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01:00Summer in Antarctica and the seas around the outer islands are teeming with life.
01:16Fur seals are streaming in their thousands to their traditional breeding beaches on the island of South Georgia.
01:31It's November and the race to breed has started.
01:37Some bull seals have already claimed territories on the beach and are prepared to defend them against all comers.
01:45You have to be fairly cautious how you approach, no, no, no, how you approach these big bulls
01:52because they've got very sharp teeth and can be extremely aggressive.
01:57At the moment though there's not much problem with them, but in two weeks I wouldn't dare set foot on this beach
02:04because by then all the females will have come ashore too and there will be over 100,000 fur seals on this one beach.
02:15Each dominant bull in this dense and seemingly structureless crowd rules over a territory of about 30 square metres
02:23which is enough to accommodate about a dozen females.
02:27The frontiers between these territories are invisible to our eyes but very clear to the bulls.
02:33When neighbours meet face to face across a boundary they put on a ritualised display of force
02:39but they won't fight as long as each stays on his own side of the frontier.
02:46The heavily pregnant females arrive two or three weeks after the males
02:51and head immediately for the prime territories near the high water mark.
02:55Only if these are fully occupied will they join ones lower down the beach.
03:01By December over a million Antarctic fur seals, 95% of the world's population, have landed here on South Georgia.
03:11One or two days after their arrival the cows give birth.
03:18Each baby is greeted by a flock of hungry skewers keen to feast on the afterbirth that comes with it.
03:41A mother will refuse to be parted from her vulnerable pup for the next seven days.
03:51The pups grow rapidly on the rich fatty milk and double their weight in 60 days.
04:11It will be eight years before they have to fight for territory.
04:17This is just play.
04:28The bulls must now be on their guard for the females are becoming sexually available
04:34and offshore males without territories are hanging around.
04:41They keep a sharp eye out for a weakened bull or an abandoned territory
04:47and will dash ashore to claim it if they see a chance.
04:51Once they've got a territory they can mate with its females.
04:57Lots of these young hopefuls wait in the shallows.
05:10One of them thinks he sees an opportunity.
05:40No luck, he's not big enough yet.
06:11The urge to breed is so strong that there is always some youngster prepared to try his luck
06:16and three or four times every day there are major battles on the beach.
06:40These fights can be really damaging.
06:54Most territory owning bulls carry severe wounds.
07:00Their flippers get split, their necks badly gouged.
07:11Mothers try to keep their pups out of harm's way.
07:21Another challenger concedes, but he's still in trouble
07:26for he'll have to dodge other outraged bulls on his way back to the sea.
07:31Although few are actually killed during these fights,
07:36they suffer from sheer exhaustion.
07:52By Christmas, in the middle of the Antarctic summer,
07:57breeding is over and the battles on the beaches have largely come to an end.
08:03But later is still in full swing.
08:09Chinstrap penguins are returning from their feeding grounds 20 miles offshore to feed their chicks.
08:40Now, in midsummer, there is almost 24 hours of daylight
08:45and here on Deception Island, there is continuous traffic from the beach
08:50up a two-lane highway to the nesting sites high in the hills.
08:56Each day, 100,000 commuters make the trip.
09:01It's nature's greatest rush hour.
09:10The trek to the higher slopes takes the chinstraps over an hour.
09:26The first obstacles they must cross are the torrential streams pouring from a melting glacier.
09:40Chinstraps, like all penguins, are both tough and persistent
09:46and a rough and tumble in the white water doesn't deter them.
09:52They're accomplished mountaineers and have elected to nest high up on the steep exposed slopes of volcanic ash.
10:23The stiff quills of their tails provide an invaluable support, preventing them from slipping backwards.
10:41Exposed ridges are the first suitable nesting grounds to be free of snow
10:47and to make the best use of the short Antarctic breeding season, penguins will make immensely long climbs to reach them.
11:04There are over 200,000 birds here on Deception Island, each pair with its own tiny nesting territory, evenly spaced from its neighbors.
11:18Incredibly, in spite of the din and confusion, returning birds are able to find their nests and partners without any difficulty.
11:32And the reunion is always marked with a jubilant display.
11:48The parents will now swap duties. The one just arrived will feed the chicks and guard them,
11:55while the other, having fasted for a couple of days, will go down to the sea to feed and collect more food for the young.
12:17Those that are nesting on the lower slopes are lucky.
12:23Others have to climb so high that their nests are up in the clouds for much of the time.
12:29The trek down from the nest can take another hour, but it has to be done if the chick is to be fed.
12:35When at last they reach the sea, their journey that so far has been merely arduous becomes very dangerous indeed.
13:05A leopard seal.
13:16A single leopard seal may catch up to six penguins an hour. During the season, it will kill hundreds.
13:23A wounded bird, having escaped almost miraculously from the seal, must now face the merciless skillers.
13:29In spite of its injury, it still struggles upwards towards its nest.
13:59The chinstraps only nest on islands that are released by the sea ice early in the season.
14:30As the summer advances, the ice continues to retreat until even the edge of the continent becomes free.
14:40By January, at the height of summer, there is almost continuous daylight,
14:46and along the Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures regularly rise above freezing.
14:52Fjords that were locked in ice for the last eight months are now littered with ice flows.
15:00Leopard seals haul out to bask in the sun.
15:08Now, for a short time, Antarctica's wildlife can afford to relax.
15:30The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
15:36The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
15:42The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
15:48The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
15:54The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
16:00The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
16:06The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
16:12The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
16:19The Arctic Ocean is a beautiful place to be.
16:33With temperatures climbing, snow and ice turns into Antarctica's most precious commodity, fresh water.
16:41And that makes it possible for the continent's sparse vegetation to resume its growth.
16:50Banks of moss are the home of a whole population of tiny animals.
17:00Deep within the crevices, ice still remains, imprisoning some of the hardiest creatures on Earth,
17:06the only land animals that can survive the Antarctic winter.
17:12Barely larger than a pinhead, these tiny mites contain a natural antifreeze
17:18that allows them to supercool to minus 30 degrees centigrade.
17:37As the ice disappears, they come to life.
17:45These minute creatures have no fixed breeding season.
17:49They're opportunists and reproduce whenever temperatures creep above freezing.
17:57Often, thousands cluster together.
18:01Most are herbivores that feed on the moss and dead vegetation,
18:05but they themselves are food for a few tiny carnivores, hunters and hunted.
18:11This is Antarctica's own miniature Serengeti.
18:21In just a few places, there's enough meltwater to create freshwater ponds.
18:28They are havens for another range of invertebrates, little crustaceans and insect larvae.
18:51Green is a rare color on the Antarctic continent,
18:55for moss can only grow where there's both freshwater and soil.
19:00But one kind of vegetation manages to survive on bare rock alone, lichens.
19:06They are able to dissolve rock and extract nutrients from it,
19:10but that takes a very long time, especially at these low temperatures.
19:15Growth is incredibly slow.
19:17A minuscule forest like this may have taken centuries to reach this size.
19:26I'm now a thousand miles farther south still.
19:31The South Pole lies about 800 miles over there.
19:36If I was as far away as that from the North Pole,
19:40I would expect to find, among these rocks,
19:43at least a hundred different species of flowering plant.
19:46In fact, in the whole of Antarctica,
19:49only two species of flowering plants have been found,
19:52and neither of them grows as far south as this.
19:55All that grows on these rocks are tiny lichens like this.
20:02One or two species of moss occur in these latitudes,
20:06but otherwise it's only lichens that grow farther south than this,
20:10and some of them get to within 200 miles of the pole.
20:15Antarctica's commonest organism is not a lichen, but a plant, an alga.
20:22It lives in the snow and paints great areas of it bright pink.
20:30In summer, the melting snow releases the algae into the sea.
20:34Just offshore, icebergs moving back and forth with the tide
20:39are also disintegrating.
20:45All these changes release minerals and nutrients.
20:49Suddenly, the inland waters become very rich,
20:52and floating algae, phytoplankton, bloom in vast clouds.
21:01Icebergs scouring the sea floor make things difficult for life of any kind,
21:06but in sheltered areas and deeper water,
21:09there is a surprisingly large and varied community of sea creatures.
21:15MUSIC
21:26Life here in temperatures close to freezing is very slow.
21:30An individual sponge or starfish may live for over 40 years.
21:45There are fish here, too,
21:47and blue-eyed shag dive down to depths of over 100 meters in search of them.
22:01The shag's feeding grounds are never far away from their colonies,
22:05on the few rocky crags that are free of snow.
22:14Uniquely among Antarctic birds, their chicks hatch without down
22:19and at first rely totally on their parents for warmth.
22:36Many of these chicks may die if the summer storms are severe,
22:40but shags, like most Antarctic birds, are long-lived,
22:44and a pair will produce many young during their lifetime.
22:54Blue-eyed shags don't nest along the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula
22:58because there is very little open water there,
23:01but one bird is not daunted by that.
23:05Antarctic terns patrol the bays in search of small crustaceans and fish.
23:13Their breeding season is long,
23:15and even in the late summer, chicks are still hatching.
23:28In some years, bad weather and predatory skewers
23:31cause heavy losses of eggs and chicks,
23:34but Antarctic terns have the rare ability to lay two or three times in a season.
23:48Not until February, the very height of summer,
23:51does the winter sea ice finally retreat to its minimum extent
23:54and release isolated outcrops of rock in the deep south.
24:02This is the Skullin Monolith,
24:05one of the very few areas of bare rock for many miles around,
24:09and here, 300,000 Antarctic petrels come to breed.
24:32Skullin Monolith
24:45A daily penguin colonies that in the spring were cut off from the sea
24:49by miles of winter sea ice
24:51are now directly accessible to open water,
24:54and the adults with hungry chicks to feed
24:56can at last swim directly back to the beaches.
25:01Although some, rather optimistically, decide to stop for a rest on the way.
25:32Skullin Monolith
25:35There is now constant activity on the beaches,
25:38as both adults must collect food
25:40to satisfy the demands of their well-grown and ever-hungry chicks.
25:52Returning adults have to find their chicks
25:55amongst hundreds of others that wait patiently in creches.
26:00But a chick can instantly recognize the call of its parent,
26:04and a mad steeplechase that can last several minutes
26:08helps to separate the rightful chick from impostors.
26:13The strongest chick of a pair is always fed first.
26:23In years when food is scarce, younger chicks are rarely fed,
26:27and skewers are constantly on the lookout for such weakened birds.
26:38Repeated harrying from above sends panic through the colony.
26:51Many penguins are forced to regurgitate their meals,
26:55and the skewers feast on the spilt krill.
27:03Small unattended chicks that stray from the creche are quickly attacked.
27:26As the pressure to complete breeding increases,
27:29there is a constant battle between penguins and skewers.
27:39This time, the chick is lucky.
27:44Attacks by skewers are very nasty and brutal,
27:47but they are not the main danger that threatens the colony.
27:52Daneys always choose very windy nest sites.
27:55Breeding so early in the season, they rely on the wind to clear away the snow,
28:00because they can only lay their eggs on bare rock.
28:03But now, at the end of the season, they pay the price.
28:08Soon, the sea will refreeze,
28:11and autumn storms will cover the bare rock with snow.
28:14In our next program, we will watch as wildlife hurries through the snow
28:19We will watch as wildlife hurries to finish breeding
28:22before winter really takes hold.
28:49You