(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
DAVE: Divers in the water. Divers in the water.
Well, this is the danger zone. This is where the predators lie.
Leopard Seal! Leopard Seal!
Stop it. No. No biting.
No.
Now we’ve just got to watch it here.
Uh-oh. (BLEEP)
-(THEME MUSIC BEGINS) -Ooh!
You ready?
BERTIE: I'm Bertie.
Filming animals is my job.
That is not a chase you see every day.
BERTIE: And I take it really seriously!
Look, I'm trying to film penguins.
-(ROARS) -Oh, and I've missed it.
Well, that was quite close.
BERTIE: I want to tell wildlife stories in a rapidly changing world.
That sounded like a big crack!
(GASPS)
BERTIE: These are my adventures.
(THEME MUSIC ENDS)
BERTIE: Nine thousand miles from my home in England
is the coldest continent on Earth.
We’ve made it to Antarctica!
Look at that big wall of icy mountains at the end of the world.
Oh, my word!
BERTIE: These freezing waters are home to a variety of extraordinary animals,
and I'm here to film one of the biggest who have ever lived
on our planet...
the mighty Fin Whale.
Twice as long as a Greyhound bus, as heavy as a fully-loaded airliner,
they range thousands of miles across the world’s oceans.
Hunted to the very edge of extinction over decades of commercial whaling,
they are still listed as a vulnerable species.
But in the last few years, scientists have reported seeing
huge gatherings of Fin Whales off a remote island in Antarctica,
and I want to film the largest gathering in history,
above and below the waterline.
And we’re sure to see some other epic animals on our journey.
Antarctica is a monumental challenge to film in at the best of times,
freezing cold water, howling winds.
But the whale gathering we're going for doesn’t happen
in a nice little sheltered bay in the lee of a mountain.
It happens out in the roughest bit of ocean on the planet.
BERTIE: There is no shelter in the Southern Ocean,
where winds can hit 70 miles per hour,
whipping up waves over 70 feet high.
And with sea temperatures just above freezing,
human survival in the water would be measured in minutes.
And there’s another catch.
The Antarctic winter is just around the corner,
so every day that we stay here it will get colder, darker, stormier...
and more dangerous.
Our skipper wants us out of here in 28 days, not a day longer.
The clock is ticking.
The key to our success lies in the food supply.
The ocean is vast, but if we can find their food
we should find the whales.
And penguins are our first major clue.
They eat the same food.
There’s nothing quite like arriving at a penguin colony.
It is a complete assault on the senses.
It’s noisy, it’s really smelly... and there’s just so much going on.
(PENGUINS SQUAWKING)
(IMITATING PENGUIN)
These penguins love rocks, they love rocks!
Antarctica is so icy that these penguins need bare rock to nest on.
And they use the rocks to build their nests,
so you can see there's a couple here just running around...
then running back to their nests with rocks.
Here he comes, this g... this one's going to grab a rock just here....
There we go, there’s a nice one.
Back to its nest.
While our goal is to go for a big whale aggregation,
all the animals here, these Chinstrap Penguins,
the Antarctic Fur Seals that are running around
in this colony as well,
everything is going to be out in the sea hunting together.
BERTIE: Antarctica may be the best place to film giant animals,
but you can’t just rock up with your camera and press record.
You have to pay the price of admission.
And that means crossing one of the deadliest stretches
of water on Earth, between South America and Antarctica,
the Drake Passage.
It’s a 500-mile stretch of violent and unpredictable ocean,
and countless ships much bigger than ours have been lost
without trace in these waters.
For our skipper Ben Wallis, even the simplest jobs
become life-threatening.
Ben needed to change a lightbulb in the mast.
The worst part about all of this is that a
a big roll down at boat level
is an even bigger roll at the top of the mast!
In waves like these, with the sea temperature only
just above freezing, anyone who falls overboard
is just not gonna survive.
There is not enough time for us to turn the boat around
and go back and find them
Hey! (CHUCKLES)
-All good? -Like brand new.
We’re a few days into the crossing now and I’m feeling
pretty rough.
But I thought this would be a good time to give you a little boat tour, so...
Right, let’s go in here.
Here’s one of the boys’ rooms.
You all right, lads?
Right, in here we’ve got Tash, who, uh,
is... has a very important job.
She’s in charge of all the... all the footage.
-Download going all right? -Yeah. Going great.
Now got to be gentle around this corner because Will is feeling
a little worse-for-wear. How you doing, man?
Nope, not... not good. Okay, we’ll leave him to it.
And, ooh... We got... we got some movement!
(BERTIE LAUGHS)
-(RETCHES) -Oh. (CHUCKLES)
Oh dear.
BERTIE: After four days at sea, we get our first glimpse of Antarctica,
Elephant Island.
And we’re rewarded with a sign that we’ve come to the right place.
Whoa!
That... giant
is a Fin Whale, that’s our first Fin Whale.
And for an animal that's absolutely massive,
it doesn’t show much of its body from the surface,
so I’m going to chuck the drone up to get a better look.
Nice one.
Well, this beauty is a Southern Fin Whale.
And these 80-foot giants can live 90 years.
They are massive.
A big female can be more than 80 tons, that’s about 16 African Elephants.
And they can be fast. I mean, these Fin Whales are shaped
like a torpedo, so they're super streamlined.
They can clock speeds of up to 25 miles an hour.
These whales in Antarctica have a lovely yellowy-orange hue,
it makes them look a bit dirty. And those are diatoms.
They're little microscopic organisms that grow on the skin of the whale.
BERTIE: In one of man’s greatest crimes against nature,
three quarters of a million Fin Whales were killed before commercial whaling
was banned in 1986.
From the brink of extinction, their numbers seem to be recovering,
and that’s why we’re here now.
Our first job is to find a safe place to anchor,
which is easier said than done.
Elephant Island is completely exposed to the furious storms
of the Southern Ocean.
It’s not long before we’re treated to a taste of what we can expect
from the weather here.
I started this mission by saying that we were coming
to the toughest place in the world to film,
but it’s only now that we're here that the reality of that
is really dawning on me!
I mean, we can’t do anything in this.
We’re just going to have to hang on to this anchorage
until this storm passes.
We’re going nowhere for now.
BERTIE: To have any chance of tracking down the whales,
we need to get scientific,
to predict where their food hotspots will be.
And I've brought just the person to help with that,
Leigh Hickmott,
a world-leading whale expert.
Where do you think is going to be our prime areas?
We can see where the isobaths come close together
indicates the water going from very deep water
to very shallow water quite quickly.
And those are the areas we want to try and concentrate on.
BERTIE: So Leigh thinks our best chance of success is here,
northwest of the island where the seabed suddenly drops away hundreds of feet,
forming a steep underwater cliff.
Deep ocean currents smash
into this cliff and are forced upwards,
carrying the nutrients that attract small creatures,
which attract bigger creatures, which attract...
well, you get the idea.
After two days stuck on anchor, the storm passes
and I’m itching to get out.
We've got to test our plan, and find some whales in the area
we're calling the Northwest Corner.
Wow, here we go.
I don’t know, today could be the day. The anchor's up,
heading out.
It’s looking pretty windy out there, but we’ve got to be in it to win it.
The conditions seem to change every five minutes, so, uh, yeah.
Fingers crossed the whales are out there somewhere.
BERTIE: But as soon as we are offshore, we hit heavy seas.
It’s definitely not flat, there’s a big swell left over.
You know, it’s one challenge
finding the whales in all this swell,
but then on top of that, being able to launch the little boat
for diving and launching drones,
it’s, uh...
Yeah, it’s going to be a real challenge.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: We’ll need to rely on our GPS and depth sounder
to get us in the right area.
We’ve just been watching the depth sounder,
and as we go further and further offshore the depth has just been
creeping down slowly, slowly, slowly.
And then all of a sudden in the last few minutes
it has just started nosediving,
so we must have hit a giant underwater cliff.
BERTIE: It’s time to find out if our theory about
the location of the whales’ food is any good.
BEN: Right there.
BERTIE: There’s definitely a lot of action around,
a lot of birds, a lot of albatross, Cape Petrels zooming around.
-Seeing lots of birds... -LEIGH: Whales are out!
Oh, there's a whale. (CHUCKLES)
Ooh! Another blow over there, nice.
We’re starting to see whales, our first whales.
Two.
Oh, yeah, big lunge.
Wow.
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
We've been seeing lots of little individual blows,
then of all of the sudden up ahead,
there’s, what, at least 10 whales,
Leigh, what do you reckon?
Whoa! Look at all the blows!
Whoa! That is a relief to see that.
Whoo! (CHUCKLES) Here we go!
Whoa!
BERTIE: We seem to be in the right place, but to film this properly,
I want to use all our specialist cameras...
and that’s clearly not happening right now.
It’s way too rough.
So, I guess not going to be able to get in the water,
not going to be able to fly the drone.
But we’ve definitely found the spot...
now we just need the weather to co-operate.
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
BERTIE: But the weather doesn’t co-operate.
We’re hit by 40 mile per hour winds and towering waves.
(WIND WHISTLING)
Conditions change completely every few hours...
and go bad in a matter of minutes.
We're forced to run for shelter.
I feel like I’m on an enormous comedown after such a big adrenaline hit.
You know, usually when you’re filming wildlife,
the big variable is whether or not the animals are doing the thing,
but here we saw that the animals were definitely doing the thing!
And, you know, today was meant to be a weather window,
but it turns bad so quick again that now we’ve got to run away,
and wait for another window.
We’re going to need a lot of stars to align in order
to even get a chance at making this work.
BERTIE: Another storm is forecast to hit us overnight,
so we run south to a small island called Gibbs,
where our skipper thinks there is a safe anchorage.
We need to hide out and wait for the right conditions
to go looking for the whales again.
(PENGUINS SQUAWKING)
Well, we’ve just come round this corner and found an absolute monster
of a Chinstrap Penguin colony they're just all up this mountainside.
And there's a lot of Giant Petrels, which are a big predatory,
scavenging bird, pulling apart a couple penguins,
so that means there's likely other predators in here.
So, this could be a... a really cool spot for us to see what’s going on.
BERTIE: I'm heading ashore to explore this unexpected penguin colony.
Their presence here could be a clue, pointing us towards the whales.
Chinstraps get their name from that black marking
that runs under their chin, and they're also sometimes called
Stonebreaker Penguins because of that ear-piercing screech.
(PENGUINS SCREECHING)
BERTIE: I mean, they are sociable birds that waddle ashore
in these massive numbers to nest.
Over a million breeding pairs have been recorded
in a single colony.
They go to pretty extreme lengths to climb up and make a nest with a view.
There is a lot of penguins here!
Every ridge we've gone over, every little corner we've gone round,
there’s just more and more Chinstrap Penguins.
I mean, there must be tens of thousands of birds here.
I mean, it just goes to show how much food there must be
in that ocean to support all of these mouths.
BERTIE: There's no food for the penguins on land,
so every morning they line up
like thousands of commuters at rush hour to hit the water.
It's an amazing scene, so I'm gonna set up down at the shoreline.
But we do need to keep an eye out for the other locals.
(ROARS)
BERTIE: They're with no natural predators on land...
-(ROARS) -...and almost no human contact,
these Antarctic Fur Seals have never developed a fear of people.
Oh, okay, okay, hey!
That’s close enough. Go on, no, keep going.
Nuh-uh.
So these are the naughty ones. Oi, back up!
You just got to, yeah, remind that we're not a chew toy.
Keep going.
There we go. And they're usually pretty obedient.
BERTIE: When these little Chinstraps get into deeper water,
they hunt the same food as the whales.
Krill,
it's a tiny shrimp-like crustacean that swarms in their millions.
To catch the krill,
penguins transform from clumsy, waddling, flightless birds...
into torpedo-like undersea ninjas.
You know, I’ve said... I've said we’re here to film
a big whale gathering,
but, you know, all these penguins
and the Fur Seals, they play just as big a role
in... in the big feeding spectacle...
and also I just really like penguins.
BERTIE: Well, from the drone,
the scale of this exodus is mind-blowing.
It’s such a tough life being one of these little penguins.
Look at this little guy, here it goes. (CHUCKLES)
He's got to face a series of obstacles every morning
just to get in the water.
And that’s only the start of it.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
They seem pretty nervous to get in, I guess predators could be hanging around
in the shallows around the rocks.
Nobody wants to make the first move.
Oh, classic prey behavior. There’s safety in numbers.
Looks like... they’re gonna go for it! Here they go.
We were just, uh, watching these penguins pour into the water
and they were looking super nervous,
and we figured out why,
we just saw a huge Leopard Seal head pop up.
Yeah, it was just in there.
It is just skulking round the rocks waiting for the penguins
to... to pour into the water and then snatch one.
(PENGUINS SQUAWKING)
LEIGH: The Leopard Seal is gonna take advantage of the fact
that the penguins are just jumping in.
There’s lots of swell, there’s lots of wash.
For such a large animal, they are incredibly agile in the water.
Huge head, big eyes, and really big, powerful jaws and teeth.
BERTIE: This adult female gives us a gruesome display of the skills
that make her such a deadly hunter.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BERTIE: Thrashing her prey about might look cruel,
but they don't have the serrated teeth of a shark,
this is the only way that they can break down their food
into small enough chunks to swallow.
The weather takes a turn for the worse,
but a hunting Leopard Seal is too good an opportunity to miss.
So, it’s time to suit up and brave the icy waters for the first time.
Well, filming underwater here... isn’t a lot of fun in the preparation,
it’s a lot of getting very cold. But, I think it'll be worth it.
Now for the really cold bit.
Do it quick, do it quick.
BERTIE: I’m using a wetsuit...
so I can be more nimble than in a dry suit.
But even the thickest wetsuit will let in water.
Freezing water.
I’ve never dived in Antarctica before,
so I’m pretty apprehensive as to what that first hit is like.
Have it?
BERTIE: This is a little daunting. The water is minus one Celsius,
that's about 30 Fahrenheit.
I’m trying to comfort myself
with the knowledge that humans are not a Leopard Seal’s natural prey.
I’m also aware that this female could kill us very easily
if she wanted to.
In 2003, a scientist was dragged underwater, bitten,
and drowned by a Leopard Seal in Antarctic waters.
In this cold, I've got about 20 minutes of dive time before my core temperature
starts to drop dangerously low.
I’m going to have to work fast.
Well, this is the penguin danger zone.
This is the spot where they go
to jump off the rocks and head out to sea.
So they come flying off those rocks at high speed
to make sure they clear this zone as quick as possible.
Leopard seal, Leopard seal.
That right there...
is a penguin’s worst nightmare.
Oh, wow.
These Leopard Seals can be twice as heavy as a male lion...
but that looks more like a dragon.
She is huge.
Stop it!
She’s a little feisty.
Whoa.
Now we’ve just got to watch it here.
We’re fine, but...
we've just got to make sure we don’t let it be naughty.
Coming back. Uh-oh.
No, oi! No, no. No biting.
Please don’t scratch
my nice glass dome.
All this gaping and biting, she’s not trying to eat us,
she’s just trying to figure out what we are
because we’re complete aliens to her.
She’s probably never seen a human in her life.
She’s so sneaky.
She knows exactly which way we’re looking
and she always comes up behind us.
You see how she just appears and disappears into the swell,
using the waves and the rocks as cover.
(BLEEP)
Okay, that was one lunge too far.
Now she’s ignoring the penguins and paying way too much attention in us.
Dan, it's time to get out.
Thanks, dude.
That was wild!
She’s using her natural coloration against the rocks
and against the aerated water, and the penguins will have no idea
she’s there until it’s too late.
So, she's... she’s in the right spot, she's... and that’s why she probably
got funny with us because she knows she’s got a prime hunting spot there,
she probably defends it from other Leopard Seals.
So, she got to the point where she wanted to keep hunting
and it was time for us to go.
I think we got out at the right moment.
-Yeah. Good call. -It was getting a little "Ooh, okay."
BERTIE: For those penguins that do make it through the kill-zone,
their odds improve dramatically.
Their speed and their agility gives them the edge in open water...
And then they’re free to head offshore and hunt the krill swarms
that will feed them and their chicks.
And we need to get back to our hunt for those same krill swarms.
But back out on the northwest corner, the weather is still not playing ball.
The wind keeps changing direction, that means we need to keep hunting
for new anchorages if we want to sleep safely at night.
Wow!
Look at all these whale bones.
I often forget that Antarctica
was the scene of one of the biggest wildlife massacres,
if not the biggest in history.
Millions of whales were slaughtered
for their blubber, to make margarine and soap.
This must be the... the jawbone.
Huge!
I often get pretty down about how badly we humans
have behaved as a species, but since the ban on commercial whaling
in the '80s, the whales here have started to make
a remarkable comeback and there have been reports
of more whales off this coast than there have been for decades,
and that’s why we’re here, that’s what we’re looking for
BERTIE: Seeing these bones makes me even more determined
to track down the aggregation,
to discover whether the Fin Whales really are making a comeback.
Well, time is running out.
But the sea is flatter, the skies are clear... ish,
and we have Fin Whales.
Not the aggregation we want, but enough for whale biologist Leigh
to deploy some satellite tags.
These tags are gonna help him understand their behavior,
and I'm hoping they're gonna lead us to the big feed.
LEIGH: The science we want to collect is completely new.
We... We really want to know where these animals go
when they leave here.
What are their migration routes? Where do they go to give birth?
My job here is going to be photo ID, see if it has any unique
identifiable markings on its back or its dorsal fin.
Okay, Dave, are you ready?
BERTIE: This tagging process is covered by really strict permitting rules
to make sure we avoid stressing the whales.
Gently.
BERTIE: He’s going in nice and slow, nice and gently
to make sure the animal is calm and relaxed,
so he can make a... a clean shot.
BERTIE: The tags are harmless to these massive animals,
but I’m still amazed by Leigh’s self-control.
He won’t fire the dart until he has the perfect shot.
Ea... Easy.
We needed a little more fin there.
BERTIE: Oh, that was really close.
-That was very close. -I thought you were going to fire then.
That's... That's it.
This is a lot more challenging than I thought it would be.
That's it, close the gap.
BERTIE: The titanium dart carrying the satellite tag has to stick
in the base of the fin, and not the whale’s body,
to have any chance of staying attached when it dives.
That's it, close the gap.
Yes! Tag on. Brilliant, thank you all so much.
BERTIE: That tag should start sending regular transmissions
about the whale’s movement to Leigh’s colleague in Germany.
When we get hold of that data,
I hope it'll lead us to our goal.
Tag on.
BERTIE: But over the next few days...
the conditions continue to worsen.
(WIND WHISTLING)
As the days tick by, serious doubts are creeping in.
Well, we’re not having a lot of luck here, we’re just getting hammered
day after day by just mad wind, rain, snow.
It's hard to believe it's ever going to be calm enough here for us to film
The pressure is on.
BERTIE: But there’s one small scrap of hope.
One of Leigh’s satellite tags is reporting lots of whale activity
close to our anchorage.
Well, we’ve just pulled up the anchor and for the first time in days,
it’s clear, there’s no fog, there’s not too much wind,
we’ve got the conditions.
And straight away, on the horizon,
I can see little party poppers. (IMITATES EXPLOSIONS)
They look like little cannons going off,
but we know they're not little cannons.
So, we are going to motor full steam in that direction.
BERTIE: This is it, this is the best chance we have.
All the preparation, all the searching,
it all comes down to this.
It’s always the most nerve-racking time.
I don’t know how many months, even years,
I’ve been thinking about this moment.
The pressure’s on, come on!
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: This is unbelievable.
I mean, it looked like a lot of whales from... from the surface,
but now I’m up in the sky. The scale of it is...
mind-boggling, there are just whales everywhere.
And all their blows are lit up by the sun,
and Elephant Island in the background.
We need to keep the boat a safe distance from the aggregation,
but using the drone I can get right to the heart of the action...
(CHUCKLES)
...and reveal that extraordinary feeding technique.
They’re side by side, they’re going to lunge,
they're accelerating, big tail pump.
That is wild!
Right now they’re sieving so on the top side of their jaw,
they’ve got big baleen plates, they’re big hair-like plates,
they’re made of keratin just like our fingernails or our hair.
So, they use the elasticity of that massive mouth
and their huge tongue to push the water back out
through those baleen plates so they act as a sieve
that catch all the krill.
That’s got to be one of the most extraordinary adaptations,
to go from a...
slim, streamlined missile shape
into a giant balloon in seconds.
Oh, no way!
So that’s a Humpback Whale in the middle there.
You can tell because its got these huge pectoral fins here,
and the... the Fin Whales’ pec fins are much smaller.
And I thought this Humpback Whale must be a little baby, but its not.
It... It's fully grown, its just that the Fin Whales
are so much bigger.
You can see the albatross, and the whales, and the penguins, and the Fur Seals,
all having one ginormous party.
(MUSIC FADES)
Well, seeing this whale spectacle on the drone is one thing.
It's spectacular, you really get a sense of scale,
but you are detached from it, it’s not very intimate.
So to really see what’s going on,
gonna have to get wet.
Yeah, the weather at the surface has improved,
but the sea is practically freezing and the swell is getting worse.
Mind.
BERTIE: Once underwater, we'll be smashed by powerful currents
surging up from the deep.
This is the most dangerous point of the whole mission.
Well, this is serious proper diving now.
We’re out in the open ocean, we’re in the swell
so we’ve got to be super on it. Um...
A big danger here is getting lost, so Calum here is, uh... is going
to be marking me and Dan’s position under the water.
That’s why he’s got the stupid orange hat on,
so he’s easy to spot.
And... it is a bit harsh, but it's true.
Um, these whales are big, intelligent animals,
but they are going to be preoccupied feeding
so we do have to have our wits about us.
BERTIE: Fin Whales are protected by law and there are very strict rules
on approaching them.
So we need to get in the right position and let them come to us.
But that’s not easy when they move so fast, and dive so deep.
DAVE: Divers in the water, divers in the water.
BERTIE: Under water, the ocean seems even more vast and empty.
You have to read the clues to have a chance of being in the right place.
And guess who’s here to point us in the right direction?
Our Chinstrap Penguin friends are experts at tracking the krill.
Below us, a huge shoal of rarely-seen Marbled Rock Cod
loom out of the depths to join the party.
(ETHEREAL MUSIC PLAYING)
And then the krill start to swarm again.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
BERTIE: They look big enough from above, but underwater the Fin Whales
are simply immense.
After so long searching,
I can’t quite believe I'm right next to one.
It’s humbling to think that they can live for 90 years,
and this very whale could have been alive during the whale hunting days,
when it's species was being massacred by humans....
But I sense no hostility...
only curiosity.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BERTIE: With every lunge, each whale seizes a volume of water and krill
the size of a school bus.
For a short time, it doubles in size.
The Fin Whale can trap 10,000 krill in a single mouthful,
and swallow up to two tons in a day.
They need a massive amount of energy to power such a huge body.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
-(BIRDS SQUAWKING) -(MUSIC FADES)
That was epic. Out of nowhere, huge Fin Whale... (IMITATES EXPLOSION)
...it obviously just fed, blasted straight past
with its mouth fully inflated.
Just see how big its mouth is.
And then it just cruised right past and I was thinking,
"Oh, the tail’s got to be coming, the tail’s got to be coming,"
and it just took forever to pass.
I mean, those whales, they look big from the boat,
they look big from the drone, but it's on a whole other level
when they’re a few feet away... (PANTING) ...fully inflated....
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
The funniest thing is when you look up to see where Calum is
and you see Calum is surrounded by Giant Petrels and albatross,
all assuming that he’s something dead that they can eat on the surface.
It's not a fun place to be.
(MEN CHUCKLE)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
BERTIE: As the afternoon goes on, to our amazement,
the numbers continue to build
Cheers, man.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
I’ve never seen anything this spectacular on a monitor screen before.
For every whale we can see on the surface,
there must be three more at least underneath.
BERTIE: It’s hard to comprehend that we slaughtered 750,000 Fin Whales,
taking the species to the brink of extinction.
Knowing that makes this spectacle even more powerful.
And more importantly, new research has shown
the vital role these giants play in capturing and recycling carbon.
A thriving whale population brings huge benefits
not just to these remote waters,
but to the planet as a whole.
From this footage, scientists estimate that more than 300 whales
were feeding in this aggregation.
It's the largest known gathering of Fin Whales ever filmed.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
Whoa!
This is all pretty moving because I know that I'm very lucky
and I get to go all over the world and film incredible wildlife spectacles,
but wherever I seem to go at the moment,
it seems like wildlife is on the back foot,
but here this place is different. I mean, look at it.
And this is what happens when you look after wildlife,
when you give it the chance. It'll come back on an unbelievable scale.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
This is a day I’m not going to forget in a hurry.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(MUSIC FADES)
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: Until our expedition, no one knew exactly where
the Fin Whales went once they'd finished feeding in Antarctic waters.
But the whales tagged in this film have been recorded migrating up
the west coast of South America for the first time.
Could that be where they go to breed?
Unfortunately the tags stopped transmitting,
and this still remains a mystery until more research is done.
(THEME MUSIC ENDS)