perfect home.

Up here they are safe from predators.

And right on their doorstep is miles and miles of water packed with food.

Because deep-sea fishing is just what these birds are designed for.

From way up in the sky, they lock in on their underwater prey.

Then, like living torpedoes, they slam into the water

at speeds of around 75 miles an hour.

Soon they'll head back out to sea,

and the sound of nesting gannets on these cliffs

will be a distant memory.

At least, until next year.

If you had to choose just one place that summed up the elemental nature of Britain's coastline,

then this estuary at Snettisham on the Norfolk coast would be a pretty strong contender.

The deadly power of the tide is never far away,

and in this huge open space

there's no hiding place from the sun, the wind and the waves.

And yet this place owes it existence not to these, but to the last of our forces of nature, the rain.

But it's not the rain falling on the coast that matters,

it's the rain falling much further inland.

The fresh water that rain brings to the British Isles

is absolutely vital.

All across the countryside, rain drains into streams,

streams into small rivers

and small rivers into big rivers.

And it's in estuaries, where rivers meet the sea,

that most of the rains end up.

And they bring with them this.

Mud. An accumulation of huge quantities of soil and silt

washed downriver by rainwater.

And it might not look very pretty but it's packed full of food,

and that makes our estuaries one of the most fertile places on earth.

But if this is so full of food...

why's it so empty?

Well, much of the life here lives in, rather than on, the mud.

If you dig down,

you'll find it chock-full of highly specialised creatures.

Mudshrimp...

..and ragworms...

..and billions of tiny snails.

Because these specialists can tolerate the mix

of freshwater and seawater,

they have the mud all to themselves.

Except when the tide's out.

There are some hunters that come specially equipped to winkle their prey from the mud.

At first glance you can't see anything at all, but then, with a pair of binoculars,

when you get your eye in, you can see them,

rather like wildebeest scattered across the Serengeti,

thousands and thousands of birds.

In fact, millions of birds come to over-winter in our estuaries,

and for them this mud is a gastronomic treat.

There are bills of all shapes and sizes

to probe beneath the mud.

The curlew's is long and curved

and sinks deep into the burrows of lugworms.

The redshank's have sensitive nerve endings

to pick up minute vibrations below the surface.

While the heavy dagger-like beak of the oyster catcher

is perfect for spearing ragworms.

They all feed as quickly as they can, because it's not long

before the tide turns once more.

As it covers their feeding grounds,

the birds are forced closer and closer to land,

finding safety in numbers as they wait for the tide to retreat again.

Funny really, isn't it,

that when you come to the coast, all you really want is sunshine,

and yet it's the wind, the rain,

the tide and the sun all working together that actually make it

a place worth visiting

and one of the richest and most rewarding landscapes

of the British Isles.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd