0ur planet is a blue planet.
Nearly three-quarters of its surface
is covered by the oceans.
Their enormous size, and the fact
that we know so little about many of the creatures that live there,
presented the makers of this series with some very difficult challenges.
The series took the best part of five years to make
and we filmed in nearly 200 locations worldwide.
Much of the behaviour of the animals in this series
had never been filmed before
and some was new to science.
To get it, the Blue Planet team were helped
by researchers at the cutting edge of marine science all over the world.
This film is about how we worked with those scientists
and were able to see so much that is new.
0ne of the least known and hardest animals to film is the blue whale.
It roams thousands of miles of open ocean and can move at 30 miles an hour.
You have to be very lucky
even to catch up with one.
This...
This immense body is just the tip
of the flank of the biggest creature
that exists on the planet -
the blue whale.
0ver 30 metres long and weighing as much as 200 tonnes,
it's larger than the biggest dinosaurs.
And yet its migration routes are still largely unknown
and we have no idea where blue whales breed.
The biggest research project trying to solve these mysteries
is based off California,
working with one of the largest remaining populations of blue whales.
Marine biologist Bruce Mate is pioneering a new technique
which uses electronic radio tags to send signals to satellites.
Amazingly, we don't know where most whale species are at least half the year,
and it's really important that we know their critical habitats -
where they feed, breed, calve and migrate,
because those are the areas that they can't do without,
We have to be very careful not to frighten them off but, as we approach,
you can see the flukes,
you can see the head start to rise,
When it blows, you know you're in the presence
of a HUGE animal,
There's a sense of intimidation there,
just by the sheer size of the animal,
Squeeze in,
- All rightI - 0h, yeahI
The dart is little more than a pinprick to the whale and, in under six months,
it will fall off.
The little tag sends up signals to the satellite
that records the whale's exact position each time it surfaces to breathe.
The latest results confirm that this population commutes each year
from 0regon in the north to Mexico and Costa Rica in the south,
with many whales overwintering in the Gulf of California.
For three years,
we had cameramen on standby all along this migration route
using a microlight and helicopters
to try to film blues from the air without disturbing them.
The microlight was specially adapted for landing on the water
so the cameraman could jump in ahead of the whale for an underwater shot.
But soon the whales headed out of microlight and helicopter range,
and we had to follow them south into the Gulf of California.
There, we worked with another marine biologist, Diane Gendron.
If we want to do an estimation of the population,
an estimation of the numbers of blue whale
who use the Gulf of California,
we need to know if we're looking at the whole population
or just part of it,
And that's what we're doing
with the aerial transect -
trying to estimate the number of blue whale
that use the Gulf of California during winter,
Pilot Sandy Lanham has an expert eye for spotting blue whales from the air.
For the last ten years,
she's worked with biologists studying these animals in the Gulf.
What's really exciting is that there are early indications
that this may be the place that blue whales come with their calves.
For our cameraman Rick Rosenthal it was a unique opportunity
to get rare footage of a blue whale mother with its young.
Marilee, we've just got,,,
The spotter plane also provided crucial information to a boat-based team
trying to catch up with the whales down at water level.
The whales are only on the water's surface
for two minutes.
Then they dive for 20.
But, as their tails go down,
they leave a patch of smooth water
called a footprint -
a clue to where they're heading and where they might resurface.
You know, with experience, you have an idea of the distance
a whale moves underwater,
looking from where you started moving,
With Diane's knowledge and special permits,
our team managed to get really close without disturbing the whales.
The open ocean is a vast wilderness between the continents -
a big, blue arena where finding anything is extremely difficult.
Somewhere out in this marine desert,
there are amazing dramas played out every day
and the Blue Planet team invested over 400 days
of often unsuccessful filming trips far out to sea.
The day is still young,
It's a little after four in the afternoon,
Historically, this is about the time that the predator hour starts up,
Probably the open ocean, which I like to call liquid space,
is the most difficult area to work in the ocean,
People wonder how we even film out there -
do we just throw the camera in or wander about for days on end?
There's hours of boredom, Nothing goes on, Nothing,
Patience, patience, Looking, looking,
After six weeks searching off the Pacific Coast of Panama,
our crew finally caught up with some fast-moving
and unusual dolphins -
spinners.
I look for dolphins, marine mammals
aggregating, coming together - a successful predator
goes where the food is,
If we can find those patches,
then that's going to be paydirt for us as well,
A pod of dolphins like this is often accompanied
by other predators such as tuna.
0ur team thought that following dolphins might lead them to some exciting action.
Right behind the dolphin school, a massive bunch of tuna came by,
I dove down and one school was crossing in front of me,
then all of a sudden - vroomI - another big, massive school,
Eventually, the team struck gold -
a ball of baitfish corralled at the surface by predators.
,,on that outside edge there,
You have to be quick to film a bonanza like this,
because soon the baitfish will be eaten and it'll be all over.
You have to be careful, too. This frenzy is no place for the inexperienced.
0ne of the things -
when you are in the water,
sardines will often swarm you to try to hide around you from the predators,
I could see a piece of the bait ball
break off and come directly at me,
The fish were on me and the tuna knew it, The tuna were rocketing out of the deep,
just for a second, I felt I had become part of this feeding frenzy,
I felt like a big sardine in the middle of the bait ball,
Finally, when it was all over,
all that remained was a shower of fish scales from the sardines,
slowly sinking into the deep,
And me,
0n the other side of the world,
another Blue Planet team was looking for more gentle creatures -
one of the world's smallest whales, pilot whales.
So little research
has been done in the open ocean that normally we worked without scientists.
But here we had advice from the local experts.
This site in the Alboran Sea
is very important for some species that are in decline in the Mediterranean,
like the common dolphin, the bottlenose dolphin,
the sperm whale or even the pilot whale,
We have a lookout post on the masts
and we tow a hydrophone behind the ship
that detects the clicks or the whistles that these animals use to communicate,
It's just like a clock, you know, a very rhythmic sound,
Common dolphins and pilot whales are curious animals,
If you go straight into them, usually they'll go away,
But if you spot them and then stay at a distance,
they're like children - very curious - and they'll actually go towards you,
(HIGH-PITCHED SQUEAKS)
Cameraman Mark Gottlieb describes what it was like
to get so close to so many whales.
Their sounds filled the water, It was an amazing experience,
(C0NTINU0US SQUEAKING)
I stayed with the whales
for about two hours,
They were very tolerant, but it's sensible to respect their potential power,
A calf came very close to check us out,
The male was escorting the mother and calf,
making sure nothing came too close, which in this case was me,
As I saw the calf coming towards me, it was obvious
that the male didn't want me there,
It was very important to leave the calf alone,
The male came up and swished his tail right in front of me
and nearly knocked me out, so I just stayed there
and let them swim off on their own,
(RICARD0 ) The presence of film crews on a ship like this
is definitely very important,
We are not just doing the research for academic purposes
but for conservation,
so public awareness is an important part of our programme,
It's no use for us just to come up with scientific results,
We have to get through to the public and politicians that take the measures,
The open ocean's ultimate filming challenge is the world's fastest fish -
Billfish.
Spectacular predators like marlin and sailfish
are extraordinarily difficult to locate and film.
We finally caught up with them off Mexico,
where Rick Rosenthal used the birds to guide him to the action.
(RICK) There's a Mexican legend about the frigate bird, which they call tijereta,
or scissor tail,
The height that the frigate bird flies above the surface of the sea
is directly proportional to the depth where the predators are swimming,
This opportunity only came after a total of 400 days scouring the open ocean
and many failed trips.
You're pumped up, you're hunting,
you're hunting with a camera,
You have to filter out an awful lot of what's going on around you,
get specific, get into where the action is,
It was an exciting but dangerous moment.
These underwater javelins can travel at over 70 miles an hour.
Suddenly, tuna arrive to attack the very same bait ball.
And finally, almost unbelievably,
a sei whale.
We got itI
Will it come up again?
Where the hell are you? Get goingI Help Doug, Help Doug,
You have a wish list of things you'd want to film,
And, if you're in these gatherings, you'd certainly hope that some day
a whale would come in and feed and you're in there,
In this programme, we were at the right time,
We followed groups of whales feeding,
We had put a cameraman or two in the water,
At the same time, we were filming from the surface
so we could get proper coverage,
0f all the ocean habitats,
the coasts are the most dynamic and demanding.
Life here is harsh and there are few permanent residents.
But when the conditions are right, the coast can be extremely rich -
and that is exactly what happens each June
off this coast in Natal, South Africa.
For two seasons, our crew of six cameramen
and their extensive back-up team
came to try and film one of the ocean's greatest spectacles.
Change speed underwater,
Six to 115.
They were here for an annual event called the sardine run.
Millions and millions of tonnes of sardines
migrating northwards along the coast with the changing currents.
So much food inevitably attracts masses of predators.
It was this predation the team were hoping to film.
The sardine run stretches for miles,
and the microlight was constantly searching for pods of common dolphins
that would lead them to the action.
0nce the microlight had discovered hunting dolphins,
it passed on the location to the boat-based teams.
And it wasn't just dolphins,
but hundreds of sharks that were also attracted by the fish.
Before diving in, the team put special explosive tips on their shark sticks.
If things looked really dangerous, these could be used to frighten the sharks away.
En gardeI 0ne - two - three, GoI
Very few people
dive with the brown shark,
because we see the sharks in shallow water
during the sardine run only,
When we are surrounded by sharks,
we feel fear,
And suddenly the dolphins come,
We hear them before we see them, And then we start to relax,
Scientific research on the sardine run is still in its early stages.
But underwater filming
reveals some very exciting new behaviour among the dolphins.
Working together in teams,
they release walls of bubbles to corral the sardines
into ever-tighter balls.
This bubble-netting behaviour
allowed the dolphins to feed on every last sardine left behind
while the rest of the migration continued north.
Monterey Bay,
on the coast of California.
Every year, a pod of killer whales arrives to hunt grey whales
as they migrate north through these waters.
0ur cameramen Doug Allan and Tom Fitz spent eight weeks
over two seasons trying to film the action.
We had these killer whales,
We started following them but, as you can see, the sea's got up,
It's 30 - 35 knots, We couldn't keep up with them,
0ur team was advised by marine biologist
Nancy Black,
who had spent 14 years watching killer whales in Monterey Bay
but had never seen a single complete kill.
The boat-based team was supported
by keen-eyed spotters who every day scoured the bay from the air
looking for grey whale mothers and their calves taking a shortcut.
(NANCY) During the spring,
when the mothers and calves come through,
the grey whales migrate north,
When they cross Monterey Bay, they have no shore protection,
There's no place for them to hide, and the killer whales
are out looking for these mother/calf pairs of grey whales,
Killer whales can travel at over 20mph.
The challenge was
trying to keep up with the action, whatever the weather at sea.
(NANCY) We were out there at the perfect time,
right before the attack happened,
with the killer whales in pursuit of the grey whales,
It's the first time that we've seen it all the way from the start to the end,
The killers kept up the hunt for five hours until, eventually,
the calf was so exhausted that the mother was forced to stop.
And we had to watch as the pod came in
to finish off the calf right in front of us, just a few metres away.
Killer whales seem to work
in certain roles,
0ne female actually positioned herself
between the mother and calf grey whale,
She was in there, pushing him away, The others had roles around the outside,
They seemed to be really co-ordinated,
It was the first time we'd had a chance to document that,
We spent a long time with them that day,
(D0UG) If they'd taken a mind to, they could have flipped us over,
But, on the other hand, I think they were concentrating on the whale,
and we were able to get closer but not interfere, which was important,
By the end,
I was just completely emotionally drained,
After a six-hour hunt,
the fifteen-strong pod of killer whales
ate nothing more than the calf's lower jaw
and its tongue.
The coral seas are the richest in the ocean.
Their diversity and richness of life is unmatched.
Blue Planet filmed worldwide in pretty well every major coral reef system.
But some of the most exciting places we worked were remote islands
far off the Pacific coast of Central America,
like the Galapagos, Malpelo and Cocos.
This is a big event,
This is a place in this vast ocean,
and the deep water currents come in
and hit this island,
And it upwells - brings all the nutrients up,
So the little fish feed on the nutrients,
the bigger fish feed on the little fish, then the sharks feed on THEM,
We came out here
without any experts, by ourselves, just out looking around
trying to find sharks, trying to find good things to film,
And we found a bunch of them,
Finding oneself
among so many silky sharks
was an extraordinarily exciting but perhaps worrying experience.
I don't think you have
anything to be worried about or frightened of,
They're a very curious shark, They come right up to you,
which makes it good for photography,
They bump you,
they push off your camera with their nose,
I think they want to find out what you are and what you're doing here in their world,
When they bump me, I bump them back
to let them know, ''Hey, I'm here and I'm something to be reckoned with, ''
No sooner had they arrived than the silky sharks started to disappear
into the open ocean,
never to be seen again on that particular trip.
At night, a completely new collection of animals emerges onto the reef
and we were determined to film some of the things that happen
under cover of darkness.
But lighting the reef to look as if it were lit by moonlight
requires a well co-ordinated team and a complex lighting set-up.
For filming at night, especially sharks in a big area,
we needed quite a bit of light,
Little battery lights wouldn't do, We brought in a generator
and cables coming down to 650W lights,
I don't think the sharks were disturbed at all by the light,
These sharks are clued in
to little electronic impulses from each other
and also from the prey,
Filming in the tidal seas is all about timing.
The lives of the animals that live here
are dominated by the daily advance and retreat of the tides.
But it's not just the daily cycle that's important.
The monthly cycle of the moon also has a massive effect
on the oceans.
And on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia,
it seems to be the key factor co-ordinating the mass spawning
of the entire reef.
We were there to try and film that spectacle
but, as yet, it's still not properly understood by science.
It was only 20 years ago
that they discovered that the whole of the Barrier Reef went off,
Basically it goes off on three or four nights,
They've been working on it ever since but they still don't know an awful lot,
So, for the scientists, this is really exciting,
and we tracked that down to one small, encrusted brown multipore,
It was Craig's advice that allowed us to get there at just the right time.
With three cameramen and a complex lighting rig, we were determined to film.
But, for Martha,
there was a lot of tension as she waited on deck.
It's frustrating not being able to speak to them or see them,
If you're filming topside, you can interact
and you know what the cameraman's getting,
But, on the back of a boat, at night, you have no idea what's going on,
That first night,
there was no sign of the spawning.
The worry was that the lights might be interfering with the coral's behaviour.
Craig thinks it's important not to have light on the coral at all,
He actually got us to turn the lights off on here and that light over there off
because it was producing a cast on the reef,
He thinks it might be affecting the corals,
Well, we have to light it in order to film it,
Well, I white-balanced, I switched,,, I had the light on,,,
He obeyed instructionsI
Craig thought the light might affect the spawning
so I thought I'd just leave things as they are,
I wasn't told that,
(PETER) This is a practice lighting, (MARTHA) It was, you're quite right,
Tantalisingly, for two more nights, there was little sign of the spawning.
But, eventually, on the fourth night,
something started to happen.
Some of the corals began to release sperm in clouds into the water.
But this was not the mass-spawning spectacle
the team had come to film.
For the cameramen, it was rather frustrating work
as they picked away, trying to get the pictures needed to build up the story.
It just takes such a long time, I mean, it doesn't go in one big bang,
It just goes 1,,, 2,,,
Quite a lot of eggs go off, but they don't go off in vast numbers,
They just sort of waft out gently,
4,,, 5,,, 1,,,
We would follow one egg, you know, one egg,,,
You wait five minutes and you might get two,
Watching a lump of stone getting ready to spawn is,,,
(PETER) Now, this,,, We've gone up and we've got the main light,
We're not balanced for that so I just had to adjust it,
- That's mine, - I know, I know,
Finally, on the fifth night, it seemed it was all going to happen
and Martha could hardly suppress her excitement.
Ye-e-e-esI
But there was a problem. At the last minute, Peter's camera had failed.
He worked desperately to fix it
in the few hours remaining before the spawning was due to happen.
(MARTHA) We're in go mode for tonight,
We're in go mode tonight,
- With colour, - 0h, there'll be some colour there,
No guarantee what it's likeI
There'll be some colour there but,,,
(MIKE) ,,but no spawning yet,
Luckily,
on the fifth night, the team WERE all set
to film a spectacular mass spawning of the coral reef.
The seasonal seas that occur in the temperate regions of the world
are probably the most productive parts of the ocean.
But they're hard places to work in.
Their very productivity
reduces water visibility,
and the weather is often rough and unpredictable.
The Blue Planet
came to temperate waters off California
to film some exciting new behaviour in harbour seals,
first observed by biologist Teri Nicholson.
Harbour seals are incredible,
I guess what I love about working with them is dispelling the myth
that they are these funny, rock-looking objects on shore,
When you get underwater with them,
they have an incredibly complex and dynamic social life,
They're very curious
and very cool to be with,
Teri discovered that young male seals seem to learn
an extraordinary courtship song by closely mimicking older males.
(DEEP GUTTURAL GURGLES)
(SHE IMITATES THE SEALS' S0NG)
I know it sounds much more intense than that, but I'm a femaleI
These vocalisations kind of allow males
to feel each other out and figure out
who are the males to stay away from, who they can potentially be harmed by,
They're bigger and more dominating than other males that they can overcome,
The biggest lesson I've learned is that, to look at harbour seals
and understand their behaviour, you have to look underwater,
Amost everything interesting these animals do occurs underwater,
Hundreds of miles to the north, off Prince William Sound, Alaska,
another Blue Planet team came in search of one of the least-known sharks -
salmon sharks.
These unusual relatives of the great white shark
have never been observed behaving naturally underwater,
and we were keen to try and get unique images using a remote camera
attached to a pole.
Director Hugh Pearson could watch the action via a monitor on the surface.
It was great to try and film something very new,
Also, it just fitted in so well with our story,
because the whole theme of the temperate programme
is the seasonality of the seas,
And this story is totally seasonal,
The salmon sharks wait for the salmon to spawn, and then they move in,
(PETER) 0bviously, we're hoping
that we're going to get them actually behaving naturally
and fishing amongst the salmon
in the thick numbers that we're told,
(HUGH) The timing for us to come here is absolutely vital,
because, for most of the year,
the scientists think they're out feeding in the North Pacific on whatever's there,
But they follow the salmon in
and the salmon only run in for maybe a month or so during the summer,
It's not just the sharks
that are after the salmon - there's a big fishing industry here.
Marine biologist Ken Goldman works with the fishermen,
who help him catch sharks for science.
The salmon sharks are becoming
an important resource for the state of Alaska,
There's a large interest in sport fishing,
It's becoming big news for game fishing,
The state and the federal government are interested in managing this species
before the population
begins to decline because of the fishing,
Catching and tagging a 4-metre shark is hard work.
But Ken hopes it might provide vital information about population size
and where the sharks go to breed.
They've only ever been seen here off Alaska
and then for just one month each year.
The rest of their lives remains a mystery.
(KEN) That'll be fine, That's good,
This is often the only close-up look that Ken ever gets of his shark.
And he was as fascinated as we were to see
what pictures would emerge from our camera on a pole.
This is a 3-minute selection of some of the good stuff we got,
(KEN) This kind of activity is what I don't get to see,
Even when I look over the side of the boat,
I get a top view, I don't see the side of it
or get to look up underneath it,
What's the distance from the camera,,, That's nice,
It's probably 10 foot when you start to see him,
(KEN) They probably see that camera at 30 feet,
Who knows? But theirs are adapted to that environment where ours are not,
(HUGH) Do you think from that
- that they're very visual predators? - Yeah,
By exploiting the shark's visual sense,
we hope to lure them closer to get some more powerful images still.
You get that silver-sided salmon doing what you're doing,
You're moving it along, it's something visual
going through the water,
You can't really see it without a video shot like this,
where it comes in, turns its head to it, then turns away - curious and cautious,
And then comfortable enough to go for it,
It's a new look, This is a shark that so little is known about,
and few people have had the opportunity to see them underwater,
So, every time, the behaviours are either confirming something we suspect
or showing us something new, or something we didn't think they could do,
It's absolutely wonderful to see,
You learn stuff every time you watch something like this,
The frozen seas in the Antarctic and the Arctic, for some,
are the most beautiful of all ocean habitats.
But it's dangerous to be lulled by their beauty.
For the animals that have to survive at the poles,
and our teams who had to work there, conditions could hardly be harsher.
This is not a day to be looking for bears,
It's about minus 15 with 20 knots of wind,
The wind chill is something ferocious,
Doug Allan made several trips to the Arctic island of Svalbard
to try and film polar bears hunting.
I've got this little guy here,
He comes with me on all my trips,
And, if I put him down here by the window, facing out,
hopefully he'll bring in the real thing,
So, do your stuff,
Polar bears hunt far out on the frozen sea ice,
which is a dangerous place to work.
And finding a white bear in this white wilderness
requires much patience and experience.
God, that was so frustrating,
We had this female and cub, We'd been watching her for the last 3 or 4 hours
doing a bit of hunting, never very close,
Anyway, she came in to a nice position,
And then I took a few steps towards her,
She was a long way away but she just completely reacted the wrong way,
I lost all her confidence and now she's,,,
pissed off,
And it's such a nice day for filming,
And I thought we had it and,,,
0h,,,
If anything, working in Antarctica is even more demanding than the Arctic.
Here you can be thousands of miles from civilisation
and everything you need has to come in by sea or air.
We were fortunate to have the support of scientists
on the Italian Antarctic programme
who kindly let us share a temporary research base
they'd set up miles out on the edge of the frozen sea ice.
(SPEAKS IN ITALIAN)
The Italian programme is involved in a wide range of Antarctic research,
but here they were concentrating on the communities of animals and plants
that live under the ice.
By measuring the amount of light
that reaches algae under the ice,
they hope to monitor the frozen sea's productivity - one vital way
to gauge the health of the Antarctic 0cean.
Their hole also provided
a unique opportunity for Doug.
It's quite nice,
Really big platelets of ice,
Very impressive when Mark's crawling in amongst it trying to find a space
for the light centre,
Very nice, Browns, greens, all kinds of colours,
A Weddell seal came by and gave us a quick once-over,
But most of our work
was concentrated at the ice edge.
We were there to film Emperor penguins as they returned to their breeding colonies
from feeding far out to sea.
A remote camera under the ice helped us predict when the penguins would emerge.
0K, I think that's it, That's it,
Back in the Arctic, on Svalbard, after weeks of patience,
Doug was finally getting close to a polar bear and its cub.
You have to work very carefully to gain her confidence.
It's five o'clock in the morning
and I think we've just cracked it,
We had a female there
with the cub,
and she did quite a lot of pouncing about,
50 to 80 metres away, just a nice sort of distance,
And do you know what she did
when she was finished?
She was so relaxed,
she sat down and gathered the cub in to her,
and suckled it head-on to the camera,
I tell you,
the weight off your mind when you get something like that is incredible,
Sixty per cent of our planet
is covered by ocean more than a mile deep.
The deep is by far the largest of all the ocean habitats.
And yet it's the least known.
You need the very latest technology to explore this last frontier.
As you descend, the light diminishes and pressures increase to dangerous levels.
Within 1,000 metres, it's 100 times that on the surface
and only a handful of submersibles worldwide can dive any deeper.
You're flying around in this very small ball of air - a glass bubble,
zooming around,
And it's just a wonderful feeling
to think that the chances are excellent that no one else has ever seen
anything you're looking at on that entire dive,
We joined the Johnson Sealink submersible
from the Harbor Branch 0ceanographic Institute
to film a completely new community of animals only discovered in the '90s.
This brine lake
is surrounded by thousands of mussels,
and there are extensive fields of tubeworms nearby,
all existing without the sun's energy.
Filming was a real challenge.
Every single thing you do is done remotely,
You barely twist this knob and the iris jerks,
And, you know, you see that kind of stuff - it's frustrating,
Beautiful, close-up images of tubeworms,
revealed for the very first time.
These worms live 1,000 metres down,
but we wanted to dive a lot deeper than that
and had to use a far stronger submersible.
This is ALVIN,
operated by the Woods Hole 0ceanographic Institute.
It's a reinforced titanium tank with tiny windows,
which allows it to dive as deep as three miles.
We joined ALVIN on a number of different expeditions.
This time we were diving over a mile down into the San Diego trench
about 40 miles off the Californian coast.
I'll be tracking you on 12,5,
Crammed into the tiny sphere just 2 metres wide was the pilot,
chief scientist Craig Smith...
and, once again, our cameraman Mike deGruy.
500 metres, Five - zero - zero,
Craig was keen to return to a particular location
that he had visited on a previous expedition
18 months before.
I hear sonar target,
North-east at 60 metres,
The sonar found its target -
the skeleton of a 40-tonne grey whale.
After a year and a half on the seabed,
this was all that was left.
But we first filmed it as a fresh carcass
after just six weeks on the bottom.
0riginally, the dead whale had washed up on the coast of California.
With Craig's advice, we'd paid a local fisherman
to drag it out to the San Diego trench, where it was to be sunk.
Easier said than done.
We put 5,000 pounds of weight on it
and it was still sticking halfway out of the water,
We stabbed it full of holes with cleansing knives
and a big spear that the first engineer made from the ship,
He also shot it full of holes with his ,45 automatic pistol,
The gas coming out of it when you cut holes in it was horrible,
But the hard work proved worthwhile.
The carcass attracted an extraordinary variety
of deep-sea scavengers.
SharkI SharkI
0h, geeI He's right out here,
0ut of nowhere, a sleeper shark,
a real deep-sea specialist, and never filmed at this depth before.
These sharks and thousands of hagfish stripped the carcass bare
and this was all that was left 18 months later when we returned.
Craig's main interest in returning was to collect pieces of bone
to take them to the surface.
For Mike, it was another opportunity
to film this eerie but fascinating spectacle.
It's amazing, It's just evolved,
When we first got down there,
it looked like no meat, all skeleton,
I thought, ''Ah, well, that's great, ''
Big rib cages and hagfish moving through - totally picked clean,
Unbelievable, Then, as we settled in,
and started looking in detail,
we saw mats of all these worms, and suddenly meat, hagfish grinding away,
There's still meat on it a year and a half later,
It was great, And it looks terrific,
Everything worked, Hah, I'm happy,
Craig was delighted to get so many specimens lifted to the surface,
even if they were less than fragrant.
They do smell pretty bad,
0n the surface, Craig could get a really close look
at the life living on the bones.
0n a previous expedition, he found 178 species on one vertebra.
There's a fascinating community of animals
that seem to be able to survive in the darkness
by breaking down the energy trapped in the whale's bones.
What really fascinates Craig about the new species discovered on dead whales
is that some are also found in one other special deep-sea habitat.
Two miles down along the mid-oceanic ridges,
extraordinary volcanic activity emerges out of the seabed
in hydrothermal vents.
Scientists were amazed
to discover among these vents
one of the richest oases of life in the deep ocean.
Since they were first discovered,
a new species has been revealed every ten days.
And what fascinates Craig is that some of these species
are exactly the same as those
found on his dead whales.
Remarkably, Craig believes that his whale skeletons may be providing
vital stepping stones of energy
for larvae journeying to colonise a new vent.
Like so much in the marine world,
this science is breaking the frontiers of knowledge
and new discoveries are made every day.
The satellite tags on the blue whales are still operating today,
providing Bruce Mate with new information round the clock.
We've seen animals tagged on the same day
go in dramatically different directions,
In the first seven weeks, one went up to southern 0regon,
one was down on the Baja coast, one was 1,200 miles offshore,
Some of those animals have gone all the way down to the Costa Rican dome,
which is about eight degrees north of the equator and 400 miles offshore,
Despite all the efforts of researchers worldwide,
we still do not know where these giants go to breed.
Like so much about our blue planet, it remains a mystery.
(HUGH) I don't know if we got that shot,
(PETER) We'll get it again, Go on, get your act together,
Bloody producers, Can't get the staff,