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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
00:18:01,600 --> 00:18:03,840
This is going to be quite tricky.

226
00:18:03,880 --> 00:18:06,600
Holy moly, Mark. Is the idea that we put ashore here?

227
00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:11,600
I think we ought to come ashore here and then pick our way to where the main rookery is over there,

228
00:18:11,640 --> 00:18:13,720
across these rocks.

229
00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:14,920
Yeah.

230
00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:16,320
Oh!

231
00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:22,600
'On balance I decide I am better built to hold the fort while others go into battle.

232
00:18:22,640 --> 00:18:28,240
'I elect to direct proceedings from the boat while Mark and Fernando do the Boy's Own bit.'

233
00:18:28,280 --> 00:18:29,880
For goodness sake, be careful.

234
00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:31,840
Holy mackerel.

235
00:18:32,880 --> 00:18:34,320
SEA LIONS BARK

236
00:18:37,360 --> 00:18:38,920
Oh, no, no.

237
00:18:40,600 --> 00:18:42,360
You be careful, Mark.

238
00:18:42,400 --> 00:18:44,720
Can we go a little bit closer?

239
00:18:46,120 --> 00:18:48,280
Be careful!

240
00:18:48,320 --> 00:18:52,480
Thanks. That wasn't too bad.

241
00:18:52,520 --> 00:18:55,800
Very best of luck. Yeah, thanks a lot.

242
00:18:55,840 --> 00:19:01,240
Be careful with some areas, because they are pretty sharp and they can cut your feet.

243
00:19:01,280 --> 00:19:06,960
Mark and Fernando must now creep, unseen, towards the animals, bag what they have gone to find

244
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:09,920
and beat a hasty retreat.

245
00:19:09,960 --> 00:19:15,640
And our intrepid heroes are in search of something as unromantic as sea lion poo,

246
00:19:15,680 --> 00:19:18,080
but it all helps build up a picture.

247
00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:25,200
They're coming back with a bag, there it is there. He's got one.

248
00:19:25,240 --> 00:19:26,280
Hooray!

249
00:19:26,320 --> 00:19:29,480
Never have I been happier to see a bag of poo waved at me.

250
00:19:29,520 --> 00:19:32,920
# Carwardine, Carwardine with his bag of poo... #

251
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:37,440
'Distracted by the drama, what none of us noticed was the subtle but significant way

252
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:40,720
'in which the wind was picking up.'

253
00:19:40,760 --> 00:19:43,640
It's not possible, is it? It's not possible!

254
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:49,120
This could still end nastily.

255
00:19:53,520 --> 00:19:58,280
Right. It's all a bit... all a bit hairy, frankly,

256
00:19:58,320 --> 00:20:01,360
and every second that passes makes me gladder and gladder

257
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:06,600
that I'm a quivering, wobbling, hopeless, sobbing coward.

258
00:20:09,480 --> 00:20:10,960
Oh, my good knight.

259
00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:18,920
I think they're coming to this rock here where...

260
00:20:18,960 --> 00:20:24,040
at least there may be a better chance of us jamming ourselves between them.

261
00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:28,120
Yeah, I think so. Or this one.

262
00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:40,360
'To be honest, the idea of simply abandoning Mark and Fernando to their fate amongst angry sea lions

263
00:20:40,400 --> 00:20:44,000
'was starting to seem like a very real possibility.'

264
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:52,520
That way? Yeah, that way. Oh, I don't want that exploding in my face.

265
00:20:52,560 --> 00:20:57,920
It's all well wrapped. OK. This is really important. Ready?

266
00:20:58,960 --> 00:21:01,040
Wahey! Thank you.

267
00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:07,240
Whoa. There it is, the object of this adventure.

268
00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:09,160
Little bags of poo.

269
00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:13,560
Well, we'll examine it on deck later, but first let's rescue our heroes.

270
00:21:13,600 --> 00:21:19,240
'There is now only one way that Mark and Fernando will ever see their loved ones again -

271
00:21:19,280 --> 00:21:25,200
we will have to circle to the calmer waters of the western beach where the boys will have to board -

272
00:21:25,240 --> 00:21:28,880
in full view of the basking sea lions.

273
00:21:29,880 --> 00:21:31,920
SEA LIONS BARK

274
00:21:32,240 --> 00:21:35,520
They're rather alarmed by the presence of humans on their rock.

275
00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:38,840
They've never been so outraged in their lives.

276
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:40,040
Look at that.

277
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:45,680
Can you get on?

278
00:21:45,720 --> 00:21:49,880
Yes! Not so bad!

279
00:21:49,920 --> 00:21:50,920
Not so bad?

280
00:21:50,960 --> 00:21:56,040
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
00:21:56,080 --> 00:21:59,600
They were outraged. We tried to pick our way back around and they still saw us.

282
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:03,680
"This is our rock," they were saying. At least they're coming back now.

283
00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:08,320
'Now all that remains is to analyse the hard-won treasure.'

284
00:22:08,360 --> 00:22:11,960
Oh, it stinks. It's high. Oh, dear.

285
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,800
So I'm going to need somebody to drop water for me.

286
00:22:14,840 --> 00:22:16,720
OK. I'll do that, happily.

287
00:22:16,760 --> 00:22:18,720
And I'll do this.

288
00:22:18,760 --> 00:22:20,360
Tell me when. Now.

289
00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:25,000
As sardines are the staple food of sea lions in the Sea of Cortez,

290
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:29,080
this research has historically revealed nothing but the bones of sardines.

291
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:34,160
OK, here, this is another.

292
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:36,840
It's tiny. Well, it's one of the largest.

293
00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:43,480
'This small disk is, apparently, the unmistakable inner ear, not of sardine,

294
00:22:43,520 --> 00:22:45,840
'but of a bottom-dwelling sea bass.'

295
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:49,080
When someone says to you, "Well, what did you do over the weekend..?"

296
00:22:49,120 --> 00:22:51,640
Yeah, "I sieved sea lion poo."

297
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:03,480
'Where on land sea lions are territorial and defensive, in the sea it's a different story.

298
00:23:03,520 --> 00:23:08,480
'Mark has insisted that we leave Fernando to do his work and take this chance

299
00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:11,720
'to see the animals at their best.'

300
00:23:25,360 --> 00:23:27,720
It is amazing down there.

301
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:32,720
They dart at you, they swim upside down right until the last minute.

302
00:23:32,760 --> 00:23:34,560
It's an extraordinary experience.

303
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:36,120
Did you see the one grabbing my fin?

304
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:42,400
I did, I got very close to it. It took a great mouthful of your right fin. Shall we go back in?

305
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:44,160
Let's go back, yeah.

306
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:55,520
'Fernando is discovering that these sea lions

307
00:23:55,560 --> 00:24:00,880
no longer survive on the sardines that have traditionally sustained the community,

308
00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:03,680
but are now eating bottom-dwelling bass and lizard fish.

309
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:08,960
This points to a collapse in sardine numbers and a change in the ecosystem

310
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:13,840
that could have repercussions for everything in the Sea of Cortez.

311
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:22,520
'For land-based mammals such as ourselves,

312
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:28,160
'the world beneath the ocean waves is hostile, confusing and unfeasibly vast,

313
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:31,200
'and consequently, we know surprisingly little about it.

314
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:37,520
'Like sardines, blue whales have been pillaged to feed a great sprawl of humanity

315
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:43,200
'and there are now thought to be just 15,000 left. Or 10,000. Or possibly 5,000.

316
00:24:43,240 --> 00:24:49,840
'When it comes to counting the biggest animal that ever lived, we are, unbelievably, guessing.'

317
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:57,120
'But if we have difficulty in counting, then actively conserving the ocean's species

318
00:24:57,160 --> 00:24:59,760
'is a challenge verging on the absurd.'

319
00:25:01,360 --> 00:25:05,520
'One pioneering technique is currently being tried on whale sharks.'

320
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:11,320
'We've joined conservationist and shark-watcher Estrella Navarro Holm,

321
00:25:11,360 --> 00:25:15,280
'who also just happens to be the current Miss Baja California South.

322
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:18,280
'For Mark, it's a heady combination.'

323
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:24,000
So Estrella, presumably we're just looking for a big dorsal fin just breaking the surface.

324
00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:28,200
Yes, it will be dark, and, when we get close,

325
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:32,360
we will be able to see the white spots.

326
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:36,760
We take a picture and identify the different sharks that way.

327
00:25:43,360 --> 00:25:45,960
I hear sharks have this fearsome reputation.

328
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,680
Is it a threat, is it a danger to us?

329
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,360
Most sharks aren't. Very few sharks are dangerous to people. It's a myth.

330
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:56,200
And whale sharks, particularly - they're huge butthey're gentle giants,

331
00:25:56,240 --> 00:26:00,840
they are the very worst if you get too close to them when they don't want you in the water with them,

332
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:02,400
they'll dive and get out of the way.

333
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,560
But they won't attack you.

334
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:06,880
They have teeth, they have hundreds of teeth.

335
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:10,120
Hundreds? Tiny little teeth, couple of millimetres big.

336
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:15,800
Row after row of them. But they're vestigial, they don't really use them, they don't use them to bite.

337
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,760
Oh, I see, so you couldn't be savaged by one even if it went mad? No.

338
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:23,400
Oh, it's here.

339
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:28,360
See it? Where, where, where? There it is, right in front of you. Oh, my God. It's enormous.

340
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:34,400
You can actually see the whole length. It's just coming round in front here.

341
00:26:34,440 --> 00:26:38,360
'Estrella's first task is accurately to measure the whale shark.

342
00:26:38,400 --> 00:26:44,640
'Now, with all the technology of the 21st century, how do you suppose a scientist measures a shark?'

343
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:50,000
We will swim with the shark, we will measure the shark with...

344
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,880
Oh, a good old tape measure. Yeah.

345
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:58,520
Sounds easy. I love the words, I never thought I'd hear them -

346
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:03,480
"We swim to the shark, we measure the shark." It's just... I know, it's just like, dead easy.

347
00:27:03,520 --> 00:27:07,200
Also, we have to measure the dorsal fin,

348
00:27:07,240 --> 00:27:10,160
and this is here, how we do it.

349
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,440
And do you take a picture as well? Yes, we take our picture, too.

350
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:16,600
Can I take the picture? Sure, you can. You've made Mark very happy.

351
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:21,880
Obviously, what you need is someone who stays on board to make notes, and I think I'd be very good at that.

352
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:24,920
So you two go off and measure the shark... Sounds good to me.

353
00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:27,840
I will stay on board and write things down.

354
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:33,240
And we're doing all of this while the shark is swimming along fast, and we can't really keep up.

355
00:27:33,280 --> 00:27:35,120
Yes, we have to swim fast with the shark.

356
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:37,480
You have to be fit. Yes. Oh, dear.

357
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,200
See you later. Good luck.

358
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:57,160
Oh, I wish I were going with you.

359
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,800
I get the tough job.

360
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:01,080
Where's the tape measure?

361
00:28:01,120 --> 00:28:04,040
I've got the tape measure, don't worry about that. No, we need it.

362
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:06,600
Yeah, you'll need it when you're in. I can hand it to you.

363
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:17,200
Mark. Mark.

364
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:18,960
How are they going...

365
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:20,280
They've not got the...

366
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:27,760
So they're chasing the shark, and our underwater cameraman is there, too,

367
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:31,280
to get the shots of them hopefully measuring the beast.

368
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:39,920
'By using her detailed records and by taking a DNA sample...'

369
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:41,080
I'm really impressed.

370
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:44,960
'Estrella is able to prove that meat turning up at market

371
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:48,520
'has been poached from the protected sharks of the Sea of Cortez.'

372
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,640
There they are. There's the whale. The whale shark.

373
00:28:57,240 --> 00:29:00,920
They're measuring! They're actually measuring a shark. Good God!

374
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:04,560
'And by proving that catches are illegal,

375
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:11,080
'Estrella is hoping to dramatically limit the impact of poaching on the sharks of La Paz Bay.'

376
00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:14,200
'But this time, before all of the measurements are taken,

377
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:18,920
'the shark decides that the encounter is over.'

378
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:22,160
God, it was hard work then.

379
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:25,200
21 foot long.

380
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:29,360
Keeping up with Estrella is like keeping up with a Marlin, it's just impossible.

381
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:31,600
She's so fit. She's very good, isn't she?

382
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:35,920
I feel like a slug behind her. Absolutely. I honestly have to say, I never thought you'd do it.

383
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:37,440
No, I didn't either.

384
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:40,120
Like, I mean, wrestling eels, it just seemed impossible.

385
00:29:40,160 --> 00:29:44,080
'While we have proven that the exercise is at least possible,

386
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:48,360
'we have not succeeded in getting a DNA sample of the shark.

387
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:51,240
'So we now have to wait for our shark to return.

388
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:56,760
'Looks like I'm first on lookout duty then.

389
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:00,760
Yes, for some reason Mark seems particularly absorbed in his conversation

390
00:30:00,800 --> 00:30:03,640
with the current Miss Baja California South.

391
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:07,520
'I admire a man with an unwavering devotion to his subject.'

392
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:12,680
I have a 12 o'clock. I will get you right away.

393
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:44,640
Do you want the stick?

394
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:07,360
Oh, my goodness, that was good fun.

395
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:12,440
And the dorsal fin length is 55 centimetres.

396
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:13,480
Oh, very good. 55.

397
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:14,960
And did you discover what sex it was?

398
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:18,360
Male. Male? Yeah. You could see the claspers. Right.

399
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:21,680
I don't quite know what a clasper is, but it sounds interesting.

400
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,360
It's the shark equivalent of a willy.

401
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:28,200
Oh, I see. They don't have a normal penis? Yeah, well they have two of them.

402
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:30,840
Really? Lucky thing.

403
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,040
And I'm absolutely exhausted.

404
00:31:36,120 --> 00:31:41,160
'With the measurements taken, Estrella now gets a small sample of the shark's DNA

405
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:43,960
'by jabbing it with a pointed lance.'

406
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:51,440
Well, they look as if they're having fun, and I've spent all morning and most of the afternoon watching them,

407
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:56,640
so I might as well at least have a go so I can say I've TRIED to swim with a shark.

408
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,320
Argh.

409
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:09,240
'Unbelievably, in spite of my torpedo-like movement through the waves,

410
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:15,040
'I never quite caught up with the great fish. But, a close second best, Mark got his picture.'

411
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:31,360
That's our boat, here. Do you think it's big enough?

412
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:34,160
It's great, isn't it? It's got dinghies on it and everything.

413
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:40,080
'Since the blue whales are not coming to us in La Paz Bay, we are having to go to them.'

414
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:43,280
This is Greg. I'm the captain. You're the captain? How do you do?

415
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:44,320
Nice to meet you.

416
00:32:44,360 --> 00:32:49,560
'Captain Greg and the crew of the good ship Horizon will be our hosts for the next six nights,

417
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:56,160
'and Mark assures me that if anyone can take us to blue whales then this is the crew that can do it.'

418
00:32:56,200 --> 00:33:00,880
When I was a boy I virtually learnt off by heart parts of the Guinness Book of Records,

419
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:04,520
and, of course, you know, one of the things would be a huge page,

420
00:33:04,560 --> 00:33:08,560
a double-page spread of a blue whale with pictures of cars and lorries

421
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:11,160
and various other things next to it to show the scale.

422
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:15,120
So the idea that I'm travelling to see them is...

423
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:17,880
Are you really genuinely excited? Oh, yeah.

424
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:23,160
'But, even with the best crew in the business,

425
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:27,480
'finding a blue whale at sea is like finding an extraordinarily large needle

426
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:30,720
'in a simply enormous haystack.'

427
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:38,440
'Now, I am certainly not the first to claim to see strange lights after a couple of drinks.

428
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,600
'But the camera saw it all, and it hadn't touched a drop.'

429
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:44,520
Oh, yeah.

430
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,520
Look at you. Look at you!

431
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:50,160
How dare you behave like that.

432
00:34:50,200 --> 00:34:51,840
What do you think you're doing?

433
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,000
'This is glowing algae,

434
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:58,360
'and it may not be the most technically-accomplished piece of television you will ever see,

435
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:02,360
'but, like true professionals, we did not let our personal circumstances

436
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:05,720
'prevent us from capturing the moment for posterity.'

437
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:09,640
Wow. They talk about bioluminescence, this extraordinary quality

438
00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:14,440
of certain sort of sea plants and things to light up.

439
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:21,240
But this is insane, it's like some weird neon madness that you can't believe is real,

440
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:23,440
and I have to keep looking down.

441
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:28,920
This thing, it's like, you know, slushy, it's like a blue slushy... lit.

442
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:31,200
Look at it.

443
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:33,560
Wow.

444
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:39,840
'This bioluminescent algae is, I am told, not the most outlandish thing we are going to encounter.

445
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:46,040
'We are entering the territory of one of the most eerie predators in the Sea of Cortez.'

446
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:54,040
'The next morning I'm up early, escaping nightmares of predators and blue slushies.

447
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:59,160
There may be much here that is disappearing. But nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum.

448
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:01,960
While we may have suppressed some species,

449
00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,840
the unexpected result has been a boom for one species in particular.

450
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:09,760
Here in the Sea of Cortez, an invasion is taking place.

451
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:18,680
'Scott Cassell is catching and studying what the local fishermen call the Diablo Rojo...

452
00:36:18,720 --> 00:36:19,720
'The Red Demon.'

453
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:24,480
Any luck there, Dave? Not yet? We're working.

454
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:30,800
'Before 1950, there were no reported sightings of Humboldt Squid in the Sea of Cortez.

455
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:34,320
'Now there are said to be tens of millions of them.

456
00:36:34,360 --> 00:36:41,120
'As sharks have declined, so this fearsome predator is taking over, right at the top of the food chain.'

457
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:46,160
I usually exercise a lot of caution when coming down these steps at the best of times, but this...

458
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,280
I would not want to dangle my feet in there, I suspect.

459
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:53,360
There's a great sort of history of the myth of the giant octopus,

460
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:57,080
the kraken, the huge squid, from everything from, you know,

461
00:36:57,120 --> 00:37:01,880
ancient legend to, you know, Jules Verne and everything, isn't there?

462
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:07,120
And when they get bigger they are the stuff of legends. But don't let this small animal here fool you.

463
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:10,440
I interviewed a man here in central Rosalita.

464
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:14,000
His motor failed, and in the distance were friends who couldn't hear him.

465
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:18,080
He jumps in the water and he's swimming over, and suddenly he's surrounded by squid

466
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:20,400
just a little bit bigger than this three-foot squid,

467
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:26,400
and they attacked him, and he was able to scream so loudly that his friends finally heard him

468
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:28,360
and came over and picked him out of the water.

469
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:34,480
But by the time they'd picked him out of the water he'd had 330 bites, the size of a grape each.

470
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:39,000
So when I asked to look at his wounds, he took off his shirt and he looked like a burn victim

471
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:40,360
from his waist, all the way down.

472
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:45,600
'These predators hunt in packs, swarming upon their victim in hundreds or even thousands.

473
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:51,880
'Local people now only enter these waters with extreme caution.'

474
00:37:52,920 --> 00:37:55,680
And you can't imagine how many there are down below us right now.

475
00:37:55,720 --> 00:37:59,320
Nobody knows how many squid are here. It's impossible to do a census.

476
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:05,120
But I myself have seen squid shoals reach the surface for over a football field in size,

477
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:11,000
with tens of thousands of animals on the surface reaching out of the water to collect sardines.

478
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:15,480
There's an argument, isn't there, for saying that this animal - more than the Great White Shark -

479
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:18,760
is perhaps the most perfect killing machine in the water.

480
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:22,080
This animal can have 20 million babies... Oh, my God!

481
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:24,760
and a great white shark can have ten over a lifetime,

482
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:29,480
so, you know, you're looking at an animal that can out populate every other known predator.

483
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:32,120
Cos that's one of the things that's worrying you, isn't it?

484
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:35,360
To me, the humble squid is the icon of the change on the planet,

485
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,320
because the humble squid population is just exploding

486
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:42,280
and it's almost certainly because of the reduction in predators.

487
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,560
What you are looking at, right here, is our next wild fire.

488
00:38:45,600 --> 00:38:50,560
This is an animal that is potentially going to upset the balance

489
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:53,400
of the entire Pacific Coast of all the Americas -

490
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,360
Central, North and South.

491
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:02,480
Oh, dear Lord. I think I've seen everything now.

492
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:06,960
That looks serious. It's great fun at parties.

493
00:39:07,000 --> 00:39:10,400
It only takes one good bite on a tendon, and you don't forget the lesson.

494
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:27,240
There he is.

495
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:31,480
This size right here, these ring teeth

496
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:36,200
are just like small cactus plants, but when you get an animal that is five or six feet long,

497
00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:39,560
and all of a sudden it's as big as a really thick hypodermic needles.

498
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:42,600
Whoa. Yeah. When the squid is hunting

499
00:39:42,640 --> 00:39:46,560
it's using its eyesight to find prey, and then it grabs the prey with the tentacles.

500
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:48,400
And watch the response here.

501
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:49,760
Wow!

502
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:54,200
He knows he can move that beak around in different directions. Oh, yes. Good Lord.

503
00:39:54,240 --> 00:39:57,240
So while he grabs onto somebody like this...

504
00:39:57,280 --> 00:40:01,280
Oh, yeah, he's chomping on me. While he's hanging onto me like this, he can take a bite.

505
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:04,160
'It's the stuff of B Movie horror.

506
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,800
'But this is what the suppression of a species can mean.

507
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:11,960
'Shark fishing has decimated the number of sharks, and a new predator has taken over.

508
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:15,480
'What happens next is anybody's guess.'

509
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:20,640
Unfortunately, I think these animals are such an amazing opportunistic predator

510
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:24,320
that they will explore every species they encounter as food,

511
00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:28,000
and as soon as they realise that they can eat it, they have amemory,

512
00:40:28,040 --> 00:40:32,120
so they're more adaptable to eating prey than anything else I know of in the ocean,

513
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,320
and that's why they're such a problem.

514
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:47,720
There's a humpback, three-quarters of a mile, starboard bow!

515
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:50,960
Mark, do you hear that? Yeah, yeah, got it.

516
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,160
'Not the blue whales we have been looking for,

517
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:57,640
'but a sudden encounter with a humpback is not to be sniffed at.'

518
00:40:57,680 --> 00:41:04,560
Wow... and another one! Look at it! Wow, and again! Wow!

519
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,840
Oh, it's breeching again.

520
00:41:10,480 --> 00:41:13,520
Oh, it's a stunner!

521
00:41:13,560 --> 00:41:17,240
It's so nice to see so many humpback whales on the breeding grounds like this,

522
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:21,680
this is one of the species that has actually benefited from proper protection,

523
00:41:21,720 --> 00:41:24,280
and it's really bouncing back. Fantastic.

524
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:30,280
They reckon there's about four times as many now as there were when whaling stopped, which is fantastic.

525
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:35,880
'In Mark's view, the humpback is the whale with the best song in the ocean,

526
00:41:35,920 --> 00:41:40,520
and, as the whales dive, he seizes the opportunity to let me hear it.

527
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:45,200
Got a little hydrophone here, Connected to the speakers, I can't believe this is gonna work.

528
00:41:45,240 --> 00:41:47,720
You've got no faith.

529
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,760
We'll put it down to about 20 feet.

530
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:55,280
See if that works.

531
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:56,800
WHALE SONG

532
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,000
What's that? That is it, we've got one.

533
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,040
That's unbelievable!

534
00:42:02,080 --> 00:42:03,960
Listen to that.

535
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,880
You can't believe it's a whale, can you?

536
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:11,680
It's extraordinary.

537
00:42:11,720 --> 00:42:14,320
Isn't it amazing?

538
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:15,640
It's fantastic.

539
00:42:19,240 --> 00:42:24,080
I love it. This has to be one of the best sounds in the animal kingdom.

540
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:36,320
So what we're listening to, this is a male humpback whale - only the males sing -

541
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:39,800
and if you imagine he will be at some sort of 45 degree angle,

542
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:43,160
facing down to the sea bed, with his big flippers out,

543
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:49,120
and the flippers will just be gradually waving like this like a conductor in front of an orchestra,

544
00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:52,760
and singing this song that could last up to half an hour.

545
00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:57,880
It's the longest and most complex song in the whole animal kingdom.

546
00:42:59,240 --> 00:43:01,240
WHALE SONG

547
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:37,240
Ha, ha, ha, aren't they fabulous?

548
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:40,840
Leaping for joy.

549
00:43:53,720 --> 00:43:58,760
'After seven days at sea, looking for blue whales, we are heading ashore

550
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:03,560
'onto one of the tiny islands that dot the Sea of Cortez.'

551
00:44:04,760 --> 00:44:09,800
It's said that whales have been visiting this stretch of water for many thousands of years,

552
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:14,960
and we've been told that the proof lies on this island.

553
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,160
These look like, er...

554
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:28,440
whale ribs, fossilised whale ribs.

555
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:32,560
Really? Oh, yes, they're not bone are they, that's stone. Yeah.

556
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:40,360
Well fixed inside there. Is there any way of knowing what sort of whale or what sort of age?

557
00:44:40,400 --> 00:44:43,320
Well, this island is probably four-five million years old,

558
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:48,600
so I'd guess the bones are roughly the same, so it's very hard to say exactly what they came from,

559
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:51,480
but they probably came from whales that we'd recognise,

560
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,640
a fairly modern type of whale, being that sort of age.

561
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:58,560
It's nice that this is part of the world where there still are whales,

562
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:02,440
often you see fossils inland of marine creatures where, you know,

563
00:45:02,480 --> 00:45:07,120
there you haven't a chance of seeing them ever again, whereas at least here there's continuity.

564
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,720
It's very interesting actually, because a lot of the most ancient whale bones

565
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:14,520
have been found in the Himalayas, miles from the nearest sea,

566
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:17,800
it's sort of the cradle of whale evolution.

567
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:19,880
That's extraordinary!

568
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:24,320
Here's an interesting looking one. Good God, what's that?

569
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:28,000
That's a vertebra, whale vertebrae. That's one vertebrae?

570
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:29,640
Yes, it's a good size.

571
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:33,160
So if I feel one knobble in my back, that's the equivalent?

572
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:36,720
Gives you some sense of scale, doesn't it? Wow, look at that.

573
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:38,840
Do we know how this is related to the modern whale?

574
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:41,600
No, this would be a fairly modern species,

575
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:44,680
because, again, it'll be four or five million years old,

576
00:45:44,720 --> 00:45:48,560
but we know amazingly little about how whales evolved and what they evolved from.

577
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:53,360
The latest theory is they evolved probably about 60 million years ago,

578
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:59,160
just after the dinosaurs disappeared, there was an animal, looked like a wolf with hooves,

579
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,320
and it used to live in a place called the Tethys Sea,

580
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:05,200
which is between what is now Southern Europe and Central Asia,

581
00:46:05,240 --> 00:46:08,560
and they reckon what happened was it spent more and more time in the water.

582
00:46:08,600 --> 00:46:13,280
That's extraordinary. It gradually, over this huge period of time, its legs disappeared,

583
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:16,080
and in fact you can see the evidence in the flipper of the whale,

584
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:19,080
you can see all the hand and finger bones just as...

585
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:20,840
Oh, it's still got carpals or tarsals...

586
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:23,520
They've got no hind legs or hind flippers, as you know,

587
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:27,040
but there's a little bone that is still just in the blubber,

588
00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:30,560
that's the remains of our hind legs and our hips.

589
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:35,760
'Whales have been swimming the earth for over 50 million years.'

590
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:43,840
'But it took just five decades for whaling ships to reduce their numbers by over 90%.'

591
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:53,640
Something that really worries me is that whaling is still going strong, it's not over by any means yet.

592
00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:57,600
Japan, Norway and Iceland are all whaling commercially,

593
00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:01,320
and they're killing, between them, 2,000 whales a year.

594
00:47:01,360 --> 00:47:04,360
It's as cruel as it was when whaling was at its peak,

595
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:07,080
and what I wanted to do was to show you this little video,

596
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:11,440
just to show you the reality of whaling and what's happening.

597
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,000
It look like a battleship. It does, doesn't it?

598
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:19,760
It's all pretty strong stuff... Oh, my God.

599
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:16,000
'There are currently 8,471 species of animal

600
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,160
'officially recognised as endangered by extinction.

601
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:23,280
'To put it another way, if Mark and I made a film about each one of them,

602
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:26,640
'and those films were broadcast every week without a break,

603
00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:32,160
'this series would run for a little over 162 years and ten months,

604
00:48:32,200 --> 00:48:37,640
'which is perhaps the most absurd and the most sobering statistic I have ever encountered.'

605
00:48:41,240 --> 00:48:45,560
'20 years ago, Mark photographed the Yangtze River dolphin.

606
00:48:45,600 --> 00:48:50,480
'Now the dolphin is extinct and all we have are photographs.

607
00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:54,600
'For the last year, Mark has documented everything.

608
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:58,160
'But wouldn't it be a shame - quite literally shaming -

609
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:03,160
'if all we leave to the people of the future are photographs,

610
00:49:03,200 --> 00:49:06,840
'in place of thousands and thousands of some of the most extraordinary, complex,

611
00:49:06,880 --> 00:49:12,360
'baffling and sometimes hilarious creatures that ever walked upon the earth?'

612
00:49:39,240 --> 00:49:45,440
'The biggest animal that ever lived may be hard to find, but it is still out there.

613
00:49:45,480 --> 00:49:50,560
'Having brought me all the way to Mexico, Mark is determined, by hook or by crook,

614
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:53,840
'to get our boat to blue whales.

615
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:58,040
'Mark has abandoned me for a day in La Paz, which may seem out of character,

616
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:03,760
'but I have come to recognise the glint in his eye that means he is working on a plan.'

617
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,200
I've known Sandy for many years, we met in the mid 1990s,

618
00:50:07,240 --> 00:50:09,680
and we've flown goodness knows how many hours together,

619
00:50:09,720 --> 00:50:13,320
she's the best pilot I've ever ever come across anywhere in the world.

620
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:18,800
And she's very kindly brought her lovely Cessna 182 which was built in 1958 can you believe,

621
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:23,480
it's a year older than I am, so probably quite decrepit, but it's certainly air worthy,

622
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:26,280
and she's going to help us find blue whales.

623
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:34,080
Now if anyone can do it, Sandy can, and I'm hoping we'll have found some, and then take Stephen to them.

624
00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:24,000
Ahhh!

625
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:56,560
'So, with the co-ordinates of at least one blue whale, Mark and I are heading north.'

626
00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:02,760
Well, this is what we've come to see.

627
00:53:02,800 --> 00:53:05,720
A blue whale, and that does look blue.

628
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:09,080
The size is the thing - the longest ever recorded was 110 feet long,

629
00:53:09,120 --> 00:53:13,200
which is about the length of a Boeing 737. Good Lord.

630
00:53:13,240 --> 00:53:19,680
The other thing is its weight, the heaviest ever recorded was a 190 tonnes. An average -

631
00:53:19,720 --> 00:53:24,480
I worked this out - an average-sized blue whale, if you imagine a set of weighing scales

632
00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:27,760
and you an average-sized blue whale on one side of the weighing scales

633
00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:31,560
and you have to pile lots of other things on the other side to balance the scales,

634
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:33,080
you have to put all of the following.

635
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:40,880
Half a dozen African elephants, a black rhino, a couple of whale sharks, five Tyrannosaurus Rexes,

636
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:48,440
100 world-class Sumo wrestlers, the entire football team of Norwich City... One of the lightest...!

637
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:53,640
..and my car, and that lot together equals the weight of one average sized bluewhale,

638
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:57,160
you just don't get the scale just by looking at it like that.

639
00:53:57,200 --> 00:54:01,520
And it flies through the water at great speed and with great agility.

640
00:54:01,560 --> 00:54:08,000
Yeah, they're incredibly agile, about one in four in the Sea of Cortez lift the tail - some don't,

641
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:13,920
and we don't quite understand why - lifts the tail right up in the air, and you can imagine you can see

642
00:54:13,960 --> 00:54:17,440
that length of the body up in the air as it dives,

643
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:21,160
that's probably 20 feet of tail sticking out of the water.

644
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:23,800
Goodness me, I can't wait to see this creature.

645
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:31,240
'Seeing this flicking of the tail, or fluking, is, I am told, the holy grail of whale watching.'

646
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:39,280
Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.

647
00:54:39,320 --> 00:54:43,960
'The following morning, we have arrived at where the whale was the previous day.

648
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:49,360
'Now all we need is Sandy and Cessna Emily to guide us in.'

649
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:55,200
Cessna Emily, Cessna Emily, Motor vessel Horizon with scale for Bravo 6355 channel 16.

650
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:02,800
'Vessel Horizon coming up on you.' That's her.

651
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:07,240
Cessna Emily, motor vessel Horizon Channel 18, good morning.

652
00:55:07,280 --> 00:55:14,640
Well, we're just coming up on you almost on the port side, left side, and I see you.

653
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:22,000
Hey! Wow!

654
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:28,160
If that can't see a whale, nothing can.

655
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:54,920
So that's the area she's circling above, isn't it?

656
00:55:54,960 --> 00:56:00,720
I haven't seen any flukes yet, or any sign.

657
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:05,120
So somewhere around here. Yeah.

658
00:56:06,240 --> 00:56:08,880
That's it there, there's a fluke! Can you see it? Oh, yes!

659
00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:12,240
Oh, my goodness. Right by the island. Absolutely dead ahead!

660
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:16,880
Fantastic. Oh, my goodness that's my first ever glance...

661
00:56:16,920 --> 00:56:17,920
We've done it..

662
00:56:17,960 --> 00:56:20,240
..in the direction of a blue whale!

663
00:56:22,640 --> 00:56:26,360
Oh! Look at you!

664
00:56:27,400 --> 00:56:31,880
Wow! Look at that body, look at it!

665
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:35,200
It's going to do it, it's going to fluke... No. No, not quite.

666
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:40,800
Oh! It's moving, it's going to fluke...

667
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:42,320
No!

668
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:47,360
And again. It's still going. This might be the one.

669
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:49,880
Yes, it's a big one, is it?

670
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:53,840
Yes! Yes!

671
00:56:53,880 --> 00:56:57,200
Yes! Yes! YES!

672
00:56:57,240 --> 00:56:59,600
That was high! Beauty!

673
00:57:01,040 --> 00:57:06,800
How can you get so excited about an animal just deciding to show its tail, and yet I can't tell you,

674
00:57:06,840 --> 00:57:11,000
it's the most thrilling thing when you just know it's the final arching through,

675
00:57:11,040 --> 00:57:13,120
and then there's that fabulous sight.

676
00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:18,640
'Blue whales may be diminished, but they are still out there.

677
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,880
'Like the aye-aye, the kakapo, the komodo dragon

678
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:26,720
'and the 8,471 other species on the endangered list.

679
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:34,400
'Isn't it extraordinary to imagine we could be the generation to watch them all slip away?

680
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:41,920
'And in the future, would people not wonder how we could possibly have allowed that to happen?'

681
00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:48,400
Glistening, look at that length of body and... it's fluking!

682
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:50,640
Yay!

683
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:56,000
Mark, that was the most fantastic thing I've ever seen. Really?

684
00:57:56,040 --> 00:58:02,160
It's enormous, and it's slow and it's sleek and it's just so magisterial.

685
00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:08,520
'It has been a privilege to retrace Mark's journeys, 20 years after he first made them.

686
00:58:08,560 --> 00:58:12,760
'I hope that others will remake these journeys in another 20 years -

687
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:15,600
'you have my blessing, and I sincerely hope

688
00:58:15,640 --> 00:58:19,800
'you will find the animals waiting for you when you get there.'

689
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:53,760
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