COMMENTARY MAN STEVE_BACKSHALL STEVE_BACKSHALL_PTC COMMENTARY Whales… ocean giants… ancient mariners… COMMENTARY Their songs, majesty and sheer size fill us with joy and awe. COMMENTARY In their vast shadow, a huMAN can feel very small. COMMENTARY They were here long before us… COMMENTARY Caring for their young… COMMENTARY Hunting… COMMENTARY Voyaging… COMMENTARY But now we are changing their world. So I want to see through their eyes, meeting them on their terms, to find how their future and ours are inseparable. COMMENTARY I’m tracking the latest discoveries on the hunting behaviour of whales and dolphins. COMMENTARY There are over 90 species… all very different, but with one thing in common. COMMENTARY Whatever their shape or size, they are all predators. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC The whales and dolphins have been commanding our oceans for perhaps 50 million years. With the biggest brains, the biggest appetites, and also the most creative hunting strategies. From the equators to the poles, they are truly the ultimate hunters of our seas. COMMENTARY But whales’ predatory strategies are as varies as whales themselves, often specific to a location or prey. And I want to understand the challenges they face in our changing oceans. COMMENTARY My journey into the world of ocean hunters begins with the most iconic of all… orca. Also known as killer whales. In the far north of Norway they feast on seasonal shoaling herring. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC For just two months of the year, the fjords of northern Norway play host to a gathering of some of the finest hunters on our planet. We are inside the Arctic Circle and surrounded by a pod of orca. This is the largest species of dolphin, and, I think, the most sophisticated, complex and adept of all predators. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC There’s just nothing that compares. COMMENTARY If any whale has a fearsome reputation, it’s these. COMMENTARY The ocean’s top predators. They were named as a killer of whales. COMMENTARY Scientists consider them the most complex marine predators. They target specific prey, and in nature have never harmed a human. COMMENTARY And what better way to put this to the test than to swim alongside them. COMMENTARY Usually they just cruise on by. COMMENTARY But this time, she turns… and comes to join me. COMMENTARY Nose to nose with our planet’s greatest predator. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC In two decades of working with orca, that’s the first time I’ve had one show real interest in me underwater. She was looking at me, she was studying me and going around, and around, and around, and you can’t tell if that’s just curiosity, or if they’re searching for a weakness. But in that moment, when you look in their eye, you can see the intelligence, you can see them processing you, figuring out what you are. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC I have just had a proper moment with the greatest predator, potentially, our planet has ever seen. COMMENTARY Killer whales are capable of taking prey Many times larger and more formidable than a huMAN, but they’re smart enough to be selective. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC What makes the perfect hunter is not big teeth or muscles, it’s having that brain power and its processing power, its curiosity is probably the closest of any other on the planet, to us as huMAN beings. COMMENTARY But the orca is rarely a lone hunter. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Perhaps the secret to the orca’s success is the pod, their social group. They are the most potent matriarchy on the planet, and youngsters may stay with their mothers for their entire lives. Their extraordinary communication enables them to do things that other animals simply can’t. COMMENTARY And their closeness and cooperation is clearly seen… in the Sea of Cortez. COMMENTARY These are mobula rays, here in their thousands to feed and breed. COMMENTARY For an orca hunting on her own, it’s hard to separate a target. COMMENTARY The arrival of her pod changes the odds. COMMENTARY They begin to coordinate their hunt. COMMENTARY Their multi-pronged attack panics the mobulas, breaking apart the school. Now, the orca have the advantage. They pick off the rays one… by one. COMMENTARY By working together, every whale reaps the rewards. COMMENTARY But for some orca, the greatest advantage comes not from sharing the hunt, but from sharing knowledge. Over in New Zealand, this helps a different pod take much more risky prey. COMMENTARY It’s a tempting meal, but a sting ray’s tail barb delivers a lethal toxin. COMMENTARY The key is to approach from above… and grab the head end. COMMENTARY And then flip the ray upside down. This puts it into a trance-like state called tonic immobility. COMMENTARY Now helpless, it can be consumed safely. COMMENTARY And she’s not the only one doing this. COMMENTARY This method of handling sting rays has been learned by others and is now practiced throughout the pod. COMMENTARY MANy other orca groups also have very specific hunting techniques. Some scientists say this shows that, like us, killer whales have culture; shared behaviour passed down through generations. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC The orca have the ability to feed on everything, from the smallest fish right up to the largest animal ever known to have lived, the blue whale. It’s this adaptability, this inventiveness that makes them such a success in all our oceans. COMMENTARY But some whales are far more specialised. So, what does the future hold for them with our oceans in flux? COMMENTARY I’m on a quest to understand the new challenges faced by whales hunting in our modern world. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Around 50 million years ago, land-based mammals abandoned their terrestrial lifestyle and took to the waves. In the millions of years since, a diverse array of forms has evolved, from porpoises the size of puppy dogs, to the largest animals ever known to have lived. COMMENTARY But how they hunt couldn’t be more varied. COMMENTARY To see one of the most impressive of them all, we must venture to Baja California, feeding grounds for the largest animal ever to have lived on our planet… The blue whale. COMMENTARY This female may be 25 metres long and weigh over a hundred tonnes… and she’s hungry. COMMENTARY Remarkably, the largest animal on earth feeds on something very small; shrimp-like plankton called krill. These seasonal blooms form vital banquets for blue whales. COMMENTARY She can descend 200 metres to feed… lunging, she engulfs as much as 100 tonnes of krill and water, swelling her throat like a balloon. COMMENTARY We once thought whales were bad for fish stocks… but scientists are discovering that blue whale poo acts like fertiliser on plant plankton, which feed the krill that blue whales and others rely on. So, whales have been enhancing the health of our oceans for millions of years. COMMENTARY But global warming and ever more acidic oceans are harming krill. COMMENTARY Blue whales have been slowly recovering from whaling, but without krill they would be lost. COMMENTARY If we’re endangering the largest animal on earth, what other mistakes are we making? COMMENTARY To see how we could affect their future, I want to know more about the highly varied hunting behaviour of whales. COMMENTARY I’m heading to Bimini, in the Bahamas, where there is a hunter with a unique way of finding food. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Just offshore are these sand flats, which stretch on as far as the eye can see. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC But when you get your eye in, you can see they’re filled with razor fish, garden eels, sand eels. COMMENTARY These fish pluck particles of food from the water column. COMMENTARY They seem exposed, with nowhere to hide. But at the first sign of danger… COMMENTARY They disappear from sight. COMMENTARY But one seabed scanning predator isn’t searching with its eyes. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC These craters are the feeding signs of the bottle nosed dolphin. COMMENTARY They’re using echolocation, beaming out high pitched sounds to build a picture of their world using the echoes that bounce back. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC The dolphins cruise along the bottom, and all the time, they’re sending their echolocation down through the sand, penetrating down to find what’s buried beneath. COMMENTARY It’s a remarkable technique. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC When they sense something they exhibit a left-hand turn. And then plunge their snout, their rostrum down into the sand as they try and find their food. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Did you see that?! Perfect! STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Such an incredible sight, seeing a dolphin doing a headstand on the bottom and then coming up with a fish in its mouth. COMMENTARY Although bottle nosed dolphins live all over the world, this strategy is only known from this region. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC This population here all seem to have learnt this technique. Perhaps, just like the orca, they have a culture that enables them to pass on this skill. COMMENTARY These dolphins have a specialised way of finding food in this exact environment. COMMENTARY But what happens if that environment starts to change? Could being a specialist make you more vulnerable? COMMENTARY The best place to investigate is an environment we’re already changing rapidly… the last place you’d expect to find a member of the whale family… deep in the heart of the Amazon. COMMENTARY Like strong tea, these waters are stained with tannins, dissolved from forest leaves. COMMENTARY Here in the darkness lives the most unusual dolphin of all. COMMENTARY This Amazon river dolphin, or boto, is uniquely adapted to live in this strange freshwater habitat. COMMENTARY With pink skin, tiny eyes and a bulbous forehead, he’s a curious looking creature. COMMENTARY But this is a sophisticated hunter, able to take more than 40 species of prey, including piranhas. COMMENTARY With such poor visibility, he relies on echolocation… building a soundscape picture of his world. COMMENTARY His low profile dorsal fin avoids snags, and his flippers, which move independently, allow him to freely navigate… and home in on hiding fish. COMMENTARY His highly sensitive beak is ideal for snatching fish from the deepest thickets. COMMENTARY These boto are the ultimate specialists, perfectly adapted to their unique environment… but that makes them vulnerable. COMMENTARY Fishing is emptying their home of food, and fine-meshed modern nets can be a death trap. We’ve driven other river dolphins extinct, and unless we learn our lessons fast, the boto could be next. COMMENTARY Scientists and conservationists are in a race against time to protect whales. COMMENTARY But is the world simply changing too rapidly? COMMENTARY One huMAN activity has bigger consequences for whales than any other… fishing. We have replaced whales and dolphins as the largest consumer in the oceans. COMMENTARY Here in the fjords of Norway, the catch is monitored, so there should be enough fish left for the whales, but it’s still affecting them. To see what’s happening, I need to dive right alongside the gigantic boats as they set their nets overnight. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC As the fishing boats bring in the nets, there could be several hundred tonnes of herring, shimmering silver scales and thousands, if not millions of fish trapped inside. COMMENTARY We’re plundering the whales’ natural food, but some whales are learning how to use the boats to their advantage. COMMENTARY Orca recognise the characteristic sounds of a boat fishing. To these ingenious predators, the clangs and clanks are a dinner bell. COMMENTARY Taking just the fish that spill from the nets, the orcas’ technique is surprisingly delicate. COMMENTARY Drawing other orca into the fjord, it’s a mighty gathering. But they’re not the only hunters arriving for this unusual feast… COMMENTARY Giant humpbacks come in to join them. COMMENTARY Elsewhere, these whales would be mortal enemies. But here, they feast together, mere metres from the boat. COMMENTARY It’s a rare and dramatic sight, but this spectacle has a dark side. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC It’s hard to imagine a greater concentration of hunters anywhere on the planet. Mighty animals feeding on everything that’s slopping out of the nets, the excess from their catch, and to see all of these animals concentrated in together is just breath taking. COMMENTARY It’s a strange scene, these great predators feeding on scraps from our nets. COMMENTARY But tempting whales so close to industrial fishing can end in disaster. COMMENTARY While we’re filming, local marine biologist professor Auden Rikardsen is alerted to a whale caught up in fishing gear. STEVE BACKSHALL So, you’ve just had a humpback entanglement here. We had to keep our distance, but you were right in there involved. Can you tell us what happened? Auden Rikardsen This whale had something over its, its snout, and through the mouth. So, it was just laying there, and it seems like it was er, waiting for help. Auden Rikardsen And when we came it, it came towards us. So, it was almost like, asking for help, and it was also kinda screaming, you can hear the sound blowing, ‘woo!’ It was really heart breaking, honestly, it touch you when you see that, and you, you really wanted to help. COMMENTARY Horribly entangled, she couldn’t dive or feed. COMMENTARY Time was running out. COMMENTARY But to free a frightened whale is a serious business. COMMENTARY Spooked, she tried to flee. COMMENTARY With darkness falling, it was a race against time. COMMENTARY But finally, the ropes were cut. And she was free. COMMENTARY For her, it was a lucky escape. But for most whales, there is no rescue. For this north Atlantic right whale calf, being born to an entangled mother stacked the odds too high against them both. With less than 350 of her kind left, every loss is a step towards extinction. COMMENTARY The scale of modern fishing is now immense. COMMENTARY Our fishing activities are one of the biggest threats to whales and dolphins. COMMENTARY Globally, almost a thousand cetaceans a day are caught in nets as bycatch. COMMENTARY Ghost nets, lost or discarded fishing gear, haunt our oceans… with up to a million tonnes more added every year. COMMENTARY Taking up to 600 years to break down… they’re not coming out unless we remove them. COMMENTARY There has to be a better way. COMMENTARY All around the world marine reserves are creating whale havens and I want to see the benefits they can bring. COMMENTARY I’m exploring our oceans to see how whales are trying to get by in a world very different from the one they evolved in. COMMENTARY There are places where whales can thrive, and where they hunt as they once used to. This group of islands was once a centre of commercial whaling, but they’re now a safe haven for whales and their prey. The Azores. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Where the mid-Atlantic ridge carves the ocean in two there are volcanic mountains coming up from thousands of metres of depth. Oceanic currents drive up nutrients from the deep water and that creates an explosion of life. COMMENTARY When areas like this are protected, it can lead to an abundance of fish, which are in turn food for the whales, and one phenomenon draws them in like nothing else. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC In the presence of the right kind of predators, the shoals of fish coalesce into shimmering bait balls targeted from all angles by all the various mighty mouths, and they don’t hang together for very long. COMMENTARY A bait ball is my best chance of witnessing whales feeding underwater. But they can quickly disappear. COMMENTARY So when one happens, I have to get in fast. COMMENTARY For these fish, schooling is a vital defence strategy. COMMENTARY They’re obvious targets for predators like these spotted dolphin. But there is safety in numbers. Each fish marks its neighbour, keeping a set distance and alignment. COMMENTARY For this lone dolphin, it’s a tricky moving target. One reacting fish triggers the whole school to shift in unison. COMMENTARY This dazzling effect makes it hard to pick out any individual. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC The shifting silvery shoals of fish, which just move like quicksilver, are designed to throw off the smaller predators, but having all of those creatures concentrated together in one ball makes them easy prey for the whales. COMMENTARY And they’re bringing in true leviathans. COMMENTARY Sei whales. COMMENTARY They can reach lengths of almost 20 metres and weigh up to 45 tonnes. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC It’s in the same animal group as the blue whale, and shares much in common. They’re long, streamlined, sleek, impossibly fast through the water, and they’re also one of the largest creatures in our seas. COMMENTARY But to really appreciate their hunting skills, I need to see what’s going on beneath the waves. COMMENTARY Like submarines, they pass with deceptive speed. COMMENTARY It’s ominous and awe-inspiring in equal measure. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Wow! That was incredible. The sei whale is one of the very fastest of the cetaceans, and underwater there’s barely any sense of motion as they go through the water, but when you’re close to them, the wake just tosses you around like you’re in a washing machine. COMMENTARY Sei whales have been clocked at nearly 50 kilometres per hour, and this speed is key to their hunting strategy. COMMENTARY Lunge feeding. COMMENTARY A sprint enables them to ambush the fish. COMMENTARY This sei whale needs to eat close to a tonne of fish every day. Bait balls offer a focused target… but accelerating 45 tonnes of whale to top speed… takes a lot of energy. COMMENTARY They can only use this technique in places where there are enough fish to make the sprint worthwhile. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC This is extraordinary. I’ve never been somewhere where you’re genuinely at risk of getting run over by a whale. Oh! Look at that. Honestly, I could stay in there all week with that amount of life kicking off. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Apart from anything else, it’s just a sign of what a healthy looking marine ecosystem should look like. You’ve got everything from the, the primary producers at the bottom, the, the plankton, the zooplankton, the smaller fish that feed on it, all the way up to the biggest creatures ever known to have lived on our planet, and they’re all focused here. This is what protection can do, this is what sanctuaries can achieve. When you protect waters, they turn into abundant focuses of life, like this. COMMENTARY These precious moments are a glimpse of how the world could be if we didn’t empty the seas of life. COMMENTARY And the Azores is not the only place where healthy feeding spectacles can be seen. Off the coast of South Africa, new gatherings of whales are giving us a vision of a better future. COMMENTARY Since we stopped hunting them, humpback whales have made a remarkable comeback. COMMENTARY There’s far more work to do, but sights like this are increasing, and what we’re now learning is that whales help remove carbon from the atmosphere, fertilising plant plankton, storing carbon in their vast bodies, they soak up almost 30 million tonnes every year… as much as a billion trees. COMMENTARY Whales are an integral part of keeping our oceans healthy, and healthy oceans are vital to combat climate change. COMMENTARY It’s now up to us to take action to choose our future. What’s needed now more than ever is better protection from the unintended consequences of our fishing activities. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Once, the call was to ‘save the whale’, but now we know we have to save the whales’ whole world, and our very future depends on it. COMMENTARY To discover how whales are coping in our modern world, we wanted to observe these ocean hunters in their world. COMMENTARY And the best way to film this was to start with their food, which would mean pushing our diving and filming techniques to the limit. COMMENTARY In Arctic Norway, our attempt to film interactions between whales and herring boats meant a dangerous night dive as the boats set their nets. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC There’s a huge amount goes into the safety for uh, diving like this. I mean, first of all you’re diving in Arctic waters where the temperatures can be below freezing. But we’re gonna be doing this with orca, humpback whales, the nets and the fishing as well. Yeah, I’d be lying if I… I said I wasn’t nervous. COMMENTARY As darkness fell, we prepared for blackwater diving. Unable to see beyond your torch beam, it’s a bit like being in space. It’s incredibly disorientating. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC We’re excited, but at the same time, never losing sight of the fact that this is about as dangerous as wildlife filming dives get, and everything has to be done right. MAN Don’t rush anyone. Take your time. MAN Just, er, waiting on contact, er, with the fishing vessel. COMMENTARY At last, just before dawn, we get the go ahead. MAN Okay, guys, so we can dive. MAN All okay, happy? MAN Yeah. MAN Diver one going in. MAN Nice one, Steve. MAN Two divers in. MAN Get a safety diver in. MAN Diver one, diver two, can you all hear me? STEVE BACKSHALL This is diver Steve to surface - I can read you loud and clear COMMENTARY Capturing the scale of fish spilling out from the nets showed exactly why whales are changing their behaviour and being drawn to the boats. COMMENTARY And what we saw was even more impressive than we’d expected. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC This is, to my mind, the most creative of all predators on our planet. They have the ability to adapt to their environment, to take advantage of any resource that comes their way, and here, the enormous abundance of herring is feeding 80 orca in one single feeding. COMMENTARY In Norway, we could use the herring boats to find the whales. But in the Azores, speedy bait balls hunted by even faster sei whales demanded a far more dynamic approach. MAN Bait is at 11 o’clock. MAN Yeah. MAN Yeah, Steve. STEVE BACKSHALL Shall we go? COMMENTARY This time, we’re free diving. COMMENTARY Diving on a single breath, without bulky scuba gear, we’re more responsive and faster in the water. And we minimise disturbance to the animals in this protected habitat. COMMENTARY We can’t know in advance which bait balls the whales will target, but with so much life, the prospects look good. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC The amount of whales and dolphins here is phenomenal. Just phenomenal. So, yeah, we need to focus on the fish and everything else will follow. COMMENTARY Sighting a whale is a start, though we need to be closer. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC It’s so exciting, but also utterly exhausting, just in and out the water over and over again, trying to keep up with the fish which are moving at lightning speed. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Oh, wow, out there, yes! Yeah, we have it, the epicentre of our bait ball, which is exactly what we’ve been hoping for! COMMENTARY And finally, following the food pays off. COMMENTARY We catch up with one of the fastest whales on the planet, taking advantage of the food available in these productive waters. STEVE BACKSHALL PTC Wow! Wow! Utterly, utterly jaw dropping. I never in a million years expected to get that close to a sei whale. That’s one of the craziest things that’s ever happened to me. Ha ha ha. COMMENTARY From the Arctic to the tropics, adapting our filming to each ocean hunter helped reveal the challenges they face in our modern world and what needs to be done to ensure their future.