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01:40This is the hut at Cape Evans, where Captain Scott and his party
01:44spent the winter of 1911.
01:46The freezing Antarctic temperatures have kept everything
01:49exactly as it was.
01:51Food, equipment, and perhaps most poignant of all,
01:54clothing and bedding on the bunks.
01:57So the explorers left just yesterday.
02:00And this is how it was around that same table
02:03on June the 6th, 1911, Scott's 43rd birthday.
02:07He and his team were spending the winter here
02:10so as to be ready as soon as the sun reappeared
02:13to start the trek to the Pole.
02:16They lightened the long, dark days with their own entertainment,
02:19but these were serious-minded men.
02:22For some of them, reaching the Pole was of secondary importance.
02:26They had come to make scientific discoveries
02:29in geology, biology, glaciology, meteorology,
02:33and they had a surprisingly well-equipped laboratory.
02:39And that is still here too.
02:46Photography was in the hands of Herbert Ponting.
02:49He took cinefilm as well as still photographs,
02:52and he had his own cramped darkroom
02:54in which to develop and print his huge glass plates.
03:00They had with them large stocks of tinned food.
03:03We now know that this was not nearly as nutritious
03:06as they supposed it to be.
03:08That and other vitamin deficiencies
03:10contributed to the disaster that was to come.
03:25As they waited, they knew that farther along the coast,
03:29the Norwegian, Amundsen and his team,
03:32were waiting to try and beat them to the Pole.
03:36On November 1st, at the beginning of the summer,
03:39Scott and four companions left this hut
03:42and set off on the 800-mile march to the South Pole.
03:47They wore clothes of wool and cotton,
03:50like these.
03:52They travelled on long wooden skis with simple bindings,
03:56and they transported their equipment and food
03:59on sledges which they pulled themselves,
04:02having decided against the dogs,
04:04which Amundsen, their Norwegian rival, was using.
04:07They reached the Pole on the 17th of January,
04:10only to find that Amundsen had got there 34 days before them.
04:14On the way back, Scott and his team
04:18On the way back, they encountered dreadful weather,
04:21ran short of supplies,
04:23and they died in their tent of starvation and exhaustion,
04:2611 miles from a food depot
04:29and less than 100 miles from the safety of this hut.
04:35Today, some 80 years later, a great deal has changed.
04:39Modern fabrics keep you warm during the worst of conditions.
04:43Satellites in the sky make communication
04:46and navigation easy,
04:48and almost every day during the summer,
04:50an aircraft takes off from the ice near here
04:53and flies directly to the Pole.
05:04Captain Scott marched for 79 exhausting,
05:08back-breaking days before he reached the Pole.
05:12This plane will make exactly the same journey
05:15in less than three hours,
05:17and today alone, there are four other flights like it.
05:23As you fly along Scott's route,
05:25it's not only the sheer distance that impresses you,
05:28it's also the appalling difficulties of the terrain.
05:32To begin with, Scott used a combination
05:34of motor sledge, ponies and dogs,
05:37but after 409 miles, he abandoned them all.
05:40Thereafter, he and his men hauled the sledges themselves,
05:44each man pulling a weight of 90 kilos.
05:51The decision not to use dogs throughout
05:53was probably their undoing.
05:55Amundsen, by doing so, made the journey much more quickly
05:59and with much less physical effort.
06:01So when Scott and his companions reached the Pole,
06:04they found Amundsen's abandoned tent already there,
06:07and inside it, a note for Scott to deliver to the King of Norway,
06:12telling him about Amundsen himself failed to return.
06:22Scott, when he arrived at this exact spot
06:26and found the Norwegian flag already planted by Amundsen,
06:30wrote in his journal,
06:32Great God, this is an awful place.
06:36And so it must have been to those five exhausted,
06:40exhausted men with the dreadful return journey still ahead of them.
06:44Today, some 80 years later,
06:47neither explorer would recognise the place.
06:53This summer, over 100 scientists and support staff
06:57will live and work protected from the worst of the weather
07:01by this dome.
07:05Beneath it are smaller insulated buildings,
07:07for the dome by itself is not sufficient protection from the cold.
07:13It stands 16 metres high.
07:15It's like a space station,
07:17an isolated capsule floating on slowly moving ice
07:20nearly 3,000 metres above sea level.
07:26All supplies for the Pole Station have to be brought in by air.
07:33Even in summer, it's so cold
07:35that the supply aircraft, after they've landed,
07:37have to keep their engines running to stop them from freezing.
07:44The fuel they bring is transferred into vast bladders
07:47which, when full, will last the station through the winter.
07:55The South Pole is the best place on Earth to observe the heavens above.
07:59The atmosphere is totally clear and free from pollution
08:03and the stars don't disappear below the horizon, as they do elsewhere,
08:07so that they can be observed continuously.
08:20Working in Antarctica demands a special kind of scientist.
08:24You may have the most brilliant mind,
08:26but that may be of little use
08:28if you can't pitch a tent or restart a diesel engine.
08:33But...
08:46Most of the stations are built on the edge of the continent,
08:49like the Australian base at Mawson.
08:51They stand on rock instead of ever-moving ice.
08:55Here, there are other living creatures with which to share your life.
08:5935 miles from Mawson, there are emperor penguins,
09:03which also, like you, will sit out the winter.
09:15When the last supply ships have left,
09:17the wintering crew will return to the base
09:21When the last supply ships have left,
09:23the wintering crews will see no other human being for six whole months,
09:27perhaps more.
09:30They must now find a way of living together
09:33in a place where, for some of the time,
09:35there will be no morning, no evening, and no escape.
09:39A routine is all-important,
09:41and there's plenty to do, not only scientific work,
09:44but all the jobs necessary to keep the station running.
09:47Looking after the dogs is a much sought-after job.
09:50It's refreshing to see living things other than human beings.
09:56Food becomes hugely important,
09:59and the cook is one of the most critically watched members of the community.
10:18Most bases have at least a year's supply of food in reserve
10:22in case of emergencies.
10:26And most also have a building away from these living quarters
10:30fully stocked with food in case of the worst disaster of all, a fire.
10:36For no human beings without shelter in conditions like this
10:40could survive for more than a few hours.
10:48As winter advances and the days shorten,
10:51the sun skims closer to the horizon and eventually drops below it.
10:55Now there will be little or no sunlight whatever for 37 days.
11:05Midwinter day.
11:06On Mawson Base, as on every other, it's marked with a great party.
11:12Entertainments that have been practised for weeks in secret
11:15are now performed in public.
11:46CHANTING
11:56Outside, the darkness is broken only
11:59by one of nature's most extraordinary spectacles,
12:02the southern lights, the aurora australis.
12:16CHANTING
12:28As the sun returns, so do the Adélie penguins.
12:34They come to one of their traditional colonies
12:36only a mile from Mawson Base.
12:38It's now one of the best studied of all.
12:41A wire-fenced corridor with an electronic beam across it
12:44ensures that some of the birds, as they go to and from the sea,
12:48are automatically counted and weighed.
12:52But a few must still be caught and measured in detail
12:55to keep a check on the colony's progress.
13:12SQUAWKING
13:16Some are given prominent markings
13:18so that they can be identified among their near-identical companions
13:22even at a distance.
13:24SQUAWKING
13:27It is, it must be said, rather disfiguring,
13:29but it will disappear at the next molt
13:31and it hasn't lessened the affection of the bird's partner.
13:34SQUAWKING
13:42SQUAWKING
13:47Dogs have been used here since Amundsen's day,
13:50but dogs are ecological aliens
13:52and it's been decided that they must go.
13:55Many regret that.
13:57Dogs are great companions
13:59and they can detect one of the major hazards of Antarctic travel,
14:02a snow-covered crevasse,
14:04and stop before they all fall in.
14:07No motorised sledge can do that.
14:10This team will be sent to Minnesota in the United States.
14:14Its departure will mark the end of a great chapter
14:17in the short history of mankind in the Antarctic.
14:25They will be replaced by motorised quikes.
14:33There's a limit to the amount of fuel such vehicles can carry,
14:37so they can't cover such great distances as a dog team,
14:40but they do travel faster.
14:44It used to take two days with dogs to reach Mawson's Emperor Colony.
14:48Now it's only a three-hour drive.
14:51All year, even throughout the winter,
14:54scientists visit this colony to monitor its progress
14:57as part of a long-term study.
15:00RUGBY TACKLING
15:22There's a serious scientific purpose behind this rugby tackling.
15:26The bird is to be fitted with a transmitter
15:29and send regular signals by way of an orbiting satellite
15:32to a monitoring station in Tasmania.
15:36It, too, is given an identifying mark.
15:46If this bird is like others,
15:48it's now setting off on a 100-mile march to reach open water,
15:52and when it gets there,
15:54it will dive to an astonishing depth of 450 metres to catch fish,
15:58and all the time be recording information to say where it is.
16:04Hundreds of miles to the north,
16:06a grey-headed albatross is providing similar information.
16:10It, too, has a transmitter on its back,
16:12which has revealed exactly where it collected the food in its stomach
16:16that it's now bringing back to its hungry chick.
16:20BIRDS SQUAWK
16:24It belongs to a colony that has been studied for the past 15 years
16:28by a British team.
16:30The old method of weighing birds was with a simple spring balance.
16:37But now the researchers use a new device.
16:40The scales are electronic and can seal inside a fibreglass nest.
16:46From now on, there will be no need to manhandle the chick
16:50just to get its weight.
16:54The scales transmit a reading every ten minutes to a nearby hut,
16:58where there is a watching scientist and recording apparatus.
17:02This shows that one of the parents
17:04brings 500 grams of squid, fish, lamprey and krill
17:08to the chick every three days,
17:11and signals from the satellite have revealed
17:13that the adult has travelled several hundred miles
17:16in the process of doing so.
17:29To film this series, we drew heavily on the discoveries
17:32made by scientific teams all over the continent.
17:35Guided by their satellite data,
17:37we aimed, among other things,
17:39to record in pictures just what those albatross and penguins did
17:43in the open ocean.
17:45To do that involved developing cameras and lenses
17:48that could cope with these hostile conditions
17:51and finding cameramen who could cope with them too.
17:55Swimming in the open ocean in the near-freezing seas
17:58may be second nature to an albatross,
18:00but it's a daring thing for a cameraman to do.
18:10The reward for him is sights that have never been filmed before.
18:19On board our ice-strengthened vessel, the Able J,
18:22we carried boats, diving gear and video apparatus.
18:27As well as free-diving cameramen,
18:29we had remotely controlled cameras mounted on the inflatables.
18:39One of our priorities was to find a swarm of krill.
18:43After weeks of searching, we did.
18:52And so had a pair of humpback whales.
19:02The remotely controlled video cameras gave us unique pictures.
19:09They recorded in unparalleled detail
19:12the whole of the whales' fishing technique,
19:15from the moment they released their curtain of bubbles,
19:18hemming in and concentrating the krill,
19:21to the final catch.
19:35We also had another vessel,
19:37a small, steel-hulled yacht, the Damien II.
19:41She had a retractable keel,
19:43so she could operate in waters only a metre deep
19:46and go into shallow bays where no other vessel had been before.
19:59Jérôme Poncet is the skipper and owner of the Damien.
20:03With his biologist wife,
20:04he's spent ten seasons exploring every cove and bay
20:07on the Antarctic Peninsula,
20:09and he knows them in a way no one else does.
20:27He was able to land camera teams
20:30on tiny, remote and uninhabited islands.
20:34Each night, a radio hook-up linked all the camps and the ships,
20:38which were often separated by several hundred miles of ice or ocean.
20:43Able J, this is Bailey Head, reading you loud and clear, loud and clear.
20:47Over.
20:48Bailey Head, Able J, to confirm your message.
20:50Two tents, cameras damaged.
20:52One tent broke a pole. All OK. Over.
20:58A camera on a jib arm.
21:01It gives a splendid high-angle view of a penguin colony
21:05and enables you to move alongside an individual penguin
21:08on its perambulations.
21:10But the whole thing weighs 120 kilos,
21:13and carrying that around over snowfields and rocky cliffs
21:17reduces even the strongest camera team to gasping wrecks.
21:22To get unbumpy pictures on the move,
21:25cameraman Paul Atkins used a special mount and harness
21:29called a Steadicam.
21:31That way, he was able to move smoothly into really close quarters
21:35with such tricky and dangerous subjects as fighting fur seals.
21:52Oh, my God!
21:59Blizzards often brought land-based operations to a halt,
22:03but even in such conditions as this,
22:05there was work that could be done underwater,
22:08if you can dig out the air cylinders from under the snow.
22:11Diving under the ice is very different from doing so in the open ocean,
22:15as cameraman Mike Degree explains.
22:18I'm generally a fair-weather diver.
22:20I like warm weather, sunshine, palm trees, and hammocks.
22:24I jumped into a seal hole, pushing the ice away as I entered,
22:27and they handed me my camera.
22:29Surprisingly, I wasn't too cold,
22:31except around where my mouth held on to my regulator,
22:33and that instantly froze and became numb.
22:36Suddenly, everything was quiet,
22:38and I found myself looking at, easily,
22:40one of the most extraordinary scenes I have ever, ever experienced.
22:46And I dropped down through a hole in the ice.
22:49I was completely surrounded by ice,
22:51a tunnel maybe 20 feet across.
22:54Everything above me on the land was roaring with wind,
22:57and down there, there was absolutely no sound,
23:00except for the distant trills of Weddell seals.
23:11Weddell seal researcher Amal Ajmi
23:14works underwater, too, but she doesn't get wet.
23:21She makes her observations
23:23from a capsule suspended 10 metres down beneath the ice.
23:28From there, she records the sounds of the seals
23:31while noting on a tape recorder the details of their movements.
23:35There's a lot of activity, a lot.
23:44There are a pair right next to the hydrophone.
23:47Those are probably the loudest animals.
23:51There's one single seal that is on my left,
23:56and it seems to be watching the mother and pup
24:00that were near the hydrophone.
24:02THE SEALS
24:12Other researchers have been studying
24:14a colony of emperor penguins for many years.
24:17They watch them underwater from within a protective cage,
24:20for where there are lots of penguins,
24:22you can expect to find dangerous penguin hunters,
24:25leopard seals or killer whales.
24:28And this is a leopard seal, a huge animal, nearly four metres long.
24:38A remotely controlled camera, properly placed,
24:41will record the exit of the fleeing penguins.
24:58But even out of water, they're not out of danger.
25:02Another leopard seal waits for them.
25:28Many people reckon that the leopard seal
25:31is the most dangerous killer in Antarctic waters,
25:35and that it would be suicide to get in the water with one.
25:38But the camera team were determined to film them hunting
25:42without the encumbrance of a cage.
25:44Peter Schoons and Doug Allen were the first to try.
25:49I've been underwater with all the other species of southern seals,
25:53so I had this feeling that leopard seals
25:56weren't actually going to attack us,
25:58at least not without some warning.
26:02Pete Schoons and I thought we could recognise
26:04if their behaviour ever did slip over the borderline
26:07from curiosity to aggression.
26:10It definitely produces a fair rush of adrenaline
26:12when a 12-foot seal comes out of the hazy distance
26:15and ends up almost taking the entire front of the camera
26:18into its mouth.
26:28You actually get a sense of what's going on
26:30when you're in the water,
26:32and you can't help but think,
26:34what's going on?
26:39You have to feel sorry for the young penguins.
26:41They just don't stand a chance.
26:43It's like a cat with a mouse.
26:47And here I was, the cat owner being presented with the prey.
26:59But I shouldn't deny the sheer excitement of filming
27:02so intimately one of Antarctica's top predators.
27:11This drama is a symbol of Antarctica,
27:13and I'll always count myself privileged to have seen it.
27:27It's still less than a century
27:29since the first man set foot on the Antarctic continent.
27:33Yet today, hundreds of scientists live and work here
27:36winter and summer,
27:38increasing numbers of tourists arrive,
27:41and every year, modern technologies
27:43make it increasingly easy for people to survive here.
27:48Despite all that, there are still very few footsteps
27:51in the Antarctic snow.
27:53Mining has been banned for a further 50 years,
27:56and the Antarctic Treaty remains relatively effective.
28:01At a time when it's possible for 30 people
28:04to stand on the top of Everest in one day,
28:07Antarctica still remains a remote, lonely and desolate continent,
28:12a place where it's possible to see the splendours and immensities
28:17of the natural world at its most dramatic,
28:20and what's more, witness them almost exactly as they were
28:24long, long before human beings ever arrived
28:27on the surface of this planet.
28:29Long may it remain so.
28:54Transcription by ESO, translation by —