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BRITCOM 4
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00:00Some creatures alive today almost feel like they belong to a prehistoric past.
00:16I once had a dream full of saber-toothed animals, saber-toothed cats, saber-toothed deer,
00:25saber-toothed salmon, and amongst those animals was a saber-toothed seal, the walrus.
00:37There's something about walrus, an animal we all recognize, yet one that few have ever
00:45seen.
00:47This is like a dream come true.
00:49It's unbelievable.
00:51Their lives revolve around sea ice, in ways we are only just beginning to understand.
00:57A lot of digging, not so many plants.
01:02As Arctic temperatures rise, I wonder how walruses will cope in an ice-free world.
01:09And how baby orphans like this one, will survive.
01:16I wonder how many animals are moving?
01:18I wonder how nice things are that they are.
01:19I wonder how many animals look like.
01:23If they are living, they have a bad example.
01:27I wonder how many animals are living in a life, or in the sky.
01:30I wonder how many animals are living in their life's lives and their lives?
01:33It's a good way.
01:34We shall not live.
01:35Would you like us to know such animals?
01:38I wonder how many animals do.
01:43I am
02:08You see anything Randy?
02:13It might take a little while to bump into something.
02:17Looking out across the last of the spring sea ice, I feel the fragility of the Arctic.
02:24I am a paleontologist and I oversee the world's largest natural history collection.
02:31A constant reminder that 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct.
02:37Now the Arctic is warming so rapidly, I am increasingly worried about the future of an animal close to my heart.
02:47The walrus.
02:49Think I have the little babies or something now?
02:53Yeah, they still got babies with them.
02:56I am desperate to see a walrus, but they can be very hard to find.
03:00I have seen them before, on land, but never on sea ice.
03:08Which turns into a giant jigsaw puzzle that breaks up in spring.
03:15Whoa!
03:17Got to watch out for those ice cubes.
03:19Although Randy and his two buddies, who are Alaskan natives, don't seem too fazed.
03:27You can hear them from miles away.
03:28Oh really?
03:29Yeah.
03:30Does it sound further than the smell?
03:32Yeah, you can hear them before you smell them.
03:35Before you smell them.
03:42I think I see a walrus.
03:44The mouse.
03:51You smell them now?
03:53Yeah.
03:55Please, thank you.
04:00I think there's like 50 of them up there.
04:02Oh really?
04:03Yeah, look at that.
04:04There they are.
04:13All right.
04:15Now we're talking.
04:27One thing I love about walrus is that they're very social animals.
04:31Herds of females, some with calves, huddle tightly together on ice floes.
04:40There's a pup over there.
04:41There's a little pup next to the mom.
04:49What a cute baby.
04:50A cute baby.
04:55Pups are born on the ice in spring.
04:58They rely on their mom's milk for up to two years.
05:03During this time they share an unbreakable bond.
05:06Check out these guys over there.
05:07A bunch of juveniles hanging out together with much smaller tusks.
05:24This is like a dream come true.
05:25It's unbelievable.
05:26Sitting out in the middle of the Bering Sea on a floating chunk of ice.
05:31These walrus make all sorts of cool sounds.
05:32And it's just an ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo.
05:44Sound which is kind of like that get off my little tiny piece of ice sound I think.
06:01There it is.
06:09It's kind of funny though because they love being really close together and piled on top of each other.
06:14But they hate it too.
06:15They're always pushing each other and going around with each other tusks and stuff like that.
06:19Little brothers and sisters fighting in a weird way.
06:22It's like there's all ice in the world and they're just fighting over a little piece of ice.
06:31Little baby walruses are very vulnerable to all this jostling.
06:35Some mothers protect them by spreading out on the ice flows.
06:42These islands of ice are their sanctuaries.
06:47It's kind of amazing paradise that the sea ice becomes a movable platform in which young families of walruses can move along.
06:56And it's like a whole fleet of little boats moving north.
06:59So if I was a walrus I could just lie down on this piece of ice and enjoy my life.
07:05And I'd just be motoring north where I wanted to go.
07:08Right below me on the bottom of the sea floor, plenty of clams, life is good.
07:12And it's a beautiful day in the Bering Sea.
07:15Sound!
07:16Sound!
07:17Sound!
07:22To survive on the sea ice the walrus pups stay very close to their moms.
07:27But occasionally, one turns up alone, sometimes in the strangest of places.
07:44Back in June of 2017, a couple of gold miners were working right off the coast of Nome,
07:50and they were surprised to find a little baby walrus hiding in a box on the deck.
07:54Such a cute little animal, about the size of a big, fat dog, and it didn't want to go anywhere.
08:00This mom was nowhere to be seen.
08:02They took a great video of this thing.
08:05Look at that guy.
08:06That is not a happy little walrus.
08:13He's just looking pretty sad.
08:15He's moving very slow.
08:16He's just kind of rubbing his muzzle against the barrel and like, what's going on?
08:22Looking for some walrus milk, it looks like.
08:24You can tell he's dehydrated.
08:28Cute little guy.
08:30But they did the right thing.
08:31The guys called the local authorities and transferred him down to the Sea Life Center in Seward, Alaska.
08:43The Alaska Sea Life Center is the only place in the country to take in baby walruses.
08:52Ten orphans have come through its doors since it opened in 1998.
08:57And now they have a new one.
09:00Come on, man.
09:02This one-week-old baby was discovered alone on a beach in the far north of Alaska in 2024.
09:16She's covered in scratches and puncture wounds, probably from rolling around on the rocky beach.
09:21She's a snotty-nosed kid.
09:33That's one way to get a sample.
09:35I'm pretty confident that this calf would not have made it.
09:42She was clearly alone for a period of time.
09:46She was already malnourished.
09:47But the biggest sigh of relief I have was her being good about taking food from a bottle.
09:58It makes a world of difference.
10:00It's a critical time for this baby walrus.
10:08Three of their previous orphans were so ill that they died.
10:16For me, the big question is whether this orphan's plight might be linked to changes in its arctic home.
10:23Most of the world's walrus, some 250,000 of them, live in the frigid seas between Russia and Alaska.
10:36Adults breed during the winter in areas of open water on the southern edge of the sea ice.
10:43As the ice begins to melt in spring, females and their calves drift north on their ice flows,
10:49through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic Ocean.
10:54The males stay south and head to land.
10:58One of their favorite spots is Round Island.
11:18Round Island is a remote, ethereal place I've always wanted to return to.
11:23I was last here in 1985.
11:30It's so amazing to be back here because these walruses stuck themselves in my mind like a mind worm or something like that.
11:37In my early 20s, I was working as a marine geologist investigating the feeding grounds of walrus.
11:47And it was here on Round Island where I had my first encounter.
11:51It was love at first sight.
11:56I wake up to a mysterious chiming.
12:07I wake up to a mysterious chiming.
12:21Almost like church bells.
12:25It feels like the walrus are welcoming me back to the island.
12:30A lot of these walrus do seem to be having kind of a social time with their friends.
12:46When two of them approach each other, they go right face-to-face and their little fuzzy muzzles come together, like kiss almost hello.
12:56Those whiskers are very tactile and very sensitive.
13:00They're actually feeling each other's face and I guess saying, hey, you're a walrus too, I'm a walrus, and who knows what other information they're transferring.
13:10Walruses make their chimes by moving air around sacks in their neck.
13:16Their air sacks also serve as life jackets, allowing them to take naps while at sea.
13:23So it's funny, it looks like a bunch of pinkish brown corks bobbing around a bunch of rocks.
13:29They look like they're dead, but they just sleep and you watch them for 10 to 15 minutes and finally they'll put their head up and blow a little bit of air out and take a breath and go back to sleeping.
13:46This is the oldest wildlife sanctuary in Alaska.
13:53When hunting was banned here in 1960, Round Island became a safe haven for walrus.
14:07Seabirds flock here in their tens of thousands to nest on the cliff faces.
14:14Check out this sweet little parakeet auklet.
14:21At the south end of the island, stellar sea lions cavort in the waves.
14:28Their bellies are full after feasting on herring.
14:33They are so much more frisky than their walrus cousins.
14:38They prefer to hang out on their own beach on the north side of the island.
14:45It's an amazing spot.
15:01We're on the edge of Round Island and looking out at this point and there's about 300 walruses hauled out on the beach sleeping together.
15:08For the next couple of months, these walruses will be doing what they're doing now, which is not a whole lot.
15:17And that's what Round Island is.
15:19A place for these males to chill, or rather warm up, after a strenuous winter breeding season.
15:25The spring break and summer vacation all rolled into one.
15:32This one right now actually is lying on his back with his tusks straight up in the air and his flippers out.
15:44It's a pretty non-stressful life for the walrus around Round Island.
15:48Wake up in the morning, go for a swim with a couple of your buddies, fall out on a rock, sleep some more.
15:53Go back to the beach, sleep some more. Life is good.
16:06When I was here last, almost 40 years ago, there were a lot more walruses on the beach.
16:12It makes me wonder why numbers are down today.
16:16During the spring and summer, two wardens live on Round Island and monitor walrus arrivals and departures.
16:27You guys are here for three and a half months by yourselves.
16:30Yeah.
16:31What's life on the island like?
16:32This is my personal happy place.
16:34I mean, you get to be on this remote island where there's not a lot of human activity, quiet.
16:40You can just be with your thoughts and surrounded by nature.
16:43It's really a sort of connection with a place and a natural place that it's easy to not have in our lives.
16:52And that's pretty magical.
16:54So you count the walruses every day?
16:56Yes.
16:57So there's nine beaches that we count every day, either as going in person or using cameras that we keep on the island that actually take pictures of all the haul outs.
17:08Over winter, Round Island is locked in by sea ice.
17:16But it quickly opens up to visitors after the spring thaw.
17:23We usually see the arrival of walruses here anything between starting as early as February or March.
17:29We start seeing our peak numbers like towards the end of July through potentially September.
17:34And what's a big count for you?
17:36Most years we'll have a bunch of days over a thousand and a few days that are two or three thousand.
17:46Watching walruses move all at once makes me think of them more like a single entity.
17:51One day they're here, and the next they're gone.
18:01Walrus come and go from Round Island every few days, sometimes to escape heavy surf, to feast on clams, and sometimes to visit a thermal spa on the nearby mainland.
18:12The black sand here absorbs energy from the sun and heats up as the day goes on.
18:25Just what's needed after a cold dip.
18:29The tightly packed huddle keeps them all warm.
18:43But newcomers aren't always welcome.
18:50The strange lumps around big males' necks helps protect them from tuskings by rival males.
18:57They're called bosses and are a sign of maturity, like a lion's mane.
19:04The older the walrus, the bossier it gets.
19:10Those bosses, the lady walruses, think that they're sexy.
19:15I've heard it's good eating.
19:16Really?
19:17It's like gristle.
19:19It's like crackling.
19:20Like pig skin.
19:22One thing our position here on the island all summer has allowed us to observe is the way sounds can cause disturbance.
19:33When you're sitting up there counting and you hear a commercial jet go over, you can see sometimes it will cause a stampede or a disturbance.
19:40They have really poor eyesight so they rely heavily on what the rest of the herd is doing.
19:53Sounds, airplanes, gunshots, boats, bears, foxes.
19:59There's a lot of little things even if it's nothing, a rock falling, it can cause thousands of walruses to flee to the water and it's the older animals and the younger ones that get trampled and killed or injured.
20:14Baby walrus avoid being crushed by living on the sea ice with their moms.
20:30This one ended up on a beach, separated from its mother.
20:34Here we go.
20:37After a few days rehab at the Alaska Sea Life Center, Little Miss Walrus, as she's being called, seems to be doing well.
20:45Three, two, one.
20:49They do a sneaky x-ray while she feeds.
20:52Three, two, one.
20:55Fortunately, there's no broken bones.
20:57The most challenging part of this calf's rehabilitation is just the unknown.
21:06These are very young, very sensitive animals and we don't know at any point could she get sick for a reason.
21:13Good job, you're doing so quick.
21:15You get to have fun if you want to have fun.
21:21Like most babies, Little Miss Walrus should enjoy a bath.
21:24All she could do at that moment in time was just put her head in because she was just so tired.
21:34But the fact that we're able to introduce her to water and the fact that she took to it right away.
21:41Just seeing her really explore and really love that water was really heartwarming.
21:48Oh, thank you.
21:49Baby Walrus need round-the-clock care and there's no shortage of volunteers flying in to help.
21:59We are a lot of moms.
22:01She has about 10 or 12 different moms.
22:06It's also just giving her the kind of social experience.
22:11We're actually sitting with her and getting her that close contact that she would need.
22:15We can tell already she's a fighter and that's what you need when you have an animal that you're rescuing and rehabilitating is they've got to put in some of the effort themselves too.
22:30And we're giving her everything that we can and she's actually responding to it.
22:34And that's amazing.
22:35Little Miss Walrus has become highly dependent on her surrogate moms.
22:43She can never be released back into the wild.
22:46She would not survive.
22:50Instead, she will be moved to a much larger sea life center where hopefully she'll make friends with other walruses.
22:57Dozer!
23:00Hi, buddy!
23:04Dozer is a sight to behold.
23:10A 3,500-pound adult male in his prime.
23:14All right.
23:16He was born at SeaWorld San Diego and is now 31 years old.
23:19We just celebrated his birthday with tons of clams and a large frozen ice cake.
23:26Do you want to give him a fish?
23:27Yeah, hell yeah.
23:28All right.
23:29There you go.
23:30All right, Dozer.
23:32Super easy.
23:33Don't take my job, okay?
23:37His breath isn't bad, actually.
23:39I thought he had awful breath.
23:41Their breath is not too bad.
23:42It's the other end thing, you know.
23:48Dozer has an impressive appetite and, like all walrus, is a virtuoso vocalist.
23:59There we go.
24:05Wow, that whistle is great.
24:07It's amazing, isn't it?
24:12It's only when you're this close to a fully grown walrus that you can really appreciate how big, weird, and wonderful these animals truly are.
24:23Bulbous eyes, which allow them to see behind their head.
24:27Giant saber-toothed tusks that can grow three feet long.
24:31And that great mustache.
24:34Packed with sensitive whiskers.
24:36The Vibrisi.
24:38They're using those whiskers to really comb the floor, find where their food is.
24:43They are very helpful tools.
24:45They can move them all independently.
24:47Just like 700 fingers right on the front of your face.
24:49So if you ever turn out the lights in your home and you're just feeling around, he's definitely good at doing that.
24:54Amazing.
24:55How much are you feeding him a day right now?
24:56Right now, about 125 pounds a day.
24:59That's a pretty healthy meal.
25:02Oh boy.
25:03Walrus will never go hungry here.
25:09But in the wild, it's a different story.
25:17So you guys all found your seatbelt?
25:20All right.
25:21With that, we'll be off.
25:26Wow, what a fabulous day to fly, man.
25:30This is gorgeous.
25:32Warmer summers may be making it harder for walrus to find enough food.
25:38I'm heading to a beach to dig deeper into their diet.
25:42What a beautiful spot this is.
25:45It's so glassy out here.
25:47It really is today.
25:49It's a perfect day for clamming.
25:52And who better to take me than Willie, who sports a mustache that any walrus would be proud of.
25:59There's a seal or two down there now.
26:01Wow, we're going to see a whole bunch of sea otters in the kelp on the backside of this island here.
26:05All right.
26:06Coming up on our left side.
26:07Oh my God, look at the ball.
26:09They're all waving at him.
26:10Low tide has exposed a seafood platter on the beach, and there are plenty of creatures looking to join the feast.
26:33Looks like he's got a little eel there.
26:40Good little guy, isn't he?
26:44The tricky thing about finding clams is they burrow deep to hide from predators.
26:58A lot of digging, not so many clams.
27:09Grizzly bears love clams too.
27:12They have the advantage of an incredible sense of smell.
27:19Fortunately, this one is too busy clamming to care about me.
27:28The fox is hoping for leftovers, but the bear is not happy to share.
27:45Ha ha ha.
27:46There we go.
27:48Look at that guy.
27:50This is what the bears are after.
27:52Big, fat, juicy clams.
27:53And when they get them, what they do is they actually press down and crack the shells and lick the clam meat out of the shells.
28:04And the bears go for clams during the low tides.
28:06And the walrus is going after clams that are in water depths of anywhere from a few feet to maybe 200 feet deep at them.
28:13And they go after them in a different way.
28:14People used to think that walrus use their tusks to dig for clams like bears use their claws.
28:29But we now know they use their tongue like a piston to squirt a powerful jet of water that blasts away the mud to expose the buried clams.
28:37And they use their super-sensitive whiskers to find their tasty treasure.
28:52So what the walrus does, it literally puts the clam in its lips.
28:57And then sucks.
28:59And the walrus sucks at least the siphon out of the clam and sometimes the entire clam body.
29:03Then they'll spit the empty shell back at the bottom of the sea floor and go for another clam.
29:08And some walruses, like the ones we saw on Round Island, can do something like 5,000 clams a day.
29:15So if you do a quick thumbnail calculation, there's around 250,000 walruses eating 5,000 clams each.
29:25That's well over a billion clams a day.
29:28It's hard to believe there could be so much life in this desolate ice world.
29:37But sea ice hides an incredible secret.
29:42Living on the underside of the ice are millions of microscopic organisms.
29:58Sea ice algae.
29:59They harness energy from the sun to grow, just like grass.
30:05The animals that graze here are tiny, shrimp-like creatures called amphipods.
30:23Predators then eat the amphipods and the food chain continues.
30:32Ice algae is also essential to life on the sea floor.
30:51When the ice melts, the algae sinks to the bottom and feeds other animals, including clams that walrus depend on.
31:00The Arctic is almost like going to a different planet.
31:10The same with the Antarctic.
31:11When you go to the polar regions, you experience things you just never see when you're in mid-latitudes.
31:16You see sun that doesn't set in the summer and doesn't rise in the winter.
31:23And yet there's these areas of incredibly high biological productivity and the life that you see in the Arctic,
31:30whether it's walruses or seals or whales or seabirds or caribou or moose.
31:35It's just like a remarkable place.
31:44Arctic terns chase the midnight sun their whole lives.
31:48They fly all the way from Antarctica to breed in Alaska, swapping one summer for another.
31:54The life cycle of sea ice is also driven by the sun.
32:07The cool thing about ice in the Arctic is that it takes a while to form, but it can go away very rapidly.
32:13The freeze up is a gradual thing and the thaw can be very abrupt.
32:22As the sea ice melts, it leaves behind a growing expanse of dark water that absorbs more energy from the sun.
32:30The warmer water melts the remaining ice even faster.
32:34And as Arctic summers become warmer, more and more sea ice is disappearing.
32:39It's been called the Arctic Death Spiral.
32:48It's kind of personal for me because when I came up here in 1982, there was a lot of sea ice.
32:55And now, 42 years later, we've lost a third of the summer sea ice.
33:00So just in my own personal memory of the Arctic, we've lost about a million square miles of summer ice.
33:06And you have to imagine that that's going to have some impact on the walrus.
33:21When I was doing my research back in the 80s, I was using side-scan sonar to locate walrus feeding grounds.
33:27These are on the shallow continental shelf that bridges Russia and Alaska.
33:34Here, the rich seafloor contains vast clam beds, a marine version of the Great Plains grasslands.
33:44Walrus mothers and calves depend on the moving sea ice to carry them over this rich source of food.
33:49But now, as the sea ice melts farther north, if they stay on their platforms, they will be carried beyond the continental shelf into deep water and deep trouble.
34:04The walrus is not going to dive 8,000 feet down to eat clams.
34:10It's just diving down 200 feet to eat clams.
34:13So once the ice is off the edge of the continental shelf, it's not a useful tool for the walrus.
34:19To survive, they must abandon their ice flows and head for land.
34:30And they do so in extraordinary numbers.
34:33Over 100,000 walrus gather on a single beach in the far northeast of Russia.
34:52It's the largest haul out in the world.
35:03In the past, far fewer came here.
35:15For many years, there were none at all.
35:19Today, finding an empty spot on the beach is a bit of a struggle.
35:33Females and calves make up over half the haul out.
35:37It's a far cry from their peaceful life on an ice flow.
35:45The biggest danger to a calf is being squashed by another walrus.
35:50Staying close to mom, ideally on top of her, is the safest place to be.
36:03But not everyone survives the crush.
36:13A new orphan.
36:15Another victim of a disappearing ice world.
36:18Few orphans are as lucky as little Miss Walrus.
36:35After a month at the Alaska Sea Life Center, things are looking up.
36:40Her skin's looking much better.
36:42Things are starting to heal.
36:43And she has energy.
36:45We now have what was a sick, weak animal becoming very animated.
36:52Since she arrived here, little Miss Walrus has put on 60 pounds.
36:57She's ready to make a bigger splash.
36:59She really likes to do this little throw yourself into the pool backwards thing.
37:12And the look on her face was just like, pure bliss.
37:27This orphan's rehabilitation is nearing its end.
37:29It's time to move her to a permanent home.
37:30There's only four facilities in the United States that house walruses.
37:46Ultimately, we all came into a consensus that SeaWorld Orlando would be the best place for her at this time.
37:51A big part of it is because they have the most walruses in human care.
38:00Transporting a baby walrus all the way across the continent is not an everyday occurrence.
38:05What do you even pack?
38:07Plenty of milk, for sure.
38:08Before she leaves Alaska, little Miss Walrus is given a new name.
38:17Uki is a shortened version of Ukiak, which means autumn in the language from the land she came from, which was the lands of the Inupiaq people.
38:27It just so happens, if you shorten that name a little bit into Uki, that means survivor.
38:34All right, let's get a bottle ready.
38:36Let's get her in the towel.
38:38Okay?
38:40Yeah, do it.
38:42She does what you mean.
38:46Yum.
38:48Yum.
38:50Okay.
38:52This is what we get.
38:53It's like part of the family and so it's going to be definitely sad like coming into work tomorrow and she's not going to be here.
39:10And I'm going to have to clean up all her toys.
39:13Bye, I love you.
39:17But it's for the best, like this is the best outcome for her.
39:20Like, she didn't have any chance on that beach.
39:24And so, we were giving her a second life.
39:28Back the trails, little girl.
39:30You know.
39:31Bye, sweet girl.
39:33Oh.
39:34For walrus in the wild, there's a mounting problem.
39:47As more and more walrus haul out on land, they quickly exhaust nearby clam beds.
39:53And without ice floes to carry them, females have to spend more time swimming to new feeding grounds.
40:11If they lose weight, it could lead to lower birth rates, smaller calves, and potentially even a population crash.
40:26A shortage of food also affects other animals that cruise these shores.
40:35When I first came to Alaska in the 1980s, it wasn't just walrus that I was studying.
40:49I was also studying gray whales.
40:51And the reason for that was that both of these animals are benthic feeders.
40:55They feed on the sediment in the seafloor.
41:05Gray whales are the only whales to feed this way.
41:08They aren't after clams, but amphipods and other crustaceans that live in the seafloor.
41:14They're eating by scooping up big sections of the seafloor, and they billow that sand and silt out of their mouths,
41:23leaving behind this great big plume of muddy water.
41:26And in their mouths, they retain the actual prey items.
41:37Gray whales migrate all the way from Mexico to feed in the same rich waters as walrus,
41:42making pit stops along the way, like here off Kodiak Island.
41:48This is a critical habitat area for gray whales.
41:51And before the unusual mortality events started in even the first couple of years,
41:56if we were standing here at this time of year, it would be like smokestacks going off.
42:00Whales everywhere.
42:01Just seeing all of the whales spouting.
42:06After a record low ice cover in the winter of 2017,
42:10large numbers of gray whales began stranding along their migratory route,
42:14including several on Kodiak Island.
42:17It's thought that around 5,000 whales died over four years.
42:22A population crash of 25%.
42:27It appears that many of them actually starved to death.
42:30We were able to do a blubber biopsy, basically, just to see the thickness of the blubber.
42:35It's really, really tough to cut through and is only about that thick.
42:38Wow.
42:39It should have been about like that.
42:40These are animals that would have been down to Baja and were headed back up to the Bering Sea.
42:43Exactly.
42:44And just couldn't make it.
42:45Yeah.
42:46Kind of like the long walk from food and they just ran out of food.
42:48They just ran out of gas and they couldn't quite make it.
42:51So insights from the gray whales will help us understand what's going on with the walrus instead?
42:55Quite possibly.
42:56And all of the change that's occurring ultimately have a huge impact and cause ripples throughout the entire ocean.
43:03How far these ripples will spread is uncertain.
43:16But ripple they will.
43:18Less sea ice means less sea ice algae.
43:22And less sea ice algae means an ecosystem starved of vital food.
43:33The intricate connections of life put all the animals that live here at risk, including our walrus.
43:52The most pessimistic climate models suggest that the Arctic could have a completely ice-free day as early as 2027.
44:01It's hard to imagine walrus surviving in an ice-free world.
44:21Unlike seals and sea lions who live both in cold and warm coastal waters, walrus only live in the Arctic.
44:28But if you go back in time far enough, walrus have a surprising history.
44:43I've come to visit an old friend.
44:46Tom's another big walrus fan.
44:49Hey, Kurt.
44:50How are you, man?
44:51There's one skull I wanted to show you, but I can't figure out where we put it.
44:56The embarrassment of riches problem.
44:59Although there's only one walrus species alive today, over the past 17 million years, there's been at least 20.
45:08The earliest had no tusks and looked more like a sea lion.
45:14Eventually, they took on a more recognizable form.
45:17I think I know where it is.
45:20Oh, that is amazing.
45:21Look at that.
45:22That's great.
45:23This is a skull of an adult, Thalaenictus tulivistensis, about 3.5 million years old, from here in the San Diego area.
45:33So what are we looking at?
45:35We've got the left tusk.
45:36Right.
45:37And here's the orbit.
45:38So the eye is there.
45:39This big hole here is where the nerves would come out to feed that mustache.
45:43Oh, well, all the whiskers, yeah.
45:46This is amazing because I can see some differences, but it really is a walrus with big tusks and clearly a suction feeder.
45:54Yeah, everything about it suggests that it's feeding like a modern walrus.
45:58So what's the difference?
46:00This animal that lived here in San Diego 3.5 million years ago was not living in any way with ice.
46:06So this was an animal that was adapted to warm waters here.
46:10That's pretty cool.
46:12This lineage lived very happily in a world with no ice at all.
46:16Anything we think about modern walruses, we have to put it in the context that there was an animal very like it living in San Diego 3.5 million years ago.
46:23And that changes the way I think about a walrus.
46:28Walrus in California?
46:30Who would have thought?
46:36Walrus evolved as warm water animals long before they made the Arctic their home.
46:41Perhaps within their DNA they retain some sort of resilience to survive in an ice-free world.
46:48But I really hope it doesn't come to that.
46:53I've come to check out Uki's new home.
47:04There are 12 walruses in aquariums across the United States.
47:09And half of them live here at SeaWorld Orlando.
47:13These are going to be Uki's new buddies.
47:27Uki's been kept away from the other walruses since she arrived here four months ago.
47:31And she seems happy as a clam.
47:38She's recently out of quarantine, which means she's finally accepting visitors.
47:45Hello.
47:46How's it going?
47:47Welcome.
47:48Very nice to see you.
47:49Come on, Uki.
47:50Come on.
47:51She's like an excitable little puppy that wants to follow me everywhere.
47:52Come on.
47:53Let's go, guys.
47:54Let's go.
47:55Yeah, that is so cute.
47:56Come on, Uki.
47:57Come on.
47:58There we go.
47:59Up and running.
48:02Ever since Uki was found alone on that beach, she's only ever had humans for company.
48:24So how is she going to react when she meets an adult walrus in the pool next door?
48:31Caboodle is a 21-year-old female.
48:38Her criss-cross tusks look a little menacing.
48:42Come on, Uki.
48:47Come on, Uki.
48:49Good job.
48:50Come on.
48:51Come on, Uki.
48:52Let's go around the corner.
48:55Oh, no.
49:08Introducing Uki to Caboodle has to be a carefully choreographed operation.
49:13Uki is still a vulnerable toddler.
49:14I don't know where to go.
49:15Here we go.
49:16Oh, yeah.
49:17You should go talk to Caboodle.
49:18I know you like me.
49:19Give Caboodle a talk.
49:20Yeah.
49:21Here we go.
49:22The best way to encourage walruses to bond?
49:36Over food, of course.
49:37She gets bottles that include fish fillets that are ground up and some clams that are ground
49:43up in the blender.
49:44Clam milkshake, basically.
49:45Yeah, it's good.
49:46Delicious.
49:47That's going to be your new surrogate mom there.
49:58Yeah.
49:59So that's what we're seeing mostly is lots of kisses and little, you know.
50:03It sounded like a kiss.
50:04Yeah.
50:05But just even being in here and listening to the other walruses is all part of the transition.
50:18Caboodle is the perfect mom for Uki.
50:22She's been a surrogate to a rescued orphan before.
50:28The bond between them will grow stronger by the day.
50:33But right now, Uki just wants to play.
50:40How could she come?
50:42She clearly is having a good time.
50:44Yeah.
50:45I think we have a bond.
50:46Me and Uki.
50:47That's good.
50:48I love a beautiful little walrus baby.
50:51Oh my god.
50:52How lovely is that?
50:53Okay.
50:56Uki will always feel at ease with people.
51:00Soon she'll be back with other walrus too.
51:05A life dependent on human care, but at least her future is secure.
51:10As sea ice diminishes more and more each year, the fate of walrus in the wild is increasingly uncertain.
51:29In the future, they will not just face a shortage of food and safe places to raise their pups.
51:50They will face a new threat.
51:59The more the Arctic Ocean opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness becomes vulnerable.
52:07Walrus evolved in an ice-free past.
52:17Let's hope they can survive in an ice-free future.
52:20You've been here in an ice-free mountain.
52:21So, at least...
52:34This isn't an ice-free one.
52:37You don't need to run away the other home at winter.
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