Life in the Freezer (1993) s01e04 Episode Script

The pounding surf
of the great southern ocean
beating on the rocks of South Georgia.
Few creatures, you might think,
could survive it.
But Macaroni penguins
are desperate to get ashore.
Their flippers are of little help out of water.
All they have to give them
a grip on these slippery rocks
are small claws on their feet.
Now, at the end of summer,
life is becoming increasingly difficult
for these Macaroni penguins
struggling to feed their chicks,
that are almost fully grown
and have massive appetites.
With the approach of autumn,
the weather will worsen.
Massive depressions rush around
the fringes of the Antarctic continent,
creating huge gales
with gusts of over 100 miles an hour
and lash the sea into a frenzy.
Before long, the temperatures
will drop to below freezing
and then all the wildlife
of Antartica will be engaged
in a desperate race to complete breeding
before the ice closes everything down.
In the deep south, the sea
has stayed frozen all summer.
Penguins here
face an even greater challenge,
for this is where the door closes first.
Here at Cape Royds,
I'm 1,400 miles closer to the pole,
and this Adelie colony
is the most southerly nesting group
of any penguins anywhere.
The summer here is very short indeed
and these penguins have to breed
very swiftly to be successful.
They're well ahead
of the Macaronis up in the north
and the chicks are already losing their down.
Beneath the woolly coat lies
the waterproof layer of feathers
that will protect them in the icy southern seas.
The season is so short
that things have to move fast.
Over a mere two weeks,
the jam-packed colony virtually empties
as the newly-feathered young
follow their parents to the sea
to make their first encounter with water.
And their first swim will not be easy.
The bay is filled with surging,
sharp-edged brash ice.
Even getting down to the water poses problems.
Soon the edge of the sea
is thronged by apprehensive youngsters,
nervously waiting
for someone to take the plunge.
The brash is so thick and extensive
that, on its seaward side,
adults returning with food
for their chicks can't get through.
They turn back.
The hungry youngsters
now have little alternative.
They have to get to sea to feed.
In fact, it's easier for them to cross
the brash than for their parents.
Being significantly lighter and more buoyant,
they can skitter across the surface
of the broken ice.
But moving so slowly and so clumsily
puts them in real danger.
(PANICKED CHIRPING)
A leopard seal.
The majority of the chicks
make it to open water,
where they are a little safer.
The leopard seal stays with its victim.
This game of cat and mouse
goes on for 20 minutes.
Like so many other
large predators on land and sea,
the leopard seal seems to feel
no urgency to complete its kill.
At last, the penguin is dead.
Now the process
of stripping off its flesh begins.
The carcass drifts down to the sea floor.
But it won't be wasted.
A nemeteme worm, a metre long.
It has detected the taste of penguin flesh
drifting through the cold water.
Another scavenger arrives -
a giant isopod, 10 centimetres long,
the equivalent of crabs in warmer waters.
The isopod strips off the meat
with its hooked legs and strong jaws.
The worm just turns its stomach
inside out and envelops the food.
Within hours, the carcass is covered
by a writhing tangle of worms.
Within days, there is nothing left
but bare bones.
The first snows of winter have fallen.
The last chicks to hatch are doomed.
Their parents have to abandon them
before they are fully grown.
The adults must go to sea
to build up their strength
before returning to the colony for one
last ordeal before winter - the moult.
All penguins need a new coat
of feathers for the winter,
which means shedding the old one.
So colonies right around the continent
fill with shed feathers.
On Deception Island,
Chinstrap penguins
stand silent and motionless.
Only a month ago,
these steep slopes of volcanic ash
were noisy with the squawks
of 80,000 pairs of them coming and going
and caring for their chicks.
Now they have little energy to spare.
They can't go to sea with their coats
in this condition, so they can't feed.
For three weeks, they stand fasting,
losing half their body weight,
but at the end they will have
warm, watertight coats
and be ready for the icy blasts of winter.
(RAGING WIND)
By the end of March, most of them have left,
and the remainder are on the move,
making their way
across the emptying slopes back to the sea.
Escape to the north, to open seas,
is the driving force -
to move where the food should be.
But the obstacles are formidable.
At minus 1.9 degrees centigrade,
the sea begins to freeze.
A slight swell on the surface
produces "pancake" ice.
In the frigid air,
the ice above water grows into crystals.
The early explorers
called these fantastic shapes
"ice flowers".
As it gets colder and colder,
the ice thickens.
On the coast, it freezes fast
to the margins of the land.
Farther out, the pack ice
consolidates into sea ice.
The belt of ice surrounding
the continent widens,
advancing north two miles a day
and driving life before it.
But the ice front has not yet
reached all the islands
and there are still some that
can provide a refuge for wildlife
well into autumn.
Here on South Georgia,
we are on the northern edge of Antarctica.
You can be fairly sure that
the sea here won't freeze over.
Only once or twice a century does it do so.
This floating ice has all fallen
from the glacier behind me.
But although at 54 degrees south
we are as far away from the South Pole
as Britain is from the North,
the immense ice cap of Antarctica
still dominates the climate.
Glaciers cover over half the island.
They blanket many of the peaks,
the tallest of which are 2,700 metres high,
and in some places they run
right down into the sea.
During the winter, the temperature falls
to minus 10 degrees at the coast,
so the need for animals
to complete their breeding
in the short summer season
is still very intense.
Two million fur seals come here to breed,
and, at the end of summer,
the beaches are thronged
with young pups and their mothers.
The pups suckle for four months,
until late March.
That's longer than the fur seals
that live in the warmer waters further north.
It's a measure of how strong
young animals have to be
if they are to survive down here.
A pup, to get all the milk that is its due,
has to recognise its mother's call
when she returns from feeding at sea
and is ready to provide a feed.
(LOUD HIGH- PITCHED CALL)
Three months earlier,
this shore was a battlefield
as the bulls fought for the right
to dominate this stretch of beach,
and all the females on it.
Now the mating has finished
and the bulls have gone to sea.
Only the pups are left,
testing their strength with mock fights.
Many of these youngsters
will not survive their first year.
The weaker ones will not get enough food.
There will be accidents.
There will be orphans.
By the end of the breeding season,
corpses lie scattered over the beach,
food for skuas and giant petrels.
(LOUD SCREECHING)
The petrels, with their great hooked beaks,
are usually the first to rip open a carcass.
They are Antarctica's equivalent
of Africa's vultures.
Their huge wings are two metres across.
But, unlike vultures,
they don't just scavenge.
They will tackle young penguins
and small sea birds
while they are still alive.
The whalers in the old days
used to call them "gluttons".
It's easy to see why.
And their dirtiness gave them
another nickname too - "stinkers".
Surprisingly, there are ducks
at this feast, too.
These are the South Georgia pintails.
Alone among ducks,
they have acquired a regular taste for meat.
An elephant seal wallow.
This is an all-female gathering.
They clearly like one another's company,
for they congregate in great assemblies.
But they can on occasion
get irritated with one another.
(LOW GROWLING)
Like the penguins, they went to sea
after rearing their young,
fed intensively to put on the weight
they lost during breeding,
and now they have come back
in order to moult.
Large chunks of skin and hair
peel off their bodies,
and it seems to make them very tetchy.
It takes a month for them to grow new coats.
Then, as the temperatures fall still lower
and winter closes in,
they will return to the place
where they are most at home -
the sea.
Grey-headed albatross
also nest on South Georgia,
but they stay a little longer.
The waters are still ice-free,
so they can catch food for their young
well into autumn.
An adult bird caring for its chick
may travel 600 miles or more to find food,
which it brings back in its crop.
That was a squid, and very nice, too.
Above the grey-heads,
another kind of albatross -
the largest sea bird in the world,
with a three metre wing-span -
the wandering albatross.
It nests a little further inland
on South Georgia's meadows
and ridges of tussock grass.
In marked contrast to the other birds,
that have almost finished their
breeding and are preparing to leave,
this wandering albatross
has come to start a courtship
that may take two or three years.
(SCREECHING)
These young birds
have spent the first three years
of their adult life at sea.
Now they've returned
to the colony where they were reared
and are starting to look for a partner.
They do this by taking part
in dancing parties.
Young unmated birds
court like this for several years
before they decide
who their partners shall be
and together start work on a nest mound.
But as the winter sets in
and its icy door closes,
the young albatross too have to return to sea.
The sea won't freeze
here around South Georgia,
but as the sun moves north
and the days darken,
the temperature of the ocean falls lower still
and life in the water
becomes increasingly scarce.
The huge shoals of krill disperse
and for the seabirds, food becomes
more and more difficult to find.
By April, winter storms are beginning
to sweep across the Antarctic.
The winds rise to above 100 miles an hour.
The temperature
falls to 70 degrees below zero.
And then the sea freezes.
The door has shut.
Throughout the winter, the ice
continues to advance northwards.
The area it covers
increases at the rate
of 40,000 square miles every day.
Before the winter is over,
it will have almost doubled
the size of the continent.
Now, at the end of autumn,
practically all the wildlife
has escaped to the north.
The whales have gone to find
warmer waters in which to breed.
The seals, albatrosses
and most of the penguins
have also gone out to sea,
though no one as yet is sure exactly where.
But there is one truly remarkable creature
that seems to turn all
these rules upside-down -
the Emperor penguin.
Largest of all the penguins,
the Emperor stands over a metre high
and weighs on average 33 kilos.
Most creatures are forced
by the worsening weather
to retreat north to warmer latitudes,
but the Emperors are gathering
at the ice edge
to start travelling into the deep south,
where they will mate and rear their young.
Now the Emperors start their long march -
maybe tens of miles -
to reach their traditional
nesting site on the sea ice.
In the next programme, we'll follow them
and see, with temperatures
dropping to minus 70 centigrade,
how life in the freezer
faces the ultimate challenge -
the Antarctic winter.