|
National Geographic Ocean Drifters
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The human mind |
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has always had a fascination |
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Following the stars across the seas, |
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early explorers |
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imagined that they might meet |
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They never guessed |
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drifting in the same currents |
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were life forms far stranger |
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It's a world where the forces |
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have given rise to creatures |
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Their whole existence is shaped |
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which sweep them endlessly |
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around the biggest living space |
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At the edge of this alien world, |
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one ocean drifter comes |
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It can take these hatchlings three days |
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to claw their way up |
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They may look like land animals now, |
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but sea turtles have evolved |
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to be riders of the ocean currents. |
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These loggerhead turtles, |
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are about to embark on a perilous |
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As they head down the beach, |
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they're already reading |
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with their internal compass. |
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Only one hatchling in a thousand |
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and ride the currents back to |
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It's among the most extraordinary |
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This is the story of one loggerhead's |
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of the ocean drifters. |
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Like a windup toy, the hatchling swims |
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The waves tell her which way to go |
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away from shore and from |
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Danger causes her to tuck in her limbs |
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The shark doesn't see her and swims on |
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As she heads toward the safety |
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the hatchling joins a rich tide |
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Every rock and weed is home to |
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Coastal waters are the fertile |
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Florida may produce five million |
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In some coastal species, |
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500 million offspring may come |
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The eggs of this sea urchin |
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and the smoky clouds of sperm |
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swirl together in a fertility dance |
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Huge quantities of eggs and |
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will be drawn into the ocean currents. |
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Most will become food |
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Setting their offspring adrift |
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might not sound like good |
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But it's a valuable survival mechanism |
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It lets them populate new areas |
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and encourages the exchange |
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All through the night, instinct |
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The outpouring of new life |
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is just as persistent. |
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With the bellows like action |
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the spiny lobster sends |
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It's a reproductive blizzard. |
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The lobster's larvae have evolved |
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it suits them for the drifting life |
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After 36 hours of swimming, |
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In the clear water 30 miles off |
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she reaches the edge |
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and finds shelter in the drift lines |
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This plant spends its |
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held up by small air bladders. |
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The sargassum provides a haven |
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All kinds of creatures |
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For the first time in her life, |
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the loggerhead can rest. |
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But the stillness is an illusion. |
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The winds have piled up the sargassum |
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along the edge of one of the most |
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Just beyond, |
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Viewed from space, the Earth is alive |
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with clouds caught up in the rhythm |
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These winds |
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generate the great ocean currents. |
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The loggerhead will be traveling |
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in a circle of currents called |
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Her journey starts off Florida |
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which will carry her |
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Satellite imagery is teaching us |
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that the Gulf Stream |
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spinning off side currents, |
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The edges of currents are the |
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Plant and animal drifters are drawn |
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one species making life possible |
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For a hungry animal, |
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The sargassum becomes a perch |
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They glean food particles |
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the rich soup of plants and animals, |
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Even sluggish homebodies |
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can be marvelously adapted for travel |
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The glorious creature drifting |
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Some snail larvae use tentacle |
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for feeding and to keep from sinking. |
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Some may by able to remain |
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until they drift to a suitable habitat |
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Everything is kept lightweight |
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Look closely and you can see |
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These beautiful drifters move |
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you forget that the Gulf Stream is |
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Microscopic larvae spawned in Florida |
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could eventually settle |
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And the next generation |
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The ocean drifters have little to eat |
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except each other |
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So if the sargassum weed |
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it also harbors death |
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in an astounding diversity of forms, |
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The sea horse has evolved |
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But it's still a predator |
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It drops down to ambush |
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Then loops itself back |
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to avoid being ambushed itself. |
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The entire food chain is caught up |
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in this dangerous game |
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Small fern-like animals known |
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colonize the sargassum |
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A sea slug grazes in turn on hydroids. |
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The slug's camouflage doesn't fool |
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But the sea slug has armed itself |
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The file fish abandons the attack. |
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But another creature's camouflage |
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The drifting weed may look innocuous. |
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But look again. |
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A fish hoping to harvest hydroids |
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would find itself staring |
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Evolution has made |
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the big bad wolf |
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Its extraordinary camouflage doesn't |
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The white spots also mimic |
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and hydroids that grow on sargassum. |
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Its pectoral fins have evolved |
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the better to creep through |
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It will eat creatures |
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and its victims thrash around |
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The loggerhead swims directly |
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But the sargassum fish |
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Hungry dolphin fish |
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These big, fast-moving fish can devour |
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The turtle scramble for a hiding place |
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Now the loggerhead pushes |
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Beyond the sargassum in the open sea, |
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gelatinous drifters |
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They may be the loggerhead's main |
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A jellyfish like this |
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But the thin membrane of |
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We know almost nothing |
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or any other animal survives here. |
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We act as if this is our planet |
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But the oceans are so large |
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and so deep that they constitute |
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of the inhabitable world. |
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Even for oceanographers, |
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the open sea is an alien environment, |
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tantalizing and yet largely unexplored |
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Each creature in the currents |
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its own extraordinary adaptations |
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Humans venturing into these waters |
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study only the upper layers |
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They stay tethered to a rope, |
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It's a 500 mile swim to shore. |
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Richard Harbison |
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are among the few researchers studying |
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how these ocean drifters behave |
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The air tanks limit them |
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So they get just a glimpse of how |
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Harbison and Madin specialize |
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known as jelly plankton. |
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This underwater world changes |
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Many species stay away |
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so these researchers dive round |
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Under the cover of darkness, |
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a whole new world of creatures rises |
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It is the largest animal migration |
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and it happens every night |
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This sea snail |
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as they ascend to feed at the surface. |
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Life as a jelly |
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There are no hard surfaces |
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so these drifters don't need |
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The gelatinous form gives them the |
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They've evolved for life at sea by |
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Near the surface, the smaller drifters |
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that's been growing all day in the sun. |
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Bigger animals come up to feed on them |
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The great oceanic food chain |
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and everything else depends on it |
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This weird apparition is a killing |
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The writhing arms of this comb jelly |
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which flee straight into the wing |
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at either end |
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It's easy to become mesmerized |
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of some ghostly creature turning |
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You can see the beating of the heart |
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Its mouth parts |
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Ocean conditions have reshaped |
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of what a snail should be. |
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Look in another direction, |
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and there's a salp chain grazing |
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This jelly can reproduce |
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to take immediate advantage |
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The salp sprouts new individuals |
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The gelatinous form makes |
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It allows this siphonophore |
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to spin out lengthy tentacles |
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It twitches its crustacean-like lures |
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In the boundless world of mid-ocean, |
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with the sea bottom miles below |
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a jelly is the only niche |
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One animal's body can become |
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A crustacean deposits her offspring |
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As they grow, they devour their host. |
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Crustacenas eat jellies, |
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It's a banquet where it's difficult to |
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The jellies also prey on one another. |
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The jelly plankton even have |
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The three-inch-long beroe |
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Its mouth is lined with sharp, |
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The beroe latches onto its prey |
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This ability to stretch is another |
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Though scuba researchers |
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are limited to working |
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with this submersible, |
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an oceanographer can study |
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There the world of the ocean drifters |
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Edith Widder studies creatures living |
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Her pilot maneuvers skillfully |
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with a battery of scientific equipment |
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On the way down, |
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to see creatures that have |
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endlessly strange and wonderful. |
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A siphonophore spirals out into |
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It's maximizing the feeding area |
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Scientists have only |
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this football-size comb jelly. |
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They call it Big Red. |
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This fish isn't sick. |
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In these dark unbounded depths, |
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everything simply behaves differently. |
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Like this squid suspended |
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Or this squid which has developed |
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All the rules are different down here. |
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Researchers freely admit that what they |
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is less than a paragraph. |
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Scientists have given |
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the nickname Oumbo. |
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Wider specializes in bioluminescence, |
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the ability of living creatures |
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To study this phenomenon, |
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when bioluminescent animals drift |
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She must shut down her own floodlights |
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and use special cameras |
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The pitch blackness of deep water |
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A sea cucumber |
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it makes contact with the screen. |
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Then it turns on its own lights, |
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Almost every animal |
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in the pitch dark of the deep. |
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Given the abundance |
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This may be the most common |
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The clouds of bioluminescence |
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that they light up the instruments |
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If attacked |
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some animals try to confuse their |
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like a flashbulb in the face. |
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Others illuminate the predator |
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will come along like a cop |
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Some use light like a lure |
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or to attract a mate. |
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In this world of darkness, |
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the language of light is so important |
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may determine whether |
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But what we know about bioluminescence |
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is limited by the difficulties |
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Even a submersible stays underwater |
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The promise of oceanography |
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Bioluminescent chemicals |
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But reaping the potential benefits |
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In many ways, it's like the grand |
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But we've mapped the barren surface |
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than our own deep ocean floor. |
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Is it worth exploring the depths |
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In one area the size |
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deep sea researchers recently |
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Who knows what secrets |
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Even back on the surface, |
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the limits of our knowledge can be |
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In the complex ecosystem |
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a whole other world of creatures |
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As it moves, the stinging tentacles |
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stream out to gather food. |
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By raising its gas-filled sail, |
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the man o' war can travel |
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It's an elegant system |
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not just where the current takes them, |
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Nothing about the man o' war is simple |
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It's neither an individual animal, |
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Joined together under the gas bladder |
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is a kind of cooperative assembly |
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tentacles, and reproductive organs. |
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Other species add to the complexity. |
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One fish, called nomeus, |
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hides out among the deadly veil |
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The man o' war toxin is |
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But perhaps because |
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or greater immune resistance, |
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nomeus can dine unharmed |
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Other fish aren't so lucky. |
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The man o' war can stretch |
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and each tentacle is studded |
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Nomeus may help out the man o' war by |
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Triggered by the fish, |
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the stinging cells fire slender |
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The victim is lassoed, hog-tied, |
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Then the digestive organs move in. |
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Like some monstrous lifeform, |
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they wriggle and twist |
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as they fasten their flexible mouths |
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Gradually, they engulf the fish |
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After half a year, |
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the young loggerheads odyssey |
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But she still has a lot to learn. |
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All the activity around |
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She just wants to grab |
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and doesn't seem to notice |
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For a moment, the turtle looks like |
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But it's the man o' war |
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The turtle turns her hungry eye |
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People talk about the first |
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But what a tangled and spicy meal |
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The turtle's skin may be too thick |
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But no one knows what protects |
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The loggerhead soon pushes on |
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in search of a meal |
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One of the strangest inhabitants |
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between air and water is the drifting |
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This upside-down sea slug swallows air |
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With its pointy appendages, |
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it latches onto anything |
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But what it's really after are |
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It coats its mouthparts |
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The smaller less powerful |
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But the most virulent stingers |
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Amazingly, they pass directly |
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and it uses them for its own defense. |
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But these surface drifters |
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must face adversaries even more |
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A storm is brooding up |
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It's a reminder of how unstable life |
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One moment these creatures are |
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and the next they're tumbling |
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As the storm passes, |
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and have to endure the dilution |
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Yet the animals living in |
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can seem so delicate. |
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This drifting snail |
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sealed in an envelope of mucus |
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If it lets go, |
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The raft is also holding up |
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in these egg capsules. |
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It's a cradle at the top |
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When it's done laying eggs, |
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the snail builds a new raft for itself |
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Natural debris also drifts |
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It's always been a means of dispersal |
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A coconut from the Caribbean |
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may ride the Atlantic |
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to take root on some distant shore. |
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Fish are drawn to this kind |
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A drifting crate can turn |
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Where fish lay eggs |
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But the little things |
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and the supply of garbage begins |
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One study estimated that |
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was being heaved overboard |
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A recent treaty now regulates |
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but it's rarely enforced. |
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Whatever goes into the ocean |
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and it builds up in the very places |
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Animals encrusted on debris may rouse |
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For her, drifting objects have always |
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Until recently, a loggerhead could safely |
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Nothing in her evolution |
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for this wealth of deadly new choices. |
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To her, it makes as much sense to pick |
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as at a man o' war. |
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Fragments like these |
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Plastic blocks their digestive tracts |
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This time, she's unable to |
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But she'll face many more |
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Almost every dead turtle found |
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Millions of seabirds also die |
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like this gannet tangled up in debris |
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absent-mindedly discarded |
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Commercial fishermen lose thousands |
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which spread out all across |
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There may be no way for the loggerhead |
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until it's too late. |
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The turtle has survived her first year |
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But in the long seasons before she |
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a more sinister peril may threaten her |
| 00:50:10 |
Everything out here |
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is absorbing a swelling tide |
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even the plankton. |
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Though they may seem insignificant, |
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the lifeforms here are important |
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They even help regulate |
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These microscopic plants and animals |
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have always struggled against |
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Now they must also absorb heavy metals |
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sewage, pesticides and petrochemicals. |
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Plankton is the base of the food chain |
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If our carelessness disrupts this vast |
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will it imperil the entire ocean? |
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Will it affect the food we eat |
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No one has yet spent |
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in the loggerhead's world to find out. |
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It may be that we humans |
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will always find it easier to turn our |
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and out to other worlds |
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But as we peer up at the stars, |
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we should keep one truth in mind |
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All the alien life forms we know |
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and perhaps all we ever will know |
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are here adrift on planet Earth. |
