"Born of fire from the depths of the earth baked by an infernal sun" "home to the strangest creatures imaginable" "When people first came here they thought that they had found a hell on earth" "But this is no hell it is a vibrant crucible of life" "In time, one man saw the truth and changed much more than just our view of these islands" "His name was Charles Darwin" "This is the story of how the lonely Galapagos islands came from obscurity to change the world for ever" "Your sacred Majesty we had this 6 day calm the currents were so strong and engulfed us in such a way that on the 10, March, we were brought to some islands" "Thomas de Berlanga, the bishop of Panama was sailing from Panama to Peru" "But when winds failed him, strong currents took hold and he was carried wildly off course" "Eventually, the bishop and his men found land" "But what a land!" "It seems as though at some time God had showered stones and the earth is like slag - worthless" "Both the land and its creatures seemed infernal" "They dug a well, but found water saltier than the sea" "Two men died" "They prayed for deliverance" "The winds returned and the bishop and his men got away to record their tale of a hell on earth" "They had discovered the Galapagos" "600 miles off the coast of South America right on the equator the Galapagos are a small group of a dozen or so islands alone in the vast Pacific Ocean" "For millennia, their lava-clad shores and great volcanic mountains remained unnoticed, uncharted, untainted until fate brought the bishop of Panama here nearly 500 years ago" "At first sight it's easy to see why the bishop was horrified by this place" "From the sea come dragons marine iguanas slithering onto the land" "As black as the lava itself they seemed to spit a curse as they purge themselves of salt from drinking sea water" "In the deserts behind larger dragons" "For 5 days the bishop was forced to survive on cactus pads these land iguanas eat little else" "They bite right through the needle sharp spines to reach the surprisingly juicy flesh" "And in the smoldering interior, there are giants" "Tortoises, as heavy as 4 grown men" "In their huge bodies they can store enough fat to go for a year without eating or drinking anything" "To survive here it seems you need to be a monster" "Or is it just that you need to be different?" "A bird, phoenix-like, emerges from the ashes of this barren coast" "A cormorant" "But its wings are scruffy and small" "It looks like it could never fly" "It can't" "But there is another world beneath the waves" "The ocean is rich" "And this is where the flightless cormorant has found its way of surviving by trading flight for streamlining" "With what's left of its wings tucked flat against its body enlarged feet take over propelling it on in search of octopus, eels and small fish" "A female is on the nest" "She makes it from seaweed, expertly weaved into a comfortably bed protection for her and her eggs from the razor-sharp lava" "The male brings a gift for his mate for the nest and also to bond their relationship" "Without the power of flight these birds are marooned here but they have no predators and on their doorstep is all the food they need" "For the strange creatures that have made the Galapagos home life is harsh but not hell" "If the bishop of Panama had been luckier he might have seen things differently" "In January each year the cold Humboldt current that makes Galapagos so dry, loosens its grip" "and gives way to warm water from the north" "In good years it brings a remarkable change to the islands" "Suddenly, a very different Galapagos appears" "From the ash hidden seeds come to life" "Palo Santo trees that seem long dead are resurrected from black and white to color" "A Galapagos spring but even spring here is different" "The golden meadows are grazed by land iguanas relishing a pleasant change from cactus pads" "And this female carpenter bee also drawn to the new flush of flowers visits many different kinds" "But strangely, almost all of them are yellow" "She is the only kind of bee in Galapagos" "If she likes yellow there's little point in a flower being anything else" "The rain has also brought out little birds and all around they start to sing" "This male finch tries to entice the female to inspect his nest" "Carefully built in the protection of a spiny cactus pad" "She likes it and settles in" "But even these ordinary-looking birds are extraordinary" "On the ground, in the trees where you would expect to find many different birds" "Here one kind rules" "These are all finches" "In Galapagos there are 13 different species of finch taking the place of the other birds" "The key is that each has a different beak" "Thicker, stronger for cracking seeds" "Long and sharp for flowers" "Delicate and pointed for winkling tiny creatures from cracks in rocks" "There's even a woodpecker finch" "But without a woodpeckers tongue it can't reach grubs that deep inside burrows so it has to use all its canny to get what it wants" "It breaks off a twig, a tool for probing" "Not quite right" "Yes, just right" "Another tool for another burrow" "another fat grub" "There's a lot more to this world than at first meets the eye" "For many years, this brighter side of Galapagos remained completely hidden" "Cursed by the bishop of Panama given no name" "Nobody came near" "But then nobody was even sure the islands existed shifting currents, mists, like ghosts" "Now you see them, now you don't" "In the minds of mariners the Galapagos were Las Encantadas, enchanted" "Then, in the late 1500s somebody put them on a map" "Just 12 crude marks and a name" "Isla de Galapagos - islands of the tortoises" "Put it on a map and it becomes real" "The first to come were pirates" "The Galapagos was the perfect base for raids on Spanish galleons carrying gold from South America" "But piracy is nothing new to Galapagos frigatebirds looking for plunder" "In these cliffs are the nests of hundreds of thousands of seabirds" "With so much traffic, it's not long before something gets into trouble" "A storm petrel" "But another frigate is in there like a shot and another two, three white headed juveniles" "They harried the all black male forcing it to drop the petrel" "Frigates have a fearsome reputation but the odds are not all in their favor" "If they ditch in the sea their long wings can get critically waterlogged With every swoop, they risk drowning" "In the colony, the males inflate their extraordinary red-throat pouches" "They are trying to be irresistible to females passing overhead" "He's got one" "She soon settles in and tidies up his nest" "He watches over her very carefully" "After all, he is surrounded by pirates" "Another male tries to muscle in" "Now she joins in" "She's already made her choice and helps drive the newcomer away" "Her partner wastes no more time" "And when it's all over she gets a rest on a comfortable pillow" "Hidden away from the rest of the world this is a place for pirates to find peace" "The next wave of people came to Galapagos not to plunder passing ships but for the riches of the islands themselves" "In the far west the deep Cromwell current collides with the massive islands and rises bringing nutrients from the abyss deep" "These are some of the richest seas on the equator" "But it wasn't fish that draw people to these waters" "A sperm whale" "They dive to over 3,000 feet for squid" "It's so deep even the equatorial sun is completely shut out" "So they find their food via echo-location" "Today, they are protected" "We see them as beautiful giants" "But not so long ago, the view was very different" "These were monsters to be killed for profit" "It was the rush for whale oil and stories of battles with Levithians of the deep that brought the Galapagos to the attention of the world at large" "But it wasn't just the whales that were paying the price of discovering" "There was one thing that pirates and whalers all wanted - fresh food" "Their rich fat, their giant size made tortoises perfect for the ship's larder" "In 200 years over 200,000 were taken" "On some islands tortoises were completely wiped out" "But out of the tragedy came some good" "As more people came to Galapagos a clearer picture of the islands began to appear" "Each got its own name" "Some parts were still deemed infernal" "But others had sheltered places to anchor or a few trees - vital timber for repairing ships" "Though still enchanted, the islands took on more recognizable shapes," "More accurately fixed on a map" "It was a start of coming to understand them" "When His Majesty's Ship Beagle reached the Galapagos on the 15, Sep. 1835" "It was a last minute stop before a long journey home" "She had been charting the coast of south America for more than 3 years" "She now had just 5 weeks to make a modern and accurate map of this little known outpost" "But this was much more than just another landfall" "It was to change the course of history" "On board, was naturalist Charles Darwin not the wise, grey beareded Darwin we know so well but young, impressionable, just 26" "At first, he saw the place much as those before him" "Nothing could be less inviting" "Nothing more rough and horrid" "The black rocks heated by the rays of the vertical sun give to the air a closer sultry feeling like a stove" "But he soon began to see more" "The very ground on which he was walking seemed solidified only yesterday" "It looks like the sea petrified in its most boisterous moments" "On the Beagle, his head had been buried in a new and controversial book, called 'Principles of Geology' which described a physical world constantly changing molded by nature's forces" "And just weeks before, in South America he had been caught in an earthquake" "Inspired by what he had read and experienced fired up by a young and fertile mind" "He was opening his eyes to a very different Galapagos" "Where others had seen it as hellish, ancient and unchanging" "Charles Darwin saw a brand-new land made fresh from the depths of the ocean by forces still very alive today right beneath him" "He was right." "In the west, right under the island of Fernandina is a volcanic hotspot" "Here, constantly, islands are being born" "But what he couldn't see was that as each island is created, it is carried off that hotspot on shifting oceanic plates as though on a conveyer belt" "They move slowly, a couple of inches a year" "But in geological terms, that is staggeringly fast" "Since Darwin saw them, they have now moved about 35 feet further to the southeast" "As HMS Beagle moved methodically through the archipelago" "Darwin had no idea that the islands they were mapping were moving or how important that movement was" "As the islands go on their journey, they change" "They become a touch less infernal" "Some turn green" "Others become flat and dry" "Each is also carried into a slightly different mix of ocean currents and so gets a slightly different climate" "The result is that each island ends up with its own unique character" "One of the most remote islands the Beagle passed is also the most unusual" "In the far northeast is Genovesa remote, barren, lava-clad and home to a million seabirds" "The birds forage far out in the Pacific Ocean but every day once they run the gauntlet of frigate birds they return to this battered rock, to their nests" "Behind the cliff just the right type of lava has cooled in just the right way to form a labyrinth of tiny tubes and cracks" "into the perfect size for Galapagos storm petrels" "Nobody knows how they find which crack is theirs" "But as they swoop over the ground they turn upwind so it's thought they smell their way home" "However they find their way it's a miracle" "From the middle of the Pacific to a single tiny egg" "But it's just now that they are most vulnerable" "A short-eared owl" "The petrels are too quick in the air and the owl too big to follow them deep inside their tiny tunnels" "So its best chance is to grab a bird coming in or out" "First, it uses its sharp eyesight to spot an entrance to an active burrow" "It doesn't go for a petrel straight away but positions itself just outside" "It creeps closer, more cat than owl" "It listens" "It gets away but the petrel is stunned" "The owl spots it trying to get back underground" "A second owl is watching but now makes a challenge" "It'll have to hunt for itself" "It can just squeeze into the entrance hall of one of the tunnels" "Now it waits for a petrel coming in" "There are short-eared owls on other islands but only on Genovesa have they learnt to hunt like this" "And it seems that every island on the map has a similarly strange story to tell" "It's not surprising the Galapagos are named after these lumbering giants" "Their great dome shells look just like the islands they inhabit" "Those islands high enough to catch rain can be surprisingly lush" "Here, the round shells are perfect for budging through the undergrowth without getting snagged" "But on other lower islands there's almost no rain" "And here, the tortoises look very different" "They have shells with a curved arch at the front that looks just like a Spanish saddle or Galapagos" "The islands were actually named after these tortoises" "Here there's so little to eat on the ground that they need to stretch their necks to reach more suckling vegetation" "The curved arch in their shells allows for that extra stretch" "On different islands, Galapagos life is taking a different course" "As yet, Darwin was unaware of it" "But as the Beagle hopped from island to island he took any opportunity to go ashore" "On the island of Floreana he was met on the beach at Post Office Bay by a governor of the first ever settlement in the Galapagos, an Englishman called Lawson" "Lawson's tales of the strange Galapagos life encouraged Darwin to go deep into the interior of the islands" "And wherever he went, he collected" "He saw the tortoises, though only the dome shelled kind so didn't see their secret" "He saw the little birds with their different beaks but didn't guess they were all finches" "He called one a black bird another a wren" "There was anothe bird too, the mockingbird" "He'd seen them in South America but these were somehow different" "For now he had no idea how important that difference would be" "As Darwin went further and further into the heart of the islands" "He found a sight to Galapagos that no naturalist had seen before" "In the highlands of Floreana and Santiego he found enchanted forests" "And in a handful of places he found freshwater the only freshwater for 600 miles" "Ducks dabble as though in a park" "Tortoises wallow in thick volcanic mud" "Frigatebirds come from the harsh world outside to drink" "This is no hell on earth but garden of Eden" "Darwin asked himself the crucial question" "Why are these small islands blessed with such strange and unique life?" "But just a breath away from revelation" "Darwin was taken away never to return" "At sunset on the 20, October, 1835" "The Beagle set sail for Tahiti and then home" "But all was now lost the enchanted islands had cast their spell" "No sooner had Darwin left the Galapagos than he began to see the truth" "As he spent the long hours at sea sorting through his collections one specimen suddenly caught his attention not tortoise, not finch, but mockingbird" "I have specimens from 4 different islands" "On 2 islands they appear the same the other 2 they are different" "In each island, each kind is exclusively found" "Different islands within sight of each other have different mockingbirds with slightly different feather and like the finches slightly different beaks" "Darwin now remembered something governor Lawson had told him about tortoises" "He claimed to could tell which island the tortoise came from just by the shape of its shell" "Different island, different tortoise, same thing" "He had seen from the dramatic Galapagos landscape that the islands were constantly changing" "Could living things be changing too?" "He began to see back through time" "I fancied myself brought near to the very act of creation" "He saw that the Galapagos had been born of fire, sterome from the depths of the ocean but life had then come from elsewhere" "In isolation on the Galapagos and then further isolation from island to island it had changed one form into another" "Darwin had caught a fleeting glimpse of Galapagos' great secret" "New plants, new animals, new life was being made by the islands themselves" "He looked for the same pattern in other species" "One day, the little finches would be named after him but though he had the best collection to date with a whole range of different beaks" "He hadn't thought to label which islands they came from" "So for now, they couldn't help" "And as for the tortoises, 45 adults were brought aboard the Beagle but every one had been eaten" "Their shells thrown over board lost for ever" "Unable to return, Darwin would never know the true story of the finches' beaks and the tortoises' shells" "But in the mockingbirds he had caught a glimpse of evolution" "In 1859, 24 years after leaving the Galapagos" "Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' was finally published" "It changed the world for ever" "Until the end of his days, he always held on to one certainty that the lonely Galapagos islands were the origin of all his views, the origin of 'The Origin of Species'" "Giant tortoises so impressed the ancient mariners that they named these islands after them" "Their fat flesh fuels the pirate's plunder" "In their shells is a clue to the greatest mystery on earth" "But for a tortoise, life is simple" "The recent rain draws them to the green meadows on the summit of Alcedo volcano not just for the lush grazing but to breed" "He tries to seduce her everything in time" "This age old ritual may remind us of permanence but that couldn't be further from the truth" "The offspring of these tortoises may have a slightly different shell that gives them a slightly better chance of surviving on their island" "Even these animals that move so slow, and live so long are changing" "Since people first came to these islands our understanding of them has changed too" "The Galapagos is not hell on earth but a vibrant, living demonstration of evolution of life" "Here on this little world within itself we seem to be brought somewhat closer to the great fact that mystery of all mysteries the first appearance of new beings on this earth" "In the next episode we discover how life in Galapagos is driven by elemental forces of change" "Past, present and future" "Transcription by Andrew  Hattie"