Great Migrations (2010) s01e05 Episode Script
Race to Survive
NARRATOR: Migrations.
Mysterious feats of navigation endurance and courage.
Now, technology allows scientists to go along for the ride MAN: Really diving down MAN: Yook, snap! NARRATOR:Iike never before.
MAN: It's an incredible thrill.
Stuff happens that you wouldn't believe in your wildest dreams.
NARRATOR:Iearning where the animals go MAN: Cool! Wow.
That's perfect.
Look at that! NARRATOR:why and how they survive.
MAN: This is really cutting-edge stuff.
MAN: We are the first to find out what they're really doing.
NARRATOR: This is the inside story of the science behind the great migrations.
On this October morning, elephant seals are nearing the end of breeding season.
From here in Patagonia, they will soon embark on an odyssey through the southern oceans.
That's why a team of biologists led by Flavio Quintana is here.
To deploy a state-of-the-art tag in hopes of tracking their every move.
For ten months out of the year, the seals migrate thousands of miles disappearing into the sea to feed, where their behavior is largely unknown.
It is a question vexing Quintana for much of his 20-year career.
QUlNTANA: We are always surprised to study this kind of animal, because they are incredible, incredible.
They are diving machines;, I'm really impressed with that.
Because they need to come back to shore to breed and to molt, but they spend 80 percent of their life at sea.
And nobody knows what they are doing at sea.
This is what we are trying to discover.
NARRATOR: If the high-tech tag works, scientists will finally solve the mystery of the elephant seals' migration.
Quintana's special weapon is called the Daily Diary, invented by this man, Rory Wilson.
WlLSON: There are temperature sensors in there, there are speed sensors in there, there are light sensors in there, all packaged in this resin.
This part here, all this big clunky bit here, these are two batteries.
The batteries are inside stainless steel, and that's in order to protect against the ridiculous amounts of pressures to which the animals expose themselves routinely.
NARRATOR: It's the result of ten years of trial and error.
No other tag records such a wide array of data.
Wilson got the idea for his Daily Diary while studying penguins.
WlLSON: It's terribly depressing.
You go out on your island, you're going to do your whole Ph.
D.
, your doctorate on penguins, on what they do at sea, and they're all standing around the edge Iooking at you saying, "Yes, we're the penguins.
" Then they all jump in the water and disappear.
So in a grumpy and foul-mouthed mood, I went back and thought, "lf I can't see them, then I'll find something else that's just going to record for me.
" Rather makeshift.
NARRATOR: He tested the prototype on an animal that follows direction WlLSON: Stay! NARRATOR:his dog, Moon.
Moon's Daily Diary recorded her speed, her temperature, every breath, step and wag.
WlLSON: Here's where I tell her to run, throw the stick.
Look at this activity here, tearing towards the stick.
Picks it up and then this very regular canter back.
NARRATOR: But it also revealed things Wilson didn't expect.
WlLSON: Her panting.
She'll breathe up to six times a second when she's panting [panting.]
when she's been running around.
And when I'm about to give her a command, I put my hand up, and I discovered looking at the trace, she actually holds her breath when my hand goes up.
NARRATOR: This intrigued Wilson.
He wanted to know more about the importance of breathing in animal behavior.
He returned to his penguins.
The results were astonishing.
WlLSON: Each one of these is a flipper beating.
It's swimming the whole time underwater, and relaxing a bit as it comes back to the surface here.
You can see as it comes back for the first breath, it's using the buoyancy to help it go up.
So what the penguin's doing is it's gone down, slight curve on the way down, it's come up, it's spotted a prey, it's come up really rapidly and it's gone yook, snap and then drifted up to the surface.
NARRATOR: The penguin takes in the exact amount of air it needs in advance of a dive.
WlLSON: You know, the penguin before it goes down is saying: "How deep am I going to go on the next dive, how many fish do I think I'm going to catch?" They're inhaling already at the surface the right amount of air volume to give them neutral buoyancy at the depth at which they're going to forage.
So the implication is they know: "Ha, 30 meters, I need 600 milliliters to be neutrally buoyant at that, so, 600, I'm going down.
" That's quite complicated stuff for a small bird.
NARRATOR: Their buoyant bodies can then rise like balloons through the water, effortlessly catching fish along the way.
By doing this, the animal conserves what it needs most for its migratory journey: energy.
With this discovery, Wilson joins Quintana to study the migration of the elephant seals.
In two months, these behemoths will return here to molt- a perfect time to retrieve the Daily Diaries because the batteries won't last much longer.
WlLSON: We've never done this before in animals that are going to go this deep, and it can just go horribly wrong.
NARRATOR: Elephant seals dive thousands of feet.
If the Daily Diary works under such high pressure, we will witness a new era of biological discovery.
Quintana identifies females to tag- at 2,000 pounds, they're easier to deal with than the 8,000-pound males.
Male or female, it's risky business.
And the colony is restless.
It's up to Marcela Uhart to anesthetize the giants.
UHART: Elephant seals are so big and so powerful, you know, they have very few predators.
They don't really fear us that much.
They actually challenge you.
[groaning.]
[seal barking.]
UHART: Tomorrow he's going to be on his own, I think [growling.]
WlLSON: I don't like this being protective of your friend stuff.
I'd rather they just deserted them and left them to it.
NARRATOR: They name the tagged seals after submarines and space stations.
In all, five females are successfully rigged with Daily Diaries.
WlLSON: We have five.
If we're lucky, I think we'll get four back.
I sort of tip somewhere between three and four.
And I'll just hope and pray that they all are working okay.
NARRATOR: If it goes well, Wilson will be the first to tell the story of this hidden journey.
These seals' ocean pathways are nearly boundless.
But that is not the case with many migratory routes on land.
As human populations grow and habitats diminish, the great migrating animals are increasingly in peril particularly the monarch butterfly.
The monarchs' migration spans generations of individuals and is an astounding 4,000 miles long, from Mexico to as far as Canada and back again each year.
CHlP TAYLOR: This is one of the world's most magnificent natural phenomena.
I mean, here you have an insect that migrates to the same general location every year, and then returns to breed in the northern part of North America.
NARRATOR: Chip Taylor has dedicated his life's work to the ceaseless habits of the monarch.
For 1 8 years, he's been tracking the migration with the same device: a plastic tag.
And he's learned a surprising amount from this simple tool.
In one study, Taylor released a monarch born in captivity 2,000 miles from its birthplace.
The butterfly still migrated southwest to Mexico.
TAYLOR: These butterflies have to navigate across a continent.
They have to navigate.
How does a butterfly coming out of Maine know how to get to Mexico? NARRATOR: In 2009, scientists discovered the monarch's internal GPS, a network of not one but two internal clocks.
A clock in the brain tracks the location of the sun.
And a second clock, in the antennae, keeps track of time.
TAYLOR: What they are programmed to do is follow and respond to certain physical cues, and these physical cues have a default sort of mechanism of getting them to the right place.
Now the trick for us is to try to figure out what are those cues? NARRATOR: Understanding these cues has never been more important.
The monarch population is down by half just from last year.
Its ancient flyway is unrecognizable as development overwhelms the landscape.
And the milkweed plant the monarch needs to lay its eggs is vanishing.
TAYLOR: We're losing 6,000 acres a day in this country due to development.
That's 2.
2 million acres a year.
That's just an astounding amount of habitat to turn into concrete.
And you just can't keep on doing that without having a really significant impact on wildlife out there.
NARRATOR: Knowing how far the monarchs fly each day and where they stop could save them.
An electronic tag that records precise data could help.
But this creature is light as smoke, and a tag is a heavy load.
Enter Martin Wikelski.
He's a migration ecologist, Ieading the charge to miniaturize tag technology.
WlKELSKl: The smaller you can get the tag, the more power you can output, the better the study we can do.
And that's going to be a total breakthrough in our understanding of the natural environment.
We need to understand small animals to understand life on Earth, and that's what we still have no clue about.
NARRATOR: With radio tags, Wikelski followed the route of a one-ounce thrush, discovering how it navigates at night.
Then he went smaller, switching to insects.
His team designed a tiny hearing aid battery attached to an antenna made of a guitar string.
The smaller the device, the simpler the data.
This radio tag only tracked location and direction.
But it was a start.
Wikelski tried it on bees.
They flew.
He tried it on dragonflies and discovered that one migrated a hundred miles in a single day.
But the monarch is half the weight of a dragonfly.
TAYLOR: I first learned about Martin's work a few years ago when I heard of his studies where he was putting radio tags on dragonflies, and I thought that was pretty fascinating.
I thought, "Aw, man you'll never get them small enough to put them on monarchs.
" NARRATOR: Martin Wikelski's Kitty Hawk is the butterfly house in Constance, Germany.
WlKELSKl: Nice.
NARRATOR: The tag is the smallest yet, half the weight of this butterfly.
WlKELSKl: Available radio tag, and they just barely got it in the size range that the butterfly might fly with it.
And now we just try it.
NARRATOR: Trial one: no go.
A slight antenna adjustment, then trial two.
And liftoff.
WlKELSKl: Wow! [laughing.]
Oh, there it is.
It's working.
It's totally amazing, I mean, the first flight of a butterfly with a tag! So it's working, I mean, you see it's just flying all over the place.
So I think it's going to work in the field as well.
This is flying beautifully.
It's amazing.
NARRATOR: Wikelski and Taylor will now team up to see if they are on the brink of a new age of monarch science.
[rooster crows.]
The migration ecologist Martin Wikelski finally meets the monarch sage Chip Taylor.
Together, they'll conduct the first test ever of an electronic tag on a monarch butterfly.
It's a meeting of like minds but not when it comes to catching butterflies.
TAYLOR: Come up behind the butterfly while it's sitting on a flower.
What you don't want to do is swing at them in the air.
WlKELSKl: Okay.
TAYLOR: Get it! Whoa! I mean, he's like a little kid; it's wonderful.
At my age, I don't do that anymore.
I prefer the sneaky method! Looks like we got one here.
NARRATOR: The scientists catch six in all.
Success will be determined if the tags do not disrupt the monarchs' migration.
And if the insects can be found after takeoff.
WlKELSKl: I'll just get the transmitter.
NARRATOR: But Taylor has his doubts.
TAYLOR: One of the things about these kinds of tests is that you do them indoors, you do them under ideal conditions, and then we bring them out here in the field, and we're dealing with 20-mile-an-hour winds, and it's going to be quite challenging for the butterfly to figure out how to handle all of this mass that you're attaching to the abdomen.
WlKELSKl: Now it's up to the butterfly.
TAYLOR: Well, we're not going to name it lcarus, right? WlKELSKl: Let's call it lcarus and see if lcarus can fly.
WlKELSKl: Wow.
TAYLOR: Wow.
It's flying pretty well, look at that.
WlKELSKl: That's amazing.
TAYLOR: It's staying close to the ground, though.
WlKELSKl: Wow, it's flying! TAYLOR: All right, let's start with liftoff here.
WlKELSKl: Wow! TAYLOR: There she goes.
That's cool.
That's terrific, look at that! WlKELSKl: Wow, it's really taking off.
TAYLOR: It's really catching the wind.
WlKELSKl: It's coming over to your side.
TAYLOR: Big Boy.
WlKELSKl: Wow, that's a big one.
TAYLOR: That's the biggest butterfly we've got.
There it goes.
WlKELSKl: There she goes.
I think he still wants to feed.
[laughing.]
NARRATOR: Taylor and Wikelski take to the air, too, in pursuit of the tagged monarchs.
With radio receivers in tow, they listen for a telltale click.
WlKELSKl: We are looking for liftoff right now.
NARRATOR: Each butterfly is on its own frequency.
[click.]
WlKELSKl: There it is, do you hear it? We've got a signal.
NARRATOR: An auspicious start- some signals come in loud and clear.
WlKELSKl: So liftoff is still probably at the field down there.
NARRATOR: But the test is incomplete until a butterfly has flown more than a few miles in a northeasterly direction.
TAYLOR: Martin, any sign of lcarus? WlKELSKl: Nope, we will go a little lower and search closer to the ground.
TAYLOR: Let's hope it works.
[buzzing.]
WlKELSKl: Yep, yep, there it is.
I do hear lcarus.
TAYLOR: Good old lcarus.
WlKELSKl: lcarus is down there, yes.
NARRATOR: All but one are accounted for.
Big Boy is still missing.
TAYLOR: Martin, do you hear anything? WlKELSKl: Nope.
NARRATOR: Perhaps he's a long distance flyer or the weight weighed him down, plummeting him to Earth.
Taylor and Wikelski continue northeast.
Five miles out.
Nothing.
Ten miles out.
[buzzing.]
And they get it.
WlKELSKl: That's the signal! TAYLOR: That's fantastic! [cheering.]
[laughing.]
TAYLOR: It was incredible! It was unbelievable! We got Big Boy out there about 1 5 miles! NARRATOR: There's one last step.
They need to find Big Boy on the ground to identify his stopover point and find out if he's still in good condition.
WlKELSKl: That's three miles out there.
TAYLOR: Yeah.
NARRATOR: They follow Big Boy's radio signal.
Weaker.
Stronger.
WlKELSKl: In a few hundred meters, I think we should take a right.
[static.]
NARRATOR: Weaker again.
WlKELSKl: No, that's not good.
Maybe we should have gone left and then go north, I don't know.
TAYLOR: Big Boy's moved out of town.
WlKELSKl: There it is, I've got a signal.
Yes! Okay, now we get it.
WlKELSKl: On this side or the other side? TAYLOR: It's not appropriate for him to say, "Come to me, Big Boy.
" WlKELSKl: Hey! Here he is! That's it! [laughing.]
TAYLOR: Fantastic! WlKELSKl: Yes! TAYLOR: Fantastic! All right! Good for you! NARRATOR: A scientific breakthrough, the first test of its kind.
Big Boy is found in perfect condition.
WlKELSKl: It's really perfect.
TAYLOR: Yeah, this antenna is not an impediment at all.
WlKELSKl: No, no.
TAYLOR: Hot damn [laughing.]
hot damn! NARRATOR: The technology works, and the future for these insects as well as countless other animals may soon be the better for it.
TAYLOR: Big Boy is ready to go, go to Wisconsin, find a girlfriend, there he goes.
WlKELSKl: Yeah.
TAYLOR: There he goes, all right! And look it, he's going northeast, he headed out that way.
Right along the tree line, northeast.
WlKELSKl: A lot of people complain that it's hard to discover things these days because everything's known.
Absolutely not! Everything's new.
Every time we look at it, we see something new here.
NARRATOR: Taylor now has a new tool in which to continue his life's work.
TAYLOR: I watch this population go up, and I watch it go down.
I watch its life and death struggles all of the time.
I'm so intimately attached and involved with this butterfly.
And I don't know how to explain it any other way.
It's just what I am, and that's about all I can say about it.
NARRATOR: Migration is seldom attempted alone.
But there's more than safety in numbers.
For mathematical ecologist John Fryxell, migration is math in motion.
Where we see animals, he sees mathematical patterns.
And he's using these patterns to unlock the key to wildebeest survival and migration.
FRYXELL: I think migration is kind of a theme in my life.
There's just something about mobility that fascinates me.
The urge to try and predict patterns of movement to me is just really intriguing.
NARRATOR: In the Serengeti grasslands of Tanzania, wildebeest are on their 300-mile journey.
This annual event is among the great natural spectacles on the planet, as herds of zebra, gazelle and wildebeest chase the rain and the grass it nurtures.
But the wildebeest pay a hefty toll five out of six young don't make it.
And yet the herd is a million strong.
Fryxell is determined to figure out how- despite these odds- the herd thrives.
He begins by observing the wildebeest behavior from the air.
From up here, he can see the patterns of the herds.
FRYXELL: We can see a hyena over there heading over to the track.
Certainly there's some complex dynamics within the whole herd of wildebeest.
Well, the interesting thing during the migration is it's a series of individuals, one after the other, following blindly behind the movement of a key individual.
I mean, this is, you know, really interesting, this kind of streaming behavior of the wildebeest, you know, going forward.
Clearly there are some individuals that are at the front of the line.
The behavior of some leaders gets translated to the rest of the group, and then the group behaves like a super organism.
NARRATOR: Wildebeest as super organism- individuals affecting the behavior of the whole.
Fryxell then looks at what forces shape the migratory path of this super organism.
He suspects the key to why they survive in such great numbers is here- starting with an insect.
The dung beetle thrives on wildebeest manure, which it collects into balls and stores underground, fertilizing the soil allowing more wildebeest to graze.
Millions of mouths mow the grass, keeping trees in check, but allowing brush to grow.
Forming the perfect cover for predators that eat wildebeest.
It all leads, in the end, to the predators.
Fryxell believes predators- more than anything- shape the herd's patterns.
And his team takes a closer look at the lioness.
MAN: Okay.
[fires rifle.]
FRYXELL: Nine, so now we move to the upper right canine.
NARRATOR: The GPS on the collar will allow the team to track its movement.
An accelerometer records her every start, stop and speed, which tells when the hunter rests, prowls or takes to the chase.
FRYXELL: Five, six, seven wildebeest NARRATOR: Using on-site observations FRYXELL:21 wildebeest.
NARRATOR:data from collared predators and collared wildebeests, Fryxell can build mathematical models that predict the behavior of predator and prey.
It reads like a video game where he can create different scenarios between lions and wildebeest.
First, Fryxell conjures up wildebeests that do not herd.
He spreads them out like marbles over the landscape.
Then he lets a simulated lion loose.
FRYXELL: There's a kill, and another kill.
And the net result is that it's very easy for the lion to encounter fresh prey, so with that very high density of prey, you see the lion doesn't even have to go very far before it finds a new meal.
NARRATOR: In this model, the wildebeest do not stand a chance.
The next simulation more closely models a typical herd's behavior.
FRYXELL: Grouping together creates great big vacant areas that aren't very efficient for the lion to search in.
NARRATOR: Here, the wildebeest evade predators by grouping together and forming what he calls holes in the landscape, vast areas where a lion can't see a wildebeest.
The super organism then goes a step further: the holes in the landscape move.
FRYXELL: Well, when you're the best meal on four hooves, the best thing you can do is be unpredictable.
The last thing you want to be is a meal where the lions expect you to be.
NARRATOR: Lions know when seasonal herds pass through their territory, but they won't know exactly where to find them.
FRYXELL: So we can see this on this map of the Serengeti ecosystem, where the bright colors signify really high densities of animals, Iarge herds that are shifting without any kind of predictable pattern across the landscape from month to month.
Now imagine that you're a lion or hyena trying to make a living in that kind of landscape.
It's virtually impossible for you to know what would be the best place for you to set up a territory.
NARRATOR: The herd as super organism, and the surprisingly random nature of its movement, keep a predator guessing, keeping the wildebeest a million strong.
But this ingenious survival mechanism could never work without a large habitat.
And large habitats are increasingly rare as humans encroach on wild spaces.
For many of the world's migratory animals, this is the main threat to their survival.
In Mali, West Africa, the desert elephant once roamed vast distances unimpeded.
Now the last animals of their kind are under threat.
Tracker El Mehdi Doumbia and biologist Jake Wall from the organization Save the Elephants have collared nine of the 350 elephants here.
The more they can learn about the herd's habits WALL: Good, fresh tracks.
NARRATOR:the better they will be able to protect their migratory routes.
WALL: These elephants don't give us a moment to rest, they keep moving, we keep having to work really, really hard to try and find them, and, even with the tracking data, it's not an easy job.
NARRATOR: The only way the Mali elephants can survive is to move.
They walk endlessly over a home range of over 1 2,000 square miles in the harsh heat of the Sahel.
No other elephants travel farther in search of food and water.
During the dry season, they end up here.
Lake Banzena is one of the few places to find water year round.
The herds linger until distant rains begin.
Elephants can hear rain fall vast distances away because of its low infrasonic signal.
Then, within 24 hours, they go to where the rain is.
And this year, water is most critical.
It is the worst drought in 26 years.
The herd must move fast, because between the lake and the next stopover point Iies 60 miles of desert and a big obstacle: the Gandamia Plateau.
There's just one way through: Ia portes des elephants, the elephants' door- a cut in the mountain the herds have been using for centuries.
It's also a place with increasing human settlement and where elephants compete with herders and their animals for water.
These images capture a dramatic scene as villagers and a Save the Elephants team desperately try to rescue a teenage female and three juveniles.
They fell, one after another, into a man-made well searching for water.
The older elephant crushed and killed a younger one during the three-day ordeal.
These tragedies happen as humans settle on ancient elephant paths.
But 3,000 miles to the east, in the grasslands of Kenya IAlN DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: I am just going to put a little bit of water on the back without splashing.
DABALLEN: Don't step on the ears, please.
NARRATOR:a solution is being tested.
Biologist lain Douglas-Hamilton has gained near legendary status for being the African elephant's custodian.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: You don't think that's too loose? We're collaring elephants because we believe that by understanding their movements, we can understand their decisions.
And if we understand their decisions, we understand what they need.
Elephants are at a tough time now, and we have to plan for their future.
NARRATOR: Over the years, Douglas-Hamilton has witnessed first hand the disastrous consequences of human-elephant conflict.
Poaching for ivory tusks was once the chief killer of elephants.
Today, it's farmers who protect their crops.
Douglas-Hamilton with his wife Oria founded Save the Elephants 40 years ago to study and protect this severely endangered species.
This rustic outpost is the repository of the organization's studies on elephants from all over the African continent information that scientists throughout the world have come to rely on.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: It's actually a kilometer wide.
It's working well.
NARRATOR: Today, the team is collaring an elephant with a state-of-the-art device that might save its life- a tag that sends an alert when the animal nears a farm.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Many elephants across Africa get shot because they cause damage to human property, to crops, to livelihoods, and indeed they kill people.
And you want every high-tech option that you can deploy.
NARRATOR: lain Douglas-Hamilton searches for a herd, scanning the landscape by air while researcher David Daballen's team is on the ground.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: David, David! DABALLEN: Sorry, lain? DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Where I am circling there are two groups of elephants tightly under the trees.
DABALLEN: He has found them in a perfect place.
We don't want to lose them, because they are not quite often at the moment around.
We want to take the opportunity to dart them, put a collar, because we know that from our past experience they will defend so much.
And if we have four cars we can position ourselves in different positions to make sure that the females will not see the female that has gone down.
NARRATOR: They identify the female to be collared.
DABALLEN: Dart in.
She's down, she's down! Let's get a good position.
Drive.
Drive, drive! NARRATOR: Once she's unconscious, Daballen has only 20 minutes to attach the collar.
The anesthesia makes the trunk muscles go slack- a stick will keep her airway open.
This particular collar will do what Douglas-Hamilton once only dreamed of: It will allow an elephant to communicate with him.
The collar sends its alert to a cell phone via text message.
This high-tech innovation is called geofencing.
When an elephant crosses a virtual fence line, the GPS unit in the collar sends an SMS or text message to a server in Nairobi.
The server then sends text alerts to a list of recipients who can quickly intercept the herd before it reaches a farm or human settlement.
DABALLEN: Get in the car! NARRATOR: The female awakes groggy but unharmed- the collar fits perfectly.
She will blow out the stick in her trunk, but for now it assures her an open airway.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Sometimes when you have dense agriculture, the best thing you can do is to separate the people from the elephants.
When an elephant crosses a certain boundary, we get an alarm to be set off, and it gets sent to us on a mobile telephone, which allows us to plan much better how to cope with the crop raiding.
This is really cutting-edge stuff.
NARRATOR: Geofencing is still in the testing phase, but Douglas-Hamilton believes this is the future.
But there is a terrible setback.
A torrential storm causes the banks of the Ewaso Ng'iro River to crest, creating the worst flood in memory.
Save the Elephants' research center is all but gone.
Most of the buildings and much of the decade's long research are missing.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Well, this flood has had a terrible effect on our work.
First of all, it's caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage.
I don't know how we're gonna get the money to rebuild, but we've also lost some data, which is particularly precious to us.
NARRATOR: But Douglas-Hamilton and his team are determined to dig themselves out and start over again.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: We've got to carry on.
Our mission is to secure a future for elephants.
I've been working on elephants for 43 years, and it's all to save the elephants.
So we're not going to give up on that.
NARRATOR: As Save the Elephants recovers, the Mali elephants survive the drought.
And Douglas-Hamilton with his team will continue tracking elephants, working to preserve their ancient paths.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: I think the worst-case scenario would be a cutting of the migration routes, completely cut off from their water supplies.
It would then only be a matter of time before the elephants had nothing to live with.
That would be my worst-case scenario for Mali.
But it's not going to happen.
We've got to prevent it.
NARRATOR: Working in the natural world is always a gamble.
Science needs data, and if nature doesn't cooperate, data will get destroyed, eaten or swept out to sea.
In Patagonia, the scientists return, hoping their gamble pays off.
The elephant seals have returned to molt after two months at sea.
With good fortune, the five Daily Diaries will return, too.
Flavio Quintana's team use GPS to find out when the tagged seals arrive and where they settle on the beach.
Over the course of a week, the team retrieves four out of the five tags.
Each Daily Diary is perfectly intact.
7,300 miles away, Rory Wilson at his lab in Swansea, Wales, begins to read the much anticipated story- the secrets of the seal migration.
WlLSON: You know, you're opening the book on it for the first time, it's an incredible thrill.
Stuff happens that you wouldn't believe in your wildest dreams.
NARRATOR: First, Wilson reconstructs the movement of the seal named Mir.
WlLSON: This is the moment where Mir comes off the continental shelf, the platform and goes down into the deep water, and you can actually see this in her depth traces and they get deeper and deeper.
NARRATOR: Mir's deepest dive was nearly half a mile, an acrobatic feeding frenzy.
WlLSON: The animal was in free fall, the body was in all these extraordinary ballet-like postures.
And you think, whoa, I never thought elephant seals did that! NARRATOR: Then Wilson looks at how the seal swam as it traveled great distances.
He compares its sway- side-to-side movement WlLSON: So these are the tail beats, and the glide, and the tail beat and the glide NARRATOR:to the surge- vertical and horizontal position.
WlLSON: And as the tail beats occur, the animal's pointing up, and when she glides, she points down.
So up and down.
NARRATOR: Then calculates pressure to determine the depth and length of her dips.
WlLSON: And the interesting thing is she's doing exactly the same thing as sparrows do when they fly or some of these small birds.
NARRATOR: To his surprise, elephant seals are behaving like birds: they fly underwater.
This is how they conserve energy.
Small birds flap their wings to gain momentum when flying up, and hitch a ride on the current going down.
WlLSON: You see small birds flap, flap, flap, flap and glide down, flap, flap, flap and glide down, and that's a way of saving energy.
An animal as big as an elephant seal does it, and an animal as small as a sparrow does it as well.
NARRATOR: Both the small bird and the enormous elephant seal evolved to conserve energy in similar ways.
WlLSON: Energy is critical for animals, for their survival but they spend it in going out to get stuff to feed.
So this balance of energy expenditure against energy gain on migrations or off them is something that's really critical to animals.
And as we go gleefully through the planet and change everything, we really need to be considering that.
NARRATOR: For the first time, we are able to witness the elephant seal as it journeys through the ocean.
WlLSON: Lovely data, aren't they? Really beautiful, beautiful stuff that comes out of this tag.
NARRATOR: With inventions like the Daily Diary, the invisible is becoming visible.
It is in these details where the true secrets of the elephant seal reside revealing how this great wanderer can survive its long trek through the southern seas.
Wilson and his colleagues won't stop here.
They will continue to test.
WlKELSKl: Wow, it's really taking off.
TAYLOR: It's really catching the wind.
NARRATOR: lnvent DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: We get an alarm to be set off.
NARRATOR:break new ground.
And with each technological advance, the science of the great migrations gives us a larger understanding of our world.
WlLSON: It's a little bit frustrating that the Daily Diary is still as big as it is.
I still want it to be smaller, I want it on swifts, but there's no limit to that.
When are you going to stop? Ants, you know?
Mysterious feats of navigation endurance and courage.
Now, technology allows scientists to go along for the ride MAN: Really diving down MAN: Yook, snap! NARRATOR:Iike never before.
MAN: It's an incredible thrill.
Stuff happens that you wouldn't believe in your wildest dreams.
NARRATOR:Iearning where the animals go MAN: Cool! Wow.
That's perfect.
Look at that! NARRATOR:why and how they survive.
MAN: This is really cutting-edge stuff.
MAN: We are the first to find out what they're really doing.
NARRATOR: This is the inside story of the science behind the great migrations.
On this October morning, elephant seals are nearing the end of breeding season.
From here in Patagonia, they will soon embark on an odyssey through the southern oceans.
That's why a team of biologists led by Flavio Quintana is here.
To deploy a state-of-the-art tag in hopes of tracking their every move.
For ten months out of the year, the seals migrate thousands of miles disappearing into the sea to feed, where their behavior is largely unknown.
It is a question vexing Quintana for much of his 20-year career.
QUlNTANA: We are always surprised to study this kind of animal, because they are incredible, incredible.
They are diving machines;, I'm really impressed with that.
Because they need to come back to shore to breed and to molt, but they spend 80 percent of their life at sea.
And nobody knows what they are doing at sea.
This is what we are trying to discover.
NARRATOR: If the high-tech tag works, scientists will finally solve the mystery of the elephant seals' migration.
Quintana's special weapon is called the Daily Diary, invented by this man, Rory Wilson.
WlLSON: There are temperature sensors in there, there are speed sensors in there, there are light sensors in there, all packaged in this resin.
This part here, all this big clunky bit here, these are two batteries.
The batteries are inside stainless steel, and that's in order to protect against the ridiculous amounts of pressures to which the animals expose themselves routinely.
NARRATOR: It's the result of ten years of trial and error.
No other tag records such a wide array of data.
Wilson got the idea for his Daily Diary while studying penguins.
WlLSON: It's terribly depressing.
You go out on your island, you're going to do your whole Ph.
D.
, your doctorate on penguins, on what they do at sea, and they're all standing around the edge Iooking at you saying, "Yes, we're the penguins.
" Then they all jump in the water and disappear.
So in a grumpy and foul-mouthed mood, I went back and thought, "lf I can't see them, then I'll find something else that's just going to record for me.
" Rather makeshift.
NARRATOR: He tested the prototype on an animal that follows direction WlLSON: Stay! NARRATOR:his dog, Moon.
Moon's Daily Diary recorded her speed, her temperature, every breath, step and wag.
WlLSON: Here's where I tell her to run, throw the stick.
Look at this activity here, tearing towards the stick.
Picks it up and then this very regular canter back.
NARRATOR: But it also revealed things Wilson didn't expect.
WlLSON: Her panting.
She'll breathe up to six times a second when she's panting [panting.]
when she's been running around.
And when I'm about to give her a command, I put my hand up, and I discovered looking at the trace, she actually holds her breath when my hand goes up.
NARRATOR: This intrigued Wilson.
He wanted to know more about the importance of breathing in animal behavior.
He returned to his penguins.
The results were astonishing.
WlLSON: Each one of these is a flipper beating.
It's swimming the whole time underwater, and relaxing a bit as it comes back to the surface here.
You can see as it comes back for the first breath, it's using the buoyancy to help it go up.
So what the penguin's doing is it's gone down, slight curve on the way down, it's come up, it's spotted a prey, it's come up really rapidly and it's gone yook, snap and then drifted up to the surface.
NARRATOR: The penguin takes in the exact amount of air it needs in advance of a dive.
WlLSON: You know, the penguin before it goes down is saying: "How deep am I going to go on the next dive, how many fish do I think I'm going to catch?" They're inhaling already at the surface the right amount of air volume to give them neutral buoyancy at the depth at which they're going to forage.
So the implication is they know: "Ha, 30 meters, I need 600 milliliters to be neutrally buoyant at that, so, 600, I'm going down.
" That's quite complicated stuff for a small bird.
NARRATOR: Their buoyant bodies can then rise like balloons through the water, effortlessly catching fish along the way.
By doing this, the animal conserves what it needs most for its migratory journey: energy.
With this discovery, Wilson joins Quintana to study the migration of the elephant seals.
In two months, these behemoths will return here to molt- a perfect time to retrieve the Daily Diaries because the batteries won't last much longer.
WlLSON: We've never done this before in animals that are going to go this deep, and it can just go horribly wrong.
NARRATOR: Elephant seals dive thousands of feet.
If the Daily Diary works under such high pressure, we will witness a new era of biological discovery.
Quintana identifies females to tag- at 2,000 pounds, they're easier to deal with than the 8,000-pound males.
Male or female, it's risky business.
And the colony is restless.
It's up to Marcela Uhart to anesthetize the giants.
UHART: Elephant seals are so big and so powerful, you know, they have very few predators.
They don't really fear us that much.
They actually challenge you.
[groaning.]
[seal barking.]
UHART: Tomorrow he's going to be on his own, I think [growling.]
WlLSON: I don't like this being protective of your friend stuff.
I'd rather they just deserted them and left them to it.
NARRATOR: They name the tagged seals after submarines and space stations.
In all, five females are successfully rigged with Daily Diaries.
WlLSON: We have five.
If we're lucky, I think we'll get four back.
I sort of tip somewhere between three and four.
And I'll just hope and pray that they all are working okay.
NARRATOR: If it goes well, Wilson will be the first to tell the story of this hidden journey.
These seals' ocean pathways are nearly boundless.
But that is not the case with many migratory routes on land.
As human populations grow and habitats diminish, the great migrating animals are increasingly in peril particularly the monarch butterfly.
The monarchs' migration spans generations of individuals and is an astounding 4,000 miles long, from Mexico to as far as Canada and back again each year.
CHlP TAYLOR: This is one of the world's most magnificent natural phenomena.
I mean, here you have an insect that migrates to the same general location every year, and then returns to breed in the northern part of North America.
NARRATOR: Chip Taylor has dedicated his life's work to the ceaseless habits of the monarch.
For 1 8 years, he's been tracking the migration with the same device: a plastic tag.
And he's learned a surprising amount from this simple tool.
In one study, Taylor released a monarch born in captivity 2,000 miles from its birthplace.
The butterfly still migrated southwest to Mexico.
TAYLOR: These butterflies have to navigate across a continent.
They have to navigate.
How does a butterfly coming out of Maine know how to get to Mexico? NARRATOR: In 2009, scientists discovered the monarch's internal GPS, a network of not one but two internal clocks.
A clock in the brain tracks the location of the sun.
And a second clock, in the antennae, keeps track of time.
TAYLOR: What they are programmed to do is follow and respond to certain physical cues, and these physical cues have a default sort of mechanism of getting them to the right place.
Now the trick for us is to try to figure out what are those cues? NARRATOR: Understanding these cues has never been more important.
The monarch population is down by half just from last year.
Its ancient flyway is unrecognizable as development overwhelms the landscape.
And the milkweed plant the monarch needs to lay its eggs is vanishing.
TAYLOR: We're losing 6,000 acres a day in this country due to development.
That's 2.
2 million acres a year.
That's just an astounding amount of habitat to turn into concrete.
And you just can't keep on doing that without having a really significant impact on wildlife out there.
NARRATOR: Knowing how far the monarchs fly each day and where they stop could save them.
An electronic tag that records precise data could help.
But this creature is light as smoke, and a tag is a heavy load.
Enter Martin Wikelski.
He's a migration ecologist, Ieading the charge to miniaturize tag technology.
WlKELSKl: The smaller you can get the tag, the more power you can output, the better the study we can do.
And that's going to be a total breakthrough in our understanding of the natural environment.
We need to understand small animals to understand life on Earth, and that's what we still have no clue about.
NARRATOR: With radio tags, Wikelski followed the route of a one-ounce thrush, discovering how it navigates at night.
Then he went smaller, switching to insects.
His team designed a tiny hearing aid battery attached to an antenna made of a guitar string.
The smaller the device, the simpler the data.
This radio tag only tracked location and direction.
But it was a start.
Wikelski tried it on bees.
They flew.
He tried it on dragonflies and discovered that one migrated a hundred miles in a single day.
But the monarch is half the weight of a dragonfly.
TAYLOR: I first learned about Martin's work a few years ago when I heard of his studies where he was putting radio tags on dragonflies, and I thought that was pretty fascinating.
I thought, "Aw, man you'll never get them small enough to put them on monarchs.
" NARRATOR: Martin Wikelski's Kitty Hawk is the butterfly house in Constance, Germany.
WlKELSKl: Nice.
NARRATOR: The tag is the smallest yet, half the weight of this butterfly.
WlKELSKl: Available radio tag, and they just barely got it in the size range that the butterfly might fly with it.
And now we just try it.
NARRATOR: Trial one: no go.
A slight antenna adjustment, then trial two.
And liftoff.
WlKELSKl: Wow! [laughing.]
Oh, there it is.
It's working.
It's totally amazing, I mean, the first flight of a butterfly with a tag! So it's working, I mean, you see it's just flying all over the place.
So I think it's going to work in the field as well.
This is flying beautifully.
It's amazing.
NARRATOR: Wikelski and Taylor will now team up to see if they are on the brink of a new age of monarch science.
[rooster crows.]
The migration ecologist Martin Wikelski finally meets the monarch sage Chip Taylor.
Together, they'll conduct the first test ever of an electronic tag on a monarch butterfly.
It's a meeting of like minds but not when it comes to catching butterflies.
TAYLOR: Come up behind the butterfly while it's sitting on a flower.
What you don't want to do is swing at them in the air.
WlKELSKl: Okay.
TAYLOR: Get it! Whoa! I mean, he's like a little kid; it's wonderful.
At my age, I don't do that anymore.
I prefer the sneaky method! Looks like we got one here.
NARRATOR: The scientists catch six in all.
Success will be determined if the tags do not disrupt the monarchs' migration.
And if the insects can be found after takeoff.
WlKELSKl: I'll just get the transmitter.
NARRATOR: But Taylor has his doubts.
TAYLOR: One of the things about these kinds of tests is that you do them indoors, you do them under ideal conditions, and then we bring them out here in the field, and we're dealing with 20-mile-an-hour winds, and it's going to be quite challenging for the butterfly to figure out how to handle all of this mass that you're attaching to the abdomen.
WlKELSKl: Now it's up to the butterfly.
TAYLOR: Well, we're not going to name it lcarus, right? WlKELSKl: Let's call it lcarus and see if lcarus can fly.
WlKELSKl: Wow.
TAYLOR: Wow.
It's flying pretty well, look at that.
WlKELSKl: That's amazing.
TAYLOR: It's staying close to the ground, though.
WlKELSKl: Wow, it's flying! TAYLOR: All right, let's start with liftoff here.
WlKELSKl: Wow! TAYLOR: There she goes.
That's cool.
That's terrific, look at that! WlKELSKl: Wow, it's really taking off.
TAYLOR: It's really catching the wind.
WlKELSKl: It's coming over to your side.
TAYLOR: Big Boy.
WlKELSKl: Wow, that's a big one.
TAYLOR: That's the biggest butterfly we've got.
There it goes.
WlKELSKl: There she goes.
I think he still wants to feed.
[laughing.]
NARRATOR: Taylor and Wikelski take to the air, too, in pursuit of the tagged monarchs.
With radio receivers in tow, they listen for a telltale click.
WlKELSKl: We are looking for liftoff right now.
NARRATOR: Each butterfly is on its own frequency.
[click.]
WlKELSKl: There it is, do you hear it? We've got a signal.
NARRATOR: An auspicious start- some signals come in loud and clear.
WlKELSKl: So liftoff is still probably at the field down there.
NARRATOR: But the test is incomplete until a butterfly has flown more than a few miles in a northeasterly direction.
TAYLOR: Martin, any sign of lcarus? WlKELSKl: Nope, we will go a little lower and search closer to the ground.
TAYLOR: Let's hope it works.
[buzzing.]
WlKELSKl: Yep, yep, there it is.
I do hear lcarus.
TAYLOR: Good old lcarus.
WlKELSKl: lcarus is down there, yes.
NARRATOR: All but one are accounted for.
Big Boy is still missing.
TAYLOR: Martin, do you hear anything? WlKELSKl: Nope.
NARRATOR: Perhaps he's a long distance flyer or the weight weighed him down, plummeting him to Earth.
Taylor and Wikelski continue northeast.
Five miles out.
Nothing.
Ten miles out.
[buzzing.]
And they get it.
WlKELSKl: That's the signal! TAYLOR: That's fantastic! [cheering.]
[laughing.]
TAYLOR: It was incredible! It was unbelievable! We got Big Boy out there about 1 5 miles! NARRATOR: There's one last step.
They need to find Big Boy on the ground to identify his stopover point and find out if he's still in good condition.
WlKELSKl: That's three miles out there.
TAYLOR: Yeah.
NARRATOR: They follow Big Boy's radio signal.
Weaker.
Stronger.
WlKELSKl: In a few hundred meters, I think we should take a right.
[static.]
NARRATOR: Weaker again.
WlKELSKl: No, that's not good.
Maybe we should have gone left and then go north, I don't know.
TAYLOR: Big Boy's moved out of town.
WlKELSKl: There it is, I've got a signal.
Yes! Okay, now we get it.
WlKELSKl: On this side or the other side? TAYLOR: It's not appropriate for him to say, "Come to me, Big Boy.
" WlKELSKl: Hey! Here he is! That's it! [laughing.]
TAYLOR: Fantastic! WlKELSKl: Yes! TAYLOR: Fantastic! All right! Good for you! NARRATOR: A scientific breakthrough, the first test of its kind.
Big Boy is found in perfect condition.
WlKELSKl: It's really perfect.
TAYLOR: Yeah, this antenna is not an impediment at all.
WlKELSKl: No, no.
TAYLOR: Hot damn [laughing.]
hot damn! NARRATOR: The technology works, and the future for these insects as well as countless other animals may soon be the better for it.
TAYLOR: Big Boy is ready to go, go to Wisconsin, find a girlfriend, there he goes.
WlKELSKl: Yeah.
TAYLOR: There he goes, all right! And look it, he's going northeast, he headed out that way.
Right along the tree line, northeast.
WlKELSKl: A lot of people complain that it's hard to discover things these days because everything's known.
Absolutely not! Everything's new.
Every time we look at it, we see something new here.
NARRATOR: Taylor now has a new tool in which to continue his life's work.
TAYLOR: I watch this population go up, and I watch it go down.
I watch its life and death struggles all of the time.
I'm so intimately attached and involved with this butterfly.
And I don't know how to explain it any other way.
It's just what I am, and that's about all I can say about it.
NARRATOR: Migration is seldom attempted alone.
But there's more than safety in numbers.
For mathematical ecologist John Fryxell, migration is math in motion.
Where we see animals, he sees mathematical patterns.
And he's using these patterns to unlock the key to wildebeest survival and migration.
FRYXELL: I think migration is kind of a theme in my life.
There's just something about mobility that fascinates me.
The urge to try and predict patterns of movement to me is just really intriguing.
NARRATOR: In the Serengeti grasslands of Tanzania, wildebeest are on their 300-mile journey.
This annual event is among the great natural spectacles on the planet, as herds of zebra, gazelle and wildebeest chase the rain and the grass it nurtures.
But the wildebeest pay a hefty toll five out of six young don't make it.
And yet the herd is a million strong.
Fryxell is determined to figure out how- despite these odds- the herd thrives.
He begins by observing the wildebeest behavior from the air.
From up here, he can see the patterns of the herds.
FRYXELL: We can see a hyena over there heading over to the track.
Certainly there's some complex dynamics within the whole herd of wildebeest.
Well, the interesting thing during the migration is it's a series of individuals, one after the other, following blindly behind the movement of a key individual.
I mean, this is, you know, really interesting, this kind of streaming behavior of the wildebeest, you know, going forward.
Clearly there are some individuals that are at the front of the line.
The behavior of some leaders gets translated to the rest of the group, and then the group behaves like a super organism.
NARRATOR: Wildebeest as super organism- individuals affecting the behavior of the whole.
Fryxell then looks at what forces shape the migratory path of this super organism.
He suspects the key to why they survive in such great numbers is here- starting with an insect.
The dung beetle thrives on wildebeest manure, which it collects into balls and stores underground, fertilizing the soil allowing more wildebeest to graze.
Millions of mouths mow the grass, keeping trees in check, but allowing brush to grow.
Forming the perfect cover for predators that eat wildebeest.
It all leads, in the end, to the predators.
Fryxell believes predators- more than anything- shape the herd's patterns.
And his team takes a closer look at the lioness.
MAN: Okay.
[fires rifle.]
FRYXELL: Nine, so now we move to the upper right canine.
NARRATOR: The GPS on the collar will allow the team to track its movement.
An accelerometer records her every start, stop and speed, which tells when the hunter rests, prowls or takes to the chase.
FRYXELL: Five, six, seven wildebeest NARRATOR: Using on-site observations FRYXELL:21 wildebeest.
NARRATOR:data from collared predators and collared wildebeests, Fryxell can build mathematical models that predict the behavior of predator and prey.
It reads like a video game where he can create different scenarios between lions and wildebeest.
First, Fryxell conjures up wildebeests that do not herd.
He spreads them out like marbles over the landscape.
Then he lets a simulated lion loose.
FRYXELL: There's a kill, and another kill.
And the net result is that it's very easy for the lion to encounter fresh prey, so with that very high density of prey, you see the lion doesn't even have to go very far before it finds a new meal.
NARRATOR: In this model, the wildebeest do not stand a chance.
The next simulation more closely models a typical herd's behavior.
FRYXELL: Grouping together creates great big vacant areas that aren't very efficient for the lion to search in.
NARRATOR: Here, the wildebeest evade predators by grouping together and forming what he calls holes in the landscape, vast areas where a lion can't see a wildebeest.
The super organism then goes a step further: the holes in the landscape move.
FRYXELL: Well, when you're the best meal on four hooves, the best thing you can do is be unpredictable.
The last thing you want to be is a meal where the lions expect you to be.
NARRATOR: Lions know when seasonal herds pass through their territory, but they won't know exactly where to find them.
FRYXELL: So we can see this on this map of the Serengeti ecosystem, where the bright colors signify really high densities of animals, Iarge herds that are shifting without any kind of predictable pattern across the landscape from month to month.
Now imagine that you're a lion or hyena trying to make a living in that kind of landscape.
It's virtually impossible for you to know what would be the best place for you to set up a territory.
NARRATOR: The herd as super organism, and the surprisingly random nature of its movement, keep a predator guessing, keeping the wildebeest a million strong.
But this ingenious survival mechanism could never work without a large habitat.
And large habitats are increasingly rare as humans encroach on wild spaces.
For many of the world's migratory animals, this is the main threat to their survival.
In Mali, West Africa, the desert elephant once roamed vast distances unimpeded.
Now the last animals of their kind are under threat.
Tracker El Mehdi Doumbia and biologist Jake Wall from the organization Save the Elephants have collared nine of the 350 elephants here.
The more they can learn about the herd's habits WALL: Good, fresh tracks.
NARRATOR:the better they will be able to protect their migratory routes.
WALL: These elephants don't give us a moment to rest, they keep moving, we keep having to work really, really hard to try and find them, and, even with the tracking data, it's not an easy job.
NARRATOR: The only way the Mali elephants can survive is to move.
They walk endlessly over a home range of over 1 2,000 square miles in the harsh heat of the Sahel.
No other elephants travel farther in search of food and water.
During the dry season, they end up here.
Lake Banzena is one of the few places to find water year round.
The herds linger until distant rains begin.
Elephants can hear rain fall vast distances away because of its low infrasonic signal.
Then, within 24 hours, they go to where the rain is.
And this year, water is most critical.
It is the worst drought in 26 years.
The herd must move fast, because between the lake and the next stopover point Iies 60 miles of desert and a big obstacle: the Gandamia Plateau.
There's just one way through: Ia portes des elephants, the elephants' door- a cut in the mountain the herds have been using for centuries.
It's also a place with increasing human settlement and where elephants compete with herders and their animals for water.
These images capture a dramatic scene as villagers and a Save the Elephants team desperately try to rescue a teenage female and three juveniles.
They fell, one after another, into a man-made well searching for water.
The older elephant crushed and killed a younger one during the three-day ordeal.
These tragedies happen as humans settle on ancient elephant paths.
But 3,000 miles to the east, in the grasslands of Kenya IAlN DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: I am just going to put a little bit of water on the back without splashing.
DABALLEN: Don't step on the ears, please.
NARRATOR:a solution is being tested.
Biologist lain Douglas-Hamilton has gained near legendary status for being the African elephant's custodian.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: You don't think that's too loose? We're collaring elephants because we believe that by understanding their movements, we can understand their decisions.
And if we understand their decisions, we understand what they need.
Elephants are at a tough time now, and we have to plan for their future.
NARRATOR: Over the years, Douglas-Hamilton has witnessed first hand the disastrous consequences of human-elephant conflict.
Poaching for ivory tusks was once the chief killer of elephants.
Today, it's farmers who protect their crops.
Douglas-Hamilton with his wife Oria founded Save the Elephants 40 years ago to study and protect this severely endangered species.
This rustic outpost is the repository of the organization's studies on elephants from all over the African continent information that scientists throughout the world have come to rely on.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: It's actually a kilometer wide.
It's working well.
NARRATOR: Today, the team is collaring an elephant with a state-of-the-art device that might save its life- a tag that sends an alert when the animal nears a farm.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Many elephants across Africa get shot because they cause damage to human property, to crops, to livelihoods, and indeed they kill people.
And you want every high-tech option that you can deploy.
NARRATOR: lain Douglas-Hamilton searches for a herd, scanning the landscape by air while researcher David Daballen's team is on the ground.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: David, David! DABALLEN: Sorry, lain? DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Where I am circling there are two groups of elephants tightly under the trees.
DABALLEN: He has found them in a perfect place.
We don't want to lose them, because they are not quite often at the moment around.
We want to take the opportunity to dart them, put a collar, because we know that from our past experience they will defend so much.
And if we have four cars we can position ourselves in different positions to make sure that the females will not see the female that has gone down.
NARRATOR: They identify the female to be collared.
DABALLEN: Dart in.
She's down, she's down! Let's get a good position.
Drive.
Drive, drive! NARRATOR: Once she's unconscious, Daballen has only 20 minutes to attach the collar.
The anesthesia makes the trunk muscles go slack- a stick will keep her airway open.
This particular collar will do what Douglas-Hamilton once only dreamed of: It will allow an elephant to communicate with him.
The collar sends its alert to a cell phone via text message.
This high-tech innovation is called geofencing.
When an elephant crosses a virtual fence line, the GPS unit in the collar sends an SMS or text message to a server in Nairobi.
The server then sends text alerts to a list of recipients who can quickly intercept the herd before it reaches a farm or human settlement.
DABALLEN: Get in the car! NARRATOR: The female awakes groggy but unharmed- the collar fits perfectly.
She will blow out the stick in her trunk, but for now it assures her an open airway.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Sometimes when you have dense agriculture, the best thing you can do is to separate the people from the elephants.
When an elephant crosses a certain boundary, we get an alarm to be set off, and it gets sent to us on a mobile telephone, which allows us to plan much better how to cope with the crop raiding.
This is really cutting-edge stuff.
NARRATOR: Geofencing is still in the testing phase, but Douglas-Hamilton believes this is the future.
But there is a terrible setback.
A torrential storm causes the banks of the Ewaso Ng'iro River to crest, creating the worst flood in memory.
Save the Elephants' research center is all but gone.
Most of the buildings and much of the decade's long research are missing.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: Well, this flood has had a terrible effect on our work.
First of all, it's caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage.
I don't know how we're gonna get the money to rebuild, but we've also lost some data, which is particularly precious to us.
NARRATOR: But Douglas-Hamilton and his team are determined to dig themselves out and start over again.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: We've got to carry on.
Our mission is to secure a future for elephants.
I've been working on elephants for 43 years, and it's all to save the elephants.
So we're not going to give up on that.
NARRATOR: As Save the Elephants recovers, the Mali elephants survive the drought.
And Douglas-Hamilton with his team will continue tracking elephants, working to preserve their ancient paths.
DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: I think the worst-case scenario would be a cutting of the migration routes, completely cut off from their water supplies.
It would then only be a matter of time before the elephants had nothing to live with.
That would be my worst-case scenario for Mali.
But it's not going to happen.
We've got to prevent it.
NARRATOR: Working in the natural world is always a gamble.
Science needs data, and if nature doesn't cooperate, data will get destroyed, eaten or swept out to sea.
In Patagonia, the scientists return, hoping their gamble pays off.
The elephant seals have returned to molt after two months at sea.
With good fortune, the five Daily Diaries will return, too.
Flavio Quintana's team use GPS to find out when the tagged seals arrive and where they settle on the beach.
Over the course of a week, the team retrieves four out of the five tags.
Each Daily Diary is perfectly intact.
7,300 miles away, Rory Wilson at his lab in Swansea, Wales, begins to read the much anticipated story- the secrets of the seal migration.
WlLSON: You know, you're opening the book on it for the first time, it's an incredible thrill.
Stuff happens that you wouldn't believe in your wildest dreams.
NARRATOR: First, Wilson reconstructs the movement of the seal named Mir.
WlLSON: This is the moment where Mir comes off the continental shelf, the platform and goes down into the deep water, and you can actually see this in her depth traces and they get deeper and deeper.
NARRATOR: Mir's deepest dive was nearly half a mile, an acrobatic feeding frenzy.
WlLSON: The animal was in free fall, the body was in all these extraordinary ballet-like postures.
And you think, whoa, I never thought elephant seals did that! NARRATOR: Then Wilson looks at how the seal swam as it traveled great distances.
He compares its sway- side-to-side movement WlLSON: So these are the tail beats, and the glide, and the tail beat and the glide NARRATOR:to the surge- vertical and horizontal position.
WlLSON: And as the tail beats occur, the animal's pointing up, and when she glides, she points down.
So up and down.
NARRATOR: Then calculates pressure to determine the depth and length of her dips.
WlLSON: And the interesting thing is she's doing exactly the same thing as sparrows do when they fly or some of these small birds.
NARRATOR: To his surprise, elephant seals are behaving like birds: they fly underwater.
This is how they conserve energy.
Small birds flap their wings to gain momentum when flying up, and hitch a ride on the current going down.
WlLSON: You see small birds flap, flap, flap, flap and glide down, flap, flap, flap and glide down, and that's a way of saving energy.
An animal as big as an elephant seal does it, and an animal as small as a sparrow does it as well.
NARRATOR: Both the small bird and the enormous elephant seal evolved to conserve energy in similar ways.
WlLSON: Energy is critical for animals, for their survival but they spend it in going out to get stuff to feed.
So this balance of energy expenditure against energy gain on migrations or off them is something that's really critical to animals.
And as we go gleefully through the planet and change everything, we really need to be considering that.
NARRATOR: For the first time, we are able to witness the elephant seal as it journeys through the ocean.
WlLSON: Lovely data, aren't they? Really beautiful, beautiful stuff that comes out of this tag.
NARRATOR: With inventions like the Daily Diary, the invisible is becoming visible.
It is in these details where the true secrets of the elephant seal reside revealing how this great wanderer can survive its long trek through the southern seas.
Wilson and his colleagues won't stop here.
They will continue to test.
WlKELSKl: Wow, it's really taking off.
TAYLOR: It's really catching the wind.
NARRATOR: lnvent DOUGLAS-HAMlLTON: We get an alarm to be set off.
NARRATOR:break new ground.
And with each technological advance, the science of the great migrations gives us a larger understanding of our world.
WlLSON: It's a little bit frustrating that the Daily Diary is still as big as it is.
I still want it to be smaller, I want it on swifts, but there's no limit to that.
When are you going to stop? Ants, you know?