"I cannot stay away" "Coming home to Baja California for me is like walking across a thousand miles of sand and finding a pool of water" "It's an oasis for my heart" "A few very special places in the world are havens for life" "Resources and shelter draw living creatures from far and near" "These places are rare" "We call them oases" "Of them all this is one of the most extraordinary" "This is my home" "It is a hot dry peninsula 700 miles long and surrrounded by ocean" "It is called Baja California" "I am Exequiel Ezcurra" "I work here as an ecologist" "Today some fellow naturalists and I will take you to the places we love to discover the answer to a single question" "Why does this land and this sea create an oasis?" "One simple answer to that question is that there is plenty to eat" "Mercedes Guererro studies whales that are drawn here to feed" "Here whales eat floating sea life called plankton" "They find it here in huge concentrations" "Dolphins too are draw here in tens of thousands to feed their high energy life" "Dolphins track the schools of fish near the surface" "Birds can see the commotion from miles away and join in" "Whales follow while listening for the action underwater" "I have learned to recognize these/humpback whales as individ by their special markings" "We study them to see how they live and even how they die" "The sharks did not kill this humpback the don't know know what did" "I am saddened by the death of this whale but in this circle of hunger and life even the greatest lives end" "and I know that this whale's body will give new life to others" "The ocean oasis is a magnet to life" "Enriqueta Velarde studies the birds that return each year to Rasa Island" "It's amazing!" "Almost all the Heerman's Gulls and Elegant Terns in the world come here to Rasa to breed" "The gulls arrive first to establish their nest sites traveling from as far away as Canada" "The terns migrate from coastal Chile and Peru as many as half a million birds pack into this tiny island at once" "It may seem curious but the terns nest right in the middle of the gulls' colony but by living among the gulls the terns gain protection from predators" "The gulls tax the terns by stealing some of the food they bring in from the ocean" "Just imagine the birds of Rasa catch of 65 tons of fish each day one sardine at a time" "This points to one conclusion this ocean must be incredibly productive" "Iliana Ortega works here as a naturalist" "This is my community" "Much of my work here is to show people the diversity of the wildlife and to explain its biology" "For instance it's important to get to know sharks" "Like these hammerheads" "They don't threaten us They usually eat squid" "But with gray sharks there is tension" "They'll eat almost anything" "You know humans are much more dangerous to sharks han they are to us" "When you spend time with sharks you begin to understand them and learn to respect them" "But you have to command their respect too" "See?" "They're always testing you" "I admire sharks" "They're a vital link in the chain of life" "Like wolves they weed out the sick and the injured leaving behind only the healthiest of their prey to reproduce" "At night the sharks' sophisticated senses of vibration and electroconductivity serve them best" "They move faster become more excited and leave in search of prey" "I will not follow" "Throughout the night other predators stalk the oasis" "The moray eel is almost blind but it can smell like a bloodhound" "The scorpionfish is camouflaged by day but not from something that can smell it" "Daylight returns" "The frogfish begins its day" "Cornetfish stir from their slumber and light rises to the morning" "Some animals come to the oasis for reasons other than hunger" "They come to breed" "These elephant seals migrate here twice each year from the Northern Pacific a roundtrip of 6,000 miles each time" "The mothers transform their thick blubber into milk and the milk is incredibly rich" "Just imagine the babies put on eight pounds a day!" "A male as big as a truck sees a smaller trespasser and this fight over the territory while the females gather" "Elephant seals may look ugly and awkward to us but they are powerful predators" "Soon they will return to the sea where they spend 90 percent of their time diving to depths of up to 1,500 feet" "Ospreys are usually solitary except here" "The abundance in the ocean oasis attract so many of these fish hawks that they crowd the twigs sometimes building their nests less than 100 meters apart" "Whenever I see them using those clawlike beaks so gently" "I can't help wondering whether instinct and emotions are really so different after all" "Is this what we call sibling rivalry?" "The chicks are always hungry so the adult osprey are always fishing" "Underwater other life is also busy breeding" "These creolefish are broadcast spawners" "Milt and eggs burst into the water and mix right there" "Schools of mackerel dash in to feast but many eggs survive" "Other fish produce fewer eggs but tend them carefully" "A female sargeant major lays her eggs on the rocks and the male spends weeks guarding his nest until the eggs hatch chasing off everything else that wants a snack" "Because life in the oasis is so crowded the reef here reminds me of a city" "A moray can smell something tasty but the baby leather bass has a refuge" "She's specially adapted to shelter among the venemous urchins" "But other fish may threaten her sanctuary" "A hawkfish attacks one of the urchins" "It's neighbors mill around waiting for scraps and careless mistakes" "In this city you better watch out when crossing the street" "Barnacles attach by their heads comb the water with their feet" "Life climbs on life here and they're eating things can I barely see" "On the rocks of the reef we're closing in on the secret that makes this fragile oasis possible" "This looks like a garden but these are not plants" "They're colonies of thousands of tiny creatures that build one upon another all reaching out into the moving water for food corals gorgonians sponges" "They're gathering bits of the same feast the richness that makes these waters so nourishing for all of life a huge abundance of plankton" "Comb jellies and jellyfish drift by the plankton soup" "They are carnivores" "This relative of the lion's mane is armed with deadly tentacles" "Yet these tiny jacks swim unharmed among them" "This colonial jellyfish is like a floating rope made up of thousands of polyps strung together each fishing with its own stinging tentacle" "King angelfish savor them" "Perhaps they like spicy foods!" "Spins a web of mucous to catch the tiniest plankton" "Look at this one!" "I call it the little sea elephant" "It's actually a member of the snail family" "We know plankton is a foundation for all this life but why is the plankton more abundant here than anywhere else?" "The answer is deep on the reef in a blizzard of life" "These are mycids tiny coldwater shrimp like creature" "Their abundance tells us that these waters are very rich in nutrients" "The mycids also tell us that these waters are unexpectedly cool" "That coolness is a vital reason why the greatest forces of land and sea combine to create the ocean oasis" "Deep inside our planet's mantle churns with heat" "On the surface the coolest pieces of the Earth's crust sink into the mantle and drag the plates behind them as if they were rafts of stone" "Five million years ago these forces began to pull Baja California from the side of Mexico" "Now look at the ocean" "Winds and the Earth's rotation push surface water away from the land and cooler green waters rise from the depths" "The cool water rich in nutrients nourishes the plankton that forms the base of the pyramid of life creating an oasis that is unique on Earth" "But that's only half the story" "The other half is on land" "It is hard to believe but the same forces that formed the oasis also cause the dryness of the desert" "Moisture here comes from the evaporation of the sea so even plants depend on the ocean" "But when the water is cool not much evaporates to make rain" "So the same cold water that brings the oasis its riches also rob the land of moisture" "Life on the land is driven not just by hunger but by thirst" "Bizarre looking boojum trees and other plants and animals have developed wonderful ways to use every drop of water" "In its thick body a cactus stores the last rain like a memory" "It survives by averaging long dry times with occasional wet ones" "A cardon lives so slowly it may only reproduce itself once in 300 years" "But there are other ways of dealing with thirst" "Hummingbirds live in the fast lane with turbo charged metabolisms ten thousand times faster than the cactus" "With its mobility a hummingbird hunts pockets of moisture and follows a flourish north with the seasons" "Its life is a dance of spring" "As a desert day cools into night a kangaroo rat emerges from its burrow" "The dangerous heat of the day is gone but there is a different kind of enemy out tonight" "The kangaroo rat never drinks neither does the rattlesnake" "The rat's metabolism manufactures water from its food" "The snake gets moisture from its prey" "The snake searches with a second pair of eyes that sense heat instead of light" "Tonight the kangaroo rat escapes" "These creatures are finely adapted to the desert a desert caused by the ocean" "Cold water and dry land" "As I cross this peninsula every mile shows me another way that land and sea shape the oasis" "As we gain altitude more moisture condenses and the vegetation thickens" "There are even pine forests up here near an observatory" "Two miles high lichens rise seared by icy winds and winter snows" "I love this place" "As I travel here by helicopter or burro I often wonder" "Can humans live in harmony with the ocean oasis?" "High in the mountains canyons shelter native palms which drink by streams that keep the precious pools of last year's rains shadowed" "People have been coming here for thousands of years" "With cave paintings they told of their dependance on other life of the ocean oasis" "But we have not always been respectful of that life" "For years people came to Mexico to hunt gray whales" "They have reason to fear us" "That is why Pachico Mayoral's experience is so extraordinary" "It was almost thirty years ago" "One day I was going fishing" "Suddenly a whale came up and rested its head on the side of my boat" "I was terrified" "But the whale wanted to make contact like a friend" "People call the whale the devilfish because it smashed whaling boats to protects itself" "I'm always amazed about how completely they have changed" "Today Pachico takes tourists into lagoons where the whales sometime come to the boats to greet people" "The whales are giving us a great blessing" "I believe that in their world we are all equal" "This is my feeling to all whales" "I believe they teach us what life is" "As we grow to respect the life of the ocean oasis it seems to welcome us home" "Mantas eat plankton but they come here for other reasons too" "They are drawn to this part of the oasis because of these little angelfish that swim out to meet them" "The angelfish go right up to the manta and gently clean it eating algae and parasites off its flanks" "They also pester the remora which clings to the manta so they can clean the sore that the suckerfish has made" "Mantas are huge powerful animals" "They can swim 20 miles an hour and can easily avoid most divers" "But they choose to swim with us" "Like gray whales the mantas seem to welcome the touch" "As I watch these creatures one depending on the other" "I realize how everthing is connected and how the land and the seas of the ocean oasis are linked in a web of life that binds us all" "Among these great creatures I feel embraced and protected" "I wish I could protect them too"