All language subtitles for The Blue Planet (2001) - S01E08 - Coasts (1080p BluRay x265 HEVC 10bit AAC 5.1 RCVR).en

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 Galapagos Island,

totally unprotected from
the massive rollers of the Pacific,

and one of the roughest coastlines
in the world.

The marine iguanas of the Galapagos

are the world's only
sea-going 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.

Females feed
only on the exposed rocks,

but the larger males dive beneath
the surface to reach the weed.

They go as deep as ten meters,

for there,
below the destructive waves,

they find the best fronds.

Cold-blooded, they have to return
to land after about ten minutes

to warm up again in the sun.

Finding food is not the only
challenge for coastal residents.

These rocky shares are hardly
a safe place to lay their eggs.

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.

To do that,
they need nice soft sand.

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

in rocky crevices.

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.

Most of the birds
that frequent this frontier

spend most of their time
in or above the open ocean.

However, all seabirds have to come
to land in order to lay their eggs.

And, after many lonely months
spent searching the ocean for food,

they have to re-establish
social relationships.

Frigate birds display

and exchange nest material.

Waved albatross dance.

The need to lay eggs 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.

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 can take six months.

Throughout the entire time,
none of them feed at all.

After mating,

a female has to leave her natural
element and haul herself onto land.

She does so at night, laying three
or four times at 15-day intervals.

After that, she swims 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 alter year,

to 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 population
of one of the rarest sea turtles.

Flat-backed turtles
are over a meter long,

but they have to be careful -

there are other giant reptiles
here, too.

Salt-water crocodiles.

Every night throughout the year,
there are flat-backs

burying their eggs
all along this stretch of sand.

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 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 nightly in
a steady trickle of beak-sized meals.

The 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
do not survive the journey.

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 100 hatchlings
will survive to adulthood.

Another beach, another continent
and a very special night.

In Costa Rica, a turtle has found
a way of reducing these dangers.

When Ridley's turtles arrive
to lay their eggs,

they don't come in tens
or hundreds, but in thousands.

In 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,
they have to clamber over one another

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

40 million eggs
are laid in these few days.

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.

Most of the 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,

cape/in 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 the fish,

the cape/in, like the turtles, have
also come out of the sea to breed.

The males are trying
to fertilize the eggs

that the females deposit in the sand.

Like the Ridley's turtles, they've
synchronized their mass laying with the tide.

In a few days, it Will be over.

Most of the cape/in die,

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

Other cape/in populations
lay their eggs in the ocean,

so why do the Newfoundland fish
spawn on land?

It seems that eggs deposited
on the beach are 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.

95% of the world's seabirds
nest together,

mostly in large
spectacular colonies.

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
this island with 250,000 gannets.

It's not the lack of suitable sites

that causes seabirds
to breed in such densities.

Here, in the North Atlantic,

there 's a wide choice of empty
coastline the birds could use.

The key factor limiting
seabird colonies

seems to be 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 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 are not fussy eaters

and will take everything
from tiny sand eels to herring.

Puffins, on the other hand,
are particular about what they eat.

Because they can only fly
short distances,

they only nest where there is
a good supply of food close by.

One such place is the Sea
of Okhotsk in far eastern Russia.

This is the island of Ta/an.

Throughout the long Arctic winter
it is encircled by ice.

But as spring approaches,
that begins to break up,

and seabirds that have wintered
far to the south

begin to return.

Its isolated position
and steep cliffs

make Ta/an 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.

In a few weeks, the silent cliffs

come alive to the calls
of four million breeding seabirds.

This is a multi-story avian city.

Assembling in these 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 chicks will
leave the nest at the same time.

Like the turtles, this is the way
they spread the impact of predators.

The world's largest eagle -
Steller sea eagle -

a third as big again
as a golden eagle.

Throughout the summer, the eagles
hunt in Talan's crowded colonies.

Riding on the updrafts,
they patrol the cliff tops,

looking out for any kittiwake

that ventures too far
from the rock face.

The huge eagle swoops with
the aerial agility of a falcon.

Co-ordinated panic among the
kittiwakes confuses their attacker.

But the eagle doesn't give up.

And it has got one.

Another kind of seabird on Talan

has a particularly effective way
of defending itself against predators,

but it doesn't appear
until an hour before sunset.

As if from nowhere, dense swarms
of seabirds suddenly arrive offshore.

They've 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 together at the coast.

One advantage of nesting
in such densities

may be the chance to share
information on feeding sites.

It also gives them
the opportunity to court.

But, 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 ocean,

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 sun',

the penguins have to make a mad dash
across open rock 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 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 storm can blow them
miles off course

and keep them
away from their nests for days.

But these birds have developed
an effective solution to the 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 undamaged
for several days without incubation

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 Falklands hillside.

It's deserted in daylight,

but as soon as it's dark

and difficult
for airborne predators to hunt,

the prions return.

As soon as they land, they call.

(CHIRPING)

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.

Just off shore, humpback whales
have returned to feed.

For these huge animals,

there's a real risk
in 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,

usually come to scavenge.

A whole range of animals exploit
the enormous quantity of food

that washes up every day
on coastlines around the world.

But, like so much of 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,

so can spend
their entire lives there.

Other marine mammals -

ones that are, in fact,
distant cousins of bears -

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

The high Arctic.

Here lives one of them -
the walrus.

Walruses spend
nearly all their lives at sea.

But each year, for a few weeks,

they have to return to the coast.

They seek out isolated beaches like
Round Island in the 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.

As warm-blooded animals
living in a 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.

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 body temperature
in an icy-cold ocean.

Heat conservation, in fact,
may 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 a 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
on the beach.

But heat dissipates more rapidly
through water than 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 ten 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.

Now the advantages of breeding
in dense colonies become clear.

Females can choose from many males,

while successful males can have
access to lots of females.

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

the bull must be prepared to fight.

(ROARS)

The larger the male, the louder
the roar, 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
to 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 are waiting to try and steal
an illicit mating

with females as they come and go.

This male knows he has 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
in groups several hundred strong.

For the growing pup, these colonies
act rather like a school.

The bonds developed here may be
vital for the rest of their lives.

Sea-lions are social animals.

As adults and young
forage together;

they probably share information
about good feeding sites.

Conditions could hardly be better
for the growing youngsters.

As the tide goes out, it leaves
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 start to swim.

The whales
need to surprise the pups,

so they have stopped calling
to each other, and keep silent.

Speed is everything.

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

but their momentum
can drive them 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 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 clear of the water,

and the whales
become less successful.

After 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.