"A sperm whale lies stranded, close to death." "To look at him now, it's hard to imagine what an extraordinary life he's led." "This is the largest predator the world has ever seen." "His home is the abyss." "He's spent most of his life at a staggering two kilometres below the waves." "Only surfacing to breathe." "Our technology can only ever give us the briefest glimpse of his alien landscape." "But what if we could see it as he sees it?" "It would be like turning on the lights in a world of eternal darkness." "Down here, mountains rise higher than Everest, ravines run deeper than the Grand Canyon" "and the creatures are more monstrous than anything found on land." "This film lights up the deep." "It tells the story of one whale's 80-year journey from calf to king of the abyss." "Welcome to the ultimate ocean odyssey." "November, 1929, and a steam ship is working in the North Atlantic, 200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland." "The crew are on a mission to repair telegraph cables that run along the ocean floor between Europe and America." "The cable lies in a world that these men know little about." "Although they cannot see it, they are floating above a giant deep-sea cliff." "Here, the continental shelf drops away to depths of over four kilometres." "These are the fertile fishing grounds of the Grand Banks." "Not far away, a sperm whale is about to make his first deep-water dive." "He's only two years old." "Until now, he's spent his young life in the sunlit surface waters under the protection of his huge mother." "This is the first stage of an apprenticeship that will take him deeper and deeper into the oceans of the world." "At 400 metres, the young bull enters the midnight zone." "Down here, no light remains." "His eyes are useless." "But he isn't blind." "He uses sound to see into the gloom." "A third of his body is given over to the most powerful sonar in the natural world." "His giant nose fires clicks into the depths." "The echoes bounce back from more than a kilometre away, illuminating the hidden world." "The perilous slopes of the Grand Banks." "This is the gateway to the abyss." "Down there is a world of astonishing landscapes and monstrous creatures." "These slopes drop for a further three kilometres to where the pressure is 300 times what it is on the surface." "He's reaching his limit." "His young body would be crushed at those depths," "but his mother and the other females that make up his family pod have no such restrictions." "As they head for their hunting grounds, their bodies disturb tiny marine creatures leaving a bioluminescent trail in their wake." "One of the females stays behind to baby-sit the young bull as he explores this unfamiliar world." "The Grand Banks are the submarine equivalent to Alpine slopes." "And like the Alps, they're covered in snow." "But this is marine snow." "Made up of tiny fragments of dead fish and plankton, it falls from the fertile waters above, balancing precariously along the edge of the steep slopes." "Most species of whale survive grazing on tiny plankton, but sperm whales use their sonar to hunt down the creatures of the deep." "The young whale is investigating something twitching on the sea bed." "But this disturbance is man-made." "Keep the tension!" "By the 1930s, dozens of massive telegraph cables crisscrossed the floor of the Atlantic." "It's one of mankind's first attempts to exploit the deep, and they require frequent maintenance." "Dragging the cables up from the bottom, they're looking for signs of damage." "Every year, cables are mysteriously broken." "Today they'll learn the landscape below them is not nearly as dead as they think it is." "In the total darkness of the abyss, the whale's echolocation picks up the moving form of the cable." "The young female's curiosity is leading her into trouble." "In the early evening, a deep-ocean earthquake reverberates along the Grand Banks." "It measures 7.2 on the Richter scale." "For the abyss, it's a small tremor but it will spark off a deadly chain of events." "The bull's mother can hear the disturbance." "The young whale must leave, but his companion is caught up in the coils." "And now everyone's in danger." "The earthquake has set off a giant underwater landslide." "Along the banks, an area half the size of Holland is on the move." "The young bull is forced to leave the female to her fate." "The sea seems to take a giant intake of breath." "A tsunami radiates across the ocean at 300 kilometres an hour." "For the crew, the giant wave causes little more than a lurch." "In deep water, the men are safe." "But the wave is heading towards the Newfoundland coast." "For generations, these people have harvested the shallow waters of the Grand Banks." "Today, though, they'll learn that events in the abyss can reach out and change their lives." "Come on." "Walk on." "In the shallows, the wave grows." "It's the most destructive Atlantic tsunami for 100 years." "No family on that coast was unaffected." "The secret world of the abyss can never be taken for granted." "Twelve transatlantic cables snapped across 800 kilometres of seabed." "And the breaking signals provided the first clear record of the geological forces at work beneath the sea." "That one's nearly as big as you, Bob." "It's not the only thing that these cables can reveal about the deep." "Deaths of whales caught like this provide the first proof about just how deep sperm whales can dive." "The young bull has started out on his journey of deep-sea discovery." "And so has man." "Look at the size of this one." "Have you got your rod, Bob?" "Yeah, somewhere." "For an adult whale to reach 45 tonnes, it must eat an average of 1,000 kilos of food a day." "An appetite which drives an endless search for enough food." "And as the pod turns east, another impulse gives urgency to their travels." "The young bull's mother is pregnant." "It's time to head for their birthing grounds in the heart of the Atlantic." "At the foot of the continental shelf lies the flattest and stillest place on Earth." "It's called the abyssal plain and stretches out ahead of the whales for 4,500 kilometres." "It's like a giant desert." "Down here there's no hard surface for life to gain a foothold." "Life in the abyss only gathers where the currents and seabed help circulate nutrients." "This is no place for a giant predator like a whale." "They're in for a long, hungry trek." "Day and night they move over the ocean desert, heading for the next feeding station." "The next island of life." "But there is one creature that is drawn to these lifeless plains." "Emerging from ponds all along the coast of America, every year, over a million eels head for one of the most extraordinary gatherings on Earth." "The abyssal plain is their destination." "In these vast mating balls, eggs are fertilised en masse." "The frenzy marks a macabre climax to the adults' lives." "For one day every year, the dead zone is littered with a million corpses and billions of eggs." "Everything that falls to the bottom of the ocean will eventually be recycled." "The nutrients brought back to the surface fuelling the world's largest food chain." "And the sperm whale sits at the top of that chain." "They are the apex predators." "But for this pod, it's been a week since they filled their stomachs." "And as they get all their fresh water from the food they eat, if the young whale doesn't feed soon, he'll die of thirst before he dies of hunger." "But hope rises out of the gloom." "The mountainous form signals that they're reaching the end of their ordeal." "In the deep ocean, any hard structure creates a haven for life and a hunting opportunity for sperm whales." "The giant peaks of this mountain range lie a thousand metres below the surface." "Almost double the distance the young bull managed at the Grand Banks." "Dive too deep and he could drown before he gets back to the surface." "But if he stays up here, he will starve." "It will take over 20 minutes to reach the hunting grounds below." "Instinctively he settles into a dive rate of five kilometres an hour." "He's falling into the abyss." "His heart rate slows to one beat per minute." "Blood supply to his skin is cut off to prevent heat loss." "And as the pressure increases, his ribcage is designed to collapse." "The lungs have flattened under the crushing body." "Protective mucus is needed to keep them from sticking together permanently." "Although his destination is still hundreds of metres below him, his powerful sonar sketches the landscape." "Ahead of him lies one of the strangest worlds in the abyss." "Lost City." "Here, vents of super-heated water have been flowing for 30,000 years, depositing minerals that grow into giant spires, some of them 60 metres high." "The deep shapes the creatures that live here." "Sometimes into bizarre forms." "An oarfish can grow to the size of a two-storey house." "It's the longest fish in the sea." "Almost never seen at the surface, rare sightings of this creature sparked legends of man-eating serpent sea monsters." "In fact, their prey is tiny." "They're opportunist predators that suck up a passing morsel with an extendable mouth." "Humans will not discover these ghostly spires for another 70 years." "Whales have known about it for generations." "After his marathon descent, the young whale has less than 10 minutes at the bottom." "Using sonar, he searches the new world for potential food." "The juvenile has no teeth." "Sperm whales suck in their prey, crushing it in their stomach." "The spiny oarfish is the wrong choice." "Following his mother's lead, he's starting to get the idea." "An adult whale can eat 500 squid in a single dive." "The young bull is running low on oxygen." "And the surface is 20 minutes above him." "His first encounter with one of the greatest landscapes of the deep has been all too brief." "Lost City sits on top of one of the biggest seamounts in the Atlantic," "Atlantis Massif." "This, in turn, hangs on the edge of one of the greatest canyons in the ocean, part of a giant mountain chain that the young whale will learn is a lifeline for his kind." "When your world is this vast, the deep ocean is a daunting place." "Alone on the surface, he uses his sensitive hearing to listen to the sounds of the ocean." "He tracks the clicks of his mother, following her as she hunts deep below." "There are other sounds in the ocean." "There are animals out here that will eat a young whale." "And as the female returns to the surface, she will fall silent for over 20 minutes." "It's a long wait." "Their reunion is short-lived." "When food is available, whales rarely spend more than 10 minutes on the surface." "The huge mountain chain beneath them is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge." "It's a highway of life that will guide the whales to their birthing grounds in the north." "Stretching from the Southern Ocean to Iceland, this ridge is part of the greatest geological feature on the planet." "Formed by the moving apart of the Earth's crust, two plates slowly separate and lava oozes from the Earth's mantle, building a giant ridge of undersea mountains." "And as the ridge turns east, they rise higher until the tips of six volcanoes break out of the water" "forming what we call the Azores." "These steep volcanic cliffs channel deep-water currents carrying nutrients to the surface." "In the shallows, life abounds and the food chain continues down into the abyss." "In the inky blackness of the deep, life is marked by the sparkle of bioluminescent creatures." "And if we could see the extent of these glowing shoals, they'd appear like a glittering firework display." "These chemical glows are used as lures and decoys to confuse the enemy." "But the enemy uses it, too." "The anglerfish looks terrifying." "In fact, it's not much bigger than your hand." "Most predators here are squid and they come in all sizes." "The giant squid is bigger than a family car." "Its eye is the size of a basketball." "No one has ever witnessed the giant squid in the deep." "And despite its size, it's a favourite prey of the sperm whale." "The battle between them is the greatest wildlife spectacle that we've never actually witnessed." "As the pod approaches the Azores, they encounter an unexpected obstacle." "Although we never see it, hidden in the depths of the abyss, there is a volcanic eruption everyday." "As the broiling lava hits pressurised seawater, hot gases are trapped in the honeycomb of solidifying rock." "For a moment, gas-filled boulders float." "The whales have arrived." "This is their haven." "In the 1920s people had very little idea about what these animals got up to below the surface." "It would be decades before we learn that sperm whales are the most social of all the whales." "And at gatherings like this, their sonar changes into a complex pattern of clicks, almost a language." "Hardly surprising from an animal with the biggest brain on the planet." "For the young whale, it's an opportunity to reinforce his bonds with the pod, so vital to his survival in the open ocean." "But even here, danger is never far away." "In New Zealand, the scars on the dying bull are testament to battles with all kinds of ocean creatures." "Look at these marks." "And even 80 years on, a large chunk out of his tail bears witness to a moment in the Azores that could so easily have cut short his life." "While the rest of the pod heads down to feed in the volcanic depths the bull's mother does not join them." "The pangs of labour have started." "The young bull stays on the surface with her." "A team of killer whales have been following the social chatter of the sperm whales for several miles." "If they isolate the young whale, they'll eat him alive." "The pack switches to radio silence." "Two orcas peel off." "They will close in from behind." "Travelling at 35 knots, a killer takes a bite of flesh in less than a second." "Now there is blood in the water and the frenzy begins." "The mother tries to put her body between the injured calf and the killers." "Far below, the pod hear the orcas." "They must return before it's too late." "The pod arrives, but the danger is not over." "They instinctively form a protective rosette around the injured calf." "But the killer whales are relentless." "They can kill an entire pod." "But not today." "A fully-grown bull has arrived." "Male sperm whales are 30% larger than females and carry over twice the weight." "Unlike the females, they possess a formidable row of teeth." "He's one whale too many for the killers." "For the first time, the young whale meets the giant he will one day become." "His life is already changing." "In the centre of the melee, his mother has given birth." "A tiny sister." "The young bull will no longer have the constant protection of his mother." "He will have to start to face up to the dangers of the deep on his own." "For decades, sperm whales have provided us with our most important clues to life in the deep oceans." "Scars on their body and the contents of their stomachs reveal how giant sea creatures, thought to be part of mythology, do exist after all." "Keep him wet." "As scientists slowly piece together a more detailed picture of this animal's world, they're also beginning to understand the complexity of the oceans themselves." "He's still alive, all right." "And how these giant bodies of water are the engine of the world's climate." "It's 1938, and a storm is brewing in the mid Atlantic." "Most of the sun's energy is stored in the sea." "Just the top three metres alone absorbs more heat than the entire atmosphere of the Earth." "Ocean currents distribute this heat slowly around the planet." "As the warm seas evaporate, huge quantities of water are carried high into the atmosphere." "A small shift in the heat of the ocean can set in motion a weather pattern that grows to massive proportions." "The young bull is 12 years old." "A 35-tonne teenager as big as a bus." "The pod's heading back along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge." "Over time, adult whales build up astonishingly detailed mental maps of the deep oceans." "Together with their long range sonar, they are phenomenal navigators." "The search for food never ends." "In one life time they will travel over half a million kilometres." "The bottom here is too deep to hunt, so the mother is searching for changes in the water currents that will lead her to food." "They're invisible to human eyes, but a sperm whale can sense the change in temperature." "Where the warm waters of the Gulf Stream rub along the cold, still waters of the Atlantic, an ocean front is created." "Huge eddies form, called gyres, which can grow to many kilometres across." "The upwelling draws nutrients towards the surface, creating blooms of plankton, sparking off a temporary island of life." "First on the scene, fish gather in massive shoals." "They, in turn, attract the blue-water hunters." "Bait balls are corralled by dolphin and marlin," "shark and tuna." "It's a busy oasis in an otherwise empty stretch of ocean." "In the depths, squid get lured up towards the action above them." "It's a niche only the whales can cash in on." "But not all the predators are below the water." "In the 1930s, steam-powered whalers are state-of-the-art hunting machines." "For over a century, the sperm whale has been the most valuable of all the whales." "Over a third of the whale's volume is oil." "Its famous nose carries 150 gallons of it." "It's used to lubricate delicate machinery and to the whalers, it's literally worth its weight in gold." "To find their quarry, they've also learned to read the movements of the ocean." "Like the whales, they know that an abrupt change in sea temperature is a clue to an ocean front." "Find the front and you'll find fish." "Find fish and there's a good chance you'll find whales." "They're not far behind the pod now." "But unknown to them, they are, in turn, being chased." "Fed on the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the storm has been growing." "As the moist, warm air rises, cooler air is sucked in." "The more water that is drawn up, the more powerful the storm becomes." "The rotation of the Earth causes the clouds to twist, and the familiar shape of a hurricane has started to form." "Three hundred kilometres to the north, the whales have arrived above a spectacular canyon system that cuts across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge." "The Charley Gibbs Fracture Zone." "Here, halfway between Iceland and the Azores, two massive fractures funnel deep-ocean currents in different directions." "The amount of flow through here is the equivalent to all the rivers on Earth." "It's one of the most abundant deep sea worlds in the Atlantic." "The adults waste no time in diving down." "But the young bull stays on the surface to prepare himself." "This will be the deepest dive of his life." "Thirty minutes down and his mother has made it to the edge of the Fracture Zone." "Some of these trenches are three times deeper than the Grand Canyon." "It will take all her skills to navigate these dark passages." "Below a depth of two kilometres, only about 5% of the creatures are known to us." "But they are all potential prey for a whale." "A wreckfish is also attracted by the life that clings to the canyon wall." "These deep-water scavengers grow to over a metre." "But the sperm whale is not the only giant predator down here." "The giant squid is the stuff of legend." "A lacerating beak feeds prey down a throat that travels directly through its brain." "Coordinating eight arms with precision takes one of the most advanced nervous systems in the world." "Giant squid are never seen on the surface alive." "In the deep, these solitary creatures are not as rare as we once thought." "The young bull has finally made it to the canyon, but he's at the limits of his endurance." "He will stay near the top of the ridge just where the giant squid likes to forage." "The adults have already returned to the surface." "Parking up for a snooze after their big meal." "Their giant nose causes them to float upright, allowing the blowhole to sit just above the surface." "Deep below, the young bull is still hunting through the labyrinth of canyons." "He's spotted a shape in the murk." "It's bigger than anything he's eaten before." "The squid can feel the whale's sonar but has no way of locating its directions." "The whale needs an element of surprise." "But a sudden flash from a shoal of bioluminescent shrimp gives him away." "The great battle begins." "On the surface, the party's unaware of the plight of the teenager below them." "If not handled right, a giant squid can inflict real injuries on a young whale." "Suddenly they're in mortal danger, too." "The whales instinctively dive but they've not prepared their bodies to go deep." "They can stay under for no more than ten minutes." "The trap has been sprung." "Deep below, the squid is wrapped around his head." "Serrated suckers cut into his skin." "And he's running low on oxygen." "Starboard!" "Full starboard!" "The adults are also running out of breath." "As the young bull heads for the surface, the squid momentarily releases its grip, and the whale seizes his chance." "But the writhing mass of tentacles is still alive." "The whale needs to kill it inside his stomach." "Sucking the squid down into his throat, powerful muscles squeeze the life out of the squid." "The biggest predator on the planet has triumphed over one of the greatest monsters of the deep." "But he does not know the storm that awaits him on the surface." "As the whalers set out for home, the power of the ocean is about to be unleashed." "120 kilometres an hour winds whip up 20-metre waves." "When these waves hit currents moving in the opposite direction, they're magnified into seven-storey peaks." "If the boats get caught side on, they'll capsize." "Both ships must head directly into the waves." "The bull snatches a much needed gulp of air." "The power of the storm can still be heard to depths of over 500 metres and the noise creates a cacophony." "If the swell is big enough, even a 100- foot boat will fall down the side of the wave." "Once side on, the end is all too quick." "If a body is held deeper than 70 metres, it will never return to the surface." "The abyss claims all who come this close." "In the calm after the storm, it's hard to appreciate the fiendish strength of what has been and gone." "It's ripped across all current boundaries." "The low pressure mixing up parts of the ocean that do not usually have any disturbance from below." "It's travelled through the oceans like a forest fire, destructive and awful." "But the turmoil will stimulate new life." "In a matter of months, powerful urges would have driven the teenage bull to leave his family." "But not like this." "He is prematurely alone, and the biggest brain in the animal kingdom cannot be unaffected." "This orphan is yet to become king of the deep." "Next week, we find out how the whale survives the most perilous deep-sea landscapes of them all." "And these aren't the only dangers he'll face." "As time moves on, his world is changing." "Beneath the oceans that cover our planet, there's an extraordinary world that we humans can barely see." "But the life story of one ocean creature can light up the abyss." "This film will take you on an impossible journey, following a sperm whale into the eternal darkness of the deep." "We've seen our whale as a youngster learning to master this alien world." "Now he's grown up and he's ready to travel further and dive deeper than any other creature on Earth," "facing new dangers in an ocean that man is changing." "Welcome to the ultimate ocean odyssey." "The largest predator on our planet lies stranded on a beach in New Zealand." "If this sperm whale is not returned to the ocean soon, he'll die here." "Most of his life has been spent over two kilometres beneath the waves, so a stranding like this provides us with a unique insight into a world about which we know so little." "These scars are evidence of creatures we've never seen alive." "And blood tests reveal something extraordinary." "They show that although this bull was found here in the Pacific, he comes from a family of Atlantic whales." "At some point in his life, he must have undertaken a rare crossing from one ocean into another." "Ajourney that started at the southern tip of the Americas, where the largest ocean current in the world funnels through a gap just 800 kilometres wide," "creating the fiercest stretch of ocean on the planet, Drake Passage." "Deep below, the sea floor is littered with wrecks." "A graveyard for generations of sailors." "Using the most powerful sonar in the animal kingdom," "sperm whales penetrate the darkness of the deep." "Down here, wrecks provide a foothold for life, a home for sea fans and sponges, wreckfish and squid." "An opportunity for a hungry whale." "The bull is in his prime." "Only males develop teeth." "It takes over 30 years for them to reach full size, and each one can weigh over a kilo." "But they aren't for hunting." "He's now ready to use his teeth to challenge other bulls and fight for the right to mate." "Most whales of his age head north towards the equator to look for females, but the ocean is about to lure him into a detour to the west." "Six hundred metres down, he's entering a mysterious layer of water that's filled with the sounds of a distant ocean." "He's inside a phenomenon called the SOFAR channel, picking up calls of whales from hundreds of kilometres away." "Here, sound becomes trapped, bouncing between warm water at the surface and the cold, dense water of the deep." "It can be transmitted across entire oceans." "What he's tuning into is a group of over 40 young bulls preparing to dive." "By 1960, sperm whales are being hunted at a rate of 30,000 a year." "A gathering like this is becoming an increasingly rare sight." "The social clicks of Pacific whales are different from their Atlantic neighbours, not so much a new language as a strange accent." "But the gang seem to be open to all comers, even this stranger from the east." "There are advantages to such a large group." "The hunting clicks of one whale can signal the discovery of a shoal of fish that they can all cash in on." "From now on, the Pacific will be his home." "And he's not the only mammal starting a new adventure in this great ocean." "It's January the 3rd, 1960." "And far to the west, two men are attempting a voyage into the unknown." "Aboard the Trieste, they're heading for the deepest point on Earth, the bottom of the Marianna Trench." "The main section of the submarine is a fuel-filled buoyancy tank." "The men are suspended in a tiny steel sphere below it, and they have a long way to go." "Throw a rock into the water here, and it will take over an hour before it hits the bottom, 11 kilometres down." "The Pacific is the deepest ocean of them all." "Towards the western fringes of this giant ocean, the movement of the Earth's crust drives the seabed under the continent of Asia, creating a vast depression in the Earth's mantle, an ocean valley of gigantic proportions." "If it is to succeed, the Trieste's steel capsule will have to withstand pressures of 1,000 times greater than those on the surface." "It's getting cold." "At 800 metres, the temperature is only three degrees above freezing." "Travelling at three kilometres an hour, it will take them fours hours to reach the bottom." "The sperm whale falls into the abyss at a steady speed of five kilometres an hour, and a four-inch layer of blubber protects him from the cold." "At 1,800 metres, a tonne of pressure pushes down on every inch of the craft." "Matt, it's leaking again." "It should stop soon." "God, how does anything survive out here?" "The whale's lungs shrink to half their size under a collapsible rib cage." "A protective mucus stops them from sticking together permanently." "At two and a half kilometres down, the craft has reached the limit of even the largest of whales." "From this moment on, the sperm whale will lose its record as the deepest mammal on the planet." "For the men..." "What was that?" "...it's still another eight kilometres to the bottom." "Have we touched the bottom?" "No, we are still falling." "Any flaw in the system could cause implosion." "And halfway into the dive, an exit window develops a hairline crack." "The aquanauts have undertaken this extreme dive not even knowing what awaits them at the bottom." "They cannot slow their descent in a hurry." "If the floor is a thick soup of marine snow, they know the craft could be engulfed." "Fifteen." "Slowing up." "I can see the bottom." "Brace yourself." "Wonderful!" "No one had ever imagined that there could be life at such crushing pressures." "It's the beginning of a new appreciation of our ocean depths." "But to understand the true scale and variety of life in the deep, you need to know where to look." "And the most inhospitable environment on the planet hides its secret well." "This tiny craft sits at the bottom of a trench that could swallow Mount Everest with a few kilometres to spare." "They have a long journey home." "And like all great explorers, they leave their mark for future generations." "But no one will attempt to reach these depths again." "It's as if the hell of the deep is too difficult and the heavens are easier to explore." "...override off." "Engine arm off. 4 1 3 is in." "We copy you down, Eagle." "By 1969, we knew more about the lifeless surface of the moon..." "The Eagle has landed." "...than we did about the deep oceans of our own planet." "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue." "We're breathing again." "Thanks a lot." "But from space, the enduring image is that ours is a blue planet." "99% of the habitable area on Earth is in the deep." "In the years following the Trieste dive, our exploration of the deep may have stalled, but our exploitation of the oceans accelerated." "By the 1970s, the world's fishing fleets had found new ways of harvesting the oceans." "This long-liner can drag 20,000 hooks to depths of over two kilometres." "Mankind's hunting techniques are directly encroaching on the sperm whale territory." "But they don't have the biggest brains on the planet for nothing." "The Atlantic whale is learning a new trick from its Pacific cousins." "They've discovered that the sound of the boats' motors signals the start of a giant sushi trolley bringing fresh fish up from the depths." "But they're not the only whales who've learnt to race to this dinner bell." "In any ocean, killer whales and sperm whales are old adversaries." "The Atlantic bull still bears the scars from when he was attacked as a calf." "Now he's three times their size." "The sheer persistence of the orcas usually pays off." "And anyway, these bulls are on a mission, searching for females in the warmer waters to the north." "The route they follow takes them along a giant ridge that stretches 8,000 kilometres along the length of the ocean, the East Pacific Rise." "Here, the movement of the Earth's crust is pulling the ocean floor apart." "Similar to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, it allows magma to seep out of the Earth's core, causing volcanic mountains to rise from the seabed." "But there's one big difference here." "These plates are moving apart at speeds five times faster than those of the Atlantic." "And when this ridge blows, all hell is let loose." "It starts with explosions of pillow lava, created as molten rock meets icy water." "And all along the fracture, dormant volcanoes are brought to life, some three times the size of Mount St Helens." "Magma found in the Pacific can be so fluid that it spreads at speeds of over 30 kilometres an hour, creating giant lava lakes." "And on a bad day," "the ridge can split the ocean floor in what scientists call the curtain of fire." "On the surface, there'll be no sign of the storm raging 2,000 metres below." "For the whales, the ridge provides a habitat for a chain of deep-sea life, a feeding corridor taking the north towards the mating grounds of the Galápagos." "Around these islands, there's a steaming gateway that creates one of the most exotic landscapes of the deep." "It's a place that's attracting the attention of man." "A submarine named Alvin is following strange temperature readings coming from below." "At 1,600 metres down, the mystery of the readings is solved." "Vents of superheated water bursting from the seabed." "Then something far more unexpected, a discovery that will change our view of life on Earth." "Huge tube worms, new species of crab and shrimp, a new kind of life form." "This unique world is not based upon what falls from above." "Instead, it's fuelled by the energy of the steaming vents themselves." "Until this moment, scientists have thought that sunlight was the sole energy source driving all life on Earth." "Here is evidence that life can find another way." "Alvin's spotlights have illuminated the scientific discovery of the decade, but the research team have no way of appreciating the scale of the landscape that surrounds them." "This discovery of the deep means that all life on Earth could have started here in the abyss." "The edges of this volatile world provide the sperm whale with an opportunity to catch an eelpout or two." "As dissolved minerals solidify, the dark chimneys rise from the seabed, growing to over 70 metres in just a few years." "But the earthquakes which roll through this deep-sea world" "mean that they are all ultimately doomed." "Eight million years of ceaseless volcanic activity has culminated in the volcanoes of the Galápagos Islands." "And just like the Azores in the Atlantic, they provide the perfect habitat for the sperm whales to breed." "The bulls respond to the clicks of the female groups." "But this fearsome noise spells trouble." "At 55 years old, the skin of this male is almost white with battle scars." "His sonic clangs are strong enough to stun a human diver." "The sound alone is enough to settle most confrontations, and it sends the two younger bulls fleeing." "But the Atlantic whale is ready for a fight." "Locking jaws keeps the dangerous teeth at bay." "The younger whale is smaller, but he's more agile." "The gash across the nose is enough to persuade the old bull that he's met his match." "The spoils of this battle are a chance to pass on his genes in a whole new ocean." "He will stay with this group of females for up to a month." "It's the start of a new phase in his life, roaming the Pacific alone, visiting female groups time and again to sire more and more offspring." "No, not here!" "Go round there." "Hurry up!" "By the end of his life, this whale had travelled far enough to circumnavigate the globe 40 times." "And as man started to change the oceans of the world, it caused a struggle for survival that pushed this whale into Antarctica," "a place only the oldest and largest of bulls can go." "The whale is 80 years old, a veteran of the deep ocean." "As he approaches the warm waters off Hawaii, he's tracking down the breeding groups that live around here." "When he was born, sperm whales numbered over a million animals." "Whaling reduced them to under a quarter that size." "Now these resourceful predators are starting to recover, but it still takes some skill to find the females." "Ahead of him is the tallest mountain on Earth." "Measured from its base, five kilometres below the sea, the main island of Hawaii is 1,000 metres taller than Everest." "As usual, he's constantly wary and alert to the presence of other rival bulls." "A monster approaches." "Pulsing his sonar at the beast, a crystal clear image returns." "The nuclear submarine is the ultimate deep-sea machine." "It cruises at depths of 1,000 metres, and can stay down here for up to a year." "The sub is running silent." "She's being hunted and any noise will give her away." "On the surface, a destroyer is trying to find her, listening for the slightest noise." "The submarine is built for silence." "She may displace 9,000 tonnes, but she emits as little noise as a hairdryer." "The whale has found himself in the middle of a war game." "The submarine cannot see her surroundings, but a supercomputer charts every metre of her journey, the calculations plotted out on a virtual map of the seabed." "The sub eases up to a giant cliff." "She's hiding." "The tracking ship is using whale technology to see into the deep." "Sending pulses of sound and listening to the echo." "The giant sea cliff is confusing the image." "To the whale, these sonar pings are akin to searing flashes of light." "He's leaving just in time." "The flotilla has a secret weapon." "The fin-shaped array emits a low frequency wave louder than a jet fighter taking off." "The sonic shock bounces back details hidden to ordinary sonar." "Target acquired. 303 300." "For the sub, the game is up." "For the whale, a pressure wave is travelling towards him at 5,000 kilometres per hour." "Reeling, the whale surfaces." "His senses slowly return, but the water seems alive with noise." "Travelling at 25 knots, a container ship hull is a deadly hammer." "The propeller screws are at the rear." "The bow is silent." "A deep rumble permeates the ocean, but it's hard for a whale to work out where it's coming from." "For some species of whales, ship strikes are the biggest killer." "In a panic, he's had no time to prepare his body for the dive." "Short of oxygen, he has to return to the surface quicker than he would like." "As he rises, bubbles of gas in his bones expand like tiny mines, eating away at his spine." "Even a sperm whale can get the bends." "Forced dives like this can inflict irreversible damage on his ageing body." "At any one time, 30,000 giant ships are crisscrossing the surface of the world's oceans, making them more and more crowded." "And as this old whale is about to find out, man is increasingly invading his deep-water world, too." "Off the coast of Mexico, water flowing off the continent of America etches a canyon to depths of over two kilometres." "The runoff from the land makes a fertile deep-sea landscape that's a magnet for life, a beacon for diving whales." "It's taken the bull just eight days to get here, but the females are unresponsive." "Far from falling over him, they're diving away from him." "Down below, the feeding grounds are strangely quiet." "Man has got here first." "A bottom trawler is devastating the once thriving feeding grounds." "The females are starving." "Bottom trawling is the new slash-and- burn technique of the oceans' farmers." "The majority of fish are now caught this way." "A single net can be big enough to contain three jumbo jets." "The technique destroys a marine habitat about which we know next to nothing." "And each year, an area twice the size of America is scraped bare." "For this giant, it's time to attempt the one thing he hasn't done, to head to a place untouched by humans where only the biggest and strongest of males are able to go and where the food is out of this world." "The contents of a whale's stomach are still one of the best insights into deep-ocean life." "This regurgitated squid was probably hunted two kilometres below the surface." "Just get this out for you." "And a claw embedded in his skin is from one of the great monsters of the deep." "How long do you think he's got?" "A creature even larger than a giant squid, a beast that only the biggest bulls will take on." "In the last year of his life, the whale heads south towards one of the most extreme of all ocean environments." "On the way, a milky soup announces the presence of the great building blocks of ocean life." "A plankton bloom is made up of tiny sea creatures and microscopic plants." "During the day, the tiny animals move en masse to the relative safety of the deep, but down there, jellyfish are waiting." "It's a slow-motion feeding frenzy." "Phytoplankton like this remain near the surface." "They're plants and they're doing what all plants do, using the energy from the sun to process dissolved carbon dioxide." "The carbon is locked away in their bodies and oxygen released." "Each one absorbs a microscopic amount of carbon, but the vastness of the oceans multiplies the effect." "They have more influence on our atmosphere than all the forests on the Earth put together." "And when these creatures die, they carry the carbon down to the abyss with them." "Over millions of years, as their bodies sink into the seabed, the carbon is trapped in the deep, slowly turning into oil." "Anchored by cables to the ocean floor, this deep-sea oil rig is the tallest man-made structure on Earth." "It's an artificial shelter where life gathers in huge shoals." "A chance for an opportunist predator to stock up on fish." "But today, it's not the fish that catch his eye." "Controlled from the surface, a remote-operated vehicle is used to run structural checks on the rig." "These cameras can provide tantalising glimpses of life in the gloom." "Today, this sub will record an extraordinary contact." "One of the first images of a sperm whale in the deep." "Of all the strange creations the bull has encountered in the deep, this apparently benign structure is having the most far-reaching effect on his world." "By burning oil, we are releasing the carbon extracted by the plankton back into the atmosphere." "There is now more carbon dioxide in our air than at any time in the last 20 million years." "The effects of a global rise in temperature are felt most acutely in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica." "Two-thirds of all the world's fresh water is locked in the ice here." "This ice shelf protects one of the few regions of the oceans untouched by humans." "But this is the most extreme of all the deep-sea environments." "Only specialists can live here." "The toothfish survive the cold with antifreeze in its blood." "And high levels of oxygen in the water allow these fish to grow to over two metres in length." "This deep-sea world is fed by boom-and-bust blooms of plankton." "It's a feast-and-famine regime that encourages the growth of giants." "And here in the depths of the Antarctic, there's a creature which has remained undiscovered" "until recently." "Once, the giant squid was believed to be the biggest of its kind, so scientists had to come up with a new name for this monster." "They called it colossal squid." "And it's not just larger than its giant cousin." "It's a more active predator, too." "Its tentacles are armed with rotating hooks, each capable of slicing a two-inch gash deep into whale blubber." "This is the beast of sailors' legends." "The body alone can be five metres long." "Inside is the most ferocious beak in the animal kingdom." "But there is one creature even bigger." "The female." "She can grow to 15 metres in length." "And she's a formidable lover." "The old bull has arrived at the farthest reaches of any sperm whale's range." "Once again, he's tapping into a deep-water niche no other predators can reach." "At the edge of the ice shelf, he starts to hunt." "Usually, surface ice would keep him from approaching the edge of the shelf, but the melting icecap has created a honeycomb of submarine caverns." "A crystal maze." "He's not designed to navigate through this kind of environment." "It's the first time in his life he's had a roof over his head, blocking his access to air." "He needs oxygen and fast." "Sperm whales instinctively shy away from the shallows." "They're deep-water hunters." "Their sonar has evolved to hunt the giant spaces of the deep." "The whale's body has been honed by the abyss." "His huge streamlined bulk is designed to cope with marathon dives to extreme pressures." "It takes 10 minutes for him to take in enough oxygen for a deep dive." "The blood in his veins transports the precious gas around his body." "His muscles turn black as they store enough oxygen to stay under for up to 90 minutes." "It's time to dive deep into the world of giants." "In the eternal darkness of the deep, the whale's sonar locks on to targets 500 metres away." "The squid's massive eye is designed to pick up the faintest shadow above." "He knows something is out there." "But now the squid's hooks are showing their ferocious power." "A slash to the eye and the squid is free." "But not for long." "Now the squid is wrapped around his head." "The only chance for the whale is to get a grip of its body." "The battle between the two biggest predators on Earth has been won." "For the victor, it marks the final chapter in an epic ocean odyssey." "In his 80 years, he's travelled from the depths of the Grand Banks to the deep-sea cliffs of the Azores." "He's made over half a million deep dives, hunting with giants along the volcanic ridge that stretches from Greenland to the Falklands." "He's rounded Cape Horn and survived the fiery Pacific." "From the tallest mountains to the deepest canyons on the planet, he's taken on the greatest monsters of the abyss." "His life has been about conquering a world we can barely enter." "But these victories have not been without cost." "Every environment has left its mark." "And where does this ocean odyssey end?" "At the threshold of our surface world." "For the first time, he can feel his own weight, but his bulk is crushing the life out of him." "The attempts to return him to the deep are well-intentioned but doomed to failure." "Every odyssey must end somewhere." "Even the greatest on the planet." "His life may be over, but his influence has been spread far across the oceans." "An animal of his age will have sired over 60 offspring." "80 years ago, when the great journey started, we knew next to nothing about the deep." "Now we know enough to see that we are changing the oceans and that the influence of the abyss extends well beyond the deep." "What we cannot know is the kind of ocean that the bull's offspring will be swimming in a generation from now." "But the whale's world may be about to get just a little bit bigger."