Galapagos (2006) - S01E02 - Islands That Changed the World
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00:00Born of fire from the depths of the earth.
00:23Baked by an infernal sun.
00:30Home to the strangest creatures imaginable.
00:38When people first came here, they thought they had found a hell on earth.
00:51But this is no hell.
00:54It is a vibrant crucible of life.
01:14In time, one man saw the truth and changed much more than just our view of these islands.
01:24His name was Charles Darwin.
01:35This is the story of how the lonely Galapagos Islands came from obscurity to change the
01:43world forever.
02:04Your sacred majesty, we had a six-day calm.
02:09The currents were so strong and engulfed us in such a way that on the 10th of March
02:14we were brought to some islands.
02:21Thomas de Berlanga, the Bishop of Panama, was sailing from Panama to Peru.
02:27But when winds failed him, strong currents took hold and he was carried wildly off course.
02:35Eventually, the Bishop and his men found land.
02:40But what a land.
02:47It seemed as though at some time, God had showered stones and the earth is like slag.
02:57Worthless.
02:59Both the land and its creatures seemed infernal.
03:06They dug a well but found water saltier than the sea.
03:12Two men died.
03:19They prayed for deliverance.
03:24The winds returned and the Bishop and his men got away to record their tale of a hell
03:30on earth.
03:32They had discovered the Galapagos.
03:48Six hundred miles off the coast of South America, right on the equator, the Galapagos
03:54are a small group of a dozen or so islands, alone in the vast Pacific Ocean.
04:06For millennia their lava-clad shores and great volcanic mountains remained unnoticed, uncharted,
04:14untainted, until fate brought the Bishop of Panama here nearly five hundred years ago.
04:36At first sight, it's easy to see why the Bishop was horrified by this place.
04:45From the sea come dragons, marine iguanas, slithering onto the land.
05:00As black as the lava itself, they seemed to spit a curse as they purged themselves of
05:06salt from drinking seawater.
05:13In the deserts behind, larger dragons.
05:19For five days, the Bishop was forced to survive on cactus pads.
05:29These land iguanas eat little else.
05:38They bite right through the needle-sharp spines to reach the surprisingly juicy flesh.
05:49And in the smouldering interior, there are giants.
06:08Tortoises as heavy as four grown men.
06:14In their huge bodies, they can store enough fat to go for a year without eating or drinking
06:21anything.
06:29To survive here, it seems you need to be a monster.
06:36Or is it just that you need to be different?
06:43A bird, phoenix-like, emerges from the ashes of this barren coast.
06:50A cormorant.
06:53But its wings are scruffy and small.
06:57It looks like it could never fly.
07:01It can't.
07:08But there is another world beneath the waves.
07:13The ocean is rich, and this is where the flightless cormorant has found its way of surviving,
07:20by trading flight for streamlining.
07:38With what's left of its wings tucked flat against its body, enlarged feet take over,
07:49propelling it on in search of octopuses, eels and small fish.
08:08A female is on the nest.
08:18She makes it from seaweed, expertly weaved into a comfortable bed, protection for her
08:24and her eggs from the razor-sharp larva.
08:36The male brings a gift for his mate, for the nest, and also to bond their relationship.
08:57Without the power of flight, these birds are marooned here.
09:03They have no predators, and on their doorstep is all the food they need.
09:11For the strange creatures that have made the Galapagos home, life is harsh, but not hell.
09:25If the Bishop of Panama had been luckier, he might have seen things differently.
09:32In January each year, the cold Humboldt current that makes Galapagos so dry loosens its grip,
09:41and gives way to warm water from the north.
09:47In good years, it brings a remarkable change to the islands.
10:17Suddenly, a very different Galapagos appears.
10:23From the ash, hidden seeds come to life.
10:27Palo Santo trees that seem long dead are resurrected, from black and white to colour.
10:47A Galapagos spring.
10:53But even spring here is different.
10:59The golden meadows are grazed by land iguanas, relishing a pleasant change from cactus pads.
11:11The golden meadows are grazed by land iguanas, relishing a pleasant change from cactus pads.
11:19And this female carpenter bee, also drawn to the new flush of flowers, visits many different kinds.
11:27But strangely enough, she doesn't seem to care.
11:34And this female carpenter bee, also drawn to the new flush of flowers, visits many different kinds.
11:42But strangely, almost all of them are yellow.
11:48She is the only kind of bee in Galapagos.
11:52If she likes yellow, there's little point in a flower being anything else.
11:58There's little point in a flower being anything else.
12:12The rain has also brought out little birds.
12:16And all around, they start to sing.
12:20This male finch tries to entice the female to inspect his nest,
12:26carefully built in the protection of a spiny cactus pad.
12:42She likes it and settles in.
12:46But even these ordinary-looking birds are extraordinary.
12:52On the ground, in the trees, where you would expect to find many different birds,
12:58here one kind rules. These are all finches.
13:04In Galapagos, there are 13 different species of finch taking the place of the other birds.
13:10The key is that each has a different beak.
13:14Thicker, stronger for cracking seeds.
13:18Long and sharp for flowers.
13:22Delicate and pointed for winkling tiny creatures from cracks in rocks.
13:28There's even a woodpecker finch.
13:32But without a woodpecker's tongue, it can't reach grubs that are deep inside burrows.
13:38So it has to use all its cunning to get what it wants.
13:42It breaks off a twig.
13:46A tool for probing.
13:54Not quite right.
13:58Yes, just right.
14:22Another tool for another bird.
14:26Another tool for another burrow.
14:32Another fat grub.
14:38There's a lot more to this world than at first meets the eye.
14:48For many years, this brighter side to Galapagos remained completely hidden.
14:54Cursed by the Bishop of Panama, given no name, nobody came near.
15:02But then nobody was even sure the islands existed.
15:06Shifting currents, mists, like ghosts.
15:10Now you see them, now you don't.
15:14In the minds of mariners, the Galapagos were las encantadas, enchanted.
15:20Then, in the late 1500s, somebody put them on a map.
15:24Just 12 crude marks and a name.
15:28Islas de Galapagos.
15:32Islands of the tortoises.
15:36Put it on a map and it becomes real.
15:42The first to come were pirates.
15:46Galapagos was the perfect base for raids on Spanish galleons carrying gold from South America.
16:04But piracy is nothing new to Galapagos.
16:10Frigate birds, looking for plunder.
16:14In these cliffs are the nests of hundreds of thousands of seabirds.
16:20With so much traffic, it's not long before something gets into trouble.
16:27A storm petrol.
16:31But another frigate is in there like a shot.
16:35It's the Galapagos.
16:39It's the Galapagos.
16:43It's the Galapagos.
16:47It's the Galapagos.
16:51It's the Galapagos.
16:55It's the Galapagos.
16:59Another frigate is in there like a shot.
17:03And another.
17:05Two, three white-headed juveniles.
17:09They hound the all-black male.
17:13Forcing it to drop the petrol.
17:29Frigates have a fearsome reputation.
17:33But the odds are not all in their favour.
17:37If they ditch in the sea, their long wings can get critically waterlogged.
17:41With every swoop, they risk drowning.
17:45In the colony, the males inflate their extraordinary red throat perches.
17:51But it's not all of them.
17:55The male already has a carcass to hide.
17:59He's approaching the large red fish.
18:03He's snorkelling, for the first time.
18:07It's a bit late to go in.
18:11They're all in.
18:15And they're all in!
18:19They are trying to be irresistible to females passing overhead.
18:49He's got one.
19:04She soon settles in and tidies up his nest.
19:09He watches over her very carefully.
19:13After all, he's surrounded by pirates.
19:21Another male tries to muscle in.
19:28Now she joins in. She's already made her choice, and helps drive the newcomer away.
19:50Her partner wastes no more time.
20:06And when it's all over, she gets a rest on a comfortable pillow.
20:20Hidden away from the rest of the world, this is a place for pirates to find peace.
20:31The next wave of people came to Galapagos, not to plunder passing ships, but for the
20:36riches of the islands themselves.
20:40In the far west, the deep Cromwell Current collides with the massive islands, and rises,
20:46bringing nutrients from the abyssal deep.
20:50These are some of the richest seas on the equator.
21:00But it wasn't fish that drew people to these waters.
21:08A sperm whale.
21:27They dive to over 3,000 feet for squid.
21:31It's so deep, even the equatorial sun is completely shut out.
21:36So they find their food by echolocation.
21:46Today they are protected. We see them as beautiful giants.
21:51But not so long ago, the view was very different.
21:59These were monsters to be killed for profit.
22:12It was the rush for whale oil and stories of battles with Leviathans of the deep that
22:17brought the Galapagos to the attention of the world at large.
22:24But it wasn't just the whales that were paying the price of discovery.
22:38There was one thing that pirates and whalers all wanted.
22:43Fresh food.
22:46The rich fat, their giant size, made tortoises perfect for the ship's larder.
22:55In 200 years, over 200,000 were taken.
23:02On some islands, tortoises were completely wiped out.
23:10But out of the tragedy came some good.
23:16As more people came to Galapagos, a clearer picture of the islands began to appear.
23:23Each got its own name.
23:27Some parts were still deemed infernal.
23:32But others had sheltered places to anchor or a few trees, vital timber for repairing ships.
23:47Though still enchanted, the islands took on more recognizable shapes,
23:52more accurately fixed on a map.
24:05It was the start of coming to understand them.
24:22Galapagos
24:28Galapagos
24:46When His Majesty's ship, Beagle, reached the Galapagos on the 15th of September, 1835,
24:53it was a last-minute stop before a long journey home.
24:59She had been charting the coast of South America for more than three years.
25:03She now had just five weeks to make a modern and accurate map of this little-known outpost.
25:14But this was much more than just another landfall.
25:18It was to change the course of history.
25:24Charles Darwin
25:27On board was naturalist Charles Darwin.
25:31Not the wise, grey-bearded Darwin we know so well, but young, impressionable, just 26.
25:40Galapagos
25:51At first, he saw the place much as those before him.
25:56Nothing could be less inviting.
25:59Nothing more rough and horrid.
26:02The black rocks, heated by the rays of the vertical sun,
26:07give to the air a close and sultry feeling, like a stove.
26:16But he soon began to see more.
26:22The very ground on which he was walking seemed solidified only yesterday.
26:33It looks like the sea, petrified in its most boisterous moments.
26:42On the Beagle, his head had been buried in a new and controversial book
26:47called Principles of Geology, which described a physical world constantly changing,
26:53moulded by nature's forces.
26:56And, just weeks before, in South America, he had been caught in an earthquake.
27:10Inspired by what he had read and experienced,
27:13fired up by a young and fertile mind,
27:16he was opening his eyes to a very different Galapagos.
27:21Where others had seen it as hellish, ancient and unchanging,
27:25Charles Darwin saw a brand new land,
27:29made fresh from the depths of the ocean, by forces still very alive today,
27:35right beneath him.
27:39He was right.
27:41In the west, right under the island of Fernandina,
27:45is a volcanic hotspot.
27:52Here, constantly,
27:54there is a new life,
27:57a new life,
27:59a new life,
28:01a new life.
28:08Suddenly, islands are being born.
28:14But what he couldn't see was that, as each island is created,
28:19it is carried off that hotspot on shifting oceanic plates,
28:23as though on a conveyor belt.
28:29They move slowly, a couple of inches a year,
28:33but in geological terms that is staggeringly fast.
28:38Since Darwin saw them,
28:40they have now moved about 30 feet further to the southeast.
28:58As HMS Beagle moved methodically through the archipelago,
29:02Darwin had no idea that the islands they were mapping were moving.
29:07Or how important that movement was.
29:14As the islands go on their journey, they change.
29:18They become a touch less infernal.
29:22Some turn green.
29:24Others become flat and dry.
29:31Each is also carried into a slightly different mix of ocean currents.
29:36And so gets a slightly different climate.
29:42The result is that each island ends up with its own unique character.
29:50One of the most remote islands the Beagle passed is also the most unusual.
29:56In the far northeast is Genovesa.
30:00Remote, barren, lava-clad,
30:04and home to a million seabirds.
30:09The birds forage far out in the Pacific Ocean,
30:12but every day, once they've run the gauntlet of frigatebirds,
30:15they return to this battered rock, to their nests.
30:27Behind the cliff, just the right type of lava has cooled in just the right way,
30:32to form a labyrinth of tiny tubes and cracks
30:35that are the perfect size for Galapagos storm petrels.
30:45Nobody knows how they find which crack is theirs.
30:48But as they swoop over the ground, they turn upwind.
30:52So it's thought they smell their way home.
31:03However they find their way, it's a miracle.
31:06From the middle of the Pacific, to a single tiny egg.
31:20But it's just now that they are most vulnerable.
31:24A short-eared owl.
31:30The petrels are too quick in the air,
31:32and the owl too big to follow them deep inside their tiny tunnels.
31:36So its best chance is to grab a bird coming in or out.
31:41First, it uses its sharp eyesight to spot an entrance to an active burrow.
31:46It's a very quick bird.
31:48But the owl is not a big bird.
31:51And it's not a bird that can be seen.
31:54It's a bird that can be seen, but it can be heard.
31:58It's a bird that can be heard, but it can be heard.
32:02It's a bird that can be heard, but it can be heard.
32:05First, it uses its sharp eyesight to spot an entrance to an active burrow.
32:15It doesn't go for a petrel straight away, but positions itself just outside.
32:29It creeps closer.
32:31More cat than owl.
32:35It listens.
33:06It gets away.
33:10But the petrel is stunned.
33:13The owl spots it trying to get back underground.
33:36A second owl is watching.
33:39It now makes a challenge.
33:50It'll have to hunt for itself.
34:05It can just squeeze into the entrance hall of one of the tunnels.
34:10Now it waits for a petrel coming in.
34:36There are short-eared owls on other islands,
34:39but only on Genovesa have they learned to hunt like this.
34:48And it seems that every island on the map has a similarly strange story to tell.
34:58It's not surprising the Galapagos are named after these lumbering giants.
35:05Their great domed shells look just like the islands they inhabit.
35:11Those islands high enough to catch rain can be surprisingly lush.
35:15Here, the round shells are perfect for barging through the undergrowth without getting snagged.
35:26But on other lower islands, there's almost no rain.
35:30And here, the tortoises look very different.
35:36They have shells with a curved arch at the front
35:40that looks just like a Spanish saddle, or Galapagos.
35:45The islands were actually named after these tortoises.
35:51Here, there's so little to eat on the ground
35:54that they need to stretch their necks to reach more succulent vegetation.
36:05The curved arch in their shells allows for that extra stretch.
36:16On different islands, Galapagos life is taking a different course.
36:24As yet, Darwin was unaware of it.
36:28But as the beagle hopped from island to island,
36:31he took any opportunity to go ashore.
36:35On the island of Floriana, he was met on the beach at Post Office Bay
36:40by the governor of the first ever settlement in the Galapagos,
36:43an Englishman called Lawson.
36:49Lawson's tales of the strange Galapagos life
36:52encouraged Darwin to go deep into the interior of the islands.
36:58And wherever he went, he collected.
37:36He saw the tortoises, though only the domed, shelled kind,
37:40so didn't see their secret.
37:47He saw the little birds with their different beaks,
37:50but didn't guess they were all finches.
37:53He called one a blackbird, another a wren.
37:57There was another bird, too, the mockingbird.
38:00He'd seen them in South America.
38:03But these were somehow different.
38:06For now, he had no idea how important that difference would be.
38:16As Darwin went further and further,
38:19he discovered that the birds were not the same.
38:23As Darwin went further and further into the heart of the islands,
38:27he found a side to Galapagos that no naturalist had seen before.
38:46In the highlands of Floriana and Santiago,
38:49he found enchanted forests.
39:04And in a handful of places, he found fresh water.
39:10The only fresh water for 600 miles.
39:14Ducks dabble as though in a park.
39:18Tortoises wallow in thick volcanic mud.
39:26Frigatebirds come from the harsh world outside to drink.
39:45This is no hell on earth, but Garden of Eden.
39:56Darwin asked himself the crucial question.
40:01Why are these small islands blessed with such strange and unique life?
40:14But just a breath away from revelation,
40:17Darwin was taken away, never to return.
40:23At sunset on 20 October 1835,
40:27the Beagles set sail for Tahiti and then home.
40:35But all was not lost.
40:37The enchanted islands had cast their spell.
40:44THE BEAGLES
40:50MUSIC
41:11No sooner had Darwin left the Galapagos than he began to see the truth.
41:17As he spent the long hours at sea sorting through his collections,
41:22one specimen suddenly caught his attention.
41:25Not tortoise, not finch, but mockingbird.
41:32I have specimens from four different islands.
41:36On two islands they appear the same, but on the other two they're different.
41:41In each island, each kind is exclusively found.
41:47Different islands, within sight of each other, had different mockingbirds,
41:52with slightly different feathers and, like the finches, slightly different beaks.
41:59Darwin now remembered something Governor Lawson had told him about tortoises.
42:03He claimed he could tell which island a tortoise came from just by the shape of its shell.
42:09Different island, different tortoise.
42:12Same thing.
42:15He had seen from the dramatic Galapagos landscape that the islands were constantly changing.
42:22Could living things be changing too?
42:27He began to see back through time.
42:32I fancied myself brought near to the very act of creation.
42:38He saw that the Galapagos had been born of fire, sterile, from the depths of the ocean.
42:45But life had then come from elsewhere.
42:52In isolation on the Galapagos,
42:56and then further isolation from island to island,
43:00it had changed one form into another.
43:08Darwin had caught a fleeting glimpse of Galapagos' great secret.
43:13New plants, new animals, new life was being made by the islands themselves.
43:23He looked for the same pattern in other species.
43:29One day the little finches would be named after him,
43:32but though he had the best collection to date,
43:35with a whole range of different beaks,
43:37he hadn't thought to label which islands they came from.
43:40So for now, they couldn't help.
43:48And as for the tortoises,
43:5045 adults were brought aboard the beagle,
43:53but every one had been eaten,
43:56their shells thrown overboard, lost forever.
44:01Unable to return,
44:03Darwin would never know the true story of the finches' beaks and the tortoises' shells.
44:10But in the mockingbirds, he had caught a glimpse of evolution.
44:21In 1859, 24 years after leaving the Galapagos,
44:26Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was finally published.
44:31It changed the world forever.
44:34Until the end of his days, he always held on to one certainty,
44:39that the lonely Galapagos Islands were the origin of all his views,
44:44the origin of the Origin of Species.
44:56GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
45:21Giant tortoises so impressed the ancient mariners
45:25that they named these islands after them.
45:32Their fat flesh fuelled the pirates' plunder.
45:39In their shells is a clue to the greatest mystery on Earth.
45:48But for a tortoise, life is simple.
45:56The recent rain draws them to the green meadows on the summit of Alcedo volcano,
46:01not just for the lush grazing, but to breed.
46:26GALAPAGOS ISLANDS
46:38He tries to seduce her.
46:44Everything in time.
46:55This age-old ritual may remind us of permanence.
47:02But that couldn't be further from the truth.
47:11The offspring of these tortoises may have a slightly different shell
47:16that gives them a slightly better chance of surviving on their island.
47:22Even these animals that move so slow and live so long are changing.
47:31Since people first came to these islands,
47:34our understanding of them has changed too.
47:39The Galapagos is not hell on Earth,
47:42but a vibrant, living demonstration of the evolution of life.
47:52Here, on this little world within itself,
47:56we seem to be brought somewhat closer to the great fact,
48:00that mystery of all mysteries,
48:03the first appearance of new beings on this Earth.
48:14In the next episode, we discover how life on Galapagos
48:19is driven by elemental forces of change,
48:23past, present and future.
48:49Galapagos