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00:00A sperm whale lies stranded close to death.
00:24To look at him now, it's hard to imagine what an extraordinary life he's led.
00:30This is the largest predator the world has ever seen.
00:38His home is the abyss.
00:42He spent most of his life at a staggering two kilometers below the waves.
00:48Only surfacing to breathe.
00:54Our technology can only ever give us the briefest glimpse of his alien landscape.
01:06But what if we could see it as he sees it?
01:14It would be like turning on the lights in a world of eternal darkness.
01:22Down here, mountains rise higher than Everest.
01:26Ravines run deeper than the Grand Canyon.
01:30And the creatures are more monstrous than anything found on land.
01:39This film lights up the deep.
01:43It tells the story of one whale's 80 year journey.
01:48From calf to king of the abyss.
01:53Welcome to the ultimate ocean odyssey.
01:57November 1929 and a steamship is working in the North Atlantic.
02:19200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.
02:24The crew are on a mission to repair telegraph cables.
02:27That run along the ocean floor between Europe and America.
02:32The cable lies in a world that these men know little about.
02:39Although they cannot see it.
02:42They are floating above a giant deep sea cliff.
02:47Here the continental shelf drops away to depths of over four kilometers.
02:52These are the fertile fishing grounds of the Grand Banks.
02:57The land of the Grand Canyon.
03:07Not far away, a sperm whale is about to make his first deep water dive.
03:12He is only two years old.
03:15Until now, he has spent his young life in the sunlit surface waters
03:19under the protection of his huge mother.
03:22This is the first stage of an apprenticeship that will take him deeper and deeper
03:48into the oceans of the world.
03:57At 400 meters, the young bull enters the midnight zone.
04:03Down here, no light remains.
04:06His eyes are useless.
04:09But he isn't blind.
04:15He uses sound to see into the gloom.
04:18A third of his body is given over to the most powerful sonar in the natural world.
04:28His giant nose fires clicks into the depths.
04:32The echoes bounce back from more than a kilometer away.
04:36Illuminating a hidden world.
04:46The perilous slopes of the Grand Banks.
04:49This is the gateway to the abyss.
04:55Down there is a world of astonishing landscapes and monstrous creatures.
05:10These slopes drop for a further three kilometers,
05:13to where the pressure is 300 times what it is on the surface.
05:18He's reaching his limit.
05:21His young body would be crushed at those depths.
05:27But his mother, and the other females that make up his family pod, have no such restrictions.
05:41As they head for their hunting grounds, their bodies disturb tiny marine creatures, leaving a bioluminescent trail in their wake.
05:56One of the females stays behind to babysit the young bull, as he explores this unfamiliar world.
06:03The Grand Banks are the submarine equivalent to alpine slopes.
06:11And like the Alps, they're covered in snow.
06:14But this is marine snow.
06:17Made up of tiny fragments of dead fish and plankton,
06:21it falls from the fertile waters above,
06:24balancing precariously along the edge of the steep slopes.
06:28Most species of whales survive grazing on tiny plankton.
06:43But sperm whales use their sonar to hunt down the creatures of the deep.
06:49The young whale is investigating something twitching on the seabed.
06:59But this disturbance is man-made.
07:10Keep the tension!
07:12By the 1930s, dozens of massive telegraph cables criss-cross the floor of the Atlantic.
07:18It's one of mankind's first attempts to exploit the deep.
07:26And they require frequent maintenance.
07:29Dragging the cables up from the bottom, they're looking for signs of damage.
07:37Every year, cables are mysteriously broken.
07:42Today, they'll learn the landscape below them is not nearly as dead as they think it is.
07:49In the total darkness of the abyss, the whale's echolocation picks up the moving form of the cable.
08:07The young female's curiosity is leading her into trouble.
08:31In the early evening, a deep ocean earthquake reverberates along the Grand Banks.
08:40It measures 7.2 on the Richter scale.
08:43For the abyss, it's a small tremor.
08:46But it will spark off a deadly chain of events.
08:58The bull's mother can hear the disturbance.
09:07The young whale must leave.
09:09But his companion is caught up in the coils.
09:19And now, everyone's in danger.
09:23The earthquake has set off a giant underwater landslide.
09:30Along the banks, an area half the size of Holland is on the move.
09:53The young bull is forced to leave the female to her fate.
10:17The sea seems to take a giant intake of breath.
10:22The tsunami radiates across the ocean at 300 kilometers an hour.
10:29And now, everyone's in danger.
10:49For the crew, the giant wave causes little more than a lurch.
10:53In deep water, the men are safe.
10:57But the wave is heading towards the Newfoundland coast.
11:09For generations, these people have harvested the shallow waters of the Grand Banks.
11:13Today, though, they'll learn that events in the abyss can reach out and change their lives.
11:31In the shallows, the wave grows.
11:34In the shallows, the dagewood's
12:12It's the most destructive Atlantic tsunami for a hundred years.
12:26No family on that coast was unaffected.
12:32The secret world of the abyss can never be taken for granted.
12:36Twelve transatlantic cables snapped across 800 kilometers of seabed.
12:47And the breaking signals provided the first clear record of the geological forces at work beneath the sea.
12:54It's not the only thing that these cables can reveal about the deep.
13:06Deaths of whales caught like this provide the first proof about just how deep sperm whales can dive.
13:15The young bull has started out on his journey of deep sea discovery.
13:24And so has man.
13:29Look at the size of this one.
13:30For an adult whale to reach 45 tons, it must eat an average of a thousand kilos of food a day.
13:47An appetite which drives an endless search for enough food.
13:53And as the pod turns east, another impulse gives urgency to their travels.
13:58The young bull's mother is pregnant.
14:01It's time to head for their birthing grounds in the heart of the Atlantic.
14:05At the foot of the continental shelf lies the flattest and stillest place on Earth.
14:26It's called the Abyssal Plain and stretches out ahead of the whales for 4,500 kilometers.
14:33It's like a giant desert.
14:37Down here there's no hard surface for life to gain a foothold.
14:41Life in the abyss only gathers where the currents and seabed help circulate nutrients.
14:47This is no place for a giant predator like a whale.
14:52They're in for a long, hungry trek.
15:03Day and night, they move over the ocean desert, heading for the next feeding station, the next island of life.
15:12But there is one creature that is drawn to these lifeless plains.
15:18Emerging from ponds all along the coast of America, every year, over a million eels head for one of the most extraordinary gatherings on Earth.
15:26The Abyssal Plain is their destination.
15:30In these vast mating balls, eggs are fertilized en masse.
15:54The frenzy marks a macabre climax to the adults' lives.
16:11For one day every year, the dead zone is littered with a million corpses and billions of eggs.
16:28Everything that falls to the bottom of the ocean will eventually be recycled, the nutrients brought back to the surface, fueling the world's largest food chain.
16:41And the sperm whale sits at the top of that chain.
16:48They are the apex predators.
16:51But for this pod, it's been a week since they filled their stomachs.
16:55And as they get all their fresh water from the food they eat,
16:59if the young whale doesn't feed soon, he'll die of thirst before he dies of hunger.
17:04But hope rises out of the gloom.
17:12The mountainous form signals that they're reaching the end of their ordeal.
17:16In the deep ocean, any hard structure creates a haven for life.
17:20And a hunting opportunity for sperm whales.
17:23The giant peaks of this mountain range lie a thousand meters below the surface.
17:30Almost double the distance the young bull managed at the Grand Banks.
17:35Dive too deep, and he could drown before he gets back to the surface.
17:39But if he stays up here, he will starve.
17:42It will take over 20 minutes to reach the hunting grounds below.
17:54Instinctively, he settles into a dive rate of 5 kilometers an hour.
18:01He's falling into the abyss.
18:09His heart rate slows to one beat per minute.
18:12Blood supply to his skin is cut off to prevent heat loss.
18:21And as the pressure increases, his ribcage is designed to collapse.
18:30The lungs are flattened under the crushing body.
18:35Protective mucus is needed to keep them from sticking together permanently.
18:42Although his destination is still hundreds of meters below him,
18:51his powerful sonar sketches the landscape.
18:54Ahead of him lies one of the strangest worlds in the abyss.
19:10Lost city.
19:11Lost city.
19:11Here, vents of superheated water have been flowing for 30,000 years,
19:29depositing minerals that grow into giant spires,
19:33some of them 60 meters high.
19:35The deep shapes the creatures that live here.
19:57lost in the abyss.
19:58Lost city.
20:00Lost city.
20:00Sometimes, into bizarre forms.
20:03an oar fish can grow to the size of a two-story house
20:09it's the longest fish in the sea
20:14almost never seen at the surface rare sightings of this creature
20:21sparked legends of man-eating serpent sea monsters
20:24in fact their prey is tiny
20:28they're opportunist predators that suck up a passing morsel
20:34with an extendable mouth
20:36humans will not discover these ghostly spires for another 70 years
20:48whales have known about it for generations
20:58after his marathon descent the young whale has less than 10 minutes at the bottom
21:08using sonar he searches the new world for potential food
21:17the juvenile has no teeth sperm whales suck in their prey crushing it in their stomach
21:35the spiny oar fish is the wrong choice
21:50following his mother's lead he's starting to get the idea
22:01an adult whale can eat 500 squid in a single dive
22:09the young bull is running low on oxygen
22:31and the surface is 20 minutes above him
22:43his first encounter with one of the greatest landscapes of the deep has been all too brief
22:51lost city sits on top of one of the biggest seamounts in the atlantic
22:58atlantis massive
23:00this in turn hangs on the edge of one of the greatest canyons in the ocean
23:14part of a giant mountain chain that the young whale will learn is a lifeline for his kind
23:30when your world is this past the deep ocean is a daunting place
23:49alone on the surface he uses his sensitive hearing to listen to the sounds of the ocean
23:54he tracks the clicks of his mother following her as she hunts deep below
23:59there are other sounds in the ocean
24:03there are animals out here that will eat a young whale
24:07and as the female returns to the surface she will fall silent for over 20 minutes
24:13it's a long wait
24:15wait
24:16wait
24:17wait
24:18wait
24:24yeah
24:29wait
24:30wait
24:35wait
24:39wait
24:41The reunion is short-lived.
25:01When food is available, whales rarely spend more than 10 minutes on the surface.
25:11The huge mountain chain beneath them is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
25:18It's a highway of life that will guide the whales to their birthing grounds in the north.
25:24Stretching from the Southern Ocean to Iceland, this ridge is part of the greatest geological feature on the planet.
25:32Formed by the moving apart of the Earth's crust, two plates slowly separate and lava oozes from the Earth's mantle,
25:40building a giant ridge of undersea mountains.
25:47And as the ridge turns east, they rise higher until the tips of six volcanoes break out of the water.
25:58Forming what we call the Azores.
26:01These steep volcanic cliffs channel deep water currents, carrying nutrients to the surface.
26:16In the shallows, life abounds, and the food chain continues down into the abyss.
26:27In the inky blackness of the deep, life is marked by the sparkle of bioluminescent creatures.
26:42And if we could see the extent of these glowing shoals, they'd appear like a glittering firework display.
26:48These chemical glows are used as lures and decoys to confuse the enemy.
27:01But the enemy uses it too.
27:05The anglerfish looks terrifying.
27:12In fact, it's not much bigger than your hand.
27:24Most predators here are squid.
27:27And they come in all sizes.
27:33The giant squid is bigger than a family car.
27:38Its eye is the size of a basketball.
27:41No one has ever witnessed the giant squid in the deep.
27:46And despite its size, it's a favorite prey of the sperm whale.
27:52The battle between them is the greatest wildlife spectacle that we've never actually witnessed.
27:58As the pod approaches the azores, they encounter an unexpected obstacle.
28:16Although we never see it, hidden in the depths of the abyss, there is a volcanic eruption every day.
28:22As the broiling lava hits pressurized seawater, hot gases are trapped in the honeycomb of solidifying rock.
28:36For a moment, gas-filled boulders float.
28:52As the
29:18The whales have arrived.
29:33This is their haven.
29:34In the 1920s, people had very little idea about what these animals got up to below the surface.
29:53It would be decades before we learned that sperm whales are the most social of all the whales.
29:58And at gatherings like this, the sonar changes into a complex pattern of clicks, almost the language.
30:08Hardly surprising from an animal with the biggest brain on the planet.
30:13For the young whale, it's an opportunity to reinforce his bonds with the pod, so vital to his survival in the open ocean.
30:36But even here, danger is never far away.
30:40In New Zealand, the scars on the dying bull are testament to battles with all kinds of ocean creatures.
30:55And even 80 years on, a large chunk out of his tail bears witness to a moment in the Azores
31:02that could so easily have cut short his life.
31:10While the rest of the pod heads down to feed in the volcanic depths, the bull's mother does not join them.
31:18The pangs of labor have started.
31:22The young bull stays on the surface with her.
31:40A team of killer whales have been following the social chatter of the sperm whales for several miles.
31:55If they isolate the young whale, they'll eat him alive.
31:59The pack switches to radio silence.
32:10Two orcas peel off.
32:12They will close in from behind.
32:20Traveling at 35 knots, a killer takes a bite of flesh in less than a second.
32:24Now, there is blood in the water, and the frenzy begins.
32:33The mother tries to put her body between the injured calf and the killers.
32:54Far below, the pod hear the orcas.
32:57They must return before it's too late.
33:03The pod arrives, but the danger is not over.
33:28They instinctively form a protective rosette around the injured calf.
33:33But the killer whales are relentless.
33:51They can kill an entire pod.
33:57But not today.
33:58A fully grown bull has arrived.
34:09Male sperm whales are 30% larger than females and carry over twice the weight.
34:17Unlike the females, they possess a formidable row of teeth.
34:22He's one whale too many for the killers.
34:28For the first time, the young whale meets the giant he will one day become.
34:41His life is already changing.
34:47In the center of the melee, his mother has given birth.
34:50The young bull will no longer have the constant protection of his mother.
35:14He will have to start to face up to the dangers of the deep on his own.
35:19For decades, sperm whales have provided us with our most important clues to life in the deep oceans.
35:34Scars on their body and the contents of their stomachs
35:37reveal how giant sea creatures thought to be part of mythology do exist after all.
35:43As scientists slowly piece together a more detailed picture of this animal's world,
35:54they're also beginning to understand the complexity of the oceans themselves.
35:58And how these giant bodies of water are the engine of the world's climate.
36:10It's 1938 and a storm is brewing in the mid-Atlantic.
36:18Most of the sun's energy is stored in the sea.
36:20Just the top three meters alone absorbs more heat than the entire atmosphere of the Earth.
36:29Ocean currents distribute this heat slowly around the planet.
36:33As the warm seas evaporate, huge quantities of water are carried high into the atmosphere.
36:49A small shift in the heat of the ocean can set in motion a weather pattern that grows to massive proportions.
36:58The young bull is 12 years old.
37:09A 35-ton teenager.
37:12As big as a bus.
37:13The pods heading back along the mid-Atlantic ridge.
37:25Over time, adult whales build up astonishingly detailed mental maps of the deep oceans.
37:35Together with their long-range sonar, they are phenomenal navigators.
37:43The search for food never ends.
37:50In one lifetime, they will travel over half a million kilometers.
37:59The bottom here is too deep to hunt.
38:02So the mother is searching for changes in the water currents that will lead her to food.
38:07They are invisible to human eyes.
38:16But a sperm whale can sense the change in temperature.
38:26Where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream rub along the cold still waters of the Atlantic,
38:31an ocean front is created.
38:37Huge eddies form, called gyres, which can grow to many kilometers across.
38:43The upwelling draws nutrients towards the surface, creating blooms of plankton,
39:00sparking off a temporary island of life.
39:02First on the scene, fish gather in massive shoals.
39:10They, in turn, attract the blue water hunters.
39:12Bait balls are corralled by dolphin and marlin.
39:30Shark and tuna.
39:32It's a busy oasis in an otherwise empty stretch of ocean.
39:45In the depths, squid get lured up towards the action above them.
39:54It's a niche only the whales can cash in on.
40:02But not all the predators are below the water.
40:16In the 1930s, steam-powered whalers are state-of-the-art hunting machines.
40:36For over a century, the sperm whale has been the most valuable of all the whales.
40:41Over a third of the whales' volume is oil.
40:47Its famous nose carries 150 gallons of it.
40:51It's used to lubricate delicate machinery.
40:54And to the whalers, it's literally worth its weight in gold.
41:11To find their quarry, they've also learned to read the movements of the ocean.
41:20Like the whales, they know that an abrupt change in sea temperature is a clue to an ocean front.
41:29Find the front, and you'll find fish.
41:32Find fish, and there's a good chance you'll find whales.
41:36They're not far behind the pod now.
41:42But unknown to them, they are in turn being chased.
41:53Fed on the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the storm has been growing.
41:57As the moist, warm air rises, cooler air is sucked in.
42:03The more water that is drawn up, the more powerful the storm becomes.
42:08The rotation of the earth causes the clouds to twist,
42:11and the familiar shape of a hurricane has started to form.
42:27300 kilometres to the north, the whales have arrived above a spectacular canyon system
42:35that cuts across the mid-Atlantic ridge.
42:38The Charlie Gibbs Fracture Zone.
42:45Here, halfway between Iceland and the Azores,
42:48two massive fractures funnel deep ocean currents in different directions.
42:57The amount of flow through here is the equivalent to all the rivers on Earth.
43:07It's one of the most abundant deep-sea worlds in the Atlantic.
43:13The adults waste no time in diving down.
43:28But the young bull stays on the surface to prepare himself.
43:34This will be the deepest dive of his life.
43:46Thirty minutes down, and his mother has made it to the edge of the Fracture Zone.
43:50Some of these trenches are three times deeper than the Grand Canyon.
43:59It will take all her skills to navigate these dark passages.
44:12It will take all her skills to navigate these dark passages.
44:30Below a depth of two kilometres, only about five per cent of the creatures are known to us.
44:35But they are all potential prey for a whale.
45:05A wreck fish is also attracted by the life that clings to the canyon wall.
45:12These deep water scavengers grow to over a meter.
45:22But the sperm whale is not the only giant predator down here.
45:35The giant squid is the stuff of legend.
45:41A lacerating beak feeds prey down a throat that travels directly through its brain.
45:48Coordinating eight arms with precision takes one of the most advanced nervous systems in the world.
45:55Giant squid are never seen on the surface alive.
45:59In the deep, these solitary creatures are not as rare as we once thought.
46:05The young bull has finally made it to the canyon, but he's at the limits of his endurance.
46:18He will stay near the top of the ridge, just where the giant squid likes to forage.
46:35The adults have already returned to the surface, parking up for a snooze after their big meal.
46:48Their giant nose causes them to float upright, allowing the blowhole to sit just above the surface.
46:54Deep below, the young bull is still hunting through the labyrinth of canyons.
47:11He's spotted a shape in the murk.
47:21It's bigger than anything he's eaten before.
47:23The squid can feel the whale's sonar, but has no way of locating its directions.
47:32The whale needs an element of surprise.
47:37But a sudden flash from a shoal of bioluminescent shrimp gives him away.
47:48The great battle begins.
48:02On the surface, the pod is unaware of the plight of the teenager below them.
48:06If not handled right, a giant squid can inflict real injuries on a young whale.
48:17Suddenly, they're in mortal danger too.
48:20On the surface, they're in danger too.
48:21On the surface, they're in danger too.
48:50The whales instinctively dive, but they've not prepared their bodies to go deep.
49:11They can stay under for no more than ten minutes.
49:15The trap has been sprung.
49:20Deep below, the squid is wrapped around his head.
49:25Serrated suckers cut into his skin.
49:39And he's running low on oxygen.
49:42The adults are also running out of breath.
49:51The adults are also running out of breath.
49:53The Earth is watering.
50:04The surface is a good idea.
50:06The rats hatch out of breath.
50:08The sailors show up as animals.
50:10The Buddha is having chegar to death.
50:13The six of the participate in a gearing plan.
50:16The dragon's Entscheidung.
50:19The one of the fishes.
50:21As a young bull heads for the surface, the squid momentarily releases its grip, and the whale seizes his chance.
50:45But the writhing mass of tentacles is still alive. The whale needs to kill it inside his stomach.
50:51Sucking the squid down into his throat, powerful muscles squeeze the life out of the squid.
51:06The biggest predator on the planet has triumphed over one of the greatest monsters of the deep.
51:16But he does not know the storm that awaits him on the surface.
51:21This is with a
51:28rage talking.
51:29BELL RINGS
51:59As the whalers set out for home, the power of the oceans is about to be unleashed.
52:29120 kilometers an hour winds whip up 20 meter waves.
52:42120 kilometers an hour winds whip up 20 meters.
53:00When these waves hit currents moving in the opposite direction, they're magnified into seven-story peaks.
53:07If the boats get caught side-on, they'll capsize.
53:18Both ships must head directly into the waves.
53:30The bull snatches a much-needed gulp of air.
53:40The power of the storm can still be heard to depths of over 500 meters, and the noise creates a cacophony.
53:49If the swell is big enough,
54:15even a hundred-foot boat will fall down the side of the wave.
54:26Once side-on, the end is all too quick.
54:30THE BELL RINGS
54:42THE BELL RINGS
54:54THE BELL RINGS
55:06THE BELL RINGS
55:08THE BELL RINGS
55:10THE BELL RINGS
55:26THE BELL RINGS
55:28THE BELL RINGS
55:30THE BELL RINGS
55:32If a body is held deeper than 70 meters, it will never return to the surface.
55:54The abyss claims all who come this close.
56:02In the calm after the storm, it's hard to appreciate the fiendish strength of what has been and gone.
56:13It's ripped across all current boundaries, the low pressure mixing up parts of the ocean that do not usually have any disturbance from below.
56:23It's traveled through the oceans like a forest fire, destructive and awful.
56:29But the turmoil will stimulate new life.
56:36In a matter of months, powerful urges would have driven the teenage bull to leave his family.
56:43But not like this.
56:46He is prematurely alone.
56:50And the biggest brain in the animal kingdom cannot be unaffected.
56:55This orphan is yet to become king of the deep.
57:05Next week, we find out how the whale survives the most perilous deep-sea landscapes of them all.
57:23And these aren't the only dangers he'll face.
57:27As time moves on, his world is changing.
57:31As time moves on, his world is changing.
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