Last Chance to See (2009) s01e06 Episode Script
Blue Whale
20 years ago, my good friend, Douglas Adams, spent a year tracking down endangered animals, together with the zoologist Mark Carwardine.
Now it's my turn.
Mark and I are heading off to find out exactly what happened to those species that he'd seen dangling on the edge of extinction two decades ago.
It promises to be exhausting Exhilaratingand exasperating But I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Mexico, at first glance, is not the most promising-looking landscape for wildlife watchers.
But, of all the adventures Mark and I have shared, this is the one he has most been looking forward to.
There is no better place to come.
I think Baja has to be my favourite place in the world for watching whales because there are several different species that come here to breed, and we're coming right in the middle of the breeding season.
We've come in search of one whale in particular - the largest animal to have ever existed on earth.
The blue whale can grow over 100 feet long and can weigh over 190 tonnes.
It is said that the blue whale has a heart the size of a small car and a tongue the weight of an elephant.
In the first half of the last century, whaling ships reduced the number of blue whales by 99%, leaving the species officially classified as vulnerable to extinction.
We have come to Baja California - the Westernmost part of Mexico, and we are starting the journey at the decidedly remote San Ignacio Lagoon.
This is a collection of huts in the middle of a desert, far from the nearest town, isn't it? It's very isolated.
It's great, don't you love it?I do.
Do you, yeah? Do you, really? Well, it's different.
'Before heading in search of unpredictable blue whales, Mark has decided my introduction to whales 'should be with something smaller and easier to find.
'The grey whales of San Ignacio Lagoon are said to be the friendliest whales in the world, 'which, Mark is hoping, will allow us a very close whale encounter indeed.
' Have you seen what I'm wearing? My whaling shorts.
Oh, no! What species of whale is it? You tell me, as the expert.
Goodness knows.
It's a madey-uppy.
Yeah.
So hopefully this is where you can get the closest encounters possible with whales, and there are mothers and calves here, grey whales, and the thing is they're bored, I think.
There's not very much to do except grow older and bigger, and so they like distractions.
And people are a good distraction.
'I've had many challenges in life, but providing distraction for a bored infant whale is a new one.
' Oh, there, look! Look.
They're huge.
We're right amongst them.
You're getting really excited.
I am!This is great.
This is extraordinary.
Oh, my goodness.
That's quite close.
We hope that one of these whales, that are close to us, actually want to come even closer and investigate and come and have a proper look.
It's one of those things that nothing prepares you for.
You know you'll be pleased to see them, but when you do you're completely overwhelmed.
That rainbow is gorgeous.
It's simply lovely.
'For the adults, this is the mid point of a 10,000 mile round trip to mate and have their young, 'one of the longest migration routes of any mammal on earth.
'And there's something about being in the presence of an animal of such size and power 'that is truly impressive.
' Most of these will be about 45 feet long, so they're still big animals, you know - it's half a length of a blue whale.
So they're not big in whale terms, but they're probably twice as long as our boat.
Goodness me.
They don't upturn boats, do they?No, hardly ever! You've got to start splashing, Stephen.
With what?With your hands.
Just roll your sleeves up.
Right.
And there are great white sharks in the water, too.
Oh, he's here, look.
He's here, yeah.
Oh, hello! Come on.
Checking us out.
Yeah.
He checked us out quickly.
Oh, yeah.
Didn't like us.
No.
They didn't see my shorts, that was the problem.
If they'd seen my shorts 'Because, for a few weeks each year, 'these grey whales gather to breed in this small bay, 'they are the one whale encounter that is more or less guaranteed.
'100 years ago they also provided guaranteed opportunities for whaling boats.
' The whalers had a field day, and they killed thousands and thousands of them.
In those days they were called devil fish because they didn't just lie by the boats and let themselves be killed.
They fought back.
Did they? And the whalers, the old whaling ships used to wait out at sea, outside the lagoon here, and little whaling boats, this sort of size, would be rowed in, and the whales, once they get hurt or harpooned, they would whack the boats with their tails and breach on them, and killed many whalers.
So they've changed their character a lot.
'Since a clampdown on whaling in the 1930s, the grey whale numbers have started to recover.
' Oh, my goodness.
'Once again, this lagoon is an active nursery for many grey whale mothers and calves every year.
' You can just see a smile there.
Look at you!Did you see the eye? Yeah, the eye, clear as anything.
He just wanted to have a look at us.
Yeah.
Oh, he likes that! Oh, my God! Pushing the boat.
Yeah! Whoa! Here we go.
Oh, there he is! I touched him!Did you? With my finger, there.
Felt like PVC.
There he goes.
Wonderful.
Oh, my word, it's just extraordinary.
The most distinctive thing that whales do, I suppose, is the blowing, you know, this kind of geyser that comes out, of water, and these two slits, are they the equivalent of nostrils? Yeah, they're the blow holes, they're called.
They're like our nostrils, and through evolution they've migrated to the top of the head.
Otherwise imagine if it was still where we have our noses.
They'd have to stick their heads up like that all the time to breathe, so they just have to surface, and what happens is Cor, you don't know where to look next.
What happens is, as they surface, they start to blow out and the water that's caught in the blow holes is blown up in that big plume.
And then you can hear them, they blow out and they take a breath, and then they drop back down again.
So they're having to come up to the surface to breathe at regular intervals like we would.
And doing that.
Yeah, exactly.
Blowing off.
It's not blowing off.
It's blowing.
Sorry, you're right.
Blowing.
What an amazing creature.
Wow, that's rather beautiful.
Whoa.
Oh, yeah.
Wow.
'This is one of Mark's favourite places in the world, and I can see why.
'All the same, I have been flicking through the book of his original journeys with Douglas Adams, 'and there is a noticeable absence of the words "Mexico", "blue" and "whales", 'and a significant chapter on China - a country we appear to have missed out on completely.
' When we were planning this whole series, I imagined one of the places we would go would be China, cos a very memorable part of the book you and Douglas wrote was about the Yangtze river dolphin.
But we're not there, we're looking at dolphins and whales in Mexico, and I'd rather hoped that we would go to China.
Well, so would I, to be honest, I'd hoped we would as well.
When we first started talking about it, the Yangtze river dolphin still existed, as far as we knew, and it was the plan to go and find one.
But since we started planning all the trips it's been officially declared extinct.
Why did it become extinct? It picked probably the worst place in the world to live - the Yangtze river.
The Yangtze river basin is home to about 10% of the whole world human population, so it faced every possible threat from pollution, agricultural run-off from farm land, pollution from factories and towns to over-fishing.
And I suppose the best we can do now is make sure it doesn't happen to other species like it.
Exactly.
The Yangtze river dolphin was the first whale, dolphin or porpoise to become extinct in historical times, and it won't be the last, and so we'll go and look for the blue whale.
Even though it's so well known, it's facing many of the threats that the Yangtze river dolphin faced, it was very heavily hunted for many years, and so that's another species that's on the brink.
'As the world's human population rockets to seven billion, I wonder if it is inevitable 'that other species must simply be swept aside.
'We are hoping that a search for the iconic blue whale will reveal whether lessons have been learned from the demise of the Yangtze river dolphin.
'We're crossing the peninsula to hunt for blue whales in the Sea of Cortez.
'But on the journey across land, there's something Mark wants to show me.
'The bad news is that it involves mules.
' I like the chaps.
Como esta? I like what they're wearing as well.
Ola! Good girl.
Come on.
Andale.
Oh, Christ, you've really got to lean back, haven't you? Gee whiz, that was scary.
'Having mastered the transport, I finally get a chance to really take in the landscape.
' So this is it.
'But Mark has a surprise.
' It's enormous.
They're huge, much bigger than I was expecting.
That's really impressive.
'Thousands of years ago, long before the first Europeans arrived in Mexico, 'this was home to the Cochimi Indians, a community that lived and died, 'leaving no trace except for these pictures.
' It's amazing, isn't it? What a wild, desolate place to do this.
Extraordinary.
What gets me is, that they would have seen a place like we're seeing now, pretty much, pretty unchanged, virtually no water.
How they survived, I don't know.
It's phenomenal.
And the same sort of wildlife.
I mean, it's interesting they've got turtles, they obviously went to the coast.
Which we're quite a way from.
Yeah, we're right pretty much in the middle of the peninsula.
Yeah.
I can't see any whales here.
Oh, actually, funnily enough, to the extreme right it looks exactly like a whale.
'No one knows when the Cochimi came to this valley, 'but we know they survived with little impact on the landscape for many hundreds of years.
' They were still around when the Jesuits arrived.
They were the first people to see this, and I suppose after the Jesuits there was just a great influx of westerners and gringos, people like us and the Spaniards, who came for the gold and the copper mines.
That's the story of all our travels, it's people coming in and that's causing the problems everywhere.
I mean, that's the Yangtze river dolphin story through and through, because there were so many people living in theYangtze river basin that it's gone.
The population of Baja is increasing exponentially, and has been for a number of years.
There are not many places in the world where you can stand high up and look around, and for 180 degrees you don't see a human habitation or a pylon, or electricity, or cell phone mast or anything.
And that's good, is it? Well, I usually regret the lack of cell phone masts, but in this case I'm prepared to make an exception, being very glad.
You're changing gradually.
'Maybe I am changing just a little.
'I won't pretend that I'm not a creature of the modern world, 'but I am at least aware that a price has been paid to achieve it.
' 'It's hard to imagine this landscape as anything other than an endless wilderness, 'but if the human population continues to rise, then who knows how it might be developed and tamed, 'and the strange, hostile world of the Cochimi will finally exist only in their pictures.
We are heading for La Paz - the best place to go looking for blue whales - and very much a return to the 21st century.
CARNIVAL MUSIC 'It's a change of pace and a chance to recharge the batteries 'before heading out to encounter the biggest animal that ever lived on earth.
' Stephen is sort of assuming that our next stop is blue whales and we're guaranteed to see them, and I must admit I'm a little bit worried, because I sort of know how difficult it is, even though a blue whale is roughly the length of a Boeing 737, it's an amazingly difficult animal to find.
I've got various friends with boats out in the Sea of Cortez who are looking for me, and I'm hoping I'm going to get a phone call or a radio message in the next day or two to say they've found them.
'In the meantime we are not, it seems, destined to kick back and enjoy carnival.
'Mark has brought us to meet Fernando Elorriaga, a man with a mission - and a means to get there.
' 'There have been reports that a booming population is now overfishing the Sea of Cortez.
'Though no-one is quite sure how far reaching the changes are, Fernando is getting answers 'by looking in the unlikely direction of sea lion droppings.
' 'Yes.
We have carnival.
We have boat.
'We have beaches and the deep blue sea.
'And Mark is taking us to look at poo.
'First, find your sea lion.
' SEA LIONS BARK They're enormous.
They are, aren't they? Well, the males are huge.
Good God.
The males are a lot bigger than the females.
Can you get a whiff of them? Oh yeah.
You can tell we're close.
This noise, this HE IMITATES THE SEA LION takes me back to my childhood and the sight of a sea lion with a ball on its nose.
I know, well, these California sea lions are the ones, because they're pretty intelligent and playful, they're the ones that zoos and aquariums like to use.
When people say performing seal it's nearly always actually a performing sea lion.
It is a wonderful noise, it's as if some child has run riot at a vintage car rally, just going on all the "Prrt, prrt, prrt, prrt!" 'As sea lions on land are highly territorial and potentially hostile, 'we cannot land on the gentle slopes that rise from the calm waters on the west side of the island 'where the animals loll in vast numbers.
'Instead, we have to transfer to a small boat to go around the island to take our chances 'with the sharp rocks and choppy waters which few self-respecting sea lions would bother with.
' This is going to be quite tricky.
Holy moly, Mark.
Is the idea that we put ashore here? I think we ought to come ashore here and then pick our way to where the main rookery is over there, across these rocks.
Yeah.
Oh! 'On balance I decide I am better built to hold the fort while others go into battle.
'I elect to direct proceedings from the boat while Mark and Fernando do the Boy's Own bit.
' For goodness sake, be careful.
Holy mackerel.
SEA LIONS BARK Oh, no, no.
You be careful, Mark.
Can we go a little bit closer? Be careful! Thanks.
That wasn't too bad.
Very best of luck.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
Be careful with some areas, because they are pretty sharp and they can cut your feet.
Mark and Fernando must now creep, unseen, towards the animals, bag what they have gone to find and beat a hasty retreat.
And our intrepid heroes are in search of something as unromantic as sea lion poo, but it all helps build up a picture.
They're coming back with a bag, there it is there.
He's got one.
Hooray! Never have I been happier to see a bag of poo waved at me.
Carwardine, Carwardine with his bag of poo 'Distracted by the drama, what none of us noticed was the subtle but significant way 'in which the wind was picking up.
' It's not possible, is it? It's not possible! This could still end nastily.
Right.
It's all a bit all a bit hairy, frankly, and every second that passes makes me gladder and gladder that I'm a quivering, wobbling, hopeless, sobbing coward.
Oh, my good knight.
I think they're coming to this rock here where at least there may be a better chance of us jamming ourselves between them.
Yeah, I think so.
Or this one.
'To be honest, the idea of simply abandoning Mark and Fernando to their fate amongst angry sea lions 'was starting to seem like a very real possibility.
' That way?Yeah, that way.
Oh, I don't want that exploding in my face.
It's all well wrapped.
OK.
This is really important.
Ready? Wahey! Thank you.
Whoa.
There it is, the object of this adventure.
Little bags of poo.
Well, we'll examine it on deck later, but first let's rescue our heroes.
'There is now only one way that Mark and Fernando will ever see their loved ones again - we will have to circle to the calmer waters of the western beach where the boys will have to board - in full view of the basking sea lions.
SEA LIONS BARK They're rather alarmed by the presence of humans on their rock.
They've never been so outraged in their lives.
Look at that.
Can you get on? Yes!Not so bad! Not so bad? I thought we'd never see you again.
I don't think you've pleased the sea lions with your presence on the rock.
They were outraged.
We tried to pick our way back around and they still saw us.
"This is our rock," they were saying.
At least they're coming back now.
'Now all that remains is to analyse the hard-won treasure.
' Oh, it stinks.
It's high.
Oh, dear.
So I'm going to need somebody to drop water for me.
OK.
I'll do that, happily.
And I'll do this.
Tell me when.
Now.
As sardines are the staple food of sea lions in the Sea of Cortez, this research has historically revealed nothing but the bones of sardines.
OK, here, this is another.
It's tiny.
Well, it's one of the largest.
'This small disk is, apparently, the unmistakable inner ear, not of sardine, 'but of a bottom-dwelling sea bass.
' When someone says to you, "Well, what did you do over the weekend.
.
?" Yeah, "I sieved sea lion poo.
" 'Where on land sea lions are territorial and defensive, in the sea it's a different story.
'Mark has insisted that we leave Fernando to do his work and take this chance 'to see the animals at their best.
' It is amazing down there.
They dart at you, they swim upside down right until the last minute.
It's an extraordinary experience.
Did you see the one grabbing my fin? I did, I got very close to it.
It took a great mouthful of your right fin.
Shall we go back in? Let's go back, yeah.
'Fernando is discovering that these sea lions no longer survive on the sardines that have traditionally sustained the community, but are now eating bottom-dwelling bass and lizard fish.
This points to a collapse in sardine numbers and a change in the ecosystem that could have repercussions for everything in the Sea of Cortez.
'For land-based mammals such as ourselves, 'the world beneath the ocean waves is hostile, confusing and unfeasibly vast, 'and consequently, we know surprisingly little about it.
'Like sardines, blue whales have been pillaged to feed a great sprawl of humanity 'and there are now thought to be just 15,000 left.
Or 10,000.
Or possibly 5,000.
'When it comes to counting the biggest animal that ever lived, we are, unbelievably, guessing.
' 'But if we have difficulty in counting, then actively conserving the ocean's species 'is a challenge verging on the absurd.
' 'One pioneering technique is currently being tried on whale sharks.
' 'We've joined conservationist and shark-watcher Estrella Navarro Holm, 'who also just happens to be the current Miss Baja California South.
'For Mark, it's a heady combination.
' So Estrella, presumably we're just looking for a big dorsal fin just breaking the surface.
Yes, it will be dark, and, when we get close, we will be able to see the white spots.
We take a picture and identify the different sharks that way.
I hear sharks have this fearsome reputation.
Is it a threat, is it a danger to us? Most sharks aren't.
Very few sharks are dangerous to people.
It's a myth.
And whale sharks, particularly - they're huge butthey're gentle giants, they are the very worst if you get too close to them when they don't want you in the water with them, they'll dive and get out of the way.
But they won't attack you.
They have teeth, they have hundreds of teeth.
Hundreds?Tiny little teeth, couple of millimetres big.
Row after row of them.
But they're vestigial, they don't really use them, they don't use them to bite.
Oh, I see, so you couldn't be savaged by one even if it went mad?No.
Oh, it's here.
See it?Where, where, where? There it is, right in front of you.
Oh, my God.
It's enormous.
You can actually see the whole length.
It's just coming round in front here.
'Estrella's first task is accurately to measure the whale shark.
'Now, with all the technology of the 21st century, how do you suppose a scientist measures a shark?' We will swim with the shark, we will measure the shark with Oh, a good old tape measure.
Yeah.
Sounds easy.
I love the words, I never thought I'd hear them - "We swim to the shark, we measure the shark.
" It's just I know, it's just like, dead easy.
Also, we have to measure the dorsal fin, and this is here, how we do it.
And do you take a picture as well? Yes, we take our picture, too.
Can I take the picture?Sure, you can.
You've made Mark very happy.
Obviously, what you need is someone who stays on board to make notes, and I think I'd be very good at that.
So you two go off and measure the sharkSounds good to me.
I will stay on board and write things down.
And we're doing all of this while the shark is swimming along fast, and we can't really keep up.
Yes, we have to swim fast with the shark.
You have to be fit.
Yes.
Oh, dear.
See you later.
Good luck.
Oh, I wish I were going with you.
I get the tough job.
Where's the tape measure? I've got the tape measure, don't worry about that.
No, we need it.
Yeah, you'll need it when you're in.
I can hand it to you.
Mark.
Mark.
How are they going They've not got the So they're chasing the shark, and our underwater cameraman is there, too, to get the shots of them hopefully measuring the beast.
'By using her detailed records and by taking a DNA sample' I'm really impressed.
'Estrella is able to prove that meat turning up at market 'has been poached from the protected sharks of the Sea of Cortez.
' There they are.
There's the whale.
The whale shark.
They're measuring! They're actually measuring a shark.
Good God! 'And by proving that catches are illegal, 'Estrella is hoping to dramatically limit the impact of poaching on the sharks of La Paz Bay.
' 'But this time, before all of the measurements are taken, 'the shark decides that the encounter is over.
' God, it was hard work then.
21 foot long.
Keeping up with Estrella is like keeping up with a Marlin, it's just impossible.
She's so fit.
She's very good, isn't she? I feel like a slug behind her.
Absolutely.
I honestly have to say, I never thought you'd do it.
No, I didn't either.
Like, I mean, wrestling eels, it just seemed impossible.
'While we have proven that the exercise is at least possible, 'we have not succeeded in getting a DNA sample of the shark.
'So we now have to wait for our shark to return.
'Looks like I'm first on lookout duty then.
Yes, for some reason Mark seems particularly absorbed in his conversation with the current Miss Baja California South.
'I admire a man with an unwavering devotion to his subject.
' I have a 12 o'clock.
I will get you right away.
Do you want the stick? Oh, my goodness, that was good fun.
And the dorsal fin length is 55 centimetres.
Oh, very good.
55.
And did you discover what sex it was? Male.
Male?Yeah.
You could see the claspers.
Right.
I don't quite know what a clasper is, but it sounds interesting.
It's the shark equivalent of a willy.
Oh, I see.
They don't have a normal penis? Yeah, well they have two of them.
Really? Lucky thing.
And I'm absolutely exhausted.
'With the measurements taken, Estrella now gets a small sample of the shark's DNA 'by jabbing it with a pointed lance.
' Well, they look as if they're having fun, and I've spent all morning and most of the afternoon watching them, so I might as well at least have a go so I can say I've TRIED to swim with a shark.
Argh.
'Unbelievably, in spite of my torpedo-like movement through the waves, 'I never quite caught up with the great fish.
But, a close second best, Mark got his picture.
' That's our boat, here.
Do you think it's big enough? It's great, isn't it?It's got dinghies on it and everything.
'Since the blue whales are not coming to us in La Paz Bay, we are having to go to them.
' This is Greg.
I'm the captain.
You're the captain? How do you do? Nice to meet you.
'Captain Greg and the crew of the good ship Horizon will be our hosts for the next six nights, 'and Mark assures me that if anyone can take us to blue whales then this is the crew that can do it.
' When I was a boy I virtually learnt off by heart parts of the Guinness Book of Records, and, of course, you know, one of the things would be a huge page, a double-page spread of a blue whale with pictures of cars and lorries and various other things next to it to show the scale.
So the idea that I'm travelling to see them is Are you really genuinely excited? Oh, yeah.
'But, even with the best crew in the business, 'finding a blue whale at sea is like finding an extraordinarily large needle 'in a simply enormous haystack.
' 'Now, I am certainly not the first to claim to see strange lights after a couple of drinks.
'But the camera saw it all, and it hadn't touched a drop.
' Oh, yeah.
Look at you.
Look at you! How dare you behave like that.
What do you think you're doing? 'This is glowing algae, 'and it may not be the most technically-accomplished piece of television you will ever see, 'but, like true professionals, we did not let our personal circumstances 'prevent us from capturing the moment for posterity.
' Wow.
They talk about bioluminescence, this extraordinary quality of certain sort of sea plants and things to light up.
But this is insane, it's like some weird neon madness that you can't believe is real, and I have to keep looking down.
This thing, it's like, you know, slushy, it's like a blue slushylit.
Look at it.
Wow.
'This bioluminescent algae is, I am told, not the most outlandish thing we are going to encounter.
'We are entering the territory of one of the most eerie predators in the Sea of Cortez.
' 'The next morning I'm up early, escaping nightmares of predators and blue slushies.
There may be much here that is disappearing.
But nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum.
While we may have suppressed some species, the unexpected result has been a boom for one species in particular.
Here in the Sea of Cortez, an invasion is taking place.
'Scott Cassell is catching and studying what the local fishermen call the Diablo Rojo 'The Red Demon.
' Any luck there, Dave? Not yet? We're working.
'Before 1950, there were no reported sightings of Humboldt Squid in the Sea of Cortez.
'Now there are said to be tens of millions of them.
'As sharks have declined, so this fearsome predator is taking over, right at the top of the food chain.
' I usually exercise a lot of caution when coming down these steps at the best of times, but this I would not want to dangle my feet in there, I suspect.
There's a great sort of history of the myth of the giant octopus, the kraken, the huge squid, from everything from, you know, ancient legend to, you know, Jules Verne and everything, isn't there? And when they get bigger they are the stuff of legends.
But don't let this small animal here fool you.
I interviewed a man here in central Rosalita.
His motor failed, and in the distance were friends who couldn't hear him.
He jumps in the water and he's swimming over, and suddenly he's surrounded by squid just a little bit bigger than this three-foot squid, and they attacked him, and he was able to scream so loudly that his friends finally heard him and came over and picked him out of the water.
But by the time they'd picked him out of the water he'd had 330 bites, the size of a grape each.
So when I asked to look at his wounds, he took off his shirt and he looked like a burn victim from his waist, all the way down.
'These predators hunt in packs, swarming upon their victim in hundreds or even thousands.
'Local people now only enter these waters with extreme caution.
' And you can't imagine how many there are down below us right now.
Nobody knows how many squid are here.
It's impossible to do a census.
But I myself have seen squid shoals reach the surface for over a football field in size, with tens of thousands of animals on the surface reaching out of the water to collect sardines.
There's an argument, isn't there, for saying that this animal - more than the Great White Shark - is perhaps the most perfect killing machine in the water.
This animal can have 20 million babiesOh, my God! and a great white shark can have ten over a lifetime, so, you know, you're looking at an animal that can out populate every other known predator.
Cos that's one of the things that's worrying you, isn't it? To me, the humble squid is the icon of the change on the planet, because the humble squid population is just exploding and it's almost certainly because of the reduction in predators.
What you are looking at, right here, is our next wild fire.
This is an animal that is potentially going to upset the balance of the entire Pacific Coast of all the Americas - Central, North and South.
Oh, dear Lord.
I think I've seen everything now.
That looks serious.
It's great fun at parties.
It only takes one good bite on a tendon, and you don't forget the lesson.
There he is.
This size right here, these ring teeth are just like small cactus plants, but when you get an animal that is five or six feet long, and all of a sudden it's as big as a really thick hypodermic needles.
Whoa.
Yeah.
When the squid is hunting it's using its eyesight to find prey, and then it grabs the prey with the tentacles.
And watch the response here.
Wow! He knows he can move that beak around in different directions.
Oh, yes.
Good Lord.
So while he grabs onto somebody like this Oh, yeah, he's chomping on me.
While he's hanging onto me like this, he can take a bite.
'It's the stuff of B Movie horror.
'But this is what the suppression of a species can mean.
'Shark fishing has decimated the number of sharks, and a new predator has taken over.
'What happens next is anybody's guess.
' Unfortunately, I think these animals are such an amazing opportunistic predator that they will explore every species they encounter as food, and as soon as they realise that they can eat it, they have amemory, so they're more adaptable to eating prey than anything else I know of in the ocean, and that's why they're such a problem.
There's a humpback, three-quarters of a mile, starboard bow! Mark, do you hear that? Yeah, yeah, got it.
'Not the blue whales we have been looking for, 'but a sudden encounter with a humpback is not to be sniffed at.
' Wow and another one! Look at it! Wow, and again! Wow! Oh, it's breeching again.
Oh, it's a stunner! It's so nice to see so many humpback whales on the breeding grounds like this, this is one of the species that has actually benefited from proper protection, and it's really bouncing back.
Fantastic.
They reckon there's about four times as many now as there were when whaling stopped, which is fantastic.
'In Mark's view, the humpback is the whale with the best song in the ocean, and, as the whales dive, he seizes the opportunity to let me hear it.
Got a little hydrophone here, Connected to the speakers, I can't believe this is gonna work.
You've got no faith.
We'll put it down to about 20 feet.
See if that works.
WHALE SONG What's that? That is it, we've got one.
That's unbelievable! Listen to that.
You can't believe it's a whale, can you? It's extraordinary.
Isn't it amazing? It's fantastic.
I love it.
This has to be one of the best sounds in the animal kingdom.
So what we're listening to, this is a male humpback whale - only the males sing - and if you imagine he will be at some sort of 45 degree angle, facing down to the sea bed, with his big flippers out, and the flippers will just be gradually waving like this like a conductor in front of an orchestra, and singing this song that could last up to half an hour.
It's the longest and most complex song in the whole animal kingdom.
WHALE SONG Ha, ha, ha, aren't they fabulous? Leaping for joy.
'After seven days at sea, looking for blue whales, we are heading ashore 'onto one of the tiny islands that dot the Sea of Cortez.
' It's said that whales have been visiting this stretch of water for many thousands of years, and we've been told that the proof lies on this island.
These look like, er whale ribs, fossilised whale ribs.
Really? Oh, yes, they're not bone are they, that's stone.
Yeah.
Well fixed inside there.
Is there any way of knowing what sort of whale or what sort of age? Well, this island is probably four-five million years old, so I'd guess the bones are roughly the same, so it's very hard to say exactly what they came from, but they probably came from whales that we'd recognise, a fairly modern type of whale, being that sort of age.
It's nice that this is part of the world where there still are whales, often you see fossils inland of marine creatures where, you know, there you haven't a chance of seeing them ever again, whereas at least here there's continuity.
It's very interesting actually, because a lot of the most ancient whale bones have been found in the Himalayas, miles from the nearest sea, it's sort of the cradle of whale evolution.
That's extraordinary! Here's an interesting looking one.
Good God, what's that? That's a vertebra, whale vertebrae.
That's one vertebrae? Yes, it's a good size.
So if I feel one knobble in my back, that's the equivalent? Gives you some sense of scale, doesn't it? Wow, look at that.
Do we know how this is related to the modern whale? No, this would be a fairly modern species, because, again, it'll be four or five million years old, but we know amazingly little about how whales evolved and what they evolved from.
The latest theory is they evolved probably about 60 million years ago, just after the dinosaurs disappeared, there was an animal, looked like a wolf with hooves, and it used to live in a place called the Tethys Sea, which is between what is now Southern Europe and Central Asia, and they reckon what happened was it spent more and more time in the water.
That's extraordinary.
It gradually, over this huge period of time, its legs disappeared, and in fact you can see the evidence in the flipper of the whale, you can see all the hand and finger bones just as Oh, it's still got carpals or tarsals They've got no hind legs or hind flippers, as you know, but there's a little bone that is still just in the blubber, that's the remains of our hind legs and our hips.
'Whales have been swimming the earth for over 50 million years.
' 'But it took just five decades for whaling ships to reduce their numbers by over 90%.
' Something that really worries me is that whaling is still going strong, it's not over by any means yet.
Japan, Norway and Iceland are all whaling commercially, and they're killing, between them, 2,000 whales a year.
It's as cruel as it was when whaling was at its peak, and what I wanted to do was to show you this little video, just to show you the reality of whaling and what's happening.
It look like a battleship.
It does, doesn't it? It's all pretty strong stuff Oh, my God.
'There are currently 8,471 species of animal 'officially recognised as endangered by extinction.
'To put it another way, if Mark and I made a film about each one of them, 'and those films were broadcast every week without a break, 'this series would run for a little over 162 years and ten months, 'which is perhaps the most absurd and the most sobering statistic I have ever encountered.
' '20 years ago, Mark photographed the Yangtze River dolphin.
'Now the dolphin is extinct and all we have are photographs.
'For the last year, Mark has documented everything.
'But wouldn't it be a shame - quite literally shaming - 'if all we leave to the people of the future are photographs, 'in place of thousands and thousands of some of the most extraordinary, complex, 'baffling and sometimes hilarious creatures that ever walked upon the earth?' 'The biggest animal that ever lived may be hard to find, but it is still out there.
'Having brought me all the way to Mexico, Mark is determined, by hook or by crook, 'to get our boat to blue whales.
'Mark has abandoned me for a day in La Paz, which may seem out of character, 'but I have come to recognise the glint in his eye that means he is working on a plan.
' I've known Sandy for many years, we met in the mid 1990s, and we've flown goodness knows how many hours together, she's the best pilot I've ever ever come across anywhere in the world.
And she's very kindly brought her lovely Cessna 182 which was built in 1958 can you believe, it's a year older than I am, so probably quite decrepit, but it's certainly air worthy, and she's going to help us find blue whales.
Now if anyone can do it, Sandy can, and I'm hoping we'll have found some, and then take Stephen to them.
Ahhh! 'So, with the co-ordinates of at least one blue whale, Mark and I are heading north.
' Well, this is what we've come to see.
A blue whale, and that does look blue.
The size is the thing - the longest ever recorded was 110 feet long, which is about the length of a Boeing 737.
Good Lord.
The other thing is its weight, the heaviest ever recorded was a 190 tonnes.
An average - I worked this out - an average-sized blue whale, if you imagine a set of weighing scales and you an average-sized blue whale on one side of the weighing scales and you have to pile lots of other things on the other side to balance the scales, you have to put all of the following.
Half a dozen African elephants, a black rhino, a couple of whale sharks, five Tyrannosaurus Rexes, 100 world-class Sumo wrestlers, the entire football team of Norwich CityOne of the lightest! .
.
and my car,and that lot together equals the weight of one average sized bluewhale, you just don't get the scale just by looking at it like that.
And it flies through the water at great speed and with great agility.
Yeah, they're incredibly agile, about one in four in the Sea of Cortez lift the tail - some don't, and we don't quite understand why - lifts the tail right up in the air, and you can imagine you can see that length of the body up in the air as it dives, that's probably 20 feet of tail sticking out of the water.
Goodness me, I can't wait to see this creature.
'Seeing this flicking of the tail, or fluking, is, I am told, the holy grail of whale watching.
' Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.
'The following morning, we have arrived at where the whale was the previous day.
'Now all we need is Sandy and Cessna Emily to guide us in.
' Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.
'Vessel Horizon coming up on you.
' That's her.
Cessna Emily, motor vessel Horizon Channel 18, good morning.
Well, we're just coming up on you almost on the port side, left side, and I see you.
Hey! Wow! If that can't see a whale, nothing can.
So that's the area she's circling above, isn't it? I haven't seen any flukes yet, or any sign.
So somewhere around here.
Yeah.
That's it there, there's a fluke! Can you see it?Oh, yes! Oh, my goodness.
Right by the island.
Absolutely dead ahead! Fantastic.
Oh, my goodness that's my first ever glance We've done it.
.
.
.
in the direction of a blue whale! Oh! Look at you! Wow! Look at that body, look at it! It's going to do it, it's going to fluke No.
No, not quite.
Oh! It's moving, it's going to fluke No! And again.
It's still going.
This might be the one.
Yes, it's a big one, is it? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES! That was high!Beauty! How can you get so excited about an animal just deciding to show its tail, and yet I can't tell you, it's the most thrilling thing when you just know it's the final arching through, and then there's that fabulous sight.
'Blue whales may be diminished, but they are still out there.
'Like the aye-aye, the kakapo, the komodo dragon 'and the 8,471 other species on the endangered list.
'Isn't it extraordinary to imagine we could be the generation to watch them all slip away? 'And in the future, would people not wonder how we could possibly have allowed that to happen?' Glistening, look at that length of body andit's fluking! Yay! Mark, that was the most fantastic thing I've ever seen.
Really? It's enormous, and it's slow and it's sleek and it's just so magisterial.
'It has been a privilege to retrace Mark's journeys, 20 years after he first made them.
'I hope that others will remake these journeys in another 20 years - 'you have my blessing, and I sincerely hope 'you will find the animals waiting for you when you get there.
'
Now it's my turn.
Mark and I are heading off to find out exactly what happened to those species that he'd seen dangling on the edge of extinction two decades ago.
It promises to be exhausting Exhilaratingand exasperating But I wouldn't miss it for the world.
Mexico, at first glance, is not the most promising-looking landscape for wildlife watchers.
But, of all the adventures Mark and I have shared, this is the one he has most been looking forward to.
There is no better place to come.
I think Baja has to be my favourite place in the world for watching whales because there are several different species that come here to breed, and we're coming right in the middle of the breeding season.
We've come in search of one whale in particular - the largest animal to have ever existed on earth.
The blue whale can grow over 100 feet long and can weigh over 190 tonnes.
It is said that the blue whale has a heart the size of a small car and a tongue the weight of an elephant.
In the first half of the last century, whaling ships reduced the number of blue whales by 99%, leaving the species officially classified as vulnerable to extinction.
We have come to Baja California - the Westernmost part of Mexico, and we are starting the journey at the decidedly remote San Ignacio Lagoon.
This is a collection of huts in the middle of a desert, far from the nearest town, isn't it? It's very isolated.
It's great, don't you love it?I do.
Do you, yeah? Do you, really? Well, it's different.
'Before heading in search of unpredictable blue whales, Mark has decided my introduction to whales 'should be with something smaller and easier to find.
'The grey whales of San Ignacio Lagoon are said to be the friendliest whales in the world, 'which, Mark is hoping, will allow us a very close whale encounter indeed.
' Have you seen what I'm wearing? My whaling shorts.
Oh, no! What species of whale is it? You tell me, as the expert.
Goodness knows.
It's a madey-uppy.
Yeah.
So hopefully this is where you can get the closest encounters possible with whales, and there are mothers and calves here, grey whales, and the thing is they're bored, I think.
There's not very much to do except grow older and bigger, and so they like distractions.
And people are a good distraction.
'I've had many challenges in life, but providing distraction for a bored infant whale is a new one.
' Oh, there, look! Look.
They're huge.
We're right amongst them.
You're getting really excited.
I am!This is great.
This is extraordinary.
Oh, my goodness.
That's quite close.
We hope that one of these whales, that are close to us, actually want to come even closer and investigate and come and have a proper look.
It's one of those things that nothing prepares you for.
You know you'll be pleased to see them, but when you do you're completely overwhelmed.
That rainbow is gorgeous.
It's simply lovely.
'For the adults, this is the mid point of a 10,000 mile round trip to mate and have their young, 'one of the longest migration routes of any mammal on earth.
'And there's something about being in the presence of an animal of such size and power 'that is truly impressive.
' Most of these will be about 45 feet long, so they're still big animals, you know - it's half a length of a blue whale.
So they're not big in whale terms, but they're probably twice as long as our boat.
Goodness me.
They don't upturn boats, do they?No, hardly ever! You've got to start splashing, Stephen.
With what?With your hands.
Just roll your sleeves up.
Right.
And there are great white sharks in the water, too.
Oh, he's here, look.
He's here, yeah.
Oh, hello! Come on.
Checking us out.
Yeah.
He checked us out quickly.
Oh, yeah.
Didn't like us.
No.
They didn't see my shorts, that was the problem.
If they'd seen my shorts 'Because, for a few weeks each year, 'these grey whales gather to breed in this small bay, 'they are the one whale encounter that is more or less guaranteed.
'100 years ago they also provided guaranteed opportunities for whaling boats.
' The whalers had a field day, and they killed thousands and thousands of them.
In those days they were called devil fish because they didn't just lie by the boats and let themselves be killed.
They fought back.
Did they? And the whalers, the old whaling ships used to wait out at sea, outside the lagoon here, and little whaling boats, this sort of size, would be rowed in, and the whales, once they get hurt or harpooned, they would whack the boats with their tails and breach on them, and killed many whalers.
So they've changed their character a lot.
'Since a clampdown on whaling in the 1930s, the grey whale numbers have started to recover.
' Oh, my goodness.
'Once again, this lagoon is an active nursery for many grey whale mothers and calves every year.
' You can just see a smile there.
Look at you!Did you see the eye? Yeah, the eye, clear as anything.
He just wanted to have a look at us.
Yeah.
Oh, he likes that! Oh, my God! Pushing the boat.
Yeah! Whoa! Here we go.
Oh, there he is! I touched him!Did you? With my finger, there.
Felt like PVC.
There he goes.
Wonderful.
Oh, my word, it's just extraordinary.
The most distinctive thing that whales do, I suppose, is the blowing, you know, this kind of geyser that comes out, of water, and these two slits, are they the equivalent of nostrils? Yeah, they're the blow holes, they're called.
They're like our nostrils, and through evolution they've migrated to the top of the head.
Otherwise imagine if it was still where we have our noses.
They'd have to stick their heads up like that all the time to breathe, so they just have to surface, and what happens is Cor, you don't know where to look next.
What happens is, as they surface, they start to blow out and the water that's caught in the blow holes is blown up in that big plume.
And then you can hear them, they blow out and they take a breath, and then they drop back down again.
So they're having to come up to the surface to breathe at regular intervals like we would.
And doing that.
Yeah, exactly.
Blowing off.
It's not blowing off.
It's blowing.
Sorry, you're right.
Blowing.
What an amazing creature.
Wow, that's rather beautiful.
Whoa.
Oh, yeah.
Wow.
'This is one of Mark's favourite places in the world, and I can see why.
'All the same, I have been flicking through the book of his original journeys with Douglas Adams, 'and there is a noticeable absence of the words "Mexico", "blue" and "whales", 'and a significant chapter on China - a country we appear to have missed out on completely.
' When we were planning this whole series, I imagined one of the places we would go would be China, cos a very memorable part of the book you and Douglas wrote was about the Yangtze river dolphin.
But we're not there, we're looking at dolphins and whales in Mexico, and I'd rather hoped that we would go to China.
Well, so would I, to be honest, I'd hoped we would as well.
When we first started talking about it, the Yangtze river dolphin still existed, as far as we knew, and it was the plan to go and find one.
But since we started planning all the trips it's been officially declared extinct.
Why did it become extinct? It picked probably the worst place in the world to live - the Yangtze river.
The Yangtze river basin is home to about 10% of the whole world human population, so it faced every possible threat from pollution, agricultural run-off from farm land, pollution from factories and towns to over-fishing.
And I suppose the best we can do now is make sure it doesn't happen to other species like it.
Exactly.
The Yangtze river dolphin was the first whale, dolphin or porpoise to become extinct in historical times, and it won't be the last, and so we'll go and look for the blue whale.
Even though it's so well known, it's facing many of the threats that the Yangtze river dolphin faced, it was very heavily hunted for many years, and so that's another species that's on the brink.
'As the world's human population rockets to seven billion, I wonder if it is inevitable 'that other species must simply be swept aside.
'We are hoping that a search for the iconic blue whale will reveal whether lessons have been learned from the demise of the Yangtze river dolphin.
'We're crossing the peninsula to hunt for blue whales in the Sea of Cortez.
'But on the journey across land, there's something Mark wants to show me.
'The bad news is that it involves mules.
' I like the chaps.
Como esta? I like what they're wearing as well.
Ola! Good girl.
Come on.
Andale.
Oh, Christ, you've really got to lean back, haven't you? Gee whiz, that was scary.
'Having mastered the transport, I finally get a chance to really take in the landscape.
' So this is it.
'But Mark has a surprise.
' It's enormous.
They're huge, much bigger than I was expecting.
That's really impressive.
'Thousands of years ago, long before the first Europeans arrived in Mexico, 'this was home to the Cochimi Indians, a community that lived and died, 'leaving no trace except for these pictures.
' It's amazing, isn't it? What a wild, desolate place to do this.
Extraordinary.
What gets me is, that they would have seen a place like we're seeing now, pretty much, pretty unchanged, virtually no water.
How they survived, I don't know.
It's phenomenal.
And the same sort of wildlife.
I mean, it's interesting they've got turtles, they obviously went to the coast.
Which we're quite a way from.
Yeah, we're right pretty much in the middle of the peninsula.
Yeah.
I can't see any whales here.
Oh, actually, funnily enough, to the extreme right it looks exactly like a whale.
'No one knows when the Cochimi came to this valley, 'but we know they survived with little impact on the landscape for many hundreds of years.
' They were still around when the Jesuits arrived.
They were the first people to see this, and I suppose after the Jesuits there was just a great influx of westerners and gringos, people like us and the Spaniards, who came for the gold and the copper mines.
That's the story of all our travels, it's people coming in and that's causing the problems everywhere.
I mean, that's the Yangtze river dolphin story through and through, because there were so many people living in theYangtze river basin that it's gone.
The population of Baja is increasing exponentially, and has been for a number of years.
There are not many places in the world where you can stand high up and look around, and for 180 degrees you don't see a human habitation or a pylon, or electricity, or cell phone mast or anything.
And that's good, is it? Well, I usually regret the lack of cell phone masts, but in this case I'm prepared to make an exception, being very glad.
You're changing gradually.
'Maybe I am changing just a little.
'I won't pretend that I'm not a creature of the modern world, 'but I am at least aware that a price has been paid to achieve it.
' 'It's hard to imagine this landscape as anything other than an endless wilderness, 'but if the human population continues to rise, then who knows how it might be developed and tamed, 'and the strange, hostile world of the Cochimi will finally exist only in their pictures.
We are heading for La Paz - the best place to go looking for blue whales - and very much a return to the 21st century.
CARNIVAL MUSIC 'It's a change of pace and a chance to recharge the batteries 'before heading out to encounter the biggest animal that ever lived on earth.
' Stephen is sort of assuming that our next stop is blue whales and we're guaranteed to see them, and I must admit I'm a little bit worried, because I sort of know how difficult it is, even though a blue whale is roughly the length of a Boeing 737, it's an amazingly difficult animal to find.
I've got various friends with boats out in the Sea of Cortez who are looking for me, and I'm hoping I'm going to get a phone call or a radio message in the next day or two to say they've found them.
'In the meantime we are not, it seems, destined to kick back and enjoy carnival.
'Mark has brought us to meet Fernando Elorriaga, a man with a mission - and a means to get there.
' 'There have been reports that a booming population is now overfishing the Sea of Cortez.
'Though no-one is quite sure how far reaching the changes are, Fernando is getting answers 'by looking in the unlikely direction of sea lion droppings.
' 'Yes.
We have carnival.
We have boat.
'We have beaches and the deep blue sea.
'And Mark is taking us to look at poo.
'First, find your sea lion.
' SEA LIONS BARK They're enormous.
They are, aren't they? Well, the males are huge.
Good God.
The males are a lot bigger than the females.
Can you get a whiff of them? Oh yeah.
You can tell we're close.
This noise, this HE IMITATES THE SEA LION takes me back to my childhood and the sight of a sea lion with a ball on its nose.
I know, well, these California sea lions are the ones, because they're pretty intelligent and playful, they're the ones that zoos and aquariums like to use.
When people say performing seal it's nearly always actually a performing sea lion.
It is a wonderful noise, it's as if some child has run riot at a vintage car rally, just going on all the "Prrt, prrt, prrt, prrt!" 'As sea lions on land are highly territorial and potentially hostile, 'we cannot land on the gentle slopes that rise from the calm waters on the west side of the island 'where the animals loll in vast numbers.
'Instead, we have to transfer to a small boat to go around the island to take our chances 'with the sharp rocks and choppy waters which few self-respecting sea lions would bother with.
' This is going to be quite tricky.
Holy moly, Mark.
Is the idea that we put ashore here? I think we ought to come ashore here and then pick our way to where the main rookery is over there, across these rocks.
Yeah.
Oh! 'On balance I decide I am better built to hold the fort while others go into battle.
'I elect to direct proceedings from the boat while Mark and Fernando do the Boy's Own bit.
' For goodness sake, be careful.
Holy mackerel.
SEA LIONS BARK Oh, no, no.
You be careful, Mark.
Can we go a little bit closer? Be careful! Thanks.
That wasn't too bad.
Very best of luck.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
Be careful with some areas, because they are pretty sharp and they can cut your feet.
Mark and Fernando must now creep, unseen, towards the animals, bag what they have gone to find and beat a hasty retreat.
And our intrepid heroes are in search of something as unromantic as sea lion poo, but it all helps build up a picture.
They're coming back with a bag, there it is there.
He's got one.
Hooray! Never have I been happier to see a bag of poo waved at me.
Carwardine, Carwardine with his bag of poo 'Distracted by the drama, what none of us noticed was the subtle but significant way 'in which the wind was picking up.
' It's not possible, is it? It's not possible! This could still end nastily.
Right.
It's all a bit all a bit hairy, frankly, and every second that passes makes me gladder and gladder that I'm a quivering, wobbling, hopeless, sobbing coward.
Oh, my good knight.
I think they're coming to this rock here where at least there may be a better chance of us jamming ourselves between them.
Yeah, I think so.
Or this one.
'To be honest, the idea of simply abandoning Mark and Fernando to their fate amongst angry sea lions 'was starting to seem like a very real possibility.
' That way?Yeah, that way.
Oh, I don't want that exploding in my face.
It's all well wrapped.
OK.
This is really important.
Ready? Wahey! Thank you.
Whoa.
There it is, the object of this adventure.
Little bags of poo.
Well, we'll examine it on deck later, but first let's rescue our heroes.
'There is now only one way that Mark and Fernando will ever see their loved ones again - we will have to circle to the calmer waters of the western beach where the boys will have to board - in full view of the basking sea lions.
SEA LIONS BARK They're rather alarmed by the presence of humans on their rock.
They've never been so outraged in their lives.
Look at that.
Can you get on? Yes!Not so bad! Not so bad? I thought we'd never see you again.
I don't think you've pleased the sea lions with your presence on the rock.
They were outraged.
We tried to pick our way back around and they still saw us.
"This is our rock," they were saying.
At least they're coming back now.
'Now all that remains is to analyse the hard-won treasure.
' Oh, it stinks.
It's high.
Oh, dear.
So I'm going to need somebody to drop water for me.
OK.
I'll do that, happily.
And I'll do this.
Tell me when.
Now.
As sardines are the staple food of sea lions in the Sea of Cortez, this research has historically revealed nothing but the bones of sardines.
OK, here, this is another.
It's tiny.
Well, it's one of the largest.
'This small disk is, apparently, the unmistakable inner ear, not of sardine, 'but of a bottom-dwelling sea bass.
' When someone says to you, "Well, what did you do over the weekend.
.
?" Yeah, "I sieved sea lion poo.
" 'Where on land sea lions are territorial and defensive, in the sea it's a different story.
'Mark has insisted that we leave Fernando to do his work and take this chance 'to see the animals at their best.
' It is amazing down there.
They dart at you, they swim upside down right until the last minute.
It's an extraordinary experience.
Did you see the one grabbing my fin? I did, I got very close to it.
It took a great mouthful of your right fin.
Shall we go back in? Let's go back, yeah.
'Fernando is discovering that these sea lions no longer survive on the sardines that have traditionally sustained the community, but are now eating bottom-dwelling bass and lizard fish.
This points to a collapse in sardine numbers and a change in the ecosystem that could have repercussions for everything in the Sea of Cortez.
'For land-based mammals such as ourselves, 'the world beneath the ocean waves is hostile, confusing and unfeasibly vast, 'and consequently, we know surprisingly little about it.
'Like sardines, blue whales have been pillaged to feed a great sprawl of humanity 'and there are now thought to be just 15,000 left.
Or 10,000.
Or possibly 5,000.
'When it comes to counting the biggest animal that ever lived, we are, unbelievably, guessing.
' 'But if we have difficulty in counting, then actively conserving the ocean's species 'is a challenge verging on the absurd.
' 'One pioneering technique is currently being tried on whale sharks.
' 'We've joined conservationist and shark-watcher Estrella Navarro Holm, 'who also just happens to be the current Miss Baja California South.
'For Mark, it's a heady combination.
' So Estrella, presumably we're just looking for a big dorsal fin just breaking the surface.
Yes, it will be dark, and, when we get close, we will be able to see the white spots.
We take a picture and identify the different sharks that way.
I hear sharks have this fearsome reputation.
Is it a threat, is it a danger to us? Most sharks aren't.
Very few sharks are dangerous to people.
It's a myth.
And whale sharks, particularly - they're huge butthey're gentle giants, they are the very worst if you get too close to them when they don't want you in the water with them, they'll dive and get out of the way.
But they won't attack you.
They have teeth, they have hundreds of teeth.
Hundreds?Tiny little teeth, couple of millimetres big.
Row after row of them.
But they're vestigial, they don't really use them, they don't use them to bite.
Oh, I see, so you couldn't be savaged by one even if it went mad?No.
Oh, it's here.
See it?Where, where, where? There it is, right in front of you.
Oh, my God.
It's enormous.
You can actually see the whole length.
It's just coming round in front here.
'Estrella's first task is accurately to measure the whale shark.
'Now, with all the technology of the 21st century, how do you suppose a scientist measures a shark?' We will swim with the shark, we will measure the shark with Oh, a good old tape measure.
Yeah.
Sounds easy.
I love the words, I never thought I'd hear them - "We swim to the shark, we measure the shark.
" It's just I know, it's just like, dead easy.
Also, we have to measure the dorsal fin, and this is here, how we do it.
And do you take a picture as well? Yes, we take our picture, too.
Can I take the picture?Sure, you can.
You've made Mark very happy.
Obviously, what you need is someone who stays on board to make notes, and I think I'd be very good at that.
So you two go off and measure the sharkSounds good to me.
I will stay on board and write things down.
And we're doing all of this while the shark is swimming along fast, and we can't really keep up.
Yes, we have to swim fast with the shark.
You have to be fit.
Yes.
Oh, dear.
See you later.
Good luck.
Oh, I wish I were going with you.
I get the tough job.
Where's the tape measure? I've got the tape measure, don't worry about that.
No, we need it.
Yeah, you'll need it when you're in.
I can hand it to you.
Mark.
Mark.
How are they going They've not got the So they're chasing the shark, and our underwater cameraman is there, too, to get the shots of them hopefully measuring the beast.
'By using her detailed records and by taking a DNA sample' I'm really impressed.
'Estrella is able to prove that meat turning up at market 'has been poached from the protected sharks of the Sea of Cortez.
' There they are.
There's the whale.
The whale shark.
They're measuring! They're actually measuring a shark.
Good God! 'And by proving that catches are illegal, 'Estrella is hoping to dramatically limit the impact of poaching on the sharks of La Paz Bay.
' 'But this time, before all of the measurements are taken, 'the shark decides that the encounter is over.
' God, it was hard work then.
21 foot long.
Keeping up with Estrella is like keeping up with a Marlin, it's just impossible.
She's so fit.
She's very good, isn't she? I feel like a slug behind her.
Absolutely.
I honestly have to say, I never thought you'd do it.
No, I didn't either.
Like, I mean, wrestling eels, it just seemed impossible.
'While we have proven that the exercise is at least possible, 'we have not succeeded in getting a DNA sample of the shark.
'So we now have to wait for our shark to return.
'Looks like I'm first on lookout duty then.
Yes, for some reason Mark seems particularly absorbed in his conversation with the current Miss Baja California South.
'I admire a man with an unwavering devotion to his subject.
' I have a 12 o'clock.
I will get you right away.
Do you want the stick? Oh, my goodness, that was good fun.
And the dorsal fin length is 55 centimetres.
Oh, very good.
55.
And did you discover what sex it was? Male.
Male?Yeah.
You could see the claspers.
Right.
I don't quite know what a clasper is, but it sounds interesting.
It's the shark equivalent of a willy.
Oh, I see.
They don't have a normal penis? Yeah, well they have two of them.
Really? Lucky thing.
And I'm absolutely exhausted.
'With the measurements taken, Estrella now gets a small sample of the shark's DNA 'by jabbing it with a pointed lance.
' Well, they look as if they're having fun, and I've spent all morning and most of the afternoon watching them, so I might as well at least have a go so I can say I've TRIED to swim with a shark.
Argh.
'Unbelievably, in spite of my torpedo-like movement through the waves, 'I never quite caught up with the great fish.
But, a close second best, Mark got his picture.
' That's our boat, here.
Do you think it's big enough? It's great, isn't it?It's got dinghies on it and everything.
'Since the blue whales are not coming to us in La Paz Bay, we are having to go to them.
' This is Greg.
I'm the captain.
You're the captain? How do you do? Nice to meet you.
'Captain Greg and the crew of the good ship Horizon will be our hosts for the next six nights, 'and Mark assures me that if anyone can take us to blue whales then this is the crew that can do it.
' When I was a boy I virtually learnt off by heart parts of the Guinness Book of Records, and, of course, you know, one of the things would be a huge page, a double-page spread of a blue whale with pictures of cars and lorries and various other things next to it to show the scale.
So the idea that I'm travelling to see them is Are you really genuinely excited? Oh, yeah.
'But, even with the best crew in the business, 'finding a blue whale at sea is like finding an extraordinarily large needle 'in a simply enormous haystack.
' 'Now, I am certainly not the first to claim to see strange lights after a couple of drinks.
'But the camera saw it all, and it hadn't touched a drop.
' Oh, yeah.
Look at you.
Look at you! How dare you behave like that.
What do you think you're doing? 'This is glowing algae, 'and it may not be the most technically-accomplished piece of television you will ever see, 'but, like true professionals, we did not let our personal circumstances 'prevent us from capturing the moment for posterity.
' Wow.
They talk about bioluminescence, this extraordinary quality of certain sort of sea plants and things to light up.
But this is insane, it's like some weird neon madness that you can't believe is real, and I have to keep looking down.
This thing, it's like, you know, slushy, it's like a blue slushylit.
Look at it.
Wow.
'This bioluminescent algae is, I am told, not the most outlandish thing we are going to encounter.
'We are entering the territory of one of the most eerie predators in the Sea of Cortez.
' 'The next morning I'm up early, escaping nightmares of predators and blue slushies.
There may be much here that is disappearing.
But nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum.
While we may have suppressed some species, the unexpected result has been a boom for one species in particular.
Here in the Sea of Cortez, an invasion is taking place.
'Scott Cassell is catching and studying what the local fishermen call the Diablo Rojo 'The Red Demon.
' Any luck there, Dave? Not yet? We're working.
'Before 1950, there were no reported sightings of Humboldt Squid in the Sea of Cortez.
'Now there are said to be tens of millions of them.
'As sharks have declined, so this fearsome predator is taking over, right at the top of the food chain.
' I usually exercise a lot of caution when coming down these steps at the best of times, but this I would not want to dangle my feet in there, I suspect.
There's a great sort of history of the myth of the giant octopus, the kraken, the huge squid, from everything from, you know, ancient legend to, you know, Jules Verne and everything, isn't there? And when they get bigger they are the stuff of legends.
But don't let this small animal here fool you.
I interviewed a man here in central Rosalita.
His motor failed, and in the distance were friends who couldn't hear him.
He jumps in the water and he's swimming over, and suddenly he's surrounded by squid just a little bit bigger than this three-foot squid, and they attacked him, and he was able to scream so loudly that his friends finally heard him and came over and picked him out of the water.
But by the time they'd picked him out of the water he'd had 330 bites, the size of a grape each.
So when I asked to look at his wounds, he took off his shirt and he looked like a burn victim from his waist, all the way down.
'These predators hunt in packs, swarming upon their victim in hundreds or even thousands.
'Local people now only enter these waters with extreme caution.
' And you can't imagine how many there are down below us right now.
Nobody knows how many squid are here.
It's impossible to do a census.
But I myself have seen squid shoals reach the surface for over a football field in size, with tens of thousands of animals on the surface reaching out of the water to collect sardines.
There's an argument, isn't there, for saying that this animal - more than the Great White Shark - is perhaps the most perfect killing machine in the water.
This animal can have 20 million babiesOh, my God! and a great white shark can have ten over a lifetime, so, you know, you're looking at an animal that can out populate every other known predator.
Cos that's one of the things that's worrying you, isn't it? To me, the humble squid is the icon of the change on the planet, because the humble squid population is just exploding and it's almost certainly because of the reduction in predators.
What you are looking at, right here, is our next wild fire.
This is an animal that is potentially going to upset the balance of the entire Pacific Coast of all the Americas - Central, North and South.
Oh, dear Lord.
I think I've seen everything now.
That looks serious.
It's great fun at parties.
It only takes one good bite on a tendon, and you don't forget the lesson.
There he is.
This size right here, these ring teeth are just like small cactus plants, but when you get an animal that is five or six feet long, and all of a sudden it's as big as a really thick hypodermic needles.
Whoa.
Yeah.
When the squid is hunting it's using its eyesight to find prey, and then it grabs the prey with the tentacles.
And watch the response here.
Wow! He knows he can move that beak around in different directions.
Oh, yes.
Good Lord.
So while he grabs onto somebody like this Oh, yeah, he's chomping on me.
While he's hanging onto me like this, he can take a bite.
'It's the stuff of B Movie horror.
'But this is what the suppression of a species can mean.
'Shark fishing has decimated the number of sharks, and a new predator has taken over.
'What happens next is anybody's guess.
' Unfortunately, I think these animals are such an amazing opportunistic predator that they will explore every species they encounter as food, and as soon as they realise that they can eat it, they have amemory, so they're more adaptable to eating prey than anything else I know of in the ocean, and that's why they're such a problem.
There's a humpback, three-quarters of a mile, starboard bow! Mark, do you hear that? Yeah, yeah, got it.
'Not the blue whales we have been looking for, 'but a sudden encounter with a humpback is not to be sniffed at.
' Wow and another one! Look at it! Wow, and again! Wow! Oh, it's breeching again.
Oh, it's a stunner! It's so nice to see so many humpback whales on the breeding grounds like this, this is one of the species that has actually benefited from proper protection, and it's really bouncing back.
Fantastic.
They reckon there's about four times as many now as there were when whaling stopped, which is fantastic.
'In Mark's view, the humpback is the whale with the best song in the ocean, and, as the whales dive, he seizes the opportunity to let me hear it.
Got a little hydrophone here, Connected to the speakers, I can't believe this is gonna work.
You've got no faith.
We'll put it down to about 20 feet.
See if that works.
WHALE SONG What's that? That is it, we've got one.
That's unbelievable! Listen to that.
You can't believe it's a whale, can you? It's extraordinary.
Isn't it amazing? It's fantastic.
I love it.
This has to be one of the best sounds in the animal kingdom.
So what we're listening to, this is a male humpback whale - only the males sing - and if you imagine he will be at some sort of 45 degree angle, facing down to the sea bed, with his big flippers out, and the flippers will just be gradually waving like this like a conductor in front of an orchestra, and singing this song that could last up to half an hour.
It's the longest and most complex song in the whole animal kingdom.
WHALE SONG Ha, ha, ha, aren't they fabulous? Leaping for joy.
'After seven days at sea, looking for blue whales, we are heading ashore 'onto one of the tiny islands that dot the Sea of Cortez.
' It's said that whales have been visiting this stretch of water for many thousands of years, and we've been told that the proof lies on this island.
These look like, er whale ribs, fossilised whale ribs.
Really? Oh, yes, they're not bone are they, that's stone.
Yeah.
Well fixed inside there.
Is there any way of knowing what sort of whale or what sort of age? Well, this island is probably four-five million years old, so I'd guess the bones are roughly the same, so it's very hard to say exactly what they came from, but they probably came from whales that we'd recognise, a fairly modern type of whale, being that sort of age.
It's nice that this is part of the world where there still are whales, often you see fossils inland of marine creatures where, you know, there you haven't a chance of seeing them ever again, whereas at least here there's continuity.
It's very interesting actually, because a lot of the most ancient whale bones have been found in the Himalayas, miles from the nearest sea, it's sort of the cradle of whale evolution.
That's extraordinary! Here's an interesting looking one.
Good God, what's that? That's a vertebra, whale vertebrae.
That's one vertebrae? Yes, it's a good size.
So if I feel one knobble in my back, that's the equivalent? Gives you some sense of scale, doesn't it? Wow, look at that.
Do we know how this is related to the modern whale? No, this would be a fairly modern species, because, again, it'll be four or five million years old, but we know amazingly little about how whales evolved and what they evolved from.
The latest theory is they evolved probably about 60 million years ago, just after the dinosaurs disappeared, there was an animal, looked like a wolf with hooves, and it used to live in a place called the Tethys Sea, which is between what is now Southern Europe and Central Asia, and they reckon what happened was it spent more and more time in the water.
That's extraordinary.
It gradually, over this huge period of time, its legs disappeared, and in fact you can see the evidence in the flipper of the whale, you can see all the hand and finger bones just as Oh, it's still got carpals or tarsals They've got no hind legs or hind flippers, as you know, but there's a little bone that is still just in the blubber, that's the remains of our hind legs and our hips.
'Whales have been swimming the earth for over 50 million years.
' 'But it took just five decades for whaling ships to reduce their numbers by over 90%.
' Something that really worries me is that whaling is still going strong, it's not over by any means yet.
Japan, Norway and Iceland are all whaling commercially, and they're killing, between them, 2,000 whales a year.
It's as cruel as it was when whaling was at its peak, and what I wanted to do was to show you this little video, just to show you the reality of whaling and what's happening.
It look like a battleship.
It does, doesn't it? It's all pretty strong stuff Oh, my God.
'There are currently 8,471 species of animal 'officially recognised as endangered by extinction.
'To put it another way, if Mark and I made a film about each one of them, 'and those films were broadcast every week without a break, 'this series would run for a little over 162 years and ten months, 'which is perhaps the most absurd and the most sobering statistic I have ever encountered.
' '20 years ago, Mark photographed the Yangtze River dolphin.
'Now the dolphin is extinct and all we have are photographs.
'For the last year, Mark has documented everything.
'But wouldn't it be a shame - quite literally shaming - 'if all we leave to the people of the future are photographs, 'in place of thousands and thousands of some of the most extraordinary, complex, 'baffling and sometimes hilarious creatures that ever walked upon the earth?' 'The biggest animal that ever lived may be hard to find, but it is still out there.
'Having brought me all the way to Mexico, Mark is determined, by hook or by crook, 'to get our boat to blue whales.
'Mark has abandoned me for a day in La Paz, which may seem out of character, 'but I have come to recognise the glint in his eye that means he is working on a plan.
' I've known Sandy for many years, we met in the mid 1990s, and we've flown goodness knows how many hours together, she's the best pilot I've ever ever come across anywhere in the world.
And she's very kindly brought her lovely Cessna 182 which was built in 1958 can you believe, it's a year older than I am, so probably quite decrepit, but it's certainly air worthy, and she's going to help us find blue whales.
Now if anyone can do it, Sandy can, and I'm hoping we'll have found some, and then take Stephen to them.
Ahhh! 'So, with the co-ordinates of at least one blue whale, Mark and I are heading north.
' Well, this is what we've come to see.
A blue whale, and that does look blue.
The size is the thing - the longest ever recorded was 110 feet long, which is about the length of a Boeing 737.
Good Lord.
The other thing is its weight, the heaviest ever recorded was a 190 tonnes.
An average - I worked this out - an average-sized blue whale, if you imagine a set of weighing scales and you an average-sized blue whale on one side of the weighing scales and you have to pile lots of other things on the other side to balance the scales, you have to put all of the following.
Half a dozen African elephants, a black rhino, a couple of whale sharks, five Tyrannosaurus Rexes, 100 world-class Sumo wrestlers, the entire football team of Norwich CityOne of the lightest! .
.
and my car,and that lot together equals the weight of one average sized bluewhale, you just don't get the scale just by looking at it like that.
And it flies through the water at great speed and with great agility.
Yeah, they're incredibly agile, about one in four in the Sea of Cortez lift the tail - some don't, and we don't quite understand why - lifts the tail right up in the air, and you can imagine you can see that length of the body up in the air as it dives, that's probably 20 feet of tail sticking out of the water.
Goodness me, I can't wait to see this creature.
'Seeing this flicking of the tail, or fluking, is, I am told, the holy grail of whale watching.
' Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.
'The following morning, we have arrived at where the whale was the previous day.
'Now all we need is Sandy and Cessna Emily to guide us in.
' Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.
'Vessel Horizon coming up on you.
' That's her.
Cessna Emily, motor vessel Horizon Channel 18, good morning.
Well, we're just coming up on you almost on the port side, left side, and I see you.
Hey! Wow! If that can't see a whale, nothing can.
So that's the area she's circling above, isn't it? I haven't seen any flukes yet, or any sign.
So somewhere around here.
Yeah.
That's it there, there's a fluke! Can you see it?Oh, yes! Oh, my goodness.
Right by the island.
Absolutely dead ahead! Fantastic.
Oh, my goodness that's my first ever glance We've done it.
.
.
.
in the direction of a blue whale! Oh! Look at you! Wow! Look at that body, look at it! It's going to do it, it's going to fluke No.
No, not quite.
Oh! It's moving, it's going to fluke No! And again.
It's still going.
This might be the one.
Yes, it's a big one, is it? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES! That was high!Beauty! How can you get so excited about an animal just deciding to show its tail, and yet I can't tell you, it's the most thrilling thing when you just know it's the final arching through, and then there's that fabulous sight.
'Blue whales may be diminished, but they are still out there.
'Like the aye-aye, the kakapo, the komodo dragon 'and the 8,471 other species on the endangered list.
'Isn't it extraordinary to imagine we could be the generation to watch them all slip away? 'And in the future, would people not wonder how we could possibly have allowed that to happen?' Glistening, look at that length of body andit's fluking! Yay! Mark, that was the most fantastic thing I've ever seen.
Really? It's enormous, and it's slow and it's sleek and it's just so magisterial.
'It has been a privilege to retrace Mark's journeys, 20 years after he first made them.
'I hope that others will remake these journeys in another 20 years - 'you have my blessing, and I sincerely hope 'you will find the animals waiting for you when you get there.
'