Original subtitles

I'm on a journey around the Mediterranean.

It's the sea that attracts around a third of world tourism.

The birthplace of civilisations...

Just look at that!

..where extraordinary wealth...

This one's got a helicopter on it!

..meets shocking poverty.

I take my flipping hat off to them, I really do.

Look at the scale of the destruction!

They are on the edge of the Med.

It's a sea of wild extremes.

Yes, yes, look!

This final, fourth leg of my journey takes me from Morocco,

up the coast of southern Spain and on to Corsica,

and ultimately, the French Riviera.

On Europe's only desert coast...

Oh, my God!

..I discover how cheap food and holidays

has transformed the landscape.

It's the Manhattan of Spain.

Plastic, plastic.

I think I've seen a blow, OK.

Whales, at the mouth of the Mediterranean!

I travel to an unspoiled paradise...

I mean, the whole environment here is just incredible.

..before ending my Mediterranean journey on the opulent Cote d'Azur.

What's that smell?

Dirty, rotten money.

So, look, just over here....

It's the Rock of Gibraltar.

I am heading towards a fortified port city.

A duty-free zone, that, well, it's effectively owned

by a country across the sea,

but claimed by the nation that surrounds it.

No, I'm not going to Gibraltar.

I'm going to Ceuta, a little bit of Spain on the coast of north Africa.

The Spanish can get a bit het up about what an outrage

it is that Gibraltar's British.

Yet, just 17 miles across the sea

in Africa is Spanish Ceuta,

a port city surrounded by Morocco.

This patch of land is heavily contested.

Morocco desperately wants it.

The Spanish have campaigned for decades to reclaim Gibraltar -

perhaps a tad hypocritical, given they still own Ceuta.

Man in blue shirt.

Tareq!

Simon, hello!

It's all right, finish the phone call! It's an urgent...

Urgent phone call, OK, don't worry.

So, Tareq is going to be our guide in Ceuta.

There's around 80,000 people living here.

I think it's fair to say most people in Europe haven't heard of Ceuta.

Have most Spanish people heard of this place?

One key feature here dominates life,

putting it on the front line of one of the biggest issues

around the Mediterranean.

So, this is the border,

and given that it's the line between Africa and the European Union,

as you can imagine, there are hundreds of thousands

of migrants and refugees who want to come across.

This is a heavily fortified border.

Spain has several outposts on the north African coast.

They're the only land borders

between Africa and the European Union.

Since a new government in Italy said it was clamping down on illegal

migration, attempts to cross into Ceuta and into Spain

have more than quadrupled.

If they can get into Ceuta, they've got a chance of getting

across the water into Spain, to France, to Germany, to Europe.

In the dashboard?!

Si, si.

Can you show us what you mean?

That's incredible.

In the engine?!

Where would they fit there? Let's have a look.

What, so you have literally found cars with people hidden under here?

How did you feel when you saw that?

Ceuta has hardly any industry.

But VAT is lower in Ceuta.

It's a sort of duty-free port.

Warehouses here are stocked with cheap imported goods

from the EU, ready to be transported into Morocco.

What's going on here?

In a bizarre arrangement, up to 4,000 Moroccan women

are allowed to cross the border, carrying or wheeling as much

as they can by hand, as many times as they can.

Do you know how much it would weigh? 100 kilos.

100 kilos, we think, here, of shampoos and bath products.

Twice a week, these so-called "mule women" cross the border.

Other days, men have a turn.

It's hideously tough, but thousands of the poorest

have work as a result.

Meanwhile, Spanish Ceuta profits hugely

from the sale of goods.

The ladies here, often they are elderly and they are infirm.

This lady is wheeling stuff while she's got a crutch,

for goodness' sake.

So, they're desperate?

Can you make enough to live on?

Can you make enough to survive?

There is a lot of hard work and suffering as these ladies

are moving large bundles of goods around.

But, at the same time, many of them are saying,

"This is the only work we can get.

"If we don't do this, we go hungry."

Here, we have the absolute reality of life for so many

around the Mediterranean.

And the reality where a wealthy country like Spain butts up against

the relative poverty of Morocco.

There's unemployment and poverty in Morocco,

and in the rest of the huge continent to the south,

millions want to enter the EU.

It's why the Spanish government has been fortifying the ring

of steel that surrounds Ceuta.

This, more than anything I have seen anywhere, I think,

this is Fortress Europe.

Look at this system of fencing!

What is that?

Seven metres high, with razor wire on both fences here.

It's very hard to imagine people getting over this.

But they do.

On the other side, there are hundreds, thousands of migrants

hidden along this border, waiting for their chance to get across.

There is Morocco.

And that's where I want to head to next.

But, disappointingly, Morocco repeatedly failed to give us

permission to film my Mediterranean journey.

I decided to cross the border anyway,

travelling as a tourist, swapping professional equipment

for a basic camera and smartphones.

We're hoping that if we use a small, touristy camera

then we won't get stopped or detained.

It's a beautiful country, attracting more than 11 million

tourists each year.

Yet it's an authoritarian and undemocratic state,

with a poor record on human rights and media freedom.

There have been recent reforms, but without filming permits,

we couldn't fully capture the glory of this place,

or talk to people on camera in case we got them into trouble.

It's absolutely stunning here,

and, actually, very touristy,

but there is another aspect of life in this area

that the Moroccan government would rather you didn't know about.

In mountains and forests close to the Med, around the border

with Ceuta, migrants and refugees are on the run

from the Moroccan authorities.

Tareq was helping me track them down.

How close are we now, Tareq?

Not a lot of military around.

So we stand a chance of not getting caught.

Well, that's... That's good!

We need to go quickly.

Migrants are in this area waiting for a chance to get into Ceuta

or cross the Med to Spain.

Many are here illegally, and they stay well hidden.

We can see some movement in the bushes at the bottom of the valley.

As we headed down into the ravine, we realised we were being watched.

WHISPERS: We need to go.

OK, we're coming up to a little tent...tented shack.

It's so makeshift. Look at this.

Tareq thinks this is a ladder used to climb the fences at Ceuta.

Do you think that's it? Or...

No, no. We must to see.

CANS RATTLE

I mean, we are activating it deliberately

in the hope people are going to come out.

A very basic alarm system if the police...

RUSTLING IN BUSHES

We've found them.

So we've just met up with a guy, a migrant, looks sub-Saharan African.

And we'll find out if we're allowed to film.

THEY SPEAK IN THEIR LANGUAGE

We're in the camp.

They're letting us film.

They're worried for us about people who are up on the hill watching.

We'll worry about that later.

Can we sit down together and talk?

Yeah, yeah, you can. Yeah?

How long have you been in the forest?

Nine months?

Guinea?

These young lads have travelled thousands of miles and crossed

the Sahara to get here, close to the fence with Ceuta.

Babylon is the people of Europe, for him.

Babylon is Europe? Yes. Yeah. Europe is Babylon?

You made it over the fence?

Yes, the razor wire.

Do you know anybody who has made it into Ceuta?

They've made it to Madrid?

But success stories are rare.

And even those who make it to Europe certainly aren't guaranteed

a job or a future.

I can't be too hopeful for them,

that they're going to make it across the border.

I've tried to avoid giving them false hope.

It's incredibly difficult, but they know people

who've made it over.

They know people who've made it across the water to Europe

and have achieved what they see as the success.

And those stories, which are often spread now by social media,

ensure that many more young men will up sticks across Africa

and head north towards the promised land.

We haven't spent long with them, but I think our time is up.

We can hear more voices coming from the hillside opposite.

I think we need to get out of here.

God, they're saying good luck to us.

MUSIC

We've crossed the Mediterranean, from Africa to Europe,

from Morocco to Spain,

it feels like under the watchful eye of those lads in the forest,

who look every day at these big ships, carrying their hopes

and their dreams across to southern Spain.

And I just get to do it, thanks to this little thing -

my passport.

An accident of birth.

I felt lucky to be heading to mainland Spain across one

of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.

The Strait of Gibraltar links the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

It's just nine miles wide.

You can cross it in half an hour by ferry.

Half of the world's trade and 80% of goods and gas consumed by the EU

pass through this narrow channel.

But the Strait is home to so much more than just tankers,

ferries and container ships.

Hello! Hello. Rocio? Hello!

And how do I say your name? Ro-THEE-oh.

Rocio. Very nice to meet you. I'm Simon Reeve. Very nice to meet you.

Lovely to see you. Welcome on board. Thank you.

Rocio Espada is a Spanish marine biologist.

She studies marine life in the Strait of Gibraltar,

where nutrient-rich current from the bottom of the Med

meets water flowing in from the Atlantic,

providing ideal feeding conditions.

We have a really big biodiversity in a very small space.

We can get more than around 1,000 dolphins in the area.

A thousand dolphins here?!

Yeah, well... That means, hopefully, we should be able to

spot dolphins here. Yeah, hopefully.

You can't be stopped, can you? You're already looking.

I'm all the time.

As soon as I'm in front of the sea, I need to be looking all the time.

It's an obsession!

We've got people pointing their fingers over here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're making...

Look! Look at all of them!

How many are here? Looks like maybe 30? Yeah.

That is a good number.

You've got newborns on the other side of the group as well, guys.

Oh, just racing through the water.

Yes, brights and commons, both mixing together.

Here, guys... Oh, they're with us!

There's one there.

Now they're over here, just here.

Whoa!

The speed they move is just incredible.

They are like torpedoes in the water.

And then they're over there. And then they're back.

HE LAUGHS

They're so incredibly curious and playful.

Oh, God, there's nothing almost I love more in the sea.

They were just here.

Look.

Mummies and babies, they hang around, you know,

in the shallowest part of the bay.

And, well, as you see, refineries, ports.

But, mummies and newborns.

Is this an oil refinery over here?

That's an oil refinery.

It's huge!

Massive. It's massive.

I'm just stunned that these dolphins are having to exist in this...

It's almost like being next to the motorway.

More than 100,000 vessels pass through the Strait each year.

Dolphins have to run the gauntlet.

The boat here is going to go straight into them!

They're slowing down, I think, aren't they?

I hope so.

Sometimes, babies, you know,

they cannot dive as fast, the baby calves,

as their mothers can do,

and it doesn't swim as fast as the mothers can do,

so it is true that sometimes there is collisions.

Look at this one, guys.

You got one without a dorsal fin here.

I will show you some pictures that we've been taking.

Yeah, love to... Well, I say love to, but...

Rocio and her team have been monitoring the health of the dolphin

population in the Strait.

It's not nice to see, guys, but, uh...

So it's just had its dorsal fin there...?

Yeah, it looks like it's gone. It's been mutilated.

These can be related to propellers.

Oh, that's flesh.

Mm, this is very fresh, and we think this is a fishing line.

And it's just ripped into the fin there.

Ripped into the fin.

When they are casting and reel it in with their pulls,

or maybe when they hook a tuna, yeah, and the dolphin's passing,

that, you know, these things happen.

Then interactions with plastic.

We located a striped dolphin that put its nose, or its beak,

through a ring, like the ring that you get in the bottles.

Oh, my God.

Probably this belonged maybe to an oil can,

because it is a little bit bigger.

This animal died because of starvation.

Because it stopped eating.

It was shameful, it was like a really, really bad situation,

because we could see it, but it was impossible to catch it.

That's horrific.

Ballena, ballena, ballena!

Llama Luisa, llama Luisa!

Llama Luisa.

What did you see?

I think I've seen a blow, OK,

in the choppy waters, and I think I've seen actually the back

of the animal.

Yes, yes!

Whale!

There they go! There they go!

Two of them, two of them.

They're fin whales.

Look at the size of them. It's a submarine!

This is the second-biggest whale in the world.

The second biggest whale on planet Earth.

Oh, my goodness!

This is... Wow, this is really close! Look!

Whales, at the mouth of the Mediterranean!

Looks like a mummy and a baby, guys.

We might think of the Med as being a smaller sea,

but it's a home for giants.

The fin whale can be as heavy as a Boeing 757.

It's one of the largest creatures on our planet, ever.

But for how much longer?

Marine mammal numbers are in steep decline.

Common dolphins, they reduce their population since 1960, to 50%.

Dolphin numbers have dropped by 50%?

In the Mediterranean, yes.

One of the main problems of common dolphins,

for example, is that all the fishing is happening, and the animals

just don't have enough food.

The fish are disappearing.

And if it's disappearing, they have to move to different places

or they starve. They are getting, like, to starve.

And you can see them really, really thin.

You can even see the ribs on them.

You're seeing starving dolphins?

We've seen a few emaciated dolphins, yeah.

A few skinny ones, yeah. Emaciated, really?

Yeah, emaciated.

What state is the Mediterranean in?

It needs help. I think it needs help.

The thing is, you know, if we turn our back to it,

everything will go.

So it's just a little bit that is left, you know, to try to treat with

a little bit of care, you know?

I travelled up the southeastern coast of Spain, where the landscape

becomes a beautiful but arid wilderness.

This is actually the driest area of Europe.

Spain is home to Europe's only desert.

And it's a landscape that has stood in for the Wild West

and the Middle East in movies like Lawrence Of Arabia,

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.

Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.

A few miles inland from the Med, the Tabernas Desert is Europe

at its most extreme,

where temperatures regularly reach 50 degrees,

and just a drizzle of rain falls every year.

You would think nothing could grow here.

But you'd be wrong.

In Almeria, the stretch of coast that borders the desert,

I took to the air.

Whoa!

HE LAUGHS

Oh, it's wonderful!

The sea looks absolutely stunning.

Oh, my God.

As far as the eye can see, thousands and thousands

of acres of plastic.

Right out to the base of the mountains,

almost touching the Mediterranean down at the coast.

Right out as far over there as I can see into the distance.

This is Europe's market garden.

Unless you survive on local turnips, chances are you've eaten fruit

and veg from here, especially in the winter.

The plastic greenhouses of Almeria are a phenomenon,

covering the land for more than 100 square miles.

All right, we're coming in to land now.

Ah!

HE LAUGHS

In the 1950s and '60s, cheap plastic sheeting

revolutionised farming here.

Suddenly, it was possible for anyone to create a greenhouse and grow

crops quickly all year round with lax regulation.

These greenhouses now supply much of our favourite fruit and veg.

Stop here.

Thank you very much.

British supermarkets are some of the farmers' biggest customers.

See, look, you can see in here, I think these are aubergines.

Thousands and thousands of them.

This is an enormous operation, but I'm hoping we're going

to be able to meet some of the people who work

in these greenhouses.

Many of the workers here are migrants.

They're believed to number more than 50,000.

Most have come from north and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Suleiman's from Mali.

He's been working in the greenhouses for seven years.

Suleiman, what is this place?

It's swelteringly hot in here now,

It must be 90 degrees or so at the moment.

It must get over 100 in here during the height of the summer.

What are the working conditions like here?

Have you ever had a situation

where one of the workers here has died?

Un amigo?

Like thousands of other migrants, Suleiman crossed the Mediterranean

illegally on a raft.

But since finding a job in the greenhouses,

he's been allowed to live and work here.

Suleiman rents a decrepit four-bedroom house

he has to share with 15 other migrant workers.

Good Lord, look at this.

Ah, so there's a shower... Si. ..room....

..with a very dodgy electrical set-up in here. Si.

It's all they can afford, and all that's available.

Goodness.

So, how many people use this kitchen?

I just went to lean on the sink here...

Si.

..and it's not actually solid. Si.

Do you actually have to pay rent to live here?

That sounds shocking.

Have you complained to anybody about your pay,

your working conditions, where you're living?

I'm really... I'm really shocked.

And I'm going...

I'm sort of moving from sadness to anger at their situation.

There's an industrial plant just here, right next to where they live.

And then...

There is a main road.

Careful, careful.

Look, with cars zipping along.

It's not hidden deep within the greenhouses.

This is a very visible.

It's completely scandalous.

And I think it's also shocking that the massive international

supermarket chains are buying their produce from here,

without checking on the conditions of the workers.

Because if they came here, they could see from the main road -

they don't even need to get out of a limousine to see that people

are living here in unacceptable conditions.

The greenhouses of Almeria have turned some farmers here

into millionaires.

They generate well over L1 billion for the region,

much of it earned on the backs of the downtrodden and the desperate.

Look at.. Look at this.

This is an enormous resort, and well-watered golf course...

..surrounded by an entire sea of plastic.

Yards from where Suleiman's living, it felt like a world away.

What's the dream that still keeps you here?

Why can't it become a reality?

Just a short while ago, I was on the other side of the sea

in a forest in Morocco talking to a group of young lads

who are risking their lives to get here.

What would you say to them?

Do you know anyone who has come across and made what you might call

Is that what it is, then -

the chances of success or failure, it's just a lottery?

One in a million?

I really think that this journey has shown me much more of

the reality of the migration story and crisis around the Mediterranean.

The population of Africa is going to increase dramatically

over the next two decades, and I expect millions and millions

of people will want and need to head north towards the Mediterranean.

The only solution I can see that is just and humane

is if countries to the south from here, perhaps with outside help,

can develop their economies so they are able to offer jobs

and purpose and hope to their populations.

There's a very human story behind these anonymous greenhouses.

There's also a huge environmental impact.

Even beyond the greenhouses,

where the landscape opens into stretches of untouched,

beautiful Mediterranean coast.

So, what we're on now, what we're climbing up here,

this is basically a riverbed?

Exactly. A riverbed that, of course, is dry right now

because it hasn't rained in a while.

So you can see we're just a little distance above the sea.

Daniel Rolleri is an expert on marine pollution

who's campaigning and fighting to save the Med.

We can see what I call a good example

of this new geological age...

Oh, my God.

..in which, you know, the plastic is totally integrated

into the soil in the different layers.

This is not just one.

This means one on top of the other.

Can you see?

You know, and it really shows the footprint of humankind on Earth.

This is unbelievable.

This looks like plastic used in agriculture.

This is the greenhouse plastic. And these are the...

Are you...

Daniel, are you telling me that when the greenhouses

change their plastic, it's not recycled by law?

Most of the plastic are abandoned, you know, or...

It's just cheaper to chuck it away? Exactly.

To take it away takes time, it takes labour.

You know, and this is cheaper, to just leave it behind.

So this is one of the ways for trash to reach the sea.

Here, it barely rains, but when it does, it rains a lot - it pours.

So, all this plastic here gets flooded out into the sea? Totally.

Yes, it's like a highway, nonstop into the sea.

This is...

This makes me feel sick.

I feel disgusted by our systems that enable this to be even possible.

This is completely...obscene.

This is very upsetting, and obscene.

And look at this. Do you know what this is?

This is a tray where they have the little plants

of tomatoes, lettuce, peppers.

So they work, planting them, and then they throw it away.

This is very light, you know, the wind will blow this into

the ocean and it starts like breaking into pieces.

Have a look at this just here.

And it just breaks down, can you see, into smaller and smaller parts.

And this will end up in the ocean, in the sea, sooner or later.

No doubt about it.

In tiny, tiny fragments.

And this is what the marine wildlife eat.

And that's why then plastic is in the food chain.

The Mediterranean holds 1% of the Earth's sea water,

but 7% of the world's microplastic waste.

As a species, we have positioned ourselves

outside of the environment.

When we see problems like this, we think that,

"Well, this is an environmental problem, I am not part of it.

"That's an environmental problem." Mm.

Now, it's coming closer and closer to human beings.

It's not only in the food chain.

Plastic is within tap water, and salt.

In sea salt.

It's astonishing.

It's embarrassing. In the name of economy, of profits,

we are doing this.

For me, you know, it's unbelievable.

It's very embarrassing, as a species,

we are doing this to ourselves.

Because we are shooting on our foot, you know?

along the coast of southern Spain.

Fishing is still a huge industry here, and Spain

has the sea's largest fleet.

Hiya! Simon. Nice to meet you.

I caught a lift to a trawler that had been out since dawn.

What are you doing now?

The fishermen here have signed up to an extraordinary new scheme.

They're fishing out plastic from the Med.

Plastic, plastic...

The plastic they collect is recycled into top-end clothing and bags.

Bloody hell, there's loads.

Are you shocked by how much plastic you're pulling out now?

The fishermen in the Ecoalf project have hauled in more than

250 tonnes of plastic from the bottom of the sea.

But it's just a fraction of the tide of plastic

heading the other way.

An estimated 730 tonnes of plastic waste is now entering

the Mediterranean every day.

Circling the sea was taking me to one of the epicentres

of global tourism -

the Costa Blanca.

Just one of four million Brits alone who make this journey every year.

How busy is the hotel?

It's fully booked. Fully booked? Fully booked, yeah.

How many rooms do you have? 776.

Wow. OK.

OK...

The Mediterranean attracts more than 300 million

visitors a year.

It's a third of the entire world's tourist market.

And this resort is one of the biggest and most successful

anywhere on the planet.

It's the Manhattan of Spain!

The grandaddy of all package-holiday resorts.

Benidorm!

In the 1950s, this was a fishing community of just over 1,000 people.

It's grown a bit since then.

High-rise Benidorm pulls in almost two million visitors a year.

It's seen as a place for tanked-up Brits,

but actually, it's a major family resort,

particularly for the Spanish.

The beach can get a little busy,

but despite the crowds, it has a prized blue flag for cleanliness.

I joined Rafa Peres on his afternoon shift.

It's ironic, actually, that I have seen so much plastic

rubbish on beaches around the Mediterranean that are completely

unused generally by people, and we come here,

to one of the busiest beaches in the world,

and you're keeping it completely spotless!

Rafa's battling to keep our plastic out of the sea.

After China, Europe's the second-largest producer

of plastic, creating 27 million tonnes of plastic waste.

There's a lot of people on the beach, are there too many?

5:30 in the morning?! Si!

Is that the English or the Germans?

No?! Seriously?

They're the most professional about the beach...?

The competition for sunbeds is only going to get more fierce.

In the next ten years, tourists visiting the Med

will nearly double, to half a billion.

Managing the hordes will be a huge environmental challenge.

Grand resorts like this aren't everyone's cup of tea,

but maybe they're part of the answer.

There is an argument, actually, that Benidorm as a resort

is more sustainable than other resorts that Brits go to

on their holidays.

For a start, because everyone's crammed into quite a small space,

you don't need the sort of infrastructure that would be

required if the resort sprawled out along the whole

of the Spanish coastline.

There's a smaller individual footprint for tourists

who come here.

Benidorm, derided by those who'd never touch a package holiday,

is actually held up by some experts as a pretty good example

of sustainable mass tourism.

But with millions more heading to the Med, it still feels

like damage limitation.

Leaving Spain, I headed to one of the most unspoiled parts

of the whole sea.

A western corner of the French island of Corsica.

With dramatic beaches and soaring mountains,

nature is at the heart of Corsica's appeal.

I've arrived into Corsica.

It's known as The Beautiful Island.

I'm coming to the end of my journey around the Mediterranean,

but this place looks like a bit of a treat for all of us.

Jean Marie! Salut.

Bonjour! Simon. Simon Reeve.

Permission to come aboard? Come on.

I'd come to see a unique project led by Jean Marie Dominici,

a man on a mission to zealously protect his patch

of the Mediterranean.

Well, look, thank you for letting us come to visit.

This is the Scandola nature reserve.

It's a shining, glorious Mediterranean gem.

An area without roads or buildings,

where land and sea are at their wildest.

Where giant volcanic rock formations create a landscape

of awe and wonder.

It's the geology that led to the creation of the park originally,

but as a result of the creation of the park,

it's biodiversity that has really flourished.

Scandola is one of the most protracted marine areas

on the planet.

In a sea where over 90% of fish stocks are overexploited,

here, sea life finds a rare sanctuary.

So, you're going to let us have a swim and a dive

in the fishiest area in the Mediterranean?

That's a hell of a treat.

Thank you.

There are nearly 200 species of fish here,

including some that have disappeared from elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

Whoa!

It is... It's absolutely stunning.

I mean, the whole environment here is just incredible.

It feels as though I've stepped back in time to an era before humans

made their mark on the planet.

It's breathtaking.

Diving at Scandola requires permits reserved for scientists,

so Jean Marie had taken a camera down to depths I couldn't reach

with just my lungs.

So, we've dried off,

and we've downloaded the footage that you've shot.

Oh, look!

Bigger, bigger!

Bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger?!

No, no, no, no. About that?

But all this is only possible with protection that Jean Marie

and his team enforce with a rod of iron.

Protection means banning fishing and hunting.

Watersports are banned, and although tourists can enter

the reserve by boat, regulations apply.

Strict regulations.

I feel really sorry for them!

They were just having a nice time.

Oh, OK, sorry, we didn't know. You are on the boat?

Yeah, we go now.

Yeah, we're going back to the boat, OK. Sorry.

That is the thing, isn't it?

We each feel our individual action and behaviour isn't...

doesn't have a negative consequence.

OK.

But it's when these behaviours are replicated, 1,000, 10,000,

a million, 7 billion times,

that's when individual human becomes hugely destructive.

How much is this yacht worth?

This is quite the image of privilege over here.

This is the tender for the larger metallic blue boat over yonder.

WHISTLING

The noise echoes around, and it disturbs wildlife that's roosting

and living in the cliffs.

He's tough!

IMITATES WHIP CRACKING But you have to be.

A tiny area of this sea enjoys proper protection.

Scientists say the European Union and governments should establish

a network of marine reserves across the Med to protect life.

This reserve does actually leave me feeling quite...

..quite hopeful.

I think it shows that there is a future for the Mediterranean.

Life in this sea can be protected,

it can be preserved, if there are rules that can be followed,

a bit of inspiring leadership, and if people get tough.

They almost have to be militant.

But then, there is hope.

Another ferry. Nearly there!

Corsica was much more beautiful than I'd expected.

I left the island and took a ferry north.

In front of me is the south of France.

I'm getting very close to the end of my journey

around the Mediterranean now.

And this feels like the right place to finish,

because, since the time of the Victorians and through Hollywood,

this has really defined the image of the Mediterranean.

Merci. Au revoir.

So, I'm getting the train to Monaco.

A basic commuter train took me east,

along the French Riviera.

Perhaps more than anywhere else, the tiny principality of Monaco

is supposed to epitomise the glamour of the Mediterranean -

the Med as playground of the rich and famous.

Well, this is the dream...

..for many Europeans, as well as for tens of millions of people

on the other side of the Mediterranean -

rich and wealthy Europe.

Of course, very few people on either side of the sea

could afford to actually live here.

Property prices in Monaco are the most expensive in the world,

and it's home to the highest concentration of millionaires

and billionaires, lured - the uncharitable might suspect -

by the prospect of zero tax.

What's that smell?

Dirty, rotten money!

Monaco.

Land of the filthy rich, or, as one writer put it,

a sunny place for shady people.

Not that the owners of these vehicles have done anything

wrong at all, of course.

For me, much of Monaco is Europe at its worst.

Europe for the elite, with the ladder pulled up

and the drawbridge closed.

It's a striking example of in-your-face wealth,

at the other end of the scale from many places I've seen

on my travels around this great sea.

Well, this is the end of one of my most surprising journeys.

The Mediterranean!

From Malta to the Gaza Strip, from Libya to Monaco...

It is a place of utter extremes.