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Earth's Greatest Spectacles
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AnimalsTranscript
00:02Our planet is a place of constant change.
00:08Each year, the seasons shift and life is transformed.
00:15But there are places where the changes are so epic in scale.
00:19They can be seen from space.
00:23In this series, we reveal three of the most miraculous transformations.
00:29The islands of Svalbard. Within a few weeks, frozen wastelands burst into life.
00:38The African Okavango. A desert transforms into a magical water world.
00:46And the mysterious forests of New England, erupting in a blaze of seasonal colour.
00:55Life finds the most ingenious and surprising ways to thrive.
01:01In the world's fastest changing landscapes.
01:20Svalbard. A frozen ice world. Lying far beyond the northern tip of Norway.
01:29A lonely group of islands. Almost at the top of the world.
01:40For four months, because of the tilt of the earth, Svalbard is cloaked in darkness.
01:47Hidden from the life-giving light of the sun.
01:57But every year, a miracle happens here.
02:04As the sun returns, Svalbard undergoes an extraordinary transformation.
02:16From perpetual darkness to perpetual light.
02:21From frozen ice world to land of vibrant life.
02:29This is the story of how life survives one of the planet's most extreme changes.
03:02The Svalbard winter.
03:06A night that lasts for months.
03:12Without the sun's light, nothing can grow.
03:17And ferocious winds are dragging temperatures to minus 40 and below.
03:27How can anything survive here?
03:39One animal is in its element.
03:46A polar bear has been sleeping peacefully through the storm.
03:54Its unique coat reflects heat back into its body, just like a survival blanket.
04:01So it is quite comfortable even at minus 40.
04:15And remarkably, for the polar bear, these are relatively good times.
04:24The sea ice is at its maximum.
04:28Connecting the islands of Svalbard to the whole of the Arctic.
04:34So the bear can stride out over the frozen ocean.
04:39Its prey right beneath its feet.
04:54A ringed seal.
04:58Just a meter beneath the bear, but protected by the ice.
05:05Until it needs to breathe.
05:09The seal scrapes out a network of breathing holes dotted about the ice.
05:17It can hold its breath for 45 minutes.
05:22But then it must come up for air.
05:29The trick for the polar bear is guessing where it will appear next.
05:43But it only needs to catch one seal a week.
05:47And it is very patient.
05:55Bears can wait at a single hole for days.
06:08Only a handful of animals are tough enough to survive the winter here.
06:19The Svalbard reindeer is the world's most northerly herbivore.
06:25And that's a challenge when the land is locked in ice.
06:34They survive partly off their summer fat reserves.
06:39Losing up to half their body weight during winter.
06:44But they do need to eat.
06:49With their sharp hooves, they chisel through the crust of ice.
06:54And then literally chew the rocks.
06:57Scraping off the coating of frozen moss and lichen.
07:08But after just seven or eight winters, their teeth start to wear out.
07:17And that's when many struggle to make it.
07:30When winter claims one life, another is quick to profit.
07:39An arctic fox.
07:44It scavenges its way through the winter.
07:47Visiting frozen carcasses like this.
07:50And following polar bears to feed on their leftovers.
08:05And this is the only bird to overwinter in Svalbard.
08:12The ptarmigan.
08:14A relative of the grouse, but tougher.
08:20Like the reindeer, they pack on extra fat in the autumn.
08:24But not for energy.
08:27For insulation.
08:29So they are 50% heavier in the winter.
08:35But now, they're too fat to fly any distance.
08:41On feathered feet, they scuttle across the tundra.
08:44Seeking out the tiniest shoots of plants lying dormant in the frozen ground.
09:04For everything but the polar bear, such conditions are hard to endure.
09:15For the first explorers who came here from Europe 400 years ago,
09:21this Svalbard winter felt like an eternity.
09:26They must have wondered whether the sun would ever return.
09:32For many, it never did.
09:40But there is light here.
09:44When the moon rises, it can stay up for a week.
09:56And every so often, the solar wind coming from the other side of the planet,
10:02collides with the Earth's magnetic field, creating magical colors in the Arctic sky.
10:13Aurora Borealis.
10:15The Northern Lights.
10:30The Northern Lights.
10:37It's now mid-February.
10:39And after four long months, the sun finally returns.
11:02At first, the sun is only up for an hour at a time, so it brings little warmth.
11:09But it signals the beginning of Svalbard's miraculous transformation.
11:14The Northern Lights.
11:27The Northern Lights Back
11:43As the sun's light reaches out across the landscape, the true nature of this extraordinary
11:50wilderness is revealed. Beautiful, but brutal. Vast glaciers flow from lonely peaks, pulverizing
12:06mountains and bulldozing their remains to the frozen sea. There are no forests or woodlands.
12:21But surprisingly, the same titanic forces that make this place so inhospitable have also
12:28drawn people here. Coal, brought right to the surface by the scouring of Svalbard's glaciers.
12:42A source of great wealth for those who can survive here long enough to get it.
12:51Svalbard belongs to Norway today, but in the past many nations came to exploit its rich
12:57coal deposits, including Soviet Russia. But one grand scheme after another succumbed to
13:07this frozen land. This is Pyramiden. Once home to over a thousand people, now a ghost town.
13:35Inside these buildings, Russian workers lived with their families. But today, it all lies
13:45abandoned. The plan was to give the people of Pyramiden everything they needed to survive here through
13:59the long, dark winter. Including the world's northernmost piano. But it couldn't last. These mines were never profitable. The cost
14:23of survival here at the frozen ends of the earth was just too great.
14:30Today, Arctic foxes roam the streets where people tried to tame the Svalbard winter.
15:03Mid-March. The days have been getting dramatically longer.
15:09Only four weeks since the sun's return and there are already 12 hours of sunlight every day.
15:19Though temperatures are still well below freezing, the sun's energy is now strong enough to trigger a chain of events
15:27fundamental to life in Svalbard. Under the sea ice.
15:42These strange colours are caused by ice algae. It lays dormant all winter, frozen into the fabric of the ice.
16:05Just like a plant. It has the power to turn the sun's energy into food.
16:16As the sunlight starts to penetrate the ice, it energises the algae's green cells.
16:34The switch is flicked.
16:38The switch is flicked.
16:51Copepods.
16:52Copepods.
16:53Just a couple of millimetres long. They may look unimportant. But they hold a key to life here.
17:04They've been waiting to gorge themselves on ice algae.
17:14Very soon they are chomping away in their millions.
17:20Now, they take the sun's energy from the algae and concentrate it into a clear drop of fatty oil, which
17:29they store in a sack inside their bodies.
17:34Bottled arctic sunshine.
17:43For now, all that energy is locked away beneath the sea ice.
17:51But not for long.
18:05The intensifying sun heats from above.
18:09The warming water melts from below.
18:18It's April, and the door to Svalbard's rich waters is opening.
18:39It starts slowly at first.
18:43The silence of winter broken by the distant calls of seabirds.
18:52But quickly, their numbers build.
19:09Guillemots.
19:10Little auks.
19:13Eider ducks.
19:16Around six million birds return to Svalbard every spring.
19:23Traveling many thousands of kilometres from their winter homes in Europe.
19:28Timing their arrival for just this moment.
19:34Right away, they start to refuel.
19:38Diving into arctic water to feast on the oil-rich copepods.
19:44And beneath them, other life is stirring.
19:49Vast shoals of fish now come for the copepods' bottled sunshine.
19:55And in turn, become food for more birds.
20:03The light in the strengthening sun has kick-started spring.
20:14When the birds first reach their nesting cliffs, they find them covered in ice.
20:23It's still bitterly cold here, but they need to stake their claim early.
20:29Very soon, there will be no more space available.
20:35And they've got less than four months to raise their chicks before they'll have to be off again.
20:41So immediately, they get straight on with the business of breeding.
20:48They don't have the luxury of time.
20:59It's now the middle of April.
21:02And Svalbard's transformation is moving into a whole new phase.
21:10As the earth travels further around the sun, spinning on its axis once every 24 hours, Svalbard now moves into
21:21permanent day.
21:33Welcome to the land of the midnight sun.
21:45Now that the sun is shining all the time, it starts to have an impact on the land.
21:57Under the snow, small plants are already absorbing the sun's light.
22:03As they warm up, they start to melt themselves out of their icy prison.
22:10The summer is short, and it pays to get a head start.
22:20One strange plant has taken this trick to an extreme.
22:27This is the compass plant, one of the great survivors of the Svalbard tundra.
22:33It can live for over 300 years.
22:40Its success is down to a secret weapon.
22:44A central heating system.
22:47The spongy dome catches the sun around the clock, absorbing its energy.
22:56Though the air temperature is still hovering around freezing,
23:00the inside of the dome can rise to 30 degrees Celsius.
23:09But it doesn't heat up evenly.
23:14As the sun circles the horizon, its intensity varies.
23:21The south side of the plant gets much more warmth than the north.
23:27So when the flowers come, they erupt in sync with the sun.
23:34From south to north.
23:39It was the early explorers who first noticed this,
23:43and used the strange plant to help find their way.
23:49Just like a compass.
23:59As the snow melts further, it reveals a pile of old mining carts.
24:08For plants that don't have their own central heating,
24:11the carts offer shelter from the biting wind.
24:27A tiny walled garden, where spring can really start to take hold.
24:49And as the sun's warmth increases further, the whole tundra starts to bloom.
25:08By the end of May, a greener Svalbard is emerging from the ice.
25:23After such a long wait, for Svalbard's animals, the arrival of spring is miraculous.
25:41The reindeer desperately need the grass that the melt is uncovering.
25:48But at first they seem a little unsure of this new green world.
25:56They still have their thick winter coats.
26:01As temperatures rise, it's getting a little hot for them.
26:07So whenever they can, they take a break from eating,
26:11and settle down on the remaining islands of cool snow.
26:22It's the latest arrivals who first really take advantage of the opportunities here.
26:33Barnacle geese.
26:35They've come all the way from Scotland, where they spent the winter.
26:43As the tundra is revealed, it offers an untapped source of rich energy,
26:50worth coming over 2,000 kilometres for.
27:00This little bird is a snow bunting.
27:07He too has come far, all the way from Russia.
27:13And this is the object of his affection.
27:18Together, they have set up home in an abandoned miner's cabin.
27:31In the middle of a whale vertebra, hanging on the wall, is a cosy nest.
27:36And in that, a ball of soft reindeer fluff, ready to nestle tiny eggs.
27:45Now they are here, they are the northernmost songbirds in the world.
27:52And theirs is the song of Svalbard's spring.
28:06As the Arctic fox trots out of winter,
28:10she sheds her coat quickly to avoid overheating.
28:15She has a lot to do.
28:20Foxes are nomadic in the winter,
28:23but now the race is on to establish her summer breeding territory.
28:34She even rolls up a ball of her fur,
28:38adding a dash of urine to help signpost her patch.
28:46And every so often, she makes time to meet up with her mate.
28:52They got together in the middle of the winter.
28:56Very soon, she'll be giving birth.
29:00And then, she will have just 90 days to raise her family.
29:15It's now already June.
29:19And off the coast of Svalbard, the sea ice is breaking up fast.
29:47The polar bear's world is changing.
29:50The polar bear's world is changing.
29:58Though a polar bear can smell a seal from over a kilometre away,
30:02in this constantly moving landscape,
30:05it's much harder to track it down.
30:19It must take to the water to navigate through the drifting maze of ice.
30:34Bears are excellent swimmers.
30:36But no match for a seal.
30:44Life is getting harder.
30:47As the ice cover falls below a critical 50%,
30:52the bear spends more energy catching seals
30:55than he gets from eating them.
31:07While the breaking ice makes life more difficult for the bear,
31:11it allows Svalbard's heaviest resident to access the land.
31:24Walruses.
31:26At one and a half tons, they can be three times the weight of a polar bear.
31:33After spending the winter at the edge of the sea ice,
31:36they now return to Svalbard's shores.
31:40They haul out on their favourite beaches for the first time since last autumn.
31:47Both males and females have tusks.
31:51Some over a metre long.
31:54The bigger the tusks, the more important you are.
31:59They're also a good defence against polar bears.
32:04And useful props for a heavy head.
32:16It's their handsome whiskers and extraordinary mouths that are their most important assets.
32:24But they don't come into their own until they go out foraging.
32:31And they're in no hurry.
32:35Walrus siestas can last a week.
32:53When they finally decide to go for a swim,
32:57there are some novel ways of getting all that way down to the water.
33:32Once they're in, their strange features begin to make sense.
33:39The giant body becomes weightless.
33:42With just its nose on the seabed,
33:45it blasts away the mud with high-pressure jets of water forced through its nostrils,
33:51feeling around with its 500 highly sensitive whiskers for its favourite food.
33:58Clams.
34:00It just loves clams.
34:16When it finds the clams, it sucks the flesh right out of them with its unique vacuum mouth.
34:26A walrus can consume over 1,000 clams a day without eating a single shell.
34:42But these extraordinary animals have only recently been making a comeback.
34:50Not long ago, they were brought to the brink of extinction.
34:59Just beyond their beach are strange lumps of what appears to be concrete.
35:12In the middle of these rings were once great cauldrons in which the blubber from Svalbard's sea creatures was melted
35:20down into precious oil.
35:25Year after year, as the oil spilled over,
35:29it congealed with the surrounding sand and set into stone.
35:40Nearby is the evidence of the scale of this destruction.
35:48The bones of thousands of beluga whales.
36:00Long before it was known for its coal, Svalbard was one of the places to hunt whales and walruses.
36:14Their oil once lit the lamps and lubricated the machinery of industrial Europe.
36:23For 300 years the slaughter continued until there was almost nothing left to kill.
36:39But it took its toll on humans too.
36:44As the ground repeatedly freezes, then thaws every year.
36:49Anything buried is pushed to the surface.
36:58A whaler's grave.
37:09Though the promise of wealth and adventure drew many to these remote whaling stations.
37:15Life expectancy was so short, you even had to bring your own coffin.
37:22Tells us about the
37:49The great fjords that cut right into the mountains are free of sea ice.
37:54And the summer heat kick-starts another chain of events that benefits life here.
38:02For so long, the land and sea were united by ice.
38:08Now, open water laps against the faces of Svalbard's great glaciers.
38:24Behind the face, the glacier stretches into the distant mountains.
38:32Billions of tons of ice pushing down towards the coast.
38:39As the sun starts to melt the ice on the glacier's surface, water funnels downwards and lubricates
38:47the junction between rock and ice under the immense weight of the glacier.
38:56For some glaciers, the pressure gets too much.
39:01They start to accelerate.
39:06Svalbard's glaciers are unusual.
39:10Many remain motionless for years and then suddenly take off.
39:19These surging glaciers are some of the fastest on Earth, especially when summer meltwater
39:26lubricates them.
39:28They can reach speeds of up to 25 meters per day.
39:43At the face, the colossal weight of ice pushes from behind.
39:49While below, the warming sea erodes the base.
39:54Something has to give.
39:57Elizabeth.
40:00No!
40:01No!
40:02No!
40:03No!
40:05No!
40:17No!
40:20It's just like a huge peak!
40:21This starts to get upon me.
40:21Let's go.
40:54But this is not just a destructive force.
40:58Where the glacier meets the sea, it enhances life.
41:07In spite of the danger, kitty wakes and gulls are flocking in their thousands to the ice front.
41:15Right in the impact zone, they start to feed.
41:27Where the meltwater flowing under the glacier reaches the sea, it billows upwards right in front of the falling ice.
41:41As this plume of freezing water rises, it stuns tiny plankton and brings them to the surface.
41:54A microscopic feast.
41:57So rich it's worth risking your life for.
42:04But you've got to keep your wits about you.
42:34So you've got to look for it.
42:39It's not only birds that come here, beluga whales, young calves that don't yet have
42:50the white colour of adults.
42:56They swim in their family pods, feeding on fish that in turn eat the plankton at the
43:02foot of the ice cliff.
43:06Though the years of whaling almost wiped them out, in 1961 they were finally given protection.
43:16Today, they are becoming a much more common sight, especially where the glaciers meet
43:23the sea.
43:38By midsummer, there is more life on Svalbard than at any other time of the year.
43:44The bird cliffs are now at full capacity.
43:48Every ledge is taken.
43:53The chicks hatched three weeks ago and the race is now on to feed them fast enough.
43:59In just three more weeks, they must be out of here.
44:10Down below, the tundra too is alive with new life.
44:40The reindeer have finally got their cool summer coats and the
44:45males are sporting impressive new antlers.
44:56The fox couple are busier than ever.
45:00They have had six pups and the pressure is on to feed them.
45:06They will need to be fully grown in less than a month.
45:14Arctic fox cubs don't like to share food.
45:18When the winter comes, they will be completely on their own, so they need to learn to fend
45:23for themselves right from the start.
45:35But for the parents, now is the crunch time.
45:40As they work 24 hours a day, making many thousands of journeys to the den with food, they become
45:48exhausted, using up more energy than through the whole of the winter.
46:01In the skies above, aerial traffic has reached fever pitch as the birds frantically try to
46:09keep up with the demands of their offspring.
46:14But as they shuttle back and forth, bringing food from the ocean to the cliffs, they do much
46:21more than feed their chicks.
46:31Some of the ocean's rich nutrients passes straight through the birds.
46:43As all that fertilizer is washed down from the bird cliffs, it has a profound effect on the
46:50land below.
46:56The grass that now fattens up the reindeer for winter.
47:00The soil that nourishes the plants.
47:03The richness of Svalbard's land ultimately comes from the sea.
47:20It's now late July, and the last of Svalbard's summer visitors are only just settling in.
47:29Arctic terns have come all the way from the other end of the earth, from Antarctica, the
47:36longest migration of any animal, over 30,000 kilometres.
47:44But in three weeks, they'll have to fly all the way back again.
47:51And their chicks have only just hatched.
47:55In only 21 days' time, this ball of fluff will need to fly 30,000 kilometres.
48:09But it's well worth the parents travelling all this way.
48:18Svalbard's super-rich waters contain all the energy required.
48:24All they have to do is transport it from ocean to beak.
48:29Svalbard's too much.
48:34Svalbard's too many.
48:46Svalbard's.
49:06As the adults fish non-stop, sometimes they have to leave a chick on its own, and because
49:13its terns nest on the ground, that can make it vulnerable.
49:21The retreating sea ice has now forced Svalbard's largest predator onto the land, and it's coming
49:29this way.
49:33Now is the toughest time for polar bears.
49:38It loses a kilo of body weight for every day it spends on the land.
49:45The great ice bear turns scavenger, and he's starving.
50:15Not a good moment to break your cover.
50:38But the chick's cries for help have been heard.
50:46Terns may look dainty, but they are highly aggressive and totally fearless.
50:58Repeated attacks draw blood from the bear's sensitive nose.
51:09The Arctic's top predator, driven away by one of its smallest birds.
51:33As August arrives, Svalbard's transformation reaches its maximum extent.
51:42It's only a fleeting transition.
51:46By the end of the month, the sun will be setting again.
51:54The winter is just around the corner.
52:07But as Svalbard's yearly miracle prepares to come full circle, the summer sun helps trigger
52:14a final dramatic change.
52:19In the far northeast of Svalbard is a place where it always feels like winter.
52:27A massive ice cap, a frozen monster.
52:33Like a giant fridge, it cools this whole area of Svalbard.
52:38Only now, in late summer, does the sun start to have any effect here.
52:46On the surface of the ice, meltwater pools together and starts to flow.
53:16Where the ice cap meets the sea is one of the world's greatest wonders.
53:24The ice cliffs of Ostfana.
53:33For nearly 200 kilometers, they rise uninterrupted from the ocean.
53:52But recently, these cliffs have been changing.
53:59Something we can see most clearly from space.
54:07The very latest satellites can make precise measurements of ice thickness and speed of movement.
54:17What they reveal is astonishing.
54:24A massive tongue of ice, 50 kilometers long, is on the move.
54:32Sliding downwards from the center of the ice cap out into the ocean.
54:39A wall of ice advancing half a meter every hour.
54:47Four kilometers a year.
54:54It's thought that massive events like this are part of a natural surge cycle lasting several years.
55:02But no one knows what sets them off.
55:08The latest research suggests that summer meltwater penetrating the ice cap may be a trigger.
55:20Svalbard's ice world is incredibly delicately balanced.
55:32Just tiny rises in global temperatures could have profound effects on the whole seasonal cycle of life here.
55:51Today, as Svalbard heads for the winter once more, its future lies on a knife edge of just a few
56:00degrees.
56:20It's now the end of August and Svalbard is returning to the dark time.
56:30Svalbard's summer visitors must now leave.
56:36They've reaped the benefits of the rich summer.
56:40But if they stay here any longer, they'll die.
56:50As parents now force their young to take flight.
56:54Some before they're really ready.
57:00Foxes get a last feast before the lean time.
57:10Reindeer just keep on grazing.
57:14What they eat now decides whether they will make it through.
57:37Only one creature here welcomes the coming winter.
57:59As the sun drops below the horizon for the last time.
58:04As Svalbard moves back on to the dark side of the earth.
58:08The big change comes once more.
58:36In moments from now, Mr. Stephen Fry and his merry men are musing over the letter M.
58:42and QI next here on BBC Two.
58:44And we're rocking out over on BBC Four now as we follow the story of ACDC and their place in
58:50Aussie rock.
58:51Music .
58:55Music .
58:56Music .
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