"Our planet is a Blue Planet, deep blue water, dwarfing the patches of land we call Earth." "Deep Blue, the source of life itself." "Here, half a million albatross jostle for space to breed on a tiny island in the Southern Ocean." "After thousands of miles of searching, at last the Deep Blue offers its bounty." "The ocean sustains far more life than all of the land, but it is unevenly spread, hiding and shifting in blue space." "Gathering sea birds betray a discovery." "The fish shoals have broken their cover." "This is a world of constant jeopardy, an endless cycle of birth, death and renewal." "For a new generation of sea lions, life begins at the coast, a place of safety, to which their mothers return only to give birth." "The unfamiliar land becomes a gentle nursery, a place where the young pups gather strength, as they grow in readiness for a harsher life at sea." "The killer whales have only a few days to take advantage of the naive young pups, soon the sea lions will learn to avoid the shallows at high tide." "Meanwhile, the whales risk being stranded on the shore as they take their prey." "It's a dangerous business and young killers must be taught to hunt in open water before they can risk the shore." "At the coastline the earth and sea meet to form a borderland, a world of tension where moods shift with the tides." "Away from the coastline, in bright warm water, a tiny portion of the ocean holds its greatest riches," "the coral reefs, a narrow band of sun fed life only found in the shallows of the tropical seas." "This is a fragile world, built upon the smallest of organisms, the coral polyps, whose skeletons form the reef, colonies that may stretch for hundreds of miles." "A gentle whale shark, the largest fish in the sea, visits the reef during the green of a plankton bloom, sifting the water through its gills." "The moon is a powerful force upon the deep, her ghostly realm is a different world, where new rules apply." "Rooted to the spot, even the coral must fight a war for territory, shooting out deadly stinging cells to paralyse and then eat their neighbours alive." "The darkness brings its own mood, a change of rhythm where the creatures of the light must find a hiding place." "A crevice under a coral head will provide shelter for the night, but no certainty that you will see the dawn." "For others the darkness is feeding time." "The night feeders have no need of light, special senses allow them to detect the slightest movement." "Even the smallest electrical twitch of muscle will bring them close, ready to choose their victim." "Storm and rain and wind and cloud churn the seas with their own power." "The violent mixing of the waters brings life." "Awakened and fuelled by light from the sun." "Underwater currents mix and blend the liquid world, whipping up the nourishing swarms of tiny organisms on which so many other animals feed." "The boneless creatures have their place too, trailing their tentacles behind their pulsing forms, capturing their own prey as they drift." "At the ends of the earth, North and South, the frozen oceans wait for the return of the sun, the force that draws life from the still waters." "Polar bears, no longer safe on firm ice, are forced to take to the water." "In the far south, emperor penguins gather in vast numbers at the ice edge." "They are sleek and fat, ready to face the harshest weather conditions on Earth." "As the Antarctic summer ends, almost all life heads to the north, away from the freezing waters, but still the emperor penguins remain." "They face a long and arduous journey south, one hundred miles across the frozen wasteland to breed." "For three months the male birds will starve, enduring temperatures of minus 70 degrees, and 100 mile an hour winds." "In the Arctic, winter turns liquid sea to solid ground and for the first time since summer melted the ice, the polar bears can move across the ocean with ease." "After months of near starvation the bears are on a desperate search for food, and a new generation must learn to hunt." "They scour their frozen world for signs of nesting seals hidden in ice caves." "The freezing sea brings danger as well as opportunity." "Locked under a sheet of winter ice, these beluga whales are trapped." "It will be many weeks before the ice opens up, and they can swim to clear water." "For now they are forced to share this tiny breathing space, surfacing to snatch air and battling to keep the ice away." "This time, the bear fails, but the belugas will keep the scars of the hunter's claws on their arching streamlined backs." "Those who survive their icy prison will eventually return to the freedom of the open seas." "The warming sun once again chases away the ice, and grey whales travel six thousand miles to gorge in the polar seas." "This three month old baby is new to the open sea and the mother grey whale must swim slowly as she guides it to the feeding grounds." "Wary of the thirty tonne mother, who is twice their size, the hunters target the vulnerable calf." "After hours of harrying by the killers, the baby whale is exhausted." "Now, the hunters try to push him away from the mother." "They try to drown him." "The calf is dead." "Six hours after the chase began, the killers finally have their prize." "The mother, bereft of the baby she carried in her womb for thirteen months, must continue her journey alone." "The killers have taken only the tongue and lower jaw of the baby whale." "Away from all land, the Open Ocean, an endless expanse of blue, a vast watery desert." "Here, wandering giants travel thousands of miles on the oceanic currents in search of food." "A lonely traveller in liquid space." "In just a few secret places in the Blue, normally solitary wanderers come together in great gatherings." "Amid the fury, a thirty tonne giant rises from the blue." "Leave the narrow strip of rich sunlit waters of the ocean's surface and journey downwards into perpetual night." "With each sinking metre pressure builds, the temperature falls, all light from the surface fades." "More men have been into space than have visited the deepest reaches of this alien world." "Go deeper and life under pressure adapts, changes... ready to play a deadly game of hide and seek." "Down here the only light comes from the inhabitants of the deep themselves, some use it as a lure to attract prey." "For others, the light is a decoy, flashes which dazzle and confuse their hunters." "The deep ocean floor is by far the largest habitat on Earth, covering more than half of all the sea bed." "Here, the pressure is five hundred times greater than at the surface." "It is mostly flat, but here and there it's scarred by massive wounds." "The ocean's deepest reach, The Mariana Trench, plummets seven miles down towards the Earth's core." "The mid ocean ridges are the largest geological structures on Earth." "They stretch thirty thousand miles." "Water, hot as molten lead, gushes from chimneys as high as sixteen storey buildings." "The black smokers." "Highly poisonous hydrogen sulphide billows into the water, creating biological hell." "And yet, even here there is life in enormous quantities." "These chimneys are some of the most densely inhabited spots on earth, pillars of life where animals exist without energy from the sun." "Every single night, life without number emerges from the Deep." "They come to feed in the rich surface waters, a daily ritual which is the greatest biological migration on the planet." "We have sought out the stars, and our moon, without getting to know the Deep." "Yet, it is the Ocean that continues to surprise us." "So far, we have explored only a tiny fraction of the Deep, home to the largest creature that has ever existed." "There were once three hundred thousand blue whales in our oceans." "Now, just one percent of these glorious animals remain... and yet we continue to plunder her secret world."