BERTIE GREGORY: I’m combing the big blue for an elusive super pod
of spinner dolphins five thousand strong.
Okay. So, we’ve got a bunch of surface activity up here.
There’s birds just piling into the water. The... Geez! Look at that!
BERTIE: This is epic.
It’s massive ball of lanternfish. The favorite food of spinner dolphins.
But where are they?
Look, look, look. Here come the dolphins.
NICO: They're coming. We're gonna have a good surprise.
-Are you ready? -(THEME MUSIC BEGINS)
BERTIE: I’m Bertie. Filming animals is my job...
That is not a chase you see every day.
...and I take it really seriously.
Look, I'm trying to film penguins.
-(GROWLS) -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!
BERTIE: These are my adventures.
(THEME MUSIC ENDS)
BERTIE: I’m leaving England and heading to the mighty Pacific Ocean...
five thousand miles away off the coast of Central America.
Well, it’s pretty daunting to be searching the biggest wilderness on Earth.
But this place covers half the surface of our planet.
It's the open ocean, the high seas!
BERTIE: I'm looking for a spinner dolphin super pod.
That’s when multiple pods merge for a brief moment in time
to form a single, enormous pod with thousands of animals.
Filming a spectacle like that would be a dream come true.
Unfortunately, our oceans are in trouble and these events are getting
rarer and rarer, but the reason we’ve come to this particular spot
is because it’s where dolphins still gather in mind-blowing numbers.
BERTIE: Nobody knows exactly why super pods form,
but it usually happens
when there’s lots of food around.
So we're searching the shelf break between Quepos and the border of Panama.
That’s where the shallow sea floor suddenly drops away.
This strip of cold deep water has special qualities
which could draw lots of hungry dolphins in.
More than a mile below us, the seabed is far from flat.
There's canyons and troughs and mountains and volcanoes
and the currents are whipped through all those structures
and that fires some of the water in certain places upwards
and that brings food near the surface.
BERTIE: In other words,
it’s a big blue desert with oases hidden beneath the waves.
That’s what the spinner dolphins are looking for.
And I guess all of that sounds lovely in theory.
Find one of the oases.
Film the dolphins. Job done. Go home.
BERTIE: But it is a huge gamble.
We’re too far from land to keep going back for supplies,
so we’ve got just three weeks to scour six thousand square miles of ocean.
How on Earth are we going to find these dolphins?
BERTIE: And my guide, Nico, has another top tip,
look for birds.
It’s easier to spot them on the skyline and they often follow dolphins to food.
After searching for four days straight, it’s go time!
-BERTIE: Johnny! -JOHNNY: Yeah?
-Johnny dude, dude, bait ball, bait ball. -JOHNNY: Whereabouts?
Straight off the bow, straight off the bow. Okay.
Crazy amounts of bird action, there’s so much splashing.
Are you good? Do you need any help?
-JOHNNY: Yeah, no, I'm good. -Okay, okay.
BERTIE: It’s time to scramble the fast boat and get in the water.
Okay, there’s loads of surface activity. And a bait ball’s forming.
It’s when all the predators, dolphins, tuna, push the fish,
the prey species, up to the surface and they all gather in a ball
and the water starts to boil.
Okay. So now, Nico and Maiky are just figuring out
where to drop me 'cause these bait balls move around so much
that if they drop me too close, then we might interfere
with the behavior, which we never want to do.
But if I’m too far, then I might never see it.
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: No sign of dolphins,
but it is teeming with yellowfin tuna down here.
It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope of silver and gold!
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BERTIE: And right in the middle is a tornado of mackerel.
That’s dinner if you’re a tuna.
(MUSIC ENDS)
BERTIE: It’s intense!
From above and below.
Every mackerel is trying to get inside the bait ball.
It's the only way they can defend themselves.
Or at least it was!
They’re looking for protection.
They’re using me as a human shield!
I don’t want to mess this up for the tuna.
I don’t want to get whacked by one either.
They weigh about two hundred pounds.
It's time to get out.
That was crazy.
(SIGHS) So intense. The moment we got in there, there’s...
well, you see one tuna
for every hundred that’s under... under the surface. In one piece Johnny?
JOHNNY: Yep, so far
BERTIE: Our spinner dolphins often hang out with tuna,
but they could rock up at any time.
And we really don't want to mess this up by jumping back in too soon.
We’re just waiting for it to stabilize,
make sure there’s enough predators pinning that ball to the surface.
Nico’s seen something.
All right, well, it’s not spinners.
We've got a big bunch of spotted dolphins and they are locked in on those mackerel.
Time to get in. Let’s go, let’s go!
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: These dolphins should keep the mackerel hemmed in.
They’re so calm compared to the tuna...
but they know exactly what they’re doing.
(SQUEAKING CONTINUES)
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: They’re working in groups...
herding the mackerel like sheepdogs.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: That gives the tuna something to aim for too.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
BERTIE: Two top predators working side-by-side.
It’s carnage for the mackerel.
The more that get eaten, the fewer places there are to hide.
-(MUSIC CONTINUES) -(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
(MUSIC ENDS)
BERTIE: It’s only been what,
20 minutes since the dolphins got here?
I think it’s all over.
I don’t think I'm gonna be forgetting today in a hurry.
You know when you see a feeding frenzy, a predation on land,
often you're quite far away and you're using a long zoom lens.
But underwater it's completely different, you know,
you're limited by the water visibility, you have to be right in amongst it.
And to feel the tuna that were as big as me zipping past,
and me almost getting knocked out of the way
and then feeling the sounds of the dolphins echolocation,
their clicks buzzing in my belly.
Yeah, it doesn’t get much better than that.
BERTIE: We’ve hit a productive patch of ocean
and if there’s dolphin food here,
there’s a good chance of finding that spinner dolphin super pod.
But with sundown approaching, it’s time to head back
to the big boat and prepare for tomorrow.
I don’t want to drift too far from this spot overnight,
but this is the high seas.
There’s over two miles of water below us,
and nothing for a traditional anchor to grab onto.
So, Theo’s deploying the only form of tether we have.
It’s a sea anchor.
And rather than latch onto a rock, it latches onto the ocean currents.
(AIR HISSES)
BERTIE: The problem we’ve got is that on the surface,
the boat acts as a giant sail. So, if the wind picks up in the night,
we could just get blown off into the middle of nowhere.
So, this big parachute acts as an anchor, a drag,
to keep us in the dolphin hotspot area.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: Our search is on hold for now, but spinners hunt through the night.
There could be a super pod out there right now,
powering their way through the waves.
(MUSIC ENDS)
BERTIE: We get cracking early.
Thanks to the sea anchor,
we’re still close to where we saw that bait ball yesterday.
BERTIE: Well, Captain Oscar has spotted something.
I’m gonna check it out with the drone.
Well it’s definitely dolphins.
Just go a bit closer, tip down.
Whoa!
Wow. Look at all of them!
That is a lot of spinner dolphins!
Well, it’s not a super pod, but if 30 pods like this join together,
then bam! You know, you get a pod a mile wide, maybe even bigger.
That’s what we're looking for.
It's time to practice my filming skills for the main event.
Oh, cool! There’s a couple of tiny little babies. They’re teeny!
And they’re cruising so tight to mum they’re like, "Mum, wait for me".
I doubt they've ever seen land.
They must think the big blue just goes on forever.
Drones are just such a crazy perspective, I mean from the surface there’s--
okay, there’s quite a lot of dorsal fins but,
the moment you get over the top, suddenly it’s like,
“Wow, look at all of them.” You’ve just got no idea.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: This drone is definitely going to help me show
the mind-blowing scale of a super pod when we find it.
But right now, I want to capture the behavior
that gave spinner dolphins their name.
For that, I’ll need another game changing tool.
-(MACHINE WHIRS) -BERTIE: A gyro stabilized camera,
that smooths out shots on a rolling ocean.
There you go.
Okay. Watch out.
-TASH: Got it? -Yep.
BERTIE: It’s worth a few bob, so I've got Tash here to help me maneuver it.
You’ve got a lot of spinning just over there, if you turn the camera left.
Well, unlike with the drone, where you can see
absolutely everything that’s going on. Jib down a little bit, please, Tash.
Now we’re at water level, trying to get that super intimate low angle.
You have no idea where the dolphins are gonna come up.
So, I’m just picking a plane of focus and then waiting for the dolphins
hopefully to come up in focus.
There's a bunch of different theories as to why they jump and spin.
Some say that it’s to try and get parasites off their bodies.
Others say that it’s for communication.
Others say that it’s just for fun!
That one must have spun three times in the air.
It’s reckoned that they can spin six or even seven times in one jump.
-(JUBILANT MUSIC PLAYING) -(DOLPHIN SQUEAKS)
BERTIE: One thing's for sure, whatever the reason for spinning
it must be important to them,
because they start to practice at a very young age.
Aw, that is just the cutest!
There’s a tiny little baby
and it keeps doing little jumps.
BERTIE: Filming the spinners like this is great,
but I won’t get another chance
to practice swimming with a super pod.
I've gotta get in the water now.
-JOHNNY: Okay? -BERTIE: Okay. Cool.
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
(DOLPHINS CLICKING)
BERTIE: Dolphins use clicks to navigate and whistles to talk to each other.
The sound is immense.
(DOLPHINS CLICKING AND SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: They’re fast too.
At full-pelt they can hit over twenty miles an hour.
But I can’t even keep up with them at cruising speed!
(GRUNTS)
Oh, man!
That is so epic.
To see that many dolphins, all underwater.
But that pod, just a few hundred animals, is just a fraction of the size
of the super pods that these spinners can form.
Somewhere out here is a pod of thousands and thousands
of spinners,
and I really, really want to find it.
(UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: That brief encounter has taught me some valuable lessons.
Filming spinners on the surface is tricky, but doable.
Diving with them though? Not so easy.
Before we try again, I’m gonna head back to the big boat
to prep my secret weapon.
So, our biggest challenge
with filming the dolphins underwater is keeping up with them.
I can't swim fast enough.
So, this could be the answer to our problems.
It’s an underwater scooter.
So, there’s a really powerful propeller at the back.
I’ve got my camera attached to the front.
And, in theory, I’m gonna be able to keep up with the dolphins.
And it really is just “a theory." It's also possible
that a catastrophic failure
will send all of my camera gear down to Davy Jones's locker.
If that happens, it’s game over.
So, yeah. We’re gonna take it slow and see if it works.
And the thirteen-year-old boy inside me is also very excited
just to be using a sea scooter underwater.
BERTIE: Here we go. First, check for leaks.
We’re looking good.
It's holding together at slow speed.
Now to try it in full James Bond mode.
Dolphins cruise at about six miles per hour.
I’m only managing three with the scooter,
but that’s at least triple my maximum swimming speed.
So, it’s a definite improvement.
JOHNNY: All good?
-It’s quite a lot of fun. -MALE VOICE: Hand me that.
And yeah, you just hold down the accelerator and feel like a dolphin.
Um, so hopefully the dolphins accept it.
It seems really quiet underwater, which is important. (EXHALES)
Yeah, so I think it’s gonna work.
BERTIE: What a day! My first swim with spinners in the morning.
Re-enacting scenes from Thunderball this evening.
I think we’re all set.
Now all we need to do is find that spinner dolphin super pod tomorrow.
(MELLOW MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: A new day brings fresh doubt.
For the next four days, life aboard the Aguila follows a familiar pattern.
We get up early.
Morning!
BERTIE: Grab a coffee.
He doesn’t normally do that, it’s just 'cause we’re filming.
Head out on deck. And stare at the sea.
The big, beautiful,
and apparently lifeless sea.
We’re basically just stood here with our eyes like this,
from the moment the sun comes up to the moment the sun goes down.
BERTIE: And tiny clues are gonna lead us to a super pod.
A strange ripple, a random splash, a hungry flock of birds.
But, well, what are the chances?
We’re on a massive ocean, but no sign of life.
(GROANS) This is very, very tedious.
Not gonna lie, I'm starting to get a little bit concerned.
We’ve spent a lot of time, and we’ve searched a massive area.
But with that said, while we’re moving, the dolphins are also a moving target,
so they might very well be in a place that we’ve already searched,
we just didn’t intercept them.
BERTIE: We’ve checked the charts, and set our course,
for another underwater canyon where ocean currents
should force dolphin food to the surface.
But we haven’t seen a single spinner, let alone a super pod.
Our morale needs a boost.
And it finally arrives in the form of bottlenose dolphins.
They’re using the bow wave of our boat to speed themselves along.
It saves them energy and gives us hope.
If they’ve found food here,
there’s a chance we’ll find the spinners too.
We've just bumped into a big group of dolphins.
-JOHNNY: Bertie! -Yeah?
-JOHNNY: Pilot whales right in front. -Pilot whales?
-JOHNNY: Yeah. With the dolphins... -Where?
JOHNNY: ...right on the bow.
Oh man, no way.
Okay. Things just got very interesting.
The main pod of dolphin are about three o’clock, Bertie,
we’ve still got a couple of pilot whales here.
(GROANS) Crazy.
We’ve got more than just a couple.
I can see at least thirty from the drone.
BERTIE: Pilot whales are a type of dolphin too.
But they hunt in the deep sea up to three thousand feet down.
Finding food is incredibly hard work for them.
They must be hanging out up here to rest and catch their breath.
That’s given the bottlenose dolphins...
a chance to mingle.
That is extraordinary,
it looks like they're playing a game of chase.
Two different species playing with each other, that is just mad!
I don’t know if that’s ever been recorded before.
(LAUGHS) Whoo!
Look at that!
JOHNNY: They’re having a great time.
BERTIE: Ah! Front flip!
BERTIE: Some dolphins will harass porpoises, even bully whales,
but there’s no animosity here.
It just looks like just good old-fashioned fun.
Even though pilot whales can weigh as much as a hippo,
they’re nervous with divers.
So, I’ve got to tread carefully when I get in the water with them.
We’re going in really slow, keeping the engine really low revs,
because they can be really shy.
So, everything we're gonna be doing has got to be as quiet as possible.
Gonna slip in the water without making any splash,
so hopefully they want to hang out.
Okay?
BERTIE: Having the bottlenose here could work in my favor.
If they’re cool with me around, it’ll put the pilot whales at ease.
I'm gonna stick close to them until I’ve been introduced.
It’s beautiful.
Some are just hanging out in this big blue void,
like massive airships.
Others are still chilling with the dolphins.
I wonder if this is more than play.
They’re touching each other.
That's how dolphins strengthen their bonds.
Is it possible these guys have been friends for years?
It’s amazing to share such an intimate moment with pilot whales.
They'll soon zoom back down into the deep to continue hunting.
Right now though, it looks like there’s other important whale business.
You can learn a lot about an animal’s diet by looking at its poo....
And pilot whales make rather a lot of it.
I’m gonna check out my findings and prepare for another dive.
Well, the most fun part of that was one of the whales
did a huge poo right in my face and I swam right into it.
And full of the poo were these.
It’s a squid beak.
It’s right in the mouth of the squid.
There’s none of those guys at the surface right now.
They’re all super deep.
So these pilot whale are diving super deep,
eating the squid and coming back to the surface to breathe.
BERTIE: With calm seas and calm whales,
I’m going to pull out all the stops on the next dive.
Scooter's ready and the cool thing about this scooter,
the reason we can do this potentially with these whales, is because it’s silent.
BERTIE: If this works, it’ll bring a whole new dimension
to filming the spinners too.
It’s working even better than I hoped.
I feel like a pilot whale.
(SLOW TEMPO MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: It used to be thought that the pod was piloted by a single leader,
hence their name....
We now know that’s not true, but there is a strong family bond
that keeps the pod together.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
BERTIE: There’s one whale that stands out though, an adult female.
I think she’s scoping me out, checking that I’m harmless.
But it feels like she’s looking into my soul.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
This whale family seems to trust me.
As maybe the ultimate honor,
they’re falling asleep in front of my eyes.
They are mind-blowing.
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
(MUSIC FADES)
BERTIE: I think it’s time to leave them in peace.
-It worked! (CHUCKLES) -JOHNNY: It worked, yeah?
It’s like being a pilot whale.
The biggest one, I think she was a female, came right over.
And I could see her eye, just checking me out, twitching around.
And we just had this moment and I’ve never seen anything like that.
(BREATHES HEAVILY)
Just looking into the eye of something that is...
clearly so intelligent.
They just ooze intelligence.
And you know, we’re in the middle of nowhere,
that could be the first time that whale has ever seen a human.
First time I’ve ever seen a pilot whale underwater, so.
Yeah, I hope her encounter was...
as cool as mine was.
BERTIE: Those pilot whales were a huge bonus,
but we’re running out of time
to find that super pod.
It feels like the ocean is taunting us.
I’m considering just permanently attaching this pole to my body,
so I don’t even have to use my hands. Jump again please, Mr. or Mrs. Dolphin.
It’s a common dolphin.
About three or four times a day, we all get very excited
because we see dolphins.
But then unfortunately, whilst it’s always cool to see a dolphin,
they turn out to be the wrong ones.
Common dolphins, they jump much higher.
They do these big leaps so you can actually tell
from a really long way away if it’s a common dolphin
as opposed to a spinner. The other way to tell,
the common dolphins, if they jump and they show you
their belly,
if it’s white you immediately know it's a common dolphin.
What is that over there? Big high jump. It's a common dolphin not a spinner.
You know, watching any dolphin is living the dream.
-Big splash. -Nightmare.
BERTIE: Unless you've got a deadline.
(WHISPERS) Common dolphin.
Oh! I saw one jump really high!
(GROANS)
I’ve never been so disappointed to see a dolphin.
JOHNNY:
BERTIE: True that.
But we came all this way to film a spinner dolphin super pod.
And with time slipping by, serious doubts are creeping in.
This is all getting a bit frustrating.
Somewhere out here, are thousands and thousands of dolphins,
but we just can’t find them. And the more we look around,
trying to find a needle in a haystack,
the more I begin to feel like maybe we might not find
the super pod of spinner dolphins
that’s rumored to swim around and gather in this spot.
BERTIE: Although, if the ocean has taught me one thing,
it’s that your luck can turn at any time.
Here we go, last day. And we’re all on lookout duty.
Maybe this turtle taxi is a good omen too.
What is that?
They’re diving ten o’clock, Bertie, moving towards nine.
BERTIE: We’ve got diving birds.
This is our last chance to find spinner dolphins.
Okay. So, we’ve got a bunch of surface activity up here.
There’s birds just piling into the water.
There's Boobies, Shearwaters, all different kinds of birds
pumping into the… Geez! Look at that!
The amount of activity that’s going on at the surface is wild.
So, okay. You can film that over his shoulder,
that looks really cool.
The last few days have been frustrating,
you know, it’s a beautiful place don’t get me wrong,
but it's pretty boring just going up and down staring at empty ocean.
But occasionally, you get little oases where the life just goes bananas.
And right now, that is going bananas.
Okay. Birds are diving and the bait is up.
-Where is it? -Right there. Right there.
BERTIE: It’s so quiet.
No whoosh of tuna,
no dolphin chatter....
Just a planet-sized bait ball of lanternfish.
These guys live in the deep
and usually move towards the surface at night to feed on plankton.
That’s when spinner dolphins normally hunt them.
They’re a key part of spinners' diet.
But lanternfish are rarely at the surface in the day.
The scales in the water show that dolphins have been feeding.
So where have they gone?
Look, Nico! Look! Here come the dolphins
They’re coming.
We're gonna have a good surprise.
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: That’s music to my ears!
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING LOUDLY)
BERTIE: The dolphins are back.
They’re not spinners, they’re spotted dolphins.
It's like watching a sports team!
And the game is, "Stop the fish escaping."
(SQUEAKING CONTINUES)
They’re blowing bubbles from below.
All that rising air spooks the lanternfish
and keeps them near the surface.
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: I bet the birds are grateful.
(BIRDS SQUAWKING)
BERTIE: A youngster! Watching Mum, picking up tips.
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: This is a bit like hitting the jackpot.
Lanternfish are one of the most abundant fish on Earth,
and they draw a lot of predators in.
Here comes another now...
mobula rays.
They were once thought of as passive plankton feeders.
But show them a bait ball, and they’re anything but.
Those flaps by their face are called cephalic lobes.
They use them to funnel fish into their mouths.
Oh, here we go.
Now the guided missiles of the fish world have arrived.
Yellowfin tuna, hundreds of them!
Now we’ve got four predators all after the same food.
You’d expect there to be a few collisions.
But the only animals getting smashed are the lanternfish.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)
(MUSIC ENDS)
(DOLPHINS SQUEAKING)
BERTIE: That’s it. The predators are off.
They've blasted that bait ball into smithereens...
All that’s left is a galaxy of tiny fish scales
glinting in the water.
Coming out and searching a place that very few people ever go
has been a very humbling experience.
And I’ve definitely learned a lot from the ocean.
You need to be patient, you need to be persistent
and most of all you need to be adaptable
because you just never know what you’re going to see.
BERTIE: And I feel lucky too, overfishing, pollution, and rising water temperatures
are hammering oceans globally, but it seems like this little gem
of a place is hanging on.
One of the main goals of this expedition was to try and film super pods
of spinner dolphins and, unfortunately, we haven’t managed
that mysteriously they’ve... they've just disappeared.
And I guess, that’s what happens when you search in the open ocean.
Those dolphins are somewhere, and we just haven’t managed to find them.
But the magic of the open ocean is that whilst it might deny you
some things, it gifts you others.
To know that out here
there are these hotspots of life that are home
to just the most insane, magical wildlife encounters.
That's pretty special.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
BERTIE: Although we were trying to film dolphins, the biggest surprise
was the number of yellowfin tuna we saw.
Since foreign factory ships were pushed offshore,
all the local fishermen I spoke to said that numbers have recovered
in this one spot.
It's a small victory, but shows what can happen
when we stop factory fishing in an area and let nature heal itself.
That's good news for wildlife and local fishermen.
(MUSIC ENDS)