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20 years ago, my good friend, Douglas Adams,

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spent a year tracking down endangered animals, together with the zoologist Mark Carwardine.

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Now it's my turn.

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Mark and I are heading off to find out exactly what happened

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to those species that he'd seen dangling on the edge of extinction two decades ago.

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It promises to be exhausting...

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Exhilarating...and exasperating...

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But I wouldn't miss it for the world.

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Mexico, at first glance, is not the most promising-looking landscape for wildlife watchers.

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But, of all the adventures Mark and I have shared, this is the one he has most been looking forward to.

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There is no better place to come.

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I think Baja has to be my favourite place in the world for watching whales

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because there are several different species that come here to breed,

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and we're coming right in the middle of the breeding season.

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We've come in search of one whale in particular -

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the largest animal to have ever existed on earth.

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The blue whale can grow over 100 feet long and can weigh over 190 tonnes.

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It is said that the blue whale has a heart the size of a small car

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and a tongue the weight of an elephant.

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In the first half of the last century, whaling ships reduced the number of blue whales by 99%,

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leaving the species officially classified as vulnerable to extinction.

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We have come to Baja California - the Westernmost part of Mexico,

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and we are starting the journey at the decidedly remote San Ignacio Lagoon.

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This is a collection of huts in the middle of a desert, far from the nearest town, isn't it?

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It's very isolated. It's great, don't you love it?I do.

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Do you, yeah? Do you, really? Well, it's different.

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'Before heading in search of unpredictable blue whales, Mark has decided my introduction to whales

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'should be with something smaller and easier to find.

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'The grey whales of San Ignacio Lagoon are said to be the friendliest whales in the world,

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'which, Mark is hoping, will allow us a very close whale encounter indeed.'

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Have you seen what I'm wearing? My whaling shorts.Oh, no!

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What species of whale is it? You tell me, as the expert.Goodness knows.It's a madey-uppy.Yeah.

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So hopefully this is where you can get the closest encounters possible with whales,

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and there are mothers and calves here, grey whales, and the thing is they're bored, I think.

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There's not very much to do except grow older and bigger,

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and so they like distractions. And people are a good distraction.

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'I've had many challenges in life, but providing distraction for a bored infant whale is a new one.'

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Oh, there, look! Look. They're huge.

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We're right amongst them. You're getting really excited. I am!This is great.

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This is extraordinary. Oh, my goodness.

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That's quite close.

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We hope that one of these whales, that are close to us,

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actually want to come even closer and investigate and come and have a proper look.

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It's one of those things that nothing prepares you for. You know you'll be pleased to see them,

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but when you do you're completely overwhelmed.

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That rainbow is gorgeous. It's simply lovely.

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'For the adults, this is the mid point of a 10,000 mile round trip to mate and have their young,

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'one of the longest migration routes of any mammal on earth.

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'And there's something about being in the presence of an animal of such size and power

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'that is truly impressive.'

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Most of these will be about 45 feet long, so they're still big animals, you know -

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it's half a length of a blue whale.

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So they're not big in whale terms, but they're probably twice as long as our boat.Goodness me.

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They don't upturn boats, do they?No, hardly ever!

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You've got to start splashing, Stephen.

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With what?With your hands.

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Just roll your sleeves up.Right.

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And there are great white sharks in the water, too.

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Oh, he's here, look. He's here, yeah.

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Oh, hello!

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Come on.Checking us out.Yeah.

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He checked us out quickly. Oh, yeah. Didn't like us.No.

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They didn't see my shorts, that was the problem.

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If they'd seen my shorts...

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'Because, for a few weeks each year,

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'these grey whales gather to breed in this small bay,

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'they are the one whale encounter that is more or less guaranteed.

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'100 years ago they also provided guaranteed opportunities for whaling boats.'

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The whalers had a field day, and they killed thousands and thousands of them.

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In those days they were called devil fish

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because they didn't just lie by the boats and let themselves be killed.

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They fought back.Did they?

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And the whalers, the old whaling ships used to wait out at sea, outside the lagoon here,

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and little whaling boats, this sort of size, would be rowed in,

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and the whales, once they get hurt or harpooned, they would whack the boats with their tails

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and breach on them, and killed many whalers. So they've changed their character a lot.

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'Since a clampdown on whaling in the 1930s, the grey whale numbers have started to recover.'

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Oh, my goodness.

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'Once again, this lagoon is an active nursery for many grey whale mothers and calves every year.'

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You can just see a smile there. Look at you!Did you see the eye?

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Yeah, the eye, clear as anything.

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He just wanted to have a look at us.

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Yeah.Oh, he likes that!

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Oh, my God!

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Pushing the boat.

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Yeah!

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Whoa!

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Here we go.Oh, there he is! I touched him!Did you?

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With my finger, there. Felt like PVC.

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There he goes.

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Wonderful.Oh, my word, it's just extraordinary.

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The most distinctive thing that whales do, I suppose, is the blowing, you know,

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this kind of geyser that comes out, of water, and these two slits, are they the equivalent of nostrils?

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Yeah, they're the blow holes, they're called.

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They're like our nostrils, and through evolution

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they've migrated to the top of the head.

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Otherwise imagine if it was still where we have our noses.

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They'd have to stick their heads up like that all the time to breathe,

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so they just have to surface, and what happens is...

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Cor, you don't know where to look next.

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What happens is, as they surface,

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they start to blow out and the water that's caught in the blow holes is blown up in that big plume.

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And then you can hear them, they blow out and they take a breath, and then they drop back down again.

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So they're having to come up to the surface to breathe at regular intervals like we would.

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And doing that.Yeah, exactly. Blowing off.It's not blowing off. It's blowing.

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Sorry, you're right. Blowing.

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What an amazing creature.

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Wow, that's rather beautiful.

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Whoa.

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Oh, yeah.

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Wow.

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'This is one of Mark's favourite places in the world, and I can see why.

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'All the same, I have been flicking through the book of his original journeys with Douglas Adams,

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'and there is a noticeable absence of the words "Mexico", "blue" and "whales",

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'and a significant chapter on China - a country we appear to have missed out on completely.'

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When we were planning this whole series, I imagined one of the places we would go would be China,

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cos a very memorable part of the book you and Douglas wrote was about the Yangtze river dolphin.

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But we're not there, we're looking at dolphins and whales in Mexico,

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and I'd rather hoped that we would go to China.

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Well, so would I, to be honest, I'd hoped we would as well.

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When we first started talking about it, the Yangtze river dolphin still existed, as far as we knew,

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and it was the plan to go and find one.

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But since we started planning all the trips it's been officially declared extinct.

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Why did it become extinct?

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It picked probably the worst place in the world to live - the Yangtze river.

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The Yangtze river basin is home to about 10% of the whole world human population,

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so it faced every possible threat from pollution, agricultural run-off from farm land,

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pollution from factories and towns to over-fishing.

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And I suppose the best we can do now is make sure it doesn't happen to other species like it.

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Exactly. The Yangtze river dolphin was the first whale, dolphin or porpoise

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to become extinct in historical times, and it won't be the last,

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and so we'll go and look for the blue whale.

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Even though it's so well known, it's facing many of the threats that the Yangtze river dolphin faced,

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it was very heavily hunted for many years, and so that's another species that's on the brink.

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'As the world's human population rockets to seven billion, I wonder if it is inevitable

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'that other species must simply be swept aside.

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'We are hoping that a search for the iconic blue whale will reveal

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whether lessons have been learned from the demise of the Yangtze river dolphin.

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'We're crossing the peninsula to hunt for blue whales in the Sea of Cortez.

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'But on the journey across land, there's something Mark wants to show me.

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'The bad news is that it involves mules.'

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I like the chaps.Como esta?

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I like what they're wearing as well. Ola!

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Good girl.

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Come on.

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Andale.

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Oh, Christ, you've really got to lean back, haven't you?

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Gee whiz, that was scary.

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'Having mastered the transport, I finally get a chance to really take in the landscape.'

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So this is it. 'But Mark has a surprise.'

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It's enormous.They're huge, much bigger than I was expecting.

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That's really impressive.

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'Thousands of years ago, long before the first Europeans arrived in Mexico,

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'this was home to the Cochimi Indians, a community that lived and died,

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'leaving no trace except for these pictures.'

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It's amazing, isn't it? What a wild, desolate place to do this.Extraordinary.

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What gets me is, that they would have seen a place like we're seeing now, pretty much, pretty unchanged,

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virtually no water. How they survived, I don't know.

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It's phenomenal. And the same sort of wildlife.

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I mean, it's interesting they've got turtles, they obviously went to the coast.

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Which we're quite a way from. Yeah, we're right pretty much in the middle of the peninsula.Yeah.

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I can't see any whales here.

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Oh, actually, funnily enough, to the extreme right it looks exactly like a whale.

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'No one knows when the Cochimi came to this valley,

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'but we know they survived with little impact on the landscape for many hundreds of years.'

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They were still around when the Jesuits arrived.

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They were the first people to see this, and I suppose after the Jesuits

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there was just a great influx of westerners and gringos, people like us and the Spaniards,

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who came for the gold and the copper mines.

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That's the story of all our travels, it's people coming in and that's causing the problems everywhere.

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I mean, that's the Yangtze river dolphin story through and through,

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because there were so many people living in theYangtze river basin that it's gone.

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The population of Baja is increasing exponentially, and has been for a number of years.

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There are not many places in the world where you can stand high up and look around,

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and for 180 degrees you don't see a human habitation or a pylon,

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or electricity, or cell phone mast or anything.

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And that's good, is it? Well, I usually regret the lack of cell phone masts,

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but in this case I'm prepared to make an exception, being very glad.

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You're changing gradually.

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'Maybe I am changing just a little.

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'I won't pretend that I'm not a creature of the modern world,

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'but I am at least aware that a price has been paid to achieve it.'

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'It's hard to imagine this landscape as anything other than an endless wilderness,

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'but if the human population continues to rise, then who knows how it might be developed and tamed,

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'and the strange, hostile world of the Cochimi will finally exist only in their pictures.

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We are heading for La Paz - the best place to go looking for blue whales -

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and very much a return to the 21st century.

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CARNIVAL MUSIC

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'It's a change of pace and a chance to recharge the batteries

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'before heading out to encounter the biggest animal that ever lived on earth.'

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Stephen is sort of assuming that our next stop is blue whales and we're guaranteed to see them,

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and I must admit I'm a little bit worried,

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because I sort of know how difficult it is, even though a blue whale is roughly the length of a Boeing 737,

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it's an amazingly difficult animal to find.

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I've got various friends with boats out in the Sea of Cortez who are looking for me,

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and I'm hoping I'm going to get a phone call or a radio message in the next day or two

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to say they've found them.

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'In the meantime we are not, it seems, destined to kick back and enjoy carnival.

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'Mark has brought us to meet Fernando Elorriaga, a man with a mission - and a means to get there.'

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'There have been reports that a booming population is now overfishing the Sea of Cortez.

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'Though no-one is quite sure how far reaching the changes are, Fernando is getting answers

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'by looking in the unlikely direction of sea lion droppings.'

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'Yes. We have carnival. We have boat.

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'We have beaches and the deep blue sea.

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'And Mark is taking us to look at poo.

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'First, find your sea lion.'

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SEA LIONS BARK

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They're enormous.They are, aren't they? Well, the males are huge.Good God.

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The males are a lot bigger than the females. Can you get a whiff of them?

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Oh yeah.

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You can tell we're close.

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This noise, this...

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HE IMITATES THE SEA LION

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takes me back to my childhood and the sight of a sea lion with a ball on its nose.

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I know, well, these California sea lions are the ones, because they're pretty intelligent and playful,

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they're the ones that zoos and aquariums like to use.

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When people say performing seal it's nearly always actually a performing sea lion.

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It is a wonderful noise, it's as if some child has run riot at a vintage car rally, just going on all the...

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"Prrt, prrt, prrt, prrt!"

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'As sea lions on land are highly territorial and potentially hostile,

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'we cannot land on the gentle slopes that rise from the calm waters on the west side of the island

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'where the animals loll in vast numbers.

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'Instead, we have to transfer to a small boat to go around the island to take our chances

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'with the sharp rocks and choppy waters which few self-respecting sea lions would bother with.'

225
00:17:59,720 --> 00:18:01,960
This is going to be quite tricky.

226
00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:04,720
Holy moly, Mark. Is the idea that we put ashore here?

227
00:18:04,760 --> 00:18:09,720
I think we ought to come ashore here and then pick our way to where the main rookery is over there,

228
00:18:09,760 --> 00:18:11,840
across these rocks.

229
00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:13,040
Yeah.

230
00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:14,440
Oh!

231
00:18:14,600 --> 00:18:20,720
'On balance I decide I am better built to hold the fort while others go into battle.

232
00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:26,360
'I elect to direct proceedings from the boat while Mark and Fernando do the Boy's Own bit.'

233
00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:28,000
For goodness sake, be careful.

234
00:18:28,040 --> 00:18:29,960
Holy mackerel.

235
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:32,440
SEA LIONS BARK

236
00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:37,040
Oh, no, no.

237
00:18:38,720 --> 00:18:40,480
You be careful, Mark.

238
00:18:40,520 --> 00:18:42,840
Can we go a little bit closer?

239
00:18:44,240 --> 00:18:46,400
Be careful!

240
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:50,600
Thanks. That wasn't too bad.

241
00:18:50,640 --> 00:18:53,920
Very best of luck. Yeah, thanks a lot.

242
00:18:53,960 --> 00:18:59,360
Be careful with some areas, because they are pretty sharp and they can cut your feet.

243
00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:05,080
Mark and Fernando must now creep, unseen, towards the animals, bag what they have gone to find

244
00:19:05,120 --> 00:19:08,040
and beat a hasty retreat.

245
00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:13,760
And our intrepid heroes are in search of something as unromantic as sea lion poo,

246
00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:16,200
but it all helps build up a picture.

247
00:19:18,560 --> 00:19:23,320
They're coming back with a bag, there it is there. He's got one.

248
00:19:23,360 --> 00:19:24,400
Hooray!

249
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:27,600
Never have I been happier to see a bag of poo waved at me.

250
00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:31,040
# Carwardine, Carwardine with his bag of poo... #

251
00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:35,560
'Distracted by the drama, what none of us noticed was the subtle but significant way

252
00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:38,840
'in which the wind was picking up.'

253
00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:41,760
It's not possible, is it? It's not possible!

254
00:19:45,120 --> 00:19:47,240
This could still end nastily.

255
00:19:51,640 --> 00:19:56,400
Right. It's all a bit... all a bit hairy, frankly,

256
00:19:56,440 --> 00:19:59,480
and every second that passes makes me gladder and gladder

257
00:19:59,520 --> 00:20:04,720
that I'm a quivering, wobbling, hopeless, sobbing coward.

258
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:09,080
Oh, my good knight.

259
00:20:14,120 --> 00:20:17,040
I think they're coming to this rock here where...

260
00:20:17,080 --> 00:20:22,160
at least there may be a better chance of us jamming ourselves between them.

261
00:20:22,200 --> 00:20:26,240
Yeah, I think so. Or this one.

262
00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:38,480
'To be honest, the idea of simply abandoning Mark and Fernando to their fate amongst angry sea lions

263
00:20:38,520 --> 00:20:42,120
'was starting to seem like a very real possibility.'

264
00:20:45,080 --> 00:20:50,640
That way?Yeah, that way.Oh, I don't want that exploding in my face.

265
00:20:50,680 --> 00:20:56,040
It's all well wrapped.OK. This is really important. Ready?

266
00:20:57,080 --> 00:20:59,160
Wahey! Thank you.

267
00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:05,360
Whoa. There it is, the object of this adventure.

268
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:07,280
Little bags of poo.

269
00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:11,680
Well, we'll examine it on deck later, but first let's rescue our heroes.

270
00:21:11,720 --> 00:21:17,360
'There is now only one way that Mark and Fernando will ever see their loved ones again -

271
00:21:17,400 --> 00:21:23,320
we will have to circle to the calmer waters of the western beach where the boys will have to board -

272
00:21:23,360 --> 00:21:27,000
in full view of the basking sea lions.

273
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:30,040
SEA LIONS BARK

274
00:21:30,360 --> 00:21:33,640
They're rather alarmed by the presence of humans on their rock.

275
00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:36,960
They've never been so outraged in their lives.

276
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:38,160
Look at that.

277
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:43,800
Can you get on?

278
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:48,000
Yes!Not so bad!

279
00:21:48,040 --> 00:21:49,040
Not so bad?

280
00:21:49,080 --> 00:21:54,160
I thought we'd never see you again. I don't think you've pleased the sea lions with your presence on the rock.

281
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:57,720
They were outraged. We tried to pick our way back around and they still saw us.

282
00:21:57,760 --> 00:22:01,800
"This is our rock," they were saying. At least they're coming back now.

283
00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:06,440
'Now all that remains is to analyse the hard-won treasure.'

284
00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:10,080
Oh, it stinks.It's high.Oh, dear.

285
00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:12,920
So I'm going to need somebody to drop water for me.

286
00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:14,840
OK. I'll do that, happily.

287
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:16,840
And I'll do this.

288
00:22:16,880 --> 00:22:18,480
Tell me when.Now.

289
00:22:18,520 --> 00:22:23,120
As sardines are the staple food of sea lions in the Sea of Cortez,

290
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:27,200
this research has historically revealed nothing but the bones of sardines.

291
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,280
OK, here, this is another.

292
00:22:32,320 --> 00:22:34,960
It's tiny. Well, it's one of the largest.

293
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:41,600
'This small disk is, apparently, the unmistakable inner ear, not of sardine,

294
00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:43,960
'but of a bottom-dwelling sea bass.'

295
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:47,200
When someone says to you, "Well, what did you do over the weekend..?"

296
00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:49,760
Yeah, "I sieved sea lion poo."

297
00:22:55,360 --> 00:23:01,600
'Where on land sea lions are territorial and defensive, in the sea it's a different story.

298
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:06,600
'Mark has insisted that we leave Fernando to do his work and take this chance

299
00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:09,840
'to see the animals at their best.'

300
00:23:23,480 --> 00:23:25,840
It is amazing down there.

301
00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:30,840
They dart at you, they swim upside down right until the last minute.

302
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:32,680
It's an extraordinary experience.

303
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:34,240
Did you see the one grabbing my fin?

304
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:40,520
I did, I got very close to it. It took a great mouthful of your right fin.Shall we go back in?

305
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:42,280
Let's go back, yeah.

306
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:53,640
'Fernando is discovering that these sea lions

307
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:59,000
no longer survive on the sardines that have traditionally sustained the community,

308
00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:01,800
but are now eating bottom-dwelling bass and lizard fish.

309
00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:07,080
This points to a collapse in sardine numbers and a change in the ecosystem

310
00:24:07,120 --> 00:24:11,960
that could have repercussions for everything in the Sea of Cortez.

311
00:24:18,280 --> 00:24:20,640
'For land-based mammals such as ourselves,

312
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:26,280
'the world beneath the ocean waves is hostile, confusing and unfeasibly vast,

313
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,320
'and consequently, we know surprisingly little about it.

314
00:24:29,360 --> 00:24:35,640
'Like sardines, blue whales have been pillaged to feed a great sprawl of humanity

315
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:41,320
'and there are now thought to be just 15,000 left. Or 10,000. Or possibly 5,000.

316
00:24:41,360 --> 00:24:47,960
'When it comes to counting the biggest animal that ever lived, we are, unbelievably, guessing.'

317
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:55,240
'But if we have difficulty in counting, then actively conserving the ocean's species

318
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,880
'is a challenge verging on the absurd.'

319
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:03,640
'One pioneering technique is currently being tried on whale sharks.'

320
00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:09,440
'We've joined conservationist and shark-watcher Estrella Navarro Holm,

321
00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:13,400
'who also just happens to be the current Miss Baja California South.

322
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:16,400
'For Mark, it's a heady combination.'

323
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:22,120
So Estrella, presumably we're just looking for a big dorsal fin just breaking the surface.

324
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:26,320
Yes, it will be dark, and, when we get close,

325
00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:30,480
we will be able to see the white spots.

326
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:34,880
We take a picture and identify the different sharks that way.

327
00:25:41,480 --> 00:25:44,080
I hear sharks have this fearsome reputation.

328
00:25:44,120 --> 00:25:46,800
Is it a threat, is it a danger to us?

329
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:50,480
Most sharks aren't. Very few sharks are dangerous to people. It's a myth.

330
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:54,320
And whale sharks, particularly - they're huge butthey're gentle giants,

331
00:25:54,360 --> 00:25:58,960
they are the very worst if you get too close to them when they don't want you in the water with them,

332
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:00,520
they'll dive and get out of the way.

333
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:02,680
But they won't attack you.

334
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:05,000
They have teeth, they have hundreds of teeth.

335
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,240
Hundreds?Tiny little teeth, couple of millimetres big.

336
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:13,920
Row after row of them. But they're vestigial, they don't really use them, they don't use them to bite.

337
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:17,880
Oh, I see, so you couldn't be savaged by one even if it went mad?No.

338
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:21,520
Oh, it's here.

339
00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:26,480
See it?Where, where, where? There it is, right in front of you. Oh, my God. It's enormous.

340
00:26:26,520 --> 00:26:32,520
You can actually see the whole length. It's just coming round in front here.

341
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:36,480
'Estrella's first task is accurately to measure the whale shark.

342
00:26:36,520 --> 00:26:42,760
'Now, with all the technology of the 21st century, how do you suppose a scientist measures a shark?'

343
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:48,120
We will swim with the shark, we will measure the shark with...

344
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:52,000
Oh, a good old tape measure.Yeah.

345
00:26:52,040 --> 00:26:56,640
Sounds easy.I love the words, I never thought I'd hear them -

346
00:26:56,680 --> 00:27:01,600
"We swim to the shark, we measure the shark." It's just... I know, it's just like, dead easy.

347
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:05,320
Also, we have to measure the dorsal fin,

348
00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:08,280
and this is here, how we do it.

349
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:11,560
And do you take a picture as well? Yes, we take our picture, too.

350
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,720
Can I take the picture?Sure, you can.You've made Mark very happy.

351
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:20,000
Obviously, what you need is someone who stays on board to make notes, and I think I'd be very good at that.

352
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:23,040
So you two go off and measure the shark...Sounds good to me.

353
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:25,960
I will stay on board and write things down.

354
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:31,360
And we're doing all of this while the shark is swimming along fast, and we can't really keep up.

355
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:33,240
Yes, we have to swim fast with the shark.

356
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,600
You have to be fit.Yes.Oh, dear.

357
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:53,320
See you later.Good luck.

358
00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:55,280
Oh, I wish I were going with you.

359
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:57,920
I get the tough job.

360
00:27:57,960 --> 00:27:59,200
Where's the tape measure?

361
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,160
I've got the tape measure, don't worry about that. No, we need it.

362
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:04,720
Yeah, you'll need it when you're in. I can hand it to you.

363
00:28:12,360 --> 00:28:15,320
Mark. Mark.

364
00:28:15,360 --> 00:28:17,080
How are they going...

365
00:28:17,120 --> 00:28:18,400
They've not got the...

366
00:28:20,320 --> 00:28:25,880
So they're chasing the shark, and our underwater cameraman is there, too,

367
00:28:25,920 --> 00:28:29,400
to get the shots of them hopefully measuring the beast.

368
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:38,040
'By using her detailed records and by taking a DNA sample...'

369
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:39,200
I'm really impressed.

370
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:43,080
'Estrella is able to prove that meat turning up at market

371
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,640
'has been poached from the protected sharks of the Sea of Cortez.'

372
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:50,760
There they are. There's the whale. The whale shark.

373
00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:59,040
They're measuring! They're actually measuring a shark. Good God!

374
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:02,680
'And by proving that catches are illegal,

375
00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:09,200
'Estrella is hoping to dramatically limit the impact of poaching on the sharks of La Paz Bay.'

376
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:12,320
'But this time, before all of the measurements are taken,

377
00:29:12,360 --> 00:29:17,040
'the shark decides that the encounter is over.'

378
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:20,280
God, it was hard work then.

379
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:23,320
21 foot long.

380
00:29:23,360 --> 00:29:27,480
Keeping up with Estrella is like keeping up with a Marlin, it's just impossible.

381
00:29:27,520 --> 00:29:29,720
She's so fit. She's very good, isn't she?

382
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:34,040
I feel like a slug behind her. Absolutely. I honestly have to say, I never thought you'd do it.

383
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:35,560
No, I didn't either.

384
00:29:35,600 --> 00:29:38,240
Like, I mean, wrestling eels, it just seemed impossible.

385
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:42,200
'While we have proven that the exercise is at least possible,

386
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:46,480
'we have not succeeded in getting a DNA sample of the shark.

387
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,360
'So we now have to wait for our shark to return.

388
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:54,880
'Looks like I'm first on lookout duty then.

389
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:58,880
Yes, for some reason Mark seems particularly absorbed in his conversation

390
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:01,760
with the current Miss Baja California South.

391
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:05,640
'I admire a man with an unwavering devotion to his subject.'

392
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:10,800
I have a 12 o'clock. I will get you right away.

393
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:42,760
Do you want the stick?

394
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:05,480
Oh, my goodness, that was good fun.

395
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:10,560
And the dorsal fin length is 55 centimetres.

396
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:11,600
Oh, very good. 55.

397
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:13,080
And did you discover what sex it was?

398
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,480
Male.Male?Yeah. You could see the claspers.Right.

399
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:19,800
I don't quite know what a clasper is, but it sounds interesting.

400
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:22,480
It's the shark equivalent of a willy.

401
00:31:22,520 --> 00:31:26,320
Oh, I see. They don't have a normal penis? Yeah, well they have two of them.

402
00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:28,960
Really? Lucky thing.

403
00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:32,160
And I'm absolutely exhausted.

404
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:39,280
'With the measurements taken, Estrella now gets a small sample of the shark's DNA

405
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:42,080
'by jabbing it with a pointed lance.'

406
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:49,560
Well, they look as if they're having fun, and I've spent all morning and most of the afternoon watching them,

407
00:31:49,600 --> 00:31:54,760
so I might as well at least have a go so I can say I've TRIED to swim with a shark.

408
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:57,440
Argh.

409
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:07,360
'Unbelievably, in spite of my torpedo-like movement through the waves,

410
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:13,160
'I never quite caught up with the great fish. But, a close second best, Mark got his picture.'

411
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:29,480
That's our boat, here. Do you think it's big enough?

412
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:32,280
It's great, isn't it?It's got dinghies on it and everything.

413
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:38,200
'Since the blue whales are not coming to us in La Paz Bay, we are having to go to them.'

414
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,400
This is Greg.I'm the captain. You're the captain? How do you do?

415
00:32:41,440 --> 00:32:42,440
Nice to meet you.

416
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:47,680
'Captain Greg and the crew of the good ship Horizon will be our hosts for the next six nights,

417
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:54,280
'and Mark assures me that if anyone can take us to blue whales then this is the crew that can do it.'

418
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:59,000
When I was a boy I virtually learnt off by heart parts of the Guinness Book of Records,

419
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:02,640
and, of course, you know, one of the things would be a huge page,

420
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:06,680
a double-page spread of a blue whale with pictures of cars and lorries

421
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,280
and various other things next to it to show the scale.

422
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:13,240
So the idea that I'm travelling to see them is...

423
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,000
Are you really genuinely excited? Oh, yeah.

424
00:34:17,520 --> 00:34:21,280
'But, even with the best crew in the business,

425
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:25,600
'finding a blue whale at sea is like finding an extraordinarily large needle

426
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:28,840
'in a simply enormous haystack.'

427
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:36,560
'Now, I am certainly not the first to claim to see strange lights after a couple of drinks.

428
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:40,720
'But the camera saw it all, and it hadn't touched a drop.'

429
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:42,640
Oh, yeah.

430
00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:45,640
Look at you. Look at you!

431
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:48,280
How dare you behave like that.

432
00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:49,960
What do you think you're doing?

433
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:52,120
'This is glowing algae,

434
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:56,480
'and it may not be the most technically-accomplished piece of television you will ever see,

435
00:34:56,520 --> 00:35:00,480
'but, like true professionals, we did not let our personal circumstances

436
00:35:00,520 --> 00:35:03,840
'prevent us from capturing the moment for posterity.'

437
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:07,760
Wow. They talk about bioluminescence, this extraordinary quality

438
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:12,560
of certain sort of sea plants and things to light up.

439
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:19,360
But this is insane, it's like some weird neon madness that you can't believe is real,

440
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:21,560
and I have to keep looking down.

441
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:27,040
This thing, it's like, you know, slushy, it's like a blue slushy...lit.

442
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:29,320
Look at it.

443
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:31,680
Wow.

444
00:35:31,720 --> 00:35:37,960
'This bioluminescent algae is, I am told, not the most outlandish thing we are going to encounter.

445
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:44,160
'We are entering the territory of one of the most eerie predators in the Sea of Cortez.'

446
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:52,160
'The next morning I'm up early, escaping nightmares of predators and blue slushies.

447
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:57,280
There may be much here that is disappearing. But nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum.

448
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:00,080
While we may have suppressed some species,

449
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:03,960
the unexpected result has been a boom for one species in particular.

450
00:36:04,000 --> 00:36:07,880
Here in the Sea of Cortez, an invasion is taking place.

451
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:16,800
'Scott Cassell is catching and studying what the local fishermen call the Diablo Rojo...

452
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:17,840
'The Red Demon.'

453
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:22,600
Any luck there, Dave? Not yet? We're working.

454
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:28,920
'Before 1950, there were no reported sightings of Humboldt Squid in the Sea of Cortez.

455
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:32,440
'Now there are said to be tens of millions of them.

456
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:39,240
'As sharks have declined, so this fearsome predator is taking over, right at the top of the food chain.'

457
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:44,280
I usually exercise a lot of caution when coming down these steps at the best of times, but this...

458
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:47,400
I would not want to dangle my feet in there, I suspect.

459
00:36:47,440 --> 00:36:51,480
There's a great sort of history of the myth of the giant octopus,

460
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:55,200
the kraken, the huge squid, from everything from, you know,

461
00:36:55,240 --> 00:37:00,000
ancient legend to, you know, Jules Verne and everything, isn't there?

462
00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:05,240
And when they get bigger they are the stuff of legends. But don't let this small animal here fool you.

463
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,560
I interviewed a man here in central Rosalita.

464
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:12,120
His motor failed, and in the distance were friends who couldn't hear him.

465
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:16,200
He jumps in the water and he's swimming over, and suddenly he's surrounded by squid

466
00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:18,520
just a little bit bigger than this three-foot squid,

467
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:24,520
and they attacked him, and he was able to scream so loudly that his friends finally heard him

468
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:26,480
and came over and picked him out of the water.

469
00:37:26,520 --> 00:37:32,600
But by the time they'd picked him out of the water he'd had 330 bites, the size of a grape each.

470
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:37,120
So when I asked to look at his wounds, he took off his shirt and he looked like a burn victim

471
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:38,480
from his waist, all the way down.

472
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:43,720
'These predators hunt in packs, swarming upon their victim in hundreds or even thousands.

473
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:50,000
'Local people now only enter these waters with extreme caution.'

474
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,800
And you can't imagine how many there are down below us right now.

475
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,440
Nobody knows how many squid are here. It's impossible to do a census.

476
00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:03,240
But I myself have seen squid shoals reach the surface for over a football field in size,

477
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:09,120
with tens of thousands of animals on the surface reaching out of the water to collect sardines.

478
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:13,600
There's an argument, isn't there, for saying that this animal - more than the Great White Shark -

479
00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,880
is perhaps the most perfect killing machine in the water.

480
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:20,200
This animal can have 20 million babies...Oh, my God!

481
00:38:20,240 --> 00:38:22,880
and a great white shark can have ten over a lifetime,

482
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:27,600
so, you know, you're looking at an animal that can out populate every other known predator.

483
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,240
Cos that's one of the things that's worrying you, isn't it?

484
00:38:30,280 --> 00:38:33,480
To me, the humble squid is the icon of the change on the planet,

485
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:36,440
because the humble squid population is just exploding

486
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:40,400
and it's almost certainly because of the reduction in predators.

487
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:43,680
What you are looking at, right here, is our next wild fire.

488
00:38:43,720 --> 00:38:48,680
This is an animal that is potentially going to upset the balance

489
00:38:48,720 --> 00:38:51,520
of the entire Pacific Coast of all the Americas -

490
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:54,480
Central, North and South.

491
00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:00,600
Oh, dear Lord. I think I've seen everything now.

492
00:39:00,640 --> 00:39:05,080
That looks serious. It's great fun at parties.

493
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,520
It only takes one good bite on a tendon, and you don't forget the lesson.

494
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:25,360
There he is.

495
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:29,600
This size right here, these ring teeth

496
00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:34,320
are just like small cactus plants, but when you get an animal that is five or six feet long,

497
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,680
and all of a sudden it's as big as a really thick hypodermic needles.

498
00:39:37,720 --> 00:39:40,720
Whoa.Yeah.When the squid is hunting

499
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:44,680
it's using its eyesight to find prey, and then it grabs the prey with the tentacles.

500
00:39:44,720 --> 00:39:46,520
And watch the response here.

501
00:39:46,560 --> 00:39:47,880
Wow!

502
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:52,320
He knows he can move that beak around in different directions. Oh, yes. Good Lord.

503
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,360
So while he grabs onto somebody like this...

504
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:59,400
Oh, yeah, he's chomping on me. While he's hanging onto me like this, he can take a bite.

505
00:39:59,440 --> 00:40:02,280
'It's the stuff of B Movie horror.

506
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:04,920
'But this is what the suppression of a species can mean.

507
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:10,080
'Shark fishing has decimated the number of sharks, and a new predator has taken over.

508
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:13,600
'What happens next is anybody's guess.'

509
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:18,760
Unfortunately, I think these animals are such an amazing opportunistic predator

510
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:22,440
that they will explore every species they encounter as food,

511
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:26,120
and as soon as they realise that they can eat it, they have amemory,

512
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:30,240
so they're more adaptable to eating prey than anything else I know of in the ocean,

513
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:32,440
and that's why they're such a problem.

514
00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:45,840
There's a humpback, three-quarters of a mile, starboard bow!

515
00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,080
Mark, do you hear that? Yeah, yeah, got it.

516
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:51,280
'Not the blue whales we have been looking for,

517
00:40:51,320 --> 00:40:55,760
'but a sudden encounter with a humpback is not to be sniffed at.'

518
00:40:55,800 --> 00:41:02,680
Wow... and another one! Look at it! Wow, and again! Wow!

519
00:41:02,720 --> 00:41:04,960
Oh, it's breeching again.

520
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,640
Oh, it's a stunner!

521
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:15,360
It's so nice to see so many humpback whales on the breeding grounds like this,

522
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:19,800
this is one of the species that has actually benefited from proper protection,

523
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:22,400
and it's really bouncing back. Fantastic.

524
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:28,400
They reckon there's about four times as many now as there were when whaling stopped, which is fantastic.

525
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:34,000
'In Mark's view, the humpback is the whale with the best song in the ocean,

526
00:41:34,040 --> 00:41:38,640
and, as the whales dive, he seizes the opportunity to let me hear it.

527
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:43,320
Got a little hydrophone here, Connected to the speakers, I can't believe this is gonna work.

528
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:45,840
You've got no faith.

529
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:51,880
We'll put it down to about 20 feet.

530
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:53,400
See if that works.

531
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:54,920
WHALE SONG

532
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,120
What's that? That is it, we've got one.

533
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:00,160
That's unbelievable!

534
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,080
Listen to that.

535
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:08,000
You can't believe it's a whale, can you?

536
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:09,800
It's extraordinary.

537
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,440
Isn't it amazing?

538
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:13,760
It's fantastic.

539
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:22,200
I love it. This has to be one of the best sounds in the animal kingdom.

540
00:42:29,560 --> 00:42:34,440
So what we're listening to, this is a male humpback whale - only the males sing -

541
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:37,920
and if you imagine he will be at some sort of 45 degree angle,

542
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:41,280
facing down to the sea bed, with his big flippers out,

543
00:42:41,320 --> 00:42:47,240
and the flippers will just be gradually waving like this like a conductor in front of an orchestra,

544
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:50,880
and singing this song that could last up to half an hour.

545
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:56,000
It's the longest and most complex song in the whole animal kingdom.

546
00:42:57,360 --> 00:42:59,360
WHALE SONG

547
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:35,360
Ha, ha, ha, aren't they fabulous?

548
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:38,960
Leaping for joy.

549
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:56,880
'After seven days at sea, looking for blue whales, we are heading ashore

550
00:43:56,920 --> 00:44:01,680
'onto one of the tiny islands that dot the Sea of Cortez.'

551
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:07,920
It's said that whales have been visiting this stretch of water for many thousands of years,

552
00:44:07,960 --> 00:44:13,080
and we've been told that the proof lies on this island.

553
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,280
These look like, er...

554
00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:26,560
whale ribs, fossilised whale ribs.

555
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:30,680
Really? Oh, yes, they're not bone are they, that's stone.Yeah.

556
00:44:30,720 --> 00:44:38,480
Well fixed inside there. Is there any way of knowing what sort of whale or what sort of age?

557
00:44:38,520 --> 00:44:41,440
Well, this island is probably four-five million years old,

558
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:46,720
so I'd guess the bones are roughly the same, so it's very hard to say exactly what they came from,

559
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,600
but they probably came from whales that we'd recognise,

560
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:52,760
a fairly modern type of whale, being that sort of age.

561
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:56,680
It's nice that this is part of the world where there still are whales,

562
00:44:56,720 --> 00:45:00,560
often you see fossils inland of marine creatures where, you know,

563
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:05,240
there you haven't a chance of seeing them ever again, whereas at least here there's continuity.

564
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:08,840
It's very interesting actually, because a lot of the most ancient whale bones

565
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,640
have been found in the Himalayas, miles from the nearest sea,

566
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,920
it's sort of the cradle of whale evolution.

567
00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:18,000
That's extraordinary!

568
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:22,440
Here's an interesting looking one. Good God, what's that?

569
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:26,120
That's a vertebra, whale vertebrae. That's one vertebrae?

570
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:27,760
Yes, it's a good size.

571
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:31,280
So if I feel one knobble in my back, that's the equivalent?

572
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:34,840
Gives you some sense of scale, doesn't it? Wow, look at that.

573
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:36,960
Do we know how this is related to the modern whale?

574
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:39,720
No, this would be a fairly modern species,

575
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:42,800
because, again, it'll be four or five million years old,

576
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:46,680
but we know amazingly little about how whales evolved and what they evolved from.

577
00:45:46,720 --> 00:45:51,480
The latest theory is they evolved probably about 60 million years ago,

578
00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:57,280
just after the dinosaurs disappeared, there was an animal, looked like a wolf with hooves,

579
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,440
and it used to live in a place called the Tethys Sea,

580
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:03,320
which is between what is now Southern Europe and Central Asia,

581
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:06,680
and they reckon what happened was it spent more and more time in the water.

582
00:46:06,720 --> 00:46:11,400
That's extraordinary.It gradually, over this huge period of time, its legs disappeared,

583
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,200
and in fact you can see the evidence in the flipper of the whale,

584
00:46:14,240 --> 00:46:17,200
you can see all the hand and finger bones just as...

585
00:46:17,240 --> 00:46:18,960
Oh, it's still got carpals or tarsals...

586
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,640
They've got no hind legs or hind flippers, as you know,

587
00:46:21,680 --> 00:46:25,160
but there's a little bone that is still just in the blubber,

588
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,680
that's the remains of our hind legs and our hips.

589
00:46:29,720 --> 00:46:33,880
'Whales have been swimming the earth for over 50 million years.'

590
00:46:35,320 --> 00:46:41,960
'But it took just five decades for whaling ships to reduce their numbers by over 90%.'

591
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:51,760
Something that really worries me is that whaling is still going strong, it's not over by any means yet.

592
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:55,720
Japan, Norway and Iceland are all whaling commercially,

593
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:59,440
and they're killing, between them, 2,000 whales a year.

594
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,480
It's as cruel as it was when whaling was at its peak,

595
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:05,200
and what I wanted to do was to show you this little video,

596
00:47:05,240 --> 00:47:09,560
just to show you the reality of whaling and what's happening.

597
00:47:09,600 --> 00:47:12,120
It look like a battleship. It does, doesn't it?

598
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,880
It's all pretty strong stuff... Oh, my God.

599
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:14,120
'There are currently 8,471 species of animal

600
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:17,280
'officially recognised as endangered by extinction.

601
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:21,400
'To put it another way, if Mark and I made a film about each one of them,

602
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:24,760
'and those films were broadcast every week without a break,

603
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:30,280
'this series would run for a little over 162 years and ten months,

604
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:35,760
'which is perhaps the most absurd and the most sobering statistic I have ever encountered.'

605
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:43,680
'20 years ago, Mark photographed the Yangtze River dolphin.

606
00:48:43,720 --> 00:48:48,600
'Now the dolphin is extinct and all we have are photographs.

607
00:48:48,640 --> 00:48:52,720
'For the last year, Mark has documented everything.

608
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:56,280
'But wouldn't it be a shame - quite literally shaming -

609
00:48:56,320 --> 00:49:01,280
'if all we leave to the people of the future are photographs,

610
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:04,960
'in place of thousands and thousands of some of the most extraordinary, complex,

611
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:10,480
'baffling and sometimes hilarious creatures that ever walked upon the earth?'

612
00:49:37,360 --> 00:49:43,560
'The biggest animal that ever lived may be hard to find, but it is still out there.

613
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:48,680
'Having brought me all the way to Mexico, Mark is determined, by hook or by crook,

614
00:49:48,720 --> 00:49:51,960
'to get our boat to blue whales.

615
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:56,160
'Mark has abandoned me for a day in La Paz, which may seem out of character,

616
00:49:56,200 --> 00:50:01,880
'but I have come to recognise the glint in his eye that means he is working on a plan.'

617
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:05,320
I've known Sandy for many years, we met in the mid 1990s,

618
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:07,800
and we've flown goodness knows how many hours together,

619
00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:11,440
she's the best pilot I've ever ever come across anywhere in the world.

620
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:16,920
And she's very kindly brought her lovely Cessna 182 which was built in 1958 can you believe,

621
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:21,600
it's a year older than I am, so probably quite decrepit, but it's certainly air worthy,

622
00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:24,400
and she's going to help us find blue whales.

623
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:32,200
Now if anyone can do it, Sandy can, and I'm hoping we'll have found some, and then take Stephen to them.

624
00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:22,120
Ahhh!

625
00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:54,680
'So, with the co-ordinates of at least one blue whale, Mark and I are heading north.'

626
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:00,880
Well, this is what we've come to see.

627
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:03,840
A blue whale, and that does look blue.

628
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:07,200
The size is the thing - the longest ever recorded was 110 feet long,

629
00:53:07,240 --> 00:53:11,320
which is about the length of a Boeing 737.Good Lord.

630
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:17,800
The other thing is its weight, the heaviest ever recorded was a 190 tonnes. An average -

631
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:22,600
I worked this out - an average-sized blue whale, if you imagine a set of weighing scales

632
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:25,880
and you an average-sized blue whale on one side of the weighing scales

633
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:29,680
and you have to pile lots of other things on the other side to balance the scales,

634
00:53:29,720 --> 00:53:31,200
you have to put all of the following.

635
00:53:31,240 --> 00:53:39,000
Half a dozen African elephants, a black rhino, a couple of whale sharks, five Tyrannosaurus Rexes,

636
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:46,560
100 world-class Sumo wrestlers, the entire football team of Norwich City...One of the lightest...!

637
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:51,760
..and my car,and that lot together equals the weight of one average sized bluewhale,

638
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:55,280
you just don't get the scale just by looking at it like that.

639
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:59,640
And it flies through the water at great speed and with great agility.

640
00:53:59,680 --> 00:54:06,120
Yeah, they're incredibly agile, about one in four in the Sea of Cortez lift the tail - some don't,

641
00:54:06,160 --> 00:54:12,040
and we don't quite understand why - lifts the tail right up in the air, and you can imagine you can see

642
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:15,560
that length of the body up in the air as it dives,

643
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:19,280
that's probably 20 feet of tail sticking out of the water.

644
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:21,920
Goodness me, I can't wait to see this creature.

645
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:29,360
'Seeing this flicking of the tail, or fluking, is, I am told, the holy grail of whale watching.'

646
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:37,400
Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.

647
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:42,080
'The following morning, we have arrived at where the whale was the previous day.

648
00:54:42,120 --> 00:54:47,480
'Now all we need is Sandy and Cessna Emily to guide us in.'

649
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:53,320
Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.

650
00:54:55,160 --> 00:55:00,920
'Vessel Horizon coming up on you.' That's her.

651
00:55:00,960 --> 00:55:05,360
Cessna Emily, motor vessel Horizon Channel 18, good morning.

652
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:12,760
Well, we're just coming up on you almost on the port side, left side, and I see you.

653
00:55:16,880 --> 00:55:20,120
Hey! Wow!

654
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:26,280
If that can't see a whale, nothing can.

655
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:53,040
So that's the area she's circling above, isn't it?

656
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:58,840
I haven't seen any flukes yet, or any sign.

657
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:03,240
So somewhere around here.Yeah.

658
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:07,000
That's it there, there's a fluke! Can you see it?Oh, yes!

659
00:56:07,160 --> 00:56:10,360
Oh, my goodness.Right by the island. Absolutely dead ahead!

660
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:15,000
Fantastic.Oh, my goodness that's my first ever glance...

661
00:56:15,040 --> 00:56:16,040
We've done it..

662
00:56:16,080 --> 00:56:18,360
..in the direction of a blue whale!

663
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:24,480
Oh! Look at you!

664
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:30,000
Wow! Look at that body, look at it!

665
00:56:30,040 --> 00:56:33,320
It's going to do it, it's going to fluke... No. No, not quite.

666
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:38,920
Oh! It's moving, it's going to fluke...

667
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:40,440
No!

668
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:45,480
And again.It's still going.This might be the one.

669
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:48,000
Yes, it's a big one, is it?

670
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:51,960
Yes! Yes!

671
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:55,320
Yes! Yes! YES!

672
00:56:55,360 --> 00:56:57,720
That was high!Beauty!

673
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:04,920
How can you get so excited about an animal just deciding to show its tail, and yet I can't tell you,

674
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:09,120
it's the most thrilling thing when you just know it's the final arching through,

675
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:11,240
and then there's that fabulous sight.

676
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:16,760
'Blue whales may be diminished, but they are still out there.

677
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:20,000
'Like the aye-aye, the kakapo, the komodo dragon

678
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:24,840
'and the 8,471 other species on the endangered list.

679
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:32,520
'Isn't it extraordinary to imagine we could be the generation to watch them all slip away?

680
00:57:32,560 --> 00:57:40,040
'And in the future, would people not wonder how we could possibly have allowed that to happen?'

681
00:57:42,200 --> 00:57:46,520
Glistening, look at that length of body and...it's fluking!

682
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:48,760
Yay!

683
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:54,120
Mark, that was the most fantastic thing I've ever seen.Really?

684
00:57:54,160 --> 00:58:00,280
It's enormous, and it's slow and it's sleek and it's just so magisterial.

685
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:06,640
'It has been a privilege to retrace Mark's journeys, 20 years after he first made them.

686
00:58:06,680 --> 00:58:10,880
'I hope that others will remake these journeys in another 20 years -

687
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:13,720
'you have my blessing, and I sincerely hope

688
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:17,920
'you will find the animals waiting for you when you get there.'

689
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:51,880
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