All language subtitles for The.Blue.Planet.S01E08.Coasts.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

The coast--

the frontier between land
and sea.

This is the most dynamic
of all the ocean habitats.

The challenge here
is to survive change--

extreme change.

Cape Douglas,
on the most westerly

of the Galapagos Islands,
totally unprotected

from the massive rollers
of the Pacific Ocean

and one of the roughest
coastlines in the world.

The marine iguanas
of the Galapagos

are the world's only
seagoing lizards.

Seaweed is all they eat,

but doing so
is a dangerous business.

The local crabs have become
specially flattened,

minimizing the effect
of the pounding waves,

and the iguanas have huge claws
to grip the rocks.

This seaweed really is
fast food.

There are only a few seconds
in which to grab a few mouthfuls

before the next breaker
comes pounding in.

Female iguanas feed
only on the exposed rocks,

but the males, which are larger,

swim and dive beneath
the surface to reach the weed.

They go as deep as 10 meters,
for there,

beyond the destructive reach
of the waves,

they find the best fronds.

Being cold-blooded,
they have to return to land

after about 10 minutes or so
to warm up again in the sun.

Finding food is not
the only challenge

for coastal residents.

These rocky shores are hardly
a safe place to lay their eggs,

and each year,
the marine iguanas

have to journey inland
to find a more suitable one.

The females lay their eggs
in burrows

and leave them there to hatch.

And to do that,
they need nice, soft sand.

Down at the water's edge,
it was easy to escape danger

in rocky crevices,

but up here, the females are
dangerously exposed.

A Galapagos hawk.

The lizards don't give up
without a struggle.

These hawks stay on the coast
all year,

but they are exceptional.

The majority of the birds
that frequent this frontier

spend most of their time
elsewhere

in or above the open ocean.

However, all seabirds
have to come to land

in order to lay their eggs.

And after spending
many lonely months

searching the ocean for food,

they have to re-establish
their social relationships.

Frigate birds display
and exchange nesting material.

Waved albatross dance.

The need to lay their egg
on firm ground

ties the albatross to the coast,

but parental responsibilities
are shared.

While one looks after the egg,
the other can go off to feed.

The need to breed
brings many different animals

to the coast each year
for a few weeks.

Male sea turtles spend
all their lives at sea,

but the females, like birds,

must come to land
to lay their eggs.

To do that,
green turtles that live

and feed off the coast of Brazil
swim 1,500 miles

to the tiny island of Ascension

that lies bang in the middle
of the Atlantic Ocean.

Exactly how they manage
to navigate with such accuracy

and find this tiny lump of rock

just seven miles wide
is a mystery.

But each year, up to
5,000 turtles manage to do so,

and then, close to the coast
of Ascension, they mate.

Traveling to and from Ascension
and nesting here

can take up to six months,

and throughout that entire time,
none of them feed at all.

After mating, a female has to
leave her natural element

and haul herself up onto land.

She does so at night,
laying about three or four times

at around 15-day intervals.

After that,

she then swims all the way back
to the seas off Brazil.

She returns to this very same
island throughout her life.

Remarkably,
all the world's sea turtles

return year after year

to just a few
traditional breeding sites.

Crab Island in Australia
is one of them.

This tiny,
two-mile-long crescent of sand

lying a few miles off
Queensland's northerly tip

provides nesting sites
for half the entire population

of one of the world's
rarest sea turtles.

Flatback turtles are large,
over a meter long,

but they have to be careful.

There are other giant reptiles
here, too--

saltwater crocodiles.

Every night throughout the year,

there are flatbacks
burying their eggs

all along this lonely stretch
of sand.

Let's begin.

My dog is one of us.

You and me, girl.

Home protection?
Hunting.

Out here,
most folks let things go.

I guess I'm not
most folks.

I want to live.

Are you prepared to kill?

Yes.

One of us is not
leaving this island.

You ready?

Nine weeks later,
and things are about to happen.

These eyes shining
in the darkness

belong to night herons.

As if from nowhere,

hundreds of birds suddenly
appear on the sand dunes.

Pelicans wait patiently.

Jabiru storks pace up and down.

Before long, they see
what they've been waiting for.

Because these turtles lay
their eggs throughout the year,

the hatchlings emerge
night after night

in a steady trickle
of beak-sized meals.

Pelicans' broad beaks allow them
to dig out the hatchlings

before the herons can spear them
on the surface.

The surf may be
hundreds of meters away,

and at least a third
of the tiny turtles

do not survive the journey.

And it's not just the birds
that take them.

Crocodiles, sharks,
and hungry fish

are all waiting in the shallows.

In fact, only one
in every hundred hatchlings

will survive to adulthood.

Another beach,
another continent,

and a very special night.

Here in Costa Rica,
there is a turtle

which has found a way
of reducing these dangers.

When ridleys turtles arrive
to lay their eggs,

they don't come in tens
or hundreds,

but in thousands.

Over the next six days,

around 400,000 females
will visit this beach.

At the peak time, 5,000
are coming and going each hour.

The beach gets so crowded

that they have to clamber
over one another

to find a bare patch of sand
where they can dig a nest hole.

Forty million eggs are laid
in these few days,

so these turtles ensure
that six weeks later,

when their hatchlings emerge,
it's not just a trickle.

It's a flood.

On some nights,

over two million hatchlings
race down to the sea together.

With so many appearing
simultaneously,

the predators are overwhelmed,

and most of the young turtles
reach the sea safely.

Leaving the sea
and emerging onto land

is hard enough for turtles.

It's even harder for fish.

Each year, for hundreds of miles
along the Newfoundland coast,

capelin throw themselves
onto the beaches.

At least a million tons of fish
floundering out of the water,

a real gift
for scavenging eagles and gulls.

Odd though it may seem
for a fish,

these capelin, like the turtles,

have also come out of the sea
to breed.

The males are trying to
fertilize the eggs

that the females are depositing
in the sand.

Like the ridleys turtles,

they have synchronized
their mass laying with the tide.

In a few days, it will be over.

Most of the capelin die,

but only after they've left
their eggs in the sand.

Other capelin populations
lay their eggs in the ocean,

so why do the Newfoundland fish
spawn on land?

It seems that eggs
deposited in the beach

may be safer from predators
and develop faster

than in colder waters
out to sea.

But wherever they do so,

the huge spawning shoals provide
the concentration of food

that seabirds need
when they assemble to breed.

This is Funk Island, 40 miles
off the coast of Newfoundland,

an isolated rock
crammed with breeding seabirds.

This was the last
breeding ground

for the flightless great auk,
sadly now extinct.

Today it's still the world's
largest guillemot colony.

Over a million of them share
the crowded island

with 250,000 gannets.

It's not the lack
of suitable sites

that causes the seabirds
to breed in such densities.

Here in the North Atlantic,
there's a wide choice

of empty coastline
that the birds could use.

The key factor limiting the size
and location of seabird colonies

seems to be the availability of
food in the surrounding ocean.

There are lots of hungry mouths
to feed

and a constant demand for fish.

Throughout the long summer days
at colonies like Funk,

there's a continual stream
of birds

heading out to the ocean
to find food

and returning with full crops
to feed their young.

Gannets will travel
up to 200 miles

from the colony
on a single foraging trip.

They're not fussy eaters

and will take everything
from tiny sand eels to herring.

Puffins, on the other hand,

are very particular
about what they eat,

and because they can only fly
short distances,

they only nest
where there's a good supply

of suitable food close by.

One such place
is the Sea of Okhotsk

in far eastern Russia.

This is the island of Talan.

Throughout the long
Arctic winter,

it's encircled by ice,
but as spring approaches,

that begins to break up,
and seabirds that have

spent the winter feeding out on
the open ocean far to the south

begin to return.

Its isolated position
and steep cliffs

make Talan a perfect
nesting site.

The tufted puffins arrive first.

These are the Pacific cousins

of our less spectacular
Atlantic species.

Horned puffins soon follow.

In all, 14 different species
return to Talan each spring,

and in just a few weeks,

the once-silent cliffs
come alive

to the calls of four million
breeding seabirds.

This is a multistory avian city.

Assembling in these
dense colonies

after having spent a largely
solitary life at sea

provides the birds
with the social stimulation

that is the key to coordinating
their breeding.

By nesting and laying together,

they ensure
that most of their chicks

will leave the nest
at exactly the same time.

Just like the turtles,

this is the way they spread
the impact of predators.

The world's largest eagle,
Steller's sea eagle,

a third as big again
as a golden.

Throughout the summer,

the eagles hunt
in Talan's crowded colonies.

Riding on the updrafts,

they patrol
the top of the cliffs,

looking out for any kittiwake

that ventures too far
from the rock face.

Suddenly, the huge eagle stoops

with the aerial agility
of a falcon.

Coordinated panic
among the kittiwakes

confuses their attacker.

But the eagle doesn't give up.

And it has got one.

As if from nowhere,

dense swarms of seabirds
suddenly arrive offshore.

They're spent the day feeding
far away,

where the sea ice
has already broken up.

They are crested auklets,
hardly bigger than starlings.

A million of them return
to Talan each year

to nest in its fields
of boulders.

For the hour before sunset,
the hillsides come alive

with huge flocks
of circling auklets.

They're nervous.

No one wants to be the first
to land.

Auklets are very social

when they're back together
at the coast.

One of the advantages
of nesting in such densities

may be the chance
to share information

on good feeding sites.

It also gives them
the opportunity to court.

But perhaps most importantly,
there is safety in numbers.

Ravens and peregrines circle
above the scree slope

every evening.

By taking off together,

the auklets hope to confuse
the predators.

Eventually,
their persistence pays off.

The birds that face
the greatest challenge

in coming to the coast to nest
are surely the penguins.

Unable to fly,
they have no alternative

but to brave the immense waves.

Most penguins live
in the southern oceans,

and they have to accept
being hurled about by the surf.

Whatever the weather,

the penguin parents have to
come back to feed their chicks.

A southern sea lion bull.

He knows the penguins always use

the same traditional
landing beach.

Having braved
the thundering surf,

the penguins have to make
a mad dash

across open rock
to get to their nests.

Despite his massive size
and a body adapted for swimming,

the bull chases the penguins

for 40 or 50 meters
across the rocks.

Having caught his penguin,

the sea lion carries it out
into deeper water, where,

by violently thrashing the
little body, he skins his meal.

The seas around the Falklands

are some of the roughest
in the world.

In spite of that,

the Southern Ocean is home
to millions of tiny seabirds

hardly bigger than swallows--
petrels.

Being so small,

they're very vulnerable
to the bad weather.

A severe storm
can blow them miles off course

and keep them away
from their nests for days.

But these birds have developed
a very effective solution

to that problem.

They lay a rather special egg.

Most birds' eggs left exposed
for even a few hours

will chill and never hatch.

But these eggs are different.

They can be left for
several days without incubation

and remain undamaged

while the parents struggle home
through the storm.

Prions have also
come up with a good way

to avoid most predators.

They never come back
to the coast until after dark.

These are thin-billed prions.

Their burrows honeycomb
this hillside in the Falklands.

It's deserted throughout
the daylight hours,

but as soon as it's dark

and difficult
for airborne predators to hunt,

the prions return.

As soon as they land, they call.

The problem, of course,

is finding your burrow
among all the others.

He's listening out
for his mate's call.

And down he goes.

The Alaskan coast.

It's spring, and the last of
the winter storms is subsiding.

The plankton in this sea
is in bloom again,

and just offshore, humpback
whales have returned to feed.

For these huge animals,

there's a real risk of
coming into such shallow water,

and each year, a good number
of them pay the price.

It's an ignominious ending
for an aging whale,

but so much flesh
will not go to waste.

A black bear emerges cautiously
from the woods.

Visitors to the coast
that don't come to breed

have usually come to scavenge.

A whole range
of different animals

have learned to exploit
the enormous quantity of food

that washes up every day
on coastlines around the world.

But, like so much at the coast,

the quantity of flotsam
and jetsam is unpredictable.

Nobody can rely on it alone.

This carcass even attracted
a shy pack of wolves,

only too happy
to anoint themselves

with the scent of rotting whale.

It was months before the
scavengers finally cleaned up

all the meat on this huge and
unpredictable gift from the sea.

Whales give birth
to their young at sea

and so can spend
their entire lives there.

Other marine mammals,

have to return each year to
their ancestral home on land.

The high Arctic.

Walruses spend nearly
all their lives at sea,

but each year
for just a few weeks,

they have to return
to the coast.

They seek out isolated beaches,

like this one on Round Island
in the far northern Pacific.

Suitable sites like this,
free from bears,

are so scarce that at times,
as many as 14,000 animals

will cram themselves
onto this one beach.

When they first emerge from
the sea, the walrus are white.

That's because,

being warm-blooded animals
living in very cold ocean,

they conserve heat by keeping
their blood concentrated

in the core of their bodies.

On land,
it's warm enough for them

to allow their outer
blood vessels to dilate,

and that turns their skin
from white to pink.

Now they can molt
the outer layers of their skin,

rubbing themselves
up against the rocks.

But more than anything else,
coming to land

brings the walrus relief
from having to spend energy

maintaining their body
temperature

in an icy-cold ocean.

Heat conservation, in fact,
may well be the primary reason

so many sea mammals are forced
to return to the land each year.

The world's coldest seas
are in Antarctica.

Each spring, half the world's
southern elephant seals

return to the island
of South Georgia.

Elephant seals have

particularly thick insulation
of blubber that keeps them warm.

For them, breeding is the only
reason to leave the sea.

With temperatures
down to minus 20

and 100-mile-an-hour winds,

it can't be comfortable
out on the beach.

But heat dissipates more rapidly
through water than through air,

so even in these conditions,
their young,

which at first don't have
a thick coat of blubber,

will be far warmer on the land.

Once the males are established
on the beach,

the females soon follow.

Within just 10 days,

the empty beach fills up
with 6,000 elephant seals.

Almost immediately,

the females give birth to pups
sired the previous year.

Their milk is very rich,

and the pups grow
astonishingly quickly.

In just three weeks,

they turn from thin bags of skin
to fat balls of blubber.

As soon as they've given birth,

the females become
sexually receptive again,

and it's now that
the advantages of breeding

in such dense colonies
become clear.

Females can make their choice
from many males,

while successful males can have
access to lots of females.

But to gain that access
and control a harem of females,

a bull must be prepared
to fight.

The larger the male,
the louder the roar,

and the more likely he is
to win.

When males are well matched,

these bloody battles will last
20 minutes or more.

Eventually, the loser
retreats into a stream,

already pink with his own blood.

These battles
certainly help females

select the strongest bulls,

but they bring great dangers
for the pups.

Each year in the denser parts
of the colony,

a fifth of the pups
are crushed to death.

This is why it may be better to
mate at the edge of the beach,

close to the sea.

Less-dominant males hide
in the surf.

They're waiting to try and steal
an illicit mating with females

as they come and go.

This male knows
that he's been spotted

by the big bull
who claims all the females

on this part of the beach.

Breeding in groups
can bring advantages to pups

as well as to adults.

Along the coast of Patagonia,

southern sea lions
breed together each year

in groups
several hundred strong.

For the growing pups,

these colonies act
rather like a school.

The bonds and relationships
developed here on the beach

may be vital
for the rest of their lives.

Sea lions
are very social animals,

and as adults and young
forage together,

they probably share information

about the location
of good feeding sites.

Conditions here
could hardly be better

for the growing youngsters.

As the tide goes out,

it leaves behind a selection
of sheltered pools...

...perfect places
for learning to swim.

At high tide,
it's easy for the pups to take

their first, experimental dips
in the surf.

A killer whale.

These young pups have never seen
anything like it before.

The whales, though,
are very experienced.

Each year, this same group
turns up along the coast

at precisely the same time as
the pups are starting to swim.

The whales need to surprise
the pups,

so they've stopped calling
to one another and keep silent.

Speed is everything.

The whales do not take pups
that are out of the water,

but sometimes their momentum
drives them right up the beach,

and then there's real danger
of getting stuck.

The whale has to thrash
in this frenzied way

to get off the beach.

Most of the pups
are taken into deep water

while they're still alive,

and there, the whales
apparently play with them.

Often, an adult whale is joined
in the game by a youngster.

It may be learning
how to grab a seal pup

before it risks a drive
up the beach.

Whatever the reason,
the seal pup, still alive,

is tossed back and forth
for over half an hour.

Even when the pup is dead,

the whales' sport
is not completely over.

We can only speculate
at the real reasons

behind this
extraordinary behavior.

But for the whales, the hunting
season is a short one.

Before long, the pups learn
to stay well clear of the water,

and the whales become less
and less successful.

After just two weeks,
they move on.

The killing season is over.

That's how it often happens
along the coast.

Things are always changing.

They're never the same for long

in this, the most dynamic
of all the ocean's habitats.