Oceans (2008) s01e08 Episode Script
Arctic Ocean
They cover two thirds of our planet.
They hold clues to the mysteries of our past.
And they're vital for our future survival.
But the secrets of our oceans have remained largely undiscovered.
I am with a six gill shark.
Yes! Yes! Explorer Paul Rose is leading a team of ocean experts on a series of underwater science expeditions.
For a year the team has voyaged across the world to build up a global picture of our seas.
We are doing some pretty uncharted research here.
That is psychedelically purple! We're here to try and understand the Earth's oceans and put them in a human scale.
Our oceans are changing faster than ever.
I've never seen ice like this before.
There's never been a better time to explore the last true wilderness on Earth.
This expedition will explore one of the most hostile bodies of water on the planet, the icy wastes of the Arctic Ocean.
The water temperature hovers around zero.
About 2 million square miles of the ocean's surface is permanently frozen.
That much colder ice, much firmer, it's actually breaking off.
- This is some serious - Yeah, this is much better.
- Like, massive chunks breaking off.
- Yeah.
This is one of the least explored oceans on Earth.
It's barely a century since the first ships penetrated this ice-covered world.
The Arctic Ocean spans the North Pole.
It's the smallest and shallowest of the five great oceans.
But more than any other it plays a vital role in regulating our climate.
Only now, global warming is changing this region dramatically.
It's heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on Earth.
I think we're in a race with the Arctic Ocean.
It's changing fast, so we need to learn and understand what's going on while we can, because within our lifetimes it's going to be unrecognisable.
The team has come to see what these changes will mean for life here, and how they could affect us all.
Marine biologist and oceanographer Toni Math dives beneath the polar ice cap to reveal why it's vital to the health of our world.
We kind of are completely dependent on this stuff to keep the planet cool.
Maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy blue examines how man has exploited this ocean for hundreds of years.
It was diving, and it had blood, you know, it was bleeding, it was pulling boats.
I mean, it must have been absolutely horrendous.
And environmentalist Philippe Cousteau, grandson of ocean pioneer Jacques Cousteau, investigates how the Arctic's uniquely adapted marine life is under threat.
These rely on the ice.
I mean, without the ice, these can't exist.
Ice is the Arctic Ocean's dominant feature.
The way the ice forms and melts and changes and circulates around, it governs the Arctic Ocean, it defines the Arctic Ocean.
This ice is vital to help stop the Earth overheating.
Up to 80% of the sunlight that hits the bright, white surface is reflected back into space.
But climate change means the Arctic ice cap is shrinking.
In the last 30 years, almost one and half million square miles of ice has disappeared.
It's a major topic of concern what's happening here.
You know, the ice melting and the implications that has for the rest of the world.
Understanding why and how fast the ice is melting is crucial.
But as getting here is so challenging, the Oceans team will be one of relatively few specialised expeditions, not only to study the ice from the surface, but to dive beneath it.
Most people's experience of the Arctic sea ice would be remotely.
You know, scientists with remote sensing, you know, satellite imagery, computer models and all that.
So even the best scientists in the world who are studying Arctic sea ice often wouldn't get the chance to come to this remote location and go diving underneath it.
Working beneath the ice is hazardous.
For this extreme diving, the team needs careful preparation.
So the expedition begins by travelling to the islands of Scabbard, midway between the North Pole and the tip of Norway.
Expedition leader Paul has brought them to the relative safety of a frozen fjord to find out if they can handle the harsh conditions under the ice.
Can't be messing around with ice diving.
I mean, it's absolutely essential we get this done.
We couldn't even think of going north into the polar pack to dive unless everything was 100% perfect.
It's not just the diving that's risky.
Beside the ship are the paw prints of the Arctic's top predator, the polar bear.
The crew is on armed watch.
We wouldn't dream of coming out on this ice without someone looking after us, keeping an eye on polar bears, so we have one person always with his rifle, and there he is today.
And his only job, and not to be distracted, is to keep entirely a lookout for polar bear.
Paul has diving experience in these extreme conditions.
For the rest of the team, it'll be their first time.
It's a big deal.
It's a really big deal.
You know, it's a real temperature shock.
And although I'm really well insulated, it's still going to be a shock.
Everyone needs to wear a lifeline.
If something goes wrong, we can get pulled out of the water, at least find our way back to the entrance, because, as you can see, if you don't come out the same way you went in, you're not coming out.
The team must spend 10 minutes beneath the ice to test their equipment and their own ability to withstand the physical stress.
The icy water puts a huge strain on the body.
Cold water robs it of heat 25 times faster than cold air.
The first ever Arctic dive for me.
It is cold.
If hypothermia sets in, the divers can lose coordination and become confused.
Under the ice, that could be fatal.
There's no margin for error.
We're slowly heading back.
The test dive is over.
Tired, though.
Man, that's just 10 minutes.
After 45 minutes of that, you'd just be dead, dead on your feet.
Up above you is this weird mass of solid ice, that when you hit, you know, it's just It's like you're knocking at a door, but nobody's going to let you out.
To understand the changes facing the Arctic Ocean, they'll need to dive underneath the polar ice cap, a solid mass of free-floating pack ice.
The pack is so Very different to this.
You know, this is a bit like diving in a swimming pool when you learn to dive, and that is like the real ocean.
It's a big step from this to what I know the pack ice really holds for us.
It's a big challenge.
The team leaves Scabbard and heads north towards the ice cap.
It's a long way north.
Seventy-eight north here, 80 north approximately there.
And the mainland, Norway, you know, way down here to the south.
Now, our plan is to head directly north, and we hit the ice here, we'll be working through the whole pack.
We want that Very cold water, minus one or something, at least.
It will be some of the most extreme sights in the world to do, you know, oceanography, do science, do diving, do our studies.
The ice has that incredible power, you know, so it can be calm where we are, but that pack is just moving and pushing and grinding with incredible force.
As I said, it's one of the ultimate extreme environments.
This far north, the tilt of the Earth's axis means that for four months of the year, the sun never sets.
They use the 24-hour daylight to force their way into the polar pack.
- There's about 20 nautical miles left.
- Oh, okay.
- So it's going to take us a while - Especially with ice like this.
And it's gradually going to get tighter and gradually going to get thicker.
After eight hours, expedition leader Paul thinks they've penetrated far enough to start their exploration.
Well, we're at 80 degrees, 14 minutes.
So it's, you know, 600 and something miles from the North Pole.
- Wow.
- Nice feeling, isn't it? This huge mass of ice is floating on the ocean's surface, and can drift several miles a day.
The boat must be anchored to it so they move together.
As global warming raises the air temperature, the surface of the ice melts.
But this alone may not account for the amount of ice we know is being lost.
So Paul and Toni are going to dive beneath the polar cap to see what else might be causing this ice cover to shrink.
First thing we want to do is get under there and find out if there's any evidence of how it's formed, if there are features we can look at, if there's any evidence or any signs of melting.
And just really get underneath and actually see the ice for what it is, from a different perspective, looking up rather than looking down on it.
Let's hang on to the ice.
Well, it's Very, Very dark here.
It's about the darkest it's been since I've been here in this land of 24-hour daylight.
Unlike icebergs, which come from freshwater glaciers, this pack ice forms when it gets so cold that the ocean freezes.
The ice only forms at minus 1.
8 degrees centigrade because of all the salt in the water.
So the ice is formed from these tiny, tiny crystals, kind of forms into this huge mass of ice.
This sea ice can grow as much as three metres thick.
The shapes underneath reveal how different pieces drift together to become a vast ice sheet.
As you can see, this has been formed by these huge sea ice floes, just pushing together.
It's a bit like plate tectonics, you know, where great geological plates slide together and form mountains.
When these things slide together, they form great ridges above, and along with it these fabulous keels down below.
Keels can extend down to 40 metres.
They help stabilise the ice floes and stop strong winds from breaking them up.
But there are signs that the keels are also shrinking, causing ice floes to break up more easily and melt even faster.
Hey, Toni.
You see these features here, Toni? This is where it's melting.
As it does, the underside of the ice develops a series of depressions and ridges.
These are characteristic signs that the ice is melting underneath, as well as on top.
As ice cover decreases in the summer, the dark ocean absorbs more heat from the sun.
The water warms up and begins to melt the underside of the ice.
There are bubbles hitting the ceiling.
It's just finding all the little pockets, isn't it? And if you stick your hand up there, you lose your hand.
Some of this melting is seasonal.
What's changing now is how much ice is disappearing.
The whole of the Arctic ice cap is shrinking.
And it's a difficult thought to have when you're in minus 1 degree centigrade water and surrounded by ice.
This shrinking is so important, it's being monitored by scientists around the world using satellites.
But there are relatively few direct measurements.
So Philippe and Lucy plan to head out on to the ice to measure its thickness.
Measuring stick, some buckets.
The thickness will indicate whether this ice is likely to survive the summer.
The measurements they take will be sent to NASA.
For a few decades now NASA's been using satellite technology to track changes in the Arctic, changes in the area covered by ice and the thickness of the ice.
But they need the truth to Verify that data with information on the ground.
So that's what we're doing.
We'll be sending this straight to them.
Only ice over two metres thick is likely to make it through the summer.
To measure the thickness Philippe and Lucy need to drill right through the ice.
Whoa! Pop that through.
We've essentially got to measure the depth of the hole that we've just drilled.
And this, if we lower this down, hopefully the bar will catch on the other side of the ice.
The metal bar's horizontal out, so it's sitting against the bottom of the ice.
- I think we got it.
It's locked up.
- And that's the depth.
- I can handle that, right.
- Oh, I can feel them.
One, yeah So it's one metre.
And then The middle of this thing to that point is 65.
So we've got one metre 65.
That's relatively thin, and more likely to melt over the summer months.
But one measurement is not enough.
They need to drill several holes, to take an average.
I think that's it.
So that's one metre - One metre 76? - Yeah.
Okay, that's 1.
56, so basically all four holes have been less than two metres.
So that's, what, less than six foot or something.
The results are consistent with those of other scientists.
The majority of the ice in the Arctic is now comparatively thin, and more likely to disappear in the summer.
And this loss is accelerating.
In 2007 and 2008, the extent of the summer sea ice was the smallest since records began.
The less ice coverage there is, the more the Arctic will absorb solar radiation in the summertime, the warmer it'll get, the more ice will melt.
It's a vicious circle.
As the reflective sea ice disappears, the water warms up and more ice melts.
This leaves the ocean even more exposed to the heating effects of the sun.
And the whole process speeds up.
And as the Arctic gets warmer, this accelerates global warming.
This isn't something that's going to happen down the road, something that's going to happen to our children, going to happen in the future.
This is happening to us now.
There's been permanent ice cover in the Arctic Ocean for thousands of years.
But as this NASA animation shows, the ice cover in the summer has been changing fast.
In the 1980s, it was receding by an average of about 3% per decade.
Now it's over 1 %.
I mean, there will come a time when that will be a Very, Very different animation, because all of this ocean will probably be blue come summertime.
So, that's the projection.
I mean, it's all done on computer models.
So it is, you know, computer modelling is an attempt to predict the future, which is incredibly difficult.
One estimate suggests the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the summer by 2013.
That would mean the loss of almost 2 million square miles of sea ice.
Well, you know, you see those images of polar bears floating on bits of ice, and you just It's not It doesn't really become tangible until you're actually in it and witnessing it and seeing images like this, and then you realise how, in fact, you know, the potential is that it's going to really impact on all of us.
The fundamental importance of this ocean to the rest of the world just really can't be overstated.
If the ice keeps melting, if the Arctic becomes this Very, Very much warmer ocean the way that scientists are predicting, then that is going to change the entire planet.
A warmer Arctic Ocean would not just contribute to global warming.
It would affect the world in other ways.
Salty water, cooled by the Arctic, helps to drive global ocean circulation, a conveyor belt of currents that connects every ocean.
Cooling salty water from the Arctic region sinks to the ocean depths.
It moves towards the equator, mixes with warmer currents, and eventually becomes lighter and flows back towards the pole.
This does two important things.
It helps to keep our oceans alive by moving oxygenated water and nutrients around the planet.
And it regulates our weather by transferring heat around the globe.
If it's affected, it could radically change climate patterns and have an impact on the health of our oceans worldwide.
And it all begins under the Arctic ice.
The team's preparing for their next mission, to search for what's living beneath the ice.
But then something catches their attention.
Partway ready for a dive, and the bridge watch called out, there's a polar bear coming.
He's come on Quick, so it's all stopped for a moment.
This is the icon of the Arctic, though, finally.
I think I would have been pretty disappointed if I had come all the way up here and not seen a polar bear.
You and me both, mate.
The polar bear is the world's largest terrestrial carnivore.
Males can be up to 10 feet tall and weigh close to 800 kilograms.
They have that slow, ponderous kind of, you know, lolloping kind of walk, but they cover a huge distance.
Polar bears are well adapted to Arctic conditions.
They have two layers of fur, and black skin that absorbs heat from the sun.
Beneath this is 10 centimetres of fat.
So they can have trouble keeping cool.
But it's so cold out here.
But the reason they go so slowly is they're so well insulated.
Here we are, just all freezing and this polar bear has to go slowly so it doesn't overheat.
That's absolutely crazy.
But being so highly specialised makes them among the most vulnerable creatures in the Arctic.
The polar bear is absolutely dependent on these ice floes to exist.
Today there are about 25,000 polar bears.
But as the ice cap recedes, the population could decline fast.
That's because the ice is a valuable source of food.
You look around, and it kind of looks like a big white desert.
But it's actually a Very diverse ecosystem.
And it's critical to understand what's going on, what lives here on the fringes of existence.
Life in the Arctic depends on the spring bloom.
It occurs after months of complete darkness.
When the sunlight begins to reappear, there's an intense growth of algae.
But this bloom is short-lived.
To survive, life here needs to store enough energy to make it through the long, dark winter.
Toni and Paul plan to search for the creatures that provide the energy the Arctic relies upon, to see how they cope with the severe conditions.
It's like, to me, it seems like the most extreme environment, living in minus degree centigrade waters, just underneath the ice.
And there is life that's perfectly adapted to those Very specific conditions.
Yeah, life at the edges is so fascinating, isn't it? The whole team gears up to work on the surface and beneath the ice.
Paul and Toni will search underneath the ice cap for amphipods and copepods, the minuscule creatures which help support this ecosystem.
- Cold! - A bit windy, isn't it? They're hard to see, so once these crustaceans have been collected, Philippe and Lucy will identify them on the surface.
The data they collect will be sent to the Census of Marine Life, a survey being conducted by hundreds of scientists around the world.
But first they've got to find the tiny creatures.
Yeah, it's pretty hard.
For a start, our bubbles, I'm blowing them around.
Maybe that will dislodge them on the little crevices, you know.
Oh, yeah, there you go, look.
I can see some.
Over there, look.
Get it, go on.
That's it.
You got it.
To survive here, life must adapt to the icy conditions.
Creatures here have got proteins in their blood that act as a kind of antifreeze.
So they can actually keep on moving and working in these subzero temperatures.
The water is clouded with algae, as the expedition has arrived during the spring bloom.
It's the ideal time to track down the crustaceans.
Thank you.
Fantastic.
Because there is still so much to learn about the fauna of the Arctic, Philippe is keen to document what they find.
- Oh, yeah, you did.
Well done.
- Couple more? Oh, yeah, definitely.
Well, we've definitely got a few species of amphipods and definitely some copepods in here.
We should get them out of there Quickly because the amphipods eat the copepods.
The last several years of work that I've been doing, in terms of conservation, I've heard so much about amphipods.
I mean, these are like the classic base of the food chain in the Arctic.
I mean, grey whales travel 6,000 miles to feed on these, all the way from Mexico.
And living along with the amphipods are these tiny copepods, just a few millimetres long.
These species hold the secret to survival in the Arctic.
They feed on algae and convert it into fat.
Fat acts like a biological battery, a long-term store of energy.
So everything living here relies on fat to get through the Arctic winter.
Copepods live underneath the ice, feeding on the algae, sometimes only for a few months a year, and they build up these fat layers and can go for eight to 10 months without feeding.
The fact that these things are so high in fat means that they can pretty much fuel the rest of the food chain in the Arctic.
And that fat gets passed on up the food chain, up to the fish, fish gets eaten by the seals, the whales, the polar bears.
So fat is an incredibly important currency.
And these are the basis of the food chain.
I mean, this is such an important creature.
No one knows how many different species of amphipods exist.
This world is so little explored that even a single sample can uncover a find.
That's a new one.
It's Very different than the others.
- Yeah, it is.
- It's definitely an amphipod.
DNA analysis will be needed to be certain but this may be a new species.
You know, people just think we've explored it all, and there's just so little we actually know.
I know.
And here's just a case in point, perfect example.
Absolutely.
- Now then - Good work, you all, I've got to say.
Let's have a look.
We've got a couple things laid out here for you.
Oh, blimey! See, he's really big.
I mean, look what you found.
These big amphipods.
These are the ones that walk upside down underneath the ice, I was watching them.
But as the ice shrinks, these species could disappear faster than we can discover them.
These rely on the ice.
I mean, without the ice these can't exist.
And while that doesn't mean necessarily that, you know, the whole ecosystem will collapse, but it definitely means it'll be changing.
You'll see a shift in biodiversity, and we don't know what that means.
A hugely underrated resource in the Arctic ecosystem.
Nobody's ever interested in invertebrates.
Invertebrates hold the key to the giant, charismatic mega fauna that we're all so concerned about.
If the ice retreats, we could lose many of these tiny creatures.
Then all life here will be threatened.
The team is now heading south, back to the islands of Scabbard.
Maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy blue wants to explore the remains of a global industry that almost wiped out entire species here, whaling.
It's estimated that in the last 400 years, more than two and a half million whales were killed worldwide.
This channel would have been absolutely teeming with whales.
- It's kind of incomprehensible now.
- I know.
It completely is.
Completely is.
This is one of the places where the Arctic industry began.
In the early 1600s, the Dutch and English came here in droves to satisfy the growing demand for whale oil.
It led to the wholesale slaughter of these ocean giants.
So there was Quite a lot of competition, actually, particularly at the beginning, the early 1600s.
You know, they were actually fighting for the right to catch the whales here, particularly in somewhere like this fjord.
These waters in northern Scabbard attracted huge numbers of whales.
The whales come in here because of the slightly shallow waters to feed, so, I mean, it was just a prime hunting area.
A Dutch settlement of up to 200 people grew here.
It was called Siedenburg, blubber town.
I mean, just look at this, and look out into the fjord.
I mean, you can just imagine the 17th century ships moored up.
They would have been out there in the deeper waters, and then the smaller whalers chasing this living whale.
Contemporary paintings captured the scene.
The first person would harpoon it.
And they needed as many harpoons Every time it came up, you had to get another one in it.
And eventually, the thing would just get exhausted from the fact it was diving, it had blood, you know, it was bleeding, it was pulling boats.
I mean, it must have been an absolutely horrendous - bloodbath.
- I know, completely and utterly.
It wasn't just the number of whales that made them choose this location.
One of the main reasons that they actually settled here was because of this Very shallow, sloping shoreline here.
So it was like a natural ramp, in a way, to winch the whales onto the beach.
Once on land, the blubber could be cut away, boiled down into the precious oil and sent back to Europe.
This was the beginning of an industry that continued for hundreds of years, becoming more and more intense.
Every species of whale in the Arctic was targeted.
One of the hardest hit was the Greenland right whale, so called because it was the right whale to hunt.
Big and slow moving, it was easy to catch.
But the greatest advantage of all was that it floated when it was killed, making it simpler to haul back to shore.
Over the course of the sort of 200, 300 years that they were hunting the whales, about 120,000 were killed, to almost the point of extinction.
It's Quite remarkable.
I mean but then, they were easy prey, in a way, weren't they? The right whale.
The right whale population never really recovered here.
Today, there are almost none in the waters around Scabbard.
As larger whales became scarce, hunters turned to smaller species.
One was the beluga whale, which was hunted mercilessly.
Some of its oil was so fine, it was used to lubricate watches.
Having worked to conserve many species of whales, Philippe is keen to see how the belugas are doing here.
- There, that stark white colour - Yeah.
Is so unique.
There are no other whales that look like that.
Look a bit like dolphins, actually.
Less like a whale.
They do have a little bit of a dolphin look, like a smile.
But that melon is so distinctive on its head, you know, this big melon is just Very kind of the typical beluga shape.
These belugas were filmed in captivity.
Getting close to them in the wild will be much more difficult.
But I heard they're really Quite hard to actually see in the wild, - especially here in this region.
- Yeah.
They are supposed to be Quite shy, and that's why I wanted to see a little bit of footage ahead of time.
The team will try to find some belugas to help assess the health of the population in this part of the Arctic.
But the fjords are immense.
So to cover more ground, Paul and Toni take a boat each.
It'll be a long, cold trip, man.
Philippe and Lucy stand by to go to whichever boat finds any belugas.
They centre their search along the edge of the massive glaciers at the head of the fjord.
As the glacier's coming down, it stirs up all this silt, till, and that helps to create a really nutrient-rich area.
You have fresh water flowing in, so you can have lots of fish, lots of all sorts of stuff living in there.
These are ideal conditions for polar cod, fish the belugas feed on.
This is perfect for the belugas, for them to hunt.
This is prime beluga Zone.
Just going to keep looking this whole way along the glacier front.
Belugas are not easy to spot.
Their white colour is excellent camouflage.
I'm looking for things that look like either breaking waves or lumps of ice, which is a little bit confusing considering there are Quite a few lumps of ice knocking around these parts.
I found a seal.
I guess it doesn't count, though.
This is a bearded seal, the largest species of Arctic seal.
So they've got these red heads.
And that's because when they've been rooting around on the bottom for their food, they rub it against all the iron ore that's up in the fjords.
So these are the only ones of these bearded seals that have got red heads, just from rooting around on the bottom.
After several hours of searching, still no sign of belugas.
- That's frustrating.
It's like - I know.
I mean, it's a massive area, there's no Question, but They're here somewhere.
Maybe we'll get Just got to find them.
Finally, Toni has good news.
So, we spotted the belugas.
I literally just looked round and it looked like this block of ice was just coming up and going down again.
And I can see a few of them.
The whales are moving quickly towards the expedition ship.
It's the opportunity Philippe has been waiting for, to assess the population of belugas at close quarters.
This is Very rare and, like, Very lucky.
There's one over there.
Oh, look, look, look! We are surrounded by belugas.
Philippe and Lucy estimate there are about 30 swimming around the boat.
Very shy.
I can't believe we're getting this close.
Wow.
Look, they're literally just off the bow.
Belugas are adapted to life in these ice-covered seas.
It's weird because there isn't a dorsal fin, which you'd expect to see on most cetaceans, or certainly dolphins.
We think they've evolved to not have them for one of two reasons.
When they're under the ice, it's much easier to swim along the ice without a dorsal fin sticking out.
The other reason is that if they can reduce the surface area that's out in the water that's not insulated, so that they stay warmer without having a whole area where there's blood flowing through that can cool.
This pod of belugas is all adults.
They don't turn completely white until they're at least seven years old.
Around 40% of their body weight is blubber, one of the reasons they were attractive to the whalers.
I've never seen belugas in the wild before.
- That was brilliant.
- Beautiful, they were really That was brilliant, so I say mission accomplished.
The best thing was to see so many of them.
- Yeah.
- To see that they were so healthy.
Dozens of them.
Yeah.
While this pod might look healthy, the beluga whale could face a new threat.
A warming Arctic could speed up the retreat of the glaciers, damaging their feeding grounds.
As soon as that glacier recedes far enough that it's on land, it's not going to be the kind of habitat the belugas need.
Increasingly, this is one of the most challenging places on Earth to survive.
The Arctic Ocean is extremely cold, not very nutrient rich, and for four months of the year it's in darkness.
So there's a limit to the marine life that can exist here.
But are there corners of this ocean that can beat the odds? Philippe wants to head south to the shallow waters of Isfjorden.
Here, icy Arctic water mixes with water from the Gulf Stream, which began life thousands of miles south in the tropical Gulf of Mexico.
It's kind of a crossroads here.
This is really the entrance, the beginning of the Arctic habitat, and I'm Very curious to see kind of what the whole thing looks like, the whole environment looks like.
At first, it's not promising.
It's still pretty barren and white, almost like the surface.
But the empty seascape does show how this fjord was created.
You can see the scarring, where the glacier's sort of moved through the Valley.
Deep gouges on the ocean floor reveal how millions of tons of ice scraped across it, scoring the rock and shaping the fjord.
Then the bleak seascape is transformed.
Look at all this life.
Yeah.
You know, this conception that the Arctic is this empty, desolate place, totally blown away by what we're seeing here.
There's an explosion of life.
There's reds and greens.
That's a soft coral, related to the kinds of corals that we've seen down in much warmer waters.
But this is a soft coral, so it's purely a filter feeder, a bright, brilliant pinkish red colour.
I did not expect to see a soft coral this Vibrant here in the Arctic.
Almost no warm water corals can survive through the winter darkness.
They rely on algae that live by photosynthesis and need the sun.
But these soft corals have no algae.
They just need a steady supply of nutrients.
It really is like a soup down here.
This is basically the confluence of the North Atlantic Drift heading towards the Arctic waters and this is where the two meet, so that's why it's so incredibly nutrient-rich.
It's a Very unique environment in many ways.
The current doesn't just support the coral.
It also helps feed these anemones by bringing prey within reach of their tentacles.
There's even a kelp garden here, something usually associated with warmer water.
If you look closely, I can't see one right now, but you'll also find Arctic kelp up here.
It can photosynthesise, take energy from the sun for just one week a year.
It stores up that energy, lasts it for 51 weeks a year.
That's pretty incredible.
Other types of kelp have begun to thrive here in the last few years as the ice has receded, allowing more sunlight to reach these shallows.
It demonstrates how life adapts to inhabit the most unlikely places.
It gives you another kind of dimension of just how rich the environment here, how much richer than even I thought it would have been.
When I first came here, I had no idea how much life there is.
And that just confirms it.
I mean, that That was really amazing.
The warm current flowing from the Gulf Stream also keeps much of the water around western Scabbard ice-free in summer.
It's home to another Arctic species almost hunted to extinction.
We're just going to look and see what we can see.
Can you make any out? They're Quite a way off at the moment, but I can see movement.
They've spotted Atlantic walruses.
They were killed for their fat and tusks until there were only about 100 left here.
That was 60 years ago.
The team wants to see how the walrus population is doing now.
Walruses only live in the Arctic region, so for marine biologist Toni, it's a rare opportunity to get close to them.
I've just been watching them all tumbling in the water.
Sometimes the play looks Quite frantic, as they are literally rolling and falling over each other.
One of them lands on you, and that's it.
Curtains.
They can weigh up to two tons, giving them immense power.
Look how far they can push themselves out of the water, though.
Now that summer has cleared the ice here, the walruses have come to feed.
They like to feed in about 50 metres of water, and they're gatherers, not hunters, and they're after these clams, which are about that big.
The feeding season in the Arctic is short, so walruses are binge eaters.
They can consume more than 50 kilograms of clams in just one day.
Paul and Toni move onto the land to get a closer look.
They want to observe the walruses and determine the size of the colony.
Getting close.
Walruses are suspicious by nature and easily alarmed, so Toni and Paul approach downwind and crouch to avoid looking like predators.
All right, there's one, look, on the rim.
Oh, yeah, he's coming up.
But he's not facing us, so let's keep going while he's busy.
- Something smells good now.
- They don't smell good.
But this wind is perfect for us, though.
I don't believe they can smell us, Toni.
We should, uh Their Latin name translates as "tooth-walking seahorse", which I just think is such a perfect literal translation.
That is perfect.
Look at them.
Judging by their large size, this colony is all male.
Look, the one that's just stuck his head up has got Very short tusks, - which means it's Quite young.
- He's younger, yeah.
The one towards the back, you can see, is much bigger.
He's got much, much longer canines, which means that he's a much older male.
They grow to 40 years old, so he might be 30, 40 years old, that guy.
That big male there, he's got lots of cuts all over his chest.
Because they do use their tusks for fighting for establishing dominance.
Let's do a count, roughly.
The size of the colony will give an insight into the recovery of the species.
Okay, I can see one, two, three, four They count 22 male walruses on the beach.
The rule of thumb is that about a quarter of the colony will be on land.
The rest will be in the water, feeding.
So this colony is 88.
That's about right.
They say between 10 and 100 in Okay.
Sixty years ago, this colony would have represented almost the entire walrus population of Scabbard.
They were made a protected species here in 1952, and their numbers are slowly recovering.
It's estimated there are now around 2,000.
I love how they're, you know, on this great expanse of beach, they're all collected in one group, and they're just lying all over each other and They're Very social, aren't they? - They're Very communal creatures.
- Yeah.
As the Arctic transforms, the Atlantic walrus could, in the short term, be a climate change winner.
As their feeding grounds are usually near land, they're not dependent on ice floes to help them reach their food.
And the retreating ice could expose more feeding grounds and stimulate the growth of clams, their staple diet.
Which means that there's plenty of opportunity for their population to keep on and on increasing.
At least initially, global warming could improve the Atlantic walrus' ability to survive.
It's a real interesting balance, because we talk a lot about the negativity of climate change, but it is always nice to have that little bit of a counterbalance to be able to say, "You know what? "There are some creatures that might benefit in some way "with the changing Arctic climate.
" The changes in the Arctic Ocean are complex, and not always predictable.
But what we do know is that they will affect us all.
A transformation in this remote, bitter ocean will have a profound effect on life and climate around the globe.
As the team has journeyed across the world's oceans, change has been the dominant theme, often triggered by human activity.
Habitats are being destroyed.
Something so perfectly adapted to one particular ecosystem, it's got nowhere else to go.
Species are being threatened.
We are totally decimating their numbers.
And the fragile balance of life is being disrupted.
They'll eat their way down the food chain till there's nothing left down there.
But there are also signs of hope.
Some species are managing to adapt and are thriving.
And with human ingenuity, we are attempting to restore the balance.
What we're looking at here is almost the Indian Ocean equivalent of a garden centre.
The oceans are one of our planet's greatest assets.
And their future is in our hands.
They hold clues to the mysteries of our past.
And they're vital for our future survival.
But the secrets of our oceans have remained largely undiscovered.
I am with a six gill shark.
Yes! Yes! Explorer Paul Rose is leading a team of ocean experts on a series of underwater science expeditions.
For a year the team has voyaged across the world to build up a global picture of our seas.
We are doing some pretty uncharted research here.
That is psychedelically purple! We're here to try and understand the Earth's oceans and put them in a human scale.
Our oceans are changing faster than ever.
I've never seen ice like this before.
There's never been a better time to explore the last true wilderness on Earth.
This expedition will explore one of the most hostile bodies of water on the planet, the icy wastes of the Arctic Ocean.
The water temperature hovers around zero.
About 2 million square miles of the ocean's surface is permanently frozen.
That much colder ice, much firmer, it's actually breaking off.
- This is some serious - Yeah, this is much better.
- Like, massive chunks breaking off.
- Yeah.
This is one of the least explored oceans on Earth.
It's barely a century since the first ships penetrated this ice-covered world.
The Arctic Ocean spans the North Pole.
It's the smallest and shallowest of the five great oceans.
But more than any other it plays a vital role in regulating our climate.
Only now, global warming is changing this region dramatically.
It's heating up twice as fast as anywhere else on Earth.
I think we're in a race with the Arctic Ocean.
It's changing fast, so we need to learn and understand what's going on while we can, because within our lifetimes it's going to be unrecognisable.
The team has come to see what these changes will mean for life here, and how they could affect us all.
Marine biologist and oceanographer Toni Math dives beneath the polar ice cap to reveal why it's vital to the health of our world.
We kind of are completely dependent on this stuff to keep the planet cool.
Maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy blue examines how man has exploited this ocean for hundreds of years.
It was diving, and it had blood, you know, it was bleeding, it was pulling boats.
I mean, it must have been absolutely horrendous.
And environmentalist Philippe Cousteau, grandson of ocean pioneer Jacques Cousteau, investigates how the Arctic's uniquely adapted marine life is under threat.
These rely on the ice.
I mean, without the ice, these can't exist.
Ice is the Arctic Ocean's dominant feature.
The way the ice forms and melts and changes and circulates around, it governs the Arctic Ocean, it defines the Arctic Ocean.
This ice is vital to help stop the Earth overheating.
Up to 80% of the sunlight that hits the bright, white surface is reflected back into space.
But climate change means the Arctic ice cap is shrinking.
In the last 30 years, almost one and half million square miles of ice has disappeared.
It's a major topic of concern what's happening here.
You know, the ice melting and the implications that has for the rest of the world.
Understanding why and how fast the ice is melting is crucial.
But as getting here is so challenging, the Oceans team will be one of relatively few specialised expeditions, not only to study the ice from the surface, but to dive beneath it.
Most people's experience of the Arctic sea ice would be remotely.
You know, scientists with remote sensing, you know, satellite imagery, computer models and all that.
So even the best scientists in the world who are studying Arctic sea ice often wouldn't get the chance to come to this remote location and go diving underneath it.
Working beneath the ice is hazardous.
For this extreme diving, the team needs careful preparation.
So the expedition begins by travelling to the islands of Scabbard, midway between the North Pole and the tip of Norway.
Expedition leader Paul has brought them to the relative safety of a frozen fjord to find out if they can handle the harsh conditions under the ice.
Can't be messing around with ice diving.
I mean, it's absolutely essential we get this done.
We couldn't even think of going north into the polar pack to dive unless everything was 100% perfect.
It's not just the diving that's risky.
Beside the ship are the paw prints of the Arctic's top predator, the polar bear.
The crew is on armed watch.
We wouldn't dream of coming out on this ice without someone looking after us, keeping an eye on polar bears, so we have one person always with his rifle, and there he is today.
And his only job, and not to be distracted, is to keep entirely a lookout for polar bear.
Paul has diving experience in these extreme conditions.
For the rest of the team, it'll be their first time.
It's a big deal.
It's a really big deal.
You know, it's a real temperature shock.
And although I'm really well insulated, it's still going to be a shock.
Everyone needs to wear a lifeline.
If something goes wrong, we can get pulled out of the water, at least find our way back to the entrance, because, as you can see, if you don't come out the same way you went in, you're not coming out.
The team must spend 10 minutes beneath the ice to test their equipment and their own ability to withstand the physical stress.
The icy water puts a huge strain on the body.
Cold water robs it of heat 25 times faster than cold air.
The first ever Arctic dive for me.
It is cold.
If hypothermia sets in, the divers can lose coordination and become confused.
Under the ice, that could be fatal.
There's no margin for error.
We're slowly heading back.
The test dive is over.
Tired, though.
Man, that's just 10 minutes.
After 45 minutes of that, you'd just be dead, dead on your feet.
Up above you is this weird mass of solid ice, that when you hit, you know, it's just It's like you're knocking at a door, but nobody's going to let you out.
To understand the changes facing the Arctic Ocean, they'll need to dive underneath the polar ice cap, a solid mass of free-floating pack ice.
The pack is so Very different to this.
You know, this is a bit like diving in a swimming pool when you learn to dive, and that is like the real ocean.
It's a big step from this to what I know the pack ice really holds for us.
It's a big challenge.
The team leaves Scabbard and heads north towards the ice cap.
It's a long way north.
Seventy-eight north here, 80 north approximately there.
And the mainland, Norway, you know, way down here to the south.
Now, our plan is to head directly north, and we hit the ice here, we'll be working through the whole pack.
We want that Very cold water, minus one or something, at least.
It will be some of the most extreme sights in the world to do, you know, oceanography, do science, do diving, do our studies.
The ice has that incredible power, you know, so it can be calm where we are, but that pack is just moving and pushing and grinding with incredible force.
As I said, it's one of the ultimate extreme environments.
This far north, the tilt of the Earth's axis means that for four months of the year, the sun never sets.
They use the 24-hour daylight to force their way into the polar pack.
- There's about 20 nautical miles left.
- Oh, okay.
- So it's going to take us a while - Especially with ice like this.
And it's gradually going to get tighter and gradually going to get thicker.
After eight hours, expedition leader Paul thinks they've penetrated far enough to start their exploration.
Well, we're at 80 degrees, 14 minutes.
So it's, you know, 600 and something miles from the North Pole.
- Wow.
- Nice feeling, isn't it? This huge mass of ice is floating on the ocean's surface, and can drift several miles a day.
The boat must be anchored to it so they move together.
As global warming raises the air temperature, the surface of the ice melts.
But this alone may not account for the amount of ice we know is being lost.
So Paul and Toni are going to dive beneath the polar cap to see what else might be causing this ice cover to shrink.
First thing we want to do is get under there and find out if there's any evidence of how it's formed, if there are features we can look at, if there's any evidence or any signs of melting.
And just really get underneath and actually see the ice for what it is, from a different perspective, looking up rather than looking down on it.
Let's hang on to the ice.
Well, it's Very, Very dark here.
It's about the darkest it's been since I've been here in this land of 24-hour daylight.
Unlike icebergs, which come from freshwater glaciers, this pack ice forms when it gets so cold that the ocean freezes.
The ice only forms at minus 1.
8 degrees centigrade because of all the salt in the water.
So the ice is formed from these tiny, tiny crystals, kind of forms into this huge mass of ice.
This sea ice can grow as much as three metres thick.
The shapes underneath reveal how different pieces drift together to become a vast ice sheet.
As you can see, this has been formed by these huge sea ice floes, just pushing together.
It's a bit like plate tectonics, you know, where great geological plates slide together and form mountains.
When these things slide together, they form great ridges above, and along with it these fabulous keels down below.
Keels can extend down to 40 metres.
They help stabilise the ice floes and stop strong winds from breaking them up.
But there are signs that the keels are also shrinking, causing ice floes to break up more easily and melt even faster.
Hey, Toni.
You see these features here, Toni? This is where it's melting.
As it does, the underside of the ice develops a series of depressions and ridges.
These are characteristic signs that the ice is melting underneath, as well as on top.
As ice cover decreases in the summer, the dark ocean absorbs more heat from the sun.
The water warms up and begins to melt the underside of the ice.
There are bubbles hitting the ceiling.
It's just finding all the little pockets, isn't it? And if you stick your hand up there, you lose your hand.
Some of this melting is seasonal.
What's changing now is how much ice is disappearing.
The whole of the Arctic ice cap is shrinking.
And it's a difficult thought to have when you're in minus 1 degree centigrade water and surrounded by ice.
This shrinking is so important, it's being monitored by scientists around the world using satellites.
But there are relatively few direct measurements.
So Philippe and Lucy plan to head out on to the ice to measure its thickness.
Measuring stick, some buckets.
The thickness will indicate whether this ice is likely to survive the summer.
The measurements they take will be sent to NASA.
For a few decades now NASA's been using satellite technology to track changes in the Arctic, changes in the area covered by ice and the thickness of the ice.
But they need the truth to Verify that data with information on the ground.
So that's what we're doing.
We'll be sending this straight to them.
Only ice over two metres thick is likely to make it through the summer.
To measure the thickness Philippe and Lucy need to drill right through the ice.
Whoa! Pop that through.
We've essentially got to measure the depth of the hole that we've just drilled.
And this, if we lower this down, hopefully the bar will catch on the other side of the ice.
The metal bar's horizontal out, so it's sitting against the bottom of the ice.
- I think we got it.
It's locked up.
- And that's the depth.
- I can handle that, right.
- Oh, I can feel them.
One, yeah So it's one metre.
And then The middle of this thing to that point is 65.
So we've got one metre 65.
That's relatively thin, and more likely to melt over the summer months.
But one measurement is not enough.
They need to drill several holes, to take an average.
I think that's it.
So that's one metre - One metre 76? - Yeah.
Okay, that's 1.
56, so basically all four holes have been less than two metres.
So that's, what, less than six foot or something.
The results are consistent with those of other scientists.
The majority of the ice in the Arctic is now comparatively thin, and more likely to disappear in the summer.
And this loss is accelerating.
In 2007 and 2008, the extent of the summer sea ice was the smallest since records began.
The less ice coverage there is, the more the Arctic will absorb solar radiation in the summertime, the warmer it'll get, the more ice will melt.
It's a vicious circle.
As the reflective sea ice disappears, the water warms up and more ice melts.
This leaves the ocean even more exposed to the heating effects of the sun.
And the whole process speeds up.
And as the Arctic gets warmer, this accelerates global warming.
This isn't something that's going to happen down the road, something that's going to happen to our children, going to happen in the future.
This is happening to us now.
There's been permanent ice cover in the Arctic Ocean for thousands of years.
But as this NASA animation shows, the ice cover in the summer has been changing fast.
In the 1980s, it was receding by an average of about 3% per decade.
Now it's over 1 %.
I mean, there will come a time when that will be a Very, Very different animation, because all of this ocean will probably be blue come summertime.
So, that's the projection.
I mean, it's all done on computer models.
So it is, you know, computer modelling is an attempt to predict the future, which is incredibly difficult.
One estimate suggests the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the summer by 2013.
That would mean the loss of almost 2 million square miles of sea ice.
Well, you know, you see those images of polar bears floating on bits of ice, and you just It's not It doesn't really become tangible until you're actually in it and witnessing it and seeing images like this, and then you realise how, in fact, you know, the potential is that it's going to really impact on all of us.
The fundamental importance of this ocean to the rest of the world just really can't be overstated.
If the ice keeps melting, if the Arctic becomes this Very, Very much warmer ocean the way that scientists are predicting, then that is going to change the entire planet.
A warmer Arctic Ocean would not just contribute to global warming.
It would affect the world in other ways.
Salty water, cooled by the Arctic, helps to drive global ocean circulation, a conveyor belt of currents that connects every ocean.
Cooling salty water from the Arctic region sinks to the ocean depths.
It moves towards the equator, mixes with warmer currents, and eventually becomes lighter and flows back towards the pole.
This does two important things.
It helps to keep our oceans alive by moving oxygenated water and nutrients around the planet.
And it regulates our weather by transferring heat around the globe.
If it's affected, it could radically change climate patterns and have an impact on the health of our oceans worldwide.
And it all begins under the Arctic ice.
The team's preparing for their next mission, to search for what's living beneath the ice.
But then something catches their attention.
Partway ready for a dive, and the bridge watch called out, there's a polar bear coming.
He's come on Quick, so it's all stopped for a moment.
This is the icon of the Arctic, though, finally.
I think I would have been pretty disappointed if I had come all the way up here and not seen a polar bear.
You and me both, mate.
The polar bear is the world's largest terrestrial carnivore.
Males can be up to 10 feet tall and weigh close to 800 kilograms.
They have that slow, ponderous kind of, you know, lolloping kind of walk, but they cover a huge distance.
Polar bears are well adapted to Arctic conditions.
They have two layers of fur, and black skin that absorbs heat from the sun.
Beneath this is 10 centimetres of fat.
So they can have trouble keeping cool.
But it's so cold out here.
But the reason they go so slowly is they're so well insulated.
Here we are, just all freezing and this polar bear has to go slowly so it doesn't overheat.
That's absolutely crazy.
But being so highly specialised makes them among the most vulnerable creatures in the Arctic.
The polar bear is absolutely dependent on these ice floes to exist.
Today there are about 25,000 polar bears.
But as the ice cap recedes, the population could decline fast.
That's because the ice is a valuable source of food.
You look around, and it kind of looks like a big white desert.
But it's actually a Very diverse ecosystem.
And it's critical to understand what's going on, what lives here on the fringes of existence.
Life in the Arctic depends on the spring bloom.
It occurs after months of complete darkness.
When the sunlight begins to reappear, there's an intense growth of algae.
But this bloom is short-lived.
To survive, life here needs to store enough energy to make it through the long, dark winter.
Toni and Paul plan to search for the creatures that provide the energy the Arctic relies upon, to see how they cope with the severe conditions.
It's like, to me, it seems like the most extreme environment, living in minus degree centigrade waters, just underneath the ice.
And there is life that's perfectly adapted to those Very specific conditions.
Yeah, life at the edges is so fascinating, isn't it? The whole team gears up to work on the surface and beneath the ice.
Paul and Toni will search underneath the ice cap for amphipods and copepods, the minuscule creatures which help support this ecosystem.
- Cold! - A bit windy, isn't it? They're hard to see, so once these crustaceans have been collected, Philippe and Lucy will identify them on the surface.
The data they collect will be sent to the Census of Marine Life, a survey being conducted by hundreds of scientists around the world.
But first they've got to find the tiny creatures.
Yeah, it's pretty hard.
For a start, our bubbles, I'm blowing them around.
Maybe that will dislodge them on the little crevices, you know.
Oh, yeah, there you go, look.
I can see some.
Over there, look.
Get it, go on.
That's it.
You got it.
To survive here, life must adapt to the icy conditions.
Creatures here have got proteins in their blood that act as a kind of antifreeze.
So they can actually keep on moving and working in these subzero temperatures.
The water is clouded with algae, as the expedition has arrived during the spring bloom.
It's the ideal time to track down the crustaceans.
Thank you.
Fantastic.
Because there is still so much to learn about the fauna of the Arctic, Philippe is keen to document what they find.
- Oh, yeah, you did.
Well done.
- Couple more? Oh, yeah, definitely.
Well, we've definitely got a few species of amphipods and definitely some copepods in here.
We should get them out of there Quickly because the amphipods eat the copepods.
The last several years of work that I've been doing, in terms of conservation, I've heard so much about amphipods.
I mean, these are like the classic base of the food chain in the Arctic.
I mean, grey whales travel 6,000 miles to feed on these, all the way from Mexico.
And living along with the amphipods are these tiny copepods, just a few millimetres long.
These species hold the secret to survival in the Arctic.
They feed on algae and convert it into fat.
Fat acts like a biological battery, a long-term store of energy.
So everything living here relies on fat to get through the Arctic winter.
Copepods live underneath the ice, feeding on the algae, sometimes only for a few months a year, and they build up these fat layers and can go for eight to 10 months without feeding.
The fact that these things are so high in fat means that they can pretty much fuel the rest of the food chain in the Arctic.
And that fat gets passed on up the food chain, up to the fish, fish gets eaten by the seals, the whales, the polar bears.
So fat is an incredibly important currency.
And these are the basis of the food chain.
I mean, this is such an important creature.
No one knows how many different species of amphipods exist.
This world is so little explored that even a single sample can uncover a find.
That's a new one.
It's Very different than the others.
- Yeah, it is.
- It's definitely an amphipod.
DNA analysis will be needed to be certain but this may be a new species.
You know, people just think we've explored it all, and there's just so little we actually know.
I know.
And here's just a case in point, perfect example.
Absolutely.
- Now then - Good work, you all, I've got to say.
Let's have a look.
We've got a couple things laid out here for you.
Oh, blimey! See, he's really big.
I mean, look what you found.
These big amphipods.
These are the ones that walk upside down underneath the ice, I was watching them.
But as the ice shrinks, these species could disappear faster than we can discover them.
These rely on the ice.
I mean, without the ice these can't exist.
And while that doesn't mean necessarily that, you know, the whole ecosystem will collapse, but it definitely means it'll be changing.
You'll see a shift in biodiversity, and we don't know what that means.
A hugely underrated resource in the Arctic ecosystem.
Nobody's ever interested in invertebrates.
Invertebrates hold the key to the giant, charismatic mega fauna that we're all so concerned about.
If the ice retreats, we could lose many of these tiny creatures.
Then all life here will be threatened.
The team is now heading south, back to the islands of Scabbard.
Maritime archaeologist Dr Lucy blue wants to explore the remains of a global industry that almost wiped out entire species here, whaling.
It's estimated that in the last 400 years, more than two and a half million whales were killed worldwide.
This channel would have been absolutely teeming with whales.
- It's kind of incomprehensible now.
- I know.
It completely is.
Completely is.
This is one of the places where the Arctic industry began.
In the early 1600s, the Dutch and English came here in droves to satisfy the growing demand for whale oil.
It led to the wholesale slaughter of these ocean giants.
So there was Quite a lot of competition, actually, particularly at the beginning, the early 1600s.
You know, they were actually fighting for the right to catch the whales here, particularly in somewhere like this fjord.
These waters in northern Scabbard attracted huge numbers of whales.
The whales come in here because of the slightly shallow waters to feed, so, I mean, it was just a prime hunting area.
A Dutch settlement of up to 200 people grew here.
It was called Siedenburg, blubber town.
I mean, just look at this, and look out into the fjord.
I mean, you can just imagine the 17th century ships moored up.
They would have been out there in the deeper waters, and then the smaller whalers chasing this living whale.
Contemporary paintings captured the scene.
The first person would harpoon it.
And they needed as many harpoons Every time it came up, you had to get another one in it.
And eventually, the thing would just get exhausted from the fact it was diving, it had blood, you know, it was bleeding, it was pulling boats.
I mean, it must have been an absolutely horrendous - bloodbath.
- I know, completely and utterly.
It wasn't just the number of whales that made them choose this location.
One of the main reasons that they actually settled here was because of this Very shallow, sloping shoreline here.
So it was like a natural ramp, in a way, to winch the whales onto the beach.
Once on land, the blubber could be cut away, boiled down into the precious oil and sent back to Europe.
This was the beginning of an industry that continued for hundreds of years, becoming more and more intense.
Every species of whale in the Arctic was targeted.
One of the hardest hit was the Greenland right whale, so called because it was the right whale to hunt.
Big and slow moving, it was easy to catch.
But the greatest advantage of all was that it floated when it was killed, making it simpler to haul back to shore.
Over the course of the sort of 200, 300 years that they were hunting the whales, about 120,000 were killed, to almost the point of extinction.
It's Quite remarkable.
I mean but then, they were easy prey, in a way, weren't they? The right whale.
The right whale population never really recovered here.
Today, there are almost none in the waters around Scabbard.
As larger whales became scarce, hunters turned to smaller species.
One was the beluga whale, which was hunted mercilessly.
Some of its oil was so fine, it was used to lubricate watches.
Having worked to conserve many species of whales, Philippe is keen to see how the belugas are doing here.
- There, that stark white colour - Yeah.
Is so unique.
There are no other whales that look like that.
Look a bit like dolphins, actually.
Less like a whale.
They do have a little bit of a dolphin look, like a smile.
But that melon is so distinctive on its head, you know, this big melon is just Very kind of the typical beluga shape.
These belugas were filmed in captivity.
Getting close to them in the wild will be much more difficult.
But I heard they're really Quite hard to actually see in the wild, - especially here in this region.
- Yeah.
They are supposed to be Quite shy, and that's why I wanted to see a little bit of footage ahead of time.
The team will try to find some belugas to help assess the health of the population in this part of the Arctic.
But the fjords are immense.
So to cover more ground, Paul and Toni take a boat each.
It'll be a long, cold trip, man.
Philippe and Lucy stand by to go to whichever boat finds any belugas.
They centre their search along the edge of the massive glaciers at the head of the fjord.
As the glacier's coming down, it stirs up all this silt, till, and that helps to create a really nutrient-rich area.
You have fresh water flowing in, so you can have lots of fish, lots of all sorts of stuff living in there.
These are ideal conditions for polar cod, fish the belugas feed on.
This is perfect for the belugas, for them to hunt.
This is prime beluga Zone.
Just going to keep looking this whole way along the glacier front.
Belugas are not easy to spot.
Their white colour is excellent camouflage.
I'm looking for things that look like either breaking waves or lumps of ice, which is a little bit confusing considering there are Quite a few lumps of ice knocking around these parts.
I found a seal.
I guess it doesn't count, though.
This is a bearded seal, the largest species of Arctic seal.
So they've got these red heads.
And that's because when they've been rooting around on the bottom for their food, they rub it against all the iron ore that's up in the fjords.
So these are the only ones of these bearded seals that have got red heads, just from rooting around on the bottom.
After several hours of searching, still no sign of belugas.
- That's frustrating.
It's like - I know.
I mean, it's a massive area, there's no Question, but They're here somewhere.
Maybe we'll get Just got to find them.
Finally, Toni has good news.
So, we spotted the belugas.
I literally just looked round and it looked like this block of ice was just coming up and going down again.
And I can see a few of them.
The whales are moving quickly towards the expedition ship.
It's the opportunity Philippe has been waiting for, to assess the population of belugas at close quarters.
This is Very rare and, like, Very lucky.
There's one over there.
Oh, look, look, look! We are surrounded by belugas.
Philippe and Lucy estimate there are about 30 swimming around the boat.
Very shy.
I can't believe we're getting this close.
Wow.
Look, they're literally just off the bow.
Belugas are adapted to life in these ice-covered seas.
It's weird because there isn't a dorsal fin, which you'd expect to see on most cetaceans, or certainly dolphins.
We think they've evolved to not have them for one of two reasons.
When they're under the ice, it's much easier to swim along the ice without a dorsal fin sticking out.
The other reason is that if they can reduce the surface area that's out in the water that's not insulated, so that they stay warmer without having a whole area where there's blood flowing through that can cool.
This pod of belugas is all adults.
They don't turn completely white until they're at least seven years old.
Around 40% of their body weight is blubber, one of the reasons they were attractive to the whalers.
I've never seen belugas in the wild before.
- That was brilliant.
- Beautiful, they were really That was brilliant, so I say mission accomplished.
The best thing was to see so many of them.
- Yeah.
- To see that they were so healthy.
Dozens of them.
Yeah.
While this pod might look healthy, the beluga whale could face a new threat.
A warming Arctic could speed up the retreat of the glaciers, damaging their feeding grounds.
As soon as that glacier recedes far enough that it's on land, it's not going to be the kind of habitat the belugas need.
Increasingly, this is one of the most challenging places on Earth to survive.
The Arctic Ocean is extremely cold, not very nutrient rich, and for four months of the year it's in darkness.
So there's a limit to the marine life that can exist here.
But are there corners of this ocean that can beat the odds? Philippe wants to head south to the shallow waters of Isfjorden.
Here, icy Arctic water mixes with water from the Gulf Stream, which began life thousands of miles south in the tropical Gulf of Mexico.
It's kind of a crossroads here.
This is really the entrance, the beginning of the Arctic habitat, and I'm Very curious to see kind of what the whole thing looks like, the whole environment looks like.
At first, it's not promising.
It's still pretty barren and white, almost like the surface.
But the empty seascape does show how this fjord was created.
You can see the scarring, where the glacier's sort of moved through the Valley.
Deep gouges on the ocean floor reveal how millions of tons of ice scraped across it, scoring the rock and shaping the fjord.
Then the bleak seascape is transformed.
Look at all this life.
Yeah.
You know, this conception that the Arctic is this empty, desolate place, totally blown away by what we're seeing here.
There's an explosion of life.
There's reds and greens.
That's a soft coral, related to the kinds of corals that we've seen down in much warmer waters.
But this is a soft coral, so it's purely a filter feeder, a bright, brilliant pinkish red colour.
I did not expect to see a soft coral this Vibrant here in the Arctic.
Almost no warm water corals can survive through the winter darkness.
They rely on algae that live by photosynthesis and need the sun.
But these soft corals have no algae.
They just need a steady supply of nutrients.
It really is like a soup down here.
This is basically the confluence of the North Atlantic Drift heading towards the Arctic waters and this is where the two meet, so that's why it's so incredibly nutrient-rich.
It's a Very unique environment in many ways.
The current doesn't just support the coral.
It also helps feed these anemones by bringing prey within reach of their tentacles.
There's even a kelp garden here, something usually associated with warmer water.
If you look closely, I can't see one right now, but you'll also find Arctic kelp up here.
It can photosynthesise, take energy from the sun for just one week a year.
It stores up that energy, lasts it for 51 weeks a year.
That's pretty incredible.
Other types of kelp have begun to thrive here in the last few years as the ice has receded, allowing more sunlight to reach these shallows.
It demonstrates how life adapts to inhabit the most unlikely places.
It gives you another kind of dimension of just how rich the environment here, how much richer than even I thought it would have been.
When I first came here, I had no idea how much life there is.
And that just confirms it.
I mean, that That was really amazing.
The warm current flowing from the Gulf Stream also keeps much of the water around western Scabbard ice-free in summer.
It's home to another Arctic species almost hunted to extinction.
We're just going to look and see what we can see.
Can you make any out? They're Quite a way off at the moment, but I can see movement.
They've spotted Atlantic walruses.
They were killed for their fat and tusks until there were only about 100 left here.
That was 60 years ago.
The team wants to see how the walrus population is doing now.
Walruses only live in the Arctic region, so for marine biologist Toni, it's a rare opportunity to get close to them.
I've just been watching them all tumbling in the water.
Sometimes the play looks Quite frantic, as they are literally rolling and falling over each other.
One of them lands on you, and that's it.
Curtains.
They can weigh up to two tons, giving them immense power.
Look how far they can push themselves out of the water, though.
Now that summer has cleared the ice here, the walruses have come to feed.
They like to feed in about 50 metres of water, and they're gatherers, not hunters, and they're after these clams, which are about that big.
The feeding season in the Arctic is short, so walruses are binge eaters.
They can consume more than 50 kilograms of clams in just one day.
Paul and Toni move onto the land to get a closer look.
They want to observe the walruses and determine the size of the colony.
Getting close.
Walruses are suspicious by nature and easily alarmed, so Toni and Paul approach downwind and crouch to avoid looking like predators.
All right, there's one, look, on the rim.
Oh, yeah, he's coming up.
But he's not facing us, so let's keep going while he's busy.
- Something smells good now.
- They don't smell good.
But this wind is perfect for us, though.
I don't believe they can smell us, Toni.
We should, uh Their Latin name translates as "tooth-walking seahorse", which I just think is such a perfect literal translation.
That is perfect.
Look at them.
Judging by their large size, this colony is all male.
Look, the one that's just stuck his head up has got Very short tusks, - which means it's Quite young.
- He's younger, yeah.
The one towards the back, you can see, is much bigger.
He's got much, much longer canines, which means that he's a much older male.
They grow to 40 years old, so he might be 30, 40 years old, that guy.
That big male there, he's got lots of cuts all over his chest.
Because they do use their tusks for fighting for establishing dominance.
Let's do a count, roughly.
The size of the colony will give an insight into the recovery of the species.
Okay, I can see one, two, three, four They count 22 male walruses on the beach.
The rule of thumb is that about a quarter of the colony will be on land.
The rest will be in the water, feeding.
So this colony is 88.
That's about right.
They say between 10 and 100 in Okay.
Sixty years ago, this colony would have represented almost the entire walrus population of Scabbard.
They were made a protected species here in 1952, and their numbers are slowly recovering.
It's estimated there are now around 2,000.
I love how they're, you know, on this great expanse of beach, they're all collected in one group, and they're just lying all over each other and They're Very social, aren't they? - They're Very communal creatures.
- Yeah.
As the Arctic transforms, the Atlantic walrus could, in the short term, be a climate change winner.
As their feeding grounds are usually near land, they're not dependent on ice floes to help them reach their food.
And the retreating ice could expose more feeding grounds and stimulate the growth of clams, their staple diet.
Which means that there's plenty of opportunity for their population to keep on and on increasing.
At least initially, global warming could improve the Atlantic walrus' ability to survive.
It's a real interesting balance, because we talk a lot about the negativity of climate change, but it is always nice to have that little bit of a counterbalance to be able to say, "You know what? "There are some creatures that might benefit in some way "with the changing Arctic climate.
" The changes in the Arctic Ocean are complex, and not always predictable.
But what we do know is that they will affect us all.
A transformation in this remote, bitter ocean will have a profound effect on life and climate around the globe.
As the team has journeyed across the world's oceans, change has been the dominant theme, often triggered by human activity.
Habitats are being destroyed.
Something so perfectly adapted to one particular ecosystem, it's got nowhere else to go.
Species are being threatened.
We are totally decimating their numbers.
And the fragile balance of life is being disrupted.
They'll eat their way down the food chain till there's nothing left down there.
But there are also signs of hope.
Some species are managing to adapt and are thriving.
And with human ingenuity, we are attempting to restore the balance.
What we're looking at here is almost the Indian Ocean equivalent of a garden centre.
The oceans are one of our planet's greatest assets.
And their future is in our hands.