Art Wolfe Finds Alaska & Antarctica's Untouched Wildlife | Real Wild

[Music] foreign [Music] documenting wild places for decades I'm always struck by the concentration of diversity in this beautiful pristine Bay I'm art wolf join me on this journey to the edge foreign [Music] Glacier Bay for a long time and every time I come back here I discover something new [Music] the Ice Age really had a profound effect on this region of Southeast Alaska all the great Islands run north and south all the channels largely are running North and South Glacier Bay only 200 years ago had four thousand feet of ice and today there's just Remnant glaciers I'm being joined by Greg green a wildlife biologist who has extensive knowledge in the marine ecosystems of Southeast Alaska what I love is just the richness of this environment that we're traveling through not only do you have the spectacular glaciated mountains that really intact forests but you got all the animals that thrive in these wild waters foreign Southeast Alaska cultures use totem poles to really symbolize the animals that they revered and respected the Eagles the orcas and the raven [Music] [Music] [Music] right now we've got two whales and they're still up and in a second or two it's gonna be a nice shot because the spray will come straight up and any second now we're gonna do it and when they do it I'm gonna get the shot one two there we go beautiful and the second one will come up there we go [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign there's really a lot of activity here we're in the midst of a huge group of humpback whales that's so beautiful right now with the calm water the even light the way these spouts just really hang in the air it almost looks like a watercolor painting [Music] the sound of it is so beautiful very nice spectacular just to have that dark green body of water the way the spray is really distinguished from the dark background and then that graceful way these huge animals just enter the water when do they start heading south and where are they going these whales winter in Hawaii and they don't feed there that's where they go to breed that's where they go to have calves and then they come back here to feed to forage in this in this Rich Waters what's the status of the humpback whale are they endangered well they're still classified as an endangered animal and Under The Endangered Species Act but the populations here are definitely increasing humpback whales are coming back in the North Pacific this is a part of their body until they actually breach they usually breach when they come back to the surface and usually usually when you get they get into the Rhythm they come to the surface three or four times but that first time they come back up after sounding or diving they come up with such force that they can launch their bodies right out of the water [Music] these whales should be coming up any second that was fantastic just a sequence of two or three shots and there's more coming up right now [Music] this is a great place there's so much action right here the water is very turbulent and it mixes up the fish the Herring the Krill consequently we got cormorants gulls Eagles sea lions all vying for the same food really great for the heart and for the mind to see an environment that is largely intact the forests are all the way from the top of the ridges all the way to the water line no clear cuts no roads no buildings along the shore this is a beautiful forest with the circus Spruce and Hemlock how old would you think these trees are well we actually we know this is uh Forest began about 200 years ago when Captain Vancouver was here in a glacier just receded past wow that's amazing in 200 years this whole forest was established how is this Forest actually being affected by global warming well one of the things that we are seeing is the decline of Alaskan yellow cedar and that seems to be as a result of decline in snowfall levels so what's taking the place of yellow cedar well at this stage nothing we're waiting to see how global global change and climates are going to affect all of Southeast Alaska nothing stays the same nothing at all [Music] I love working in the rainforest and if it's raining I just adjust to it and the subjects here are many and varied there's some beautiful lines abstract details this becomes now my subject right now I'm zeroing in on just a few raindrops in the circular patterns that are really spiraling out it comes a really nice pattern really nice study of light and dark [Music] I've got a really nice shot here of fungus and dripping moss and it's a great change from shooting the grand Landscapes of glaciers and mountains to come into this Forest it's almost it's a calming effect on the mine it's such a soft environment such a quiet environment and now I'm shooting a very quiet soft subject foreign Park and it's a great habitat for black bears that come out of the forest and hibernation in the spring they eat this very succulent grass [Music] this is the sign of a bear the tops of this grass is all cut off from where it's eaten and just really pressed the grass as each walked up this Creek and the fact that the grass is still pretty much bent means he's come through in the last day maybe in the last couple hours [Music] this is a pretty uh fresh bear track here he drew a line from one toe across here if the toe is below this line it's a black bear if it's above it's a Grizzly and just the sheer size of this if this was a grizzly bear track it'd be a pretty young bear but this is a medium-sized black bear [Music] there's a bear not too far away from here it's taken one look at us and it's cut across what I think is these altars it might come right out over here so if I can anticipate the direction that's moving we might be able to get a good shot so let's walk over here it's just cut through these bushes there it is right there stop it it doesn't really have great eyesight but it sees us is wondering what we are these Bears now are sharing their environment with a brown bear or the grizzly so they're much more apprehensive about other shapes walking around we're gonna move I think he might come out one last time at the right where this little creek comes out of the forest it might be a good shot [Music] this is a nice situation because this bear is nice and relaxed we're getting our shots we've moved slow and every time it stopped we stopped and consequently we've been able to get up close Without Really pressuring the bear so now the Bears relax eating grass I'm getting the shots foreign [Music] animals here in Southeast Alaska are the orcas they're very hard to predict and often you never see them what we try to do with these orcas is discern the direction they're having then go way ahead and then the choices for the Orca to either come towards us or give us a wide berth and often they come right next to us as long as we're not chasing them [Music] with the orcas unlike the humpbacks they get into a rhythm and they stay on the surface they're a much smaller animal and they're not as capable as the humpback to stay underneath the surface so we have a higher likelihood of predicting the distance and the direction that these orcas are going [Music] they're only above the surface for a split second and I don't want to miss that foreign [Music] and I didn't [Music] as we entered Glacier Bay it's really interesting to see how the glaciers have carved and shaped the land not only the fjords but many of the islands are resistant Columns of rock that really rise out of the ocean bottom [Music] there's just so much wildlife in this really rich environment and right now there's an eagle flying [Music] beautiful being trailed by dolls [Music] there's a lot going on right now here's a whole colony of kitty weights flying in front of the cliffs I saw a peregrine falcon earlier and we've got a mountain goat with a very young kid and a Sev adult all right on the same Cliff right in front of us I think what happens is that these clips really absorb a lot of the heat from the Sun and consequently the snow melts off really soon in the season and exposes the sedges and the lichens that they really love to eat very chilled out that's what's nice about photographing these mountain goats is very relaxed really nice looking animal looking straight at us right now you can see how that powerful hump on the back is really the center for the muscles that enable it to go straight up and down [Music] this is a nice opportunity with a mother and two Cubs the babies are so cute and uh the very fact that we're drifting up so slowly the mother's curious she's watching us she's eating Barnacles right off the Rock bears are such omnivores they'll eat the Barnacles they'll eat grass they'll eat salmon berries [Music] it's great to hear the baby cry almost like a human baby right now they are so young they haven't been out of the den very long [Music] she's a great looking mother oh nice moment the babies are just touching those with mother [Music] that's as good as it gets right there [Music] we're easing up onto this colony of Northern sea lions on the north side of this island these sea lions have found just the perfect slope of rock where they can easily carry themselves up out of the water and relax and rest this is known as a rookery I'm going to try to get a establishing shot of the colony and then I'll be looking slowly Across The Colony for individuals that might be interacting a male and a female or even two males that be fighting over a female each male basically can stand each other when they're 15 or 20 30 feet apart they get too close to each other they start to steal each other's females and they start fighting this is the perfect light conditions for photographing these guys if it was even brighter overcast there's big bulky bodies with cast Shadows over other animals but with this even light it really allows us to make sense of the entire colony of Northern sea lions [Music] [Music] as we head further up the bay towards the glaciers the train gets rockier and the water becomes much colder the glaciers that feed fresh water into Glacier Bay are retreating at an amazing rate it's a natural process but it's being accelerated by global warming [Music] I love this environment it's just like kayaking through a huge watercolor painting to me foreign it's hard to Fathom that this entire Fjord was carved out by huge glaciers much much larger than these tiny little guys now these Tidewater glaciers 200 years ago how deep do you think the ice was right where we are probably somewhere between four thousand and six thousand feet thick can you imagine in 200 years at 4 000 feet of ice has melted that's extraordinary [Music] thank you know it's amazing that this Landscaping is in such rapid transition the snow has been locked up in this eyes for hundreds of years and now it's about to calve into this fjord melt and once again join the water cycle [Music] also to see how the oldest ice is the clearest ice and it's on the bottom layer of a glacier and uh it's really compressed hard and clear almost like the way diamonds are formed Jade is so beautiful I'm so privileged to be able to come into an environment like this and see things that most people don't have a opportunity to see just this outerworldly location is extraordinary [Music] the ice that's got locked up in this Glacier may have fallen in the form of snow hundreds of years ago and now at the Terminus that it's having off and ultimately melting out and it's overwhelming when you think of the scale of the human in relationship to a wall of ice and maybe three or four hundred feet high [Music] I love photographing this environment because it's so abstract with the colors the lines the textures of this great glacier [Music] it's a frightening environment it's a dynamic environment ultimately it's a fascinating environment for the camera and for my imagination the deep blues of the light passing through the ice crystals really translate well on film [Music] I love shooting Landscapes where the sensor scale is obscured you really rely on the abstract [Music] as I adjust to this Dynamic landscape I find more and more shots to shoot and right now I'm concentrating on just the reflections of these very circular icebergs with their very subtle gradients of white all the way to Deep Blue foreign [Music] right now I'm making this tiny little Iceberg really dominant in the frame and then the reflections of the icebergs across the water really is a nice soft backdrop so foreground background very surreal landscape it's all coming together [Music] and just verifying in the back of my camera and I can see that I'm getting exactly what I want foreign [Music] Glaciers are still active today as among the most exciting things that I've ever seen anywhere on Earth to see a glacier calve into these Deep Blue Waters is a really thrilling sight it's like explosions going off in front of you is both frightening but also extremely intriguing and exciting to see [Music] foreign [Music] so much of this area has been protected over the years with great legislation setting aside Glacier Bay and all the regions around it for protection forever and yet the great unknown is what impact will global warming have on this very fragile ecosystem with the warming of the earth what will happen to the populations of birds and sea creatures that live and abound in these Waters this is something we don't know we'll have to wait and see [Music] I've been traveling to Wild places for decades there's no better place on Earth to view these massive Bears than kapine National Park I'm art wolf join me on this travels to the edge [Music] I don't know [Music] look at my Coast is the largest intact uninhabited Coastline left in North America once you get up in the air and you start to fly along this Coast you really see the extent and the variety of the lamp formations this is a great place to come whether you're a photographer or a naturalist or somebody that just wants to see nature raw and pristine nice to meet you all right finally at last we're here where are we right now we're anchored up right here I'm joining bear expert Derek stonorov and naturalist Brad Joseph to explore this wild Coast one thing aren't they they try to do in Alaska is identify habitats that are critical and these sedge flats are really really critical habitats for the survival of brown bears when people think of bears and they see this really wild Peninsula they really think it's the mountains in the forest that's the reason the Bears are here but it's really about what the ocean brings to them I can't wait to get out there and see these bears [Music] thank you [Music] all up and down the cap my Coast there's these tidal Flats with sage grasses growing it's a big drawing part for the Bears and if these Meadows were not here the Bears wouldn't be down here at this time of year they're the first areas to Green up [Music] spend how much of the day just eating food differing in amounts but you can expect to see some beers down here all the time they might eat 16 18 hours a day a lot of these guys might double their body weight these sedge Meadows are real important for bears for social behavior and meeting each other he seems awfully interested in her yeah it's Mating Season definitely following around and she's definitely tolerating on a much closer range that's one way to tough you see a mating pair I'm walking gently I'm in the right the Sun is up in the sky I'm ready for romance my heart is full of joy [Music] I'm strolling away far from the bus don't have no hesitation I'm gonna rejoice from where I'm standing I can count eight bears and they're constantly popping up and disappearing as they go up and over these little Rises and it makes it exciting because you never know where one's coming up [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] animals they have a very difficult time digesting grass these are very specific kinds of sedges and it's only in these little pockets right here in the intertidal areas of these sedges grow the other thing that happens when these really high tides come in fact it's the second highest tide in the world here it floods these Meadows with salt water brings in a lot of seaweed and algae and things in a month this River could be filled with salmon absolutely it's perfect timing for the Bears because just as soon as these sedges go to seed the salmon show up it's absolutely designed to be the perfect habitat there's always food supply for these bears these Bears don't have to go too far afield they get their salmon they get their vegetables their salads and it's a huge buffet for these bears right behind us is another bear we got three right in front of us and I'm not too concerned about the one behind us are you oh I'm keeping an eye on him they're doing their thing we're sitting here doing ours and so it's okay we're not the focus of their attention from this distance is pretty obvious for me to tell female now that I've been around these bears for a couple days but from a distance what are the main things that you look for females tend to be blonder but there's a lot of exceptions with color but it's mostly body proportions and how they're built and they're built fairly differently the males have a longer neck longer legs longer body and although their head is much larger from a distance it looks a lot smaller in proportion to the rest of the body the biggest females might get to to eight 900 pounds the largest males could get to 1800. it's amazing how close they're coming to us and the fact that we're sitting low and talking quietly they just seem Not Afraid yeah this is really the right way to handle being closer on these Bears if we're in a submissive position or sort of neutral and unthreatening [Music] grizzly bears and brown bears are one in the same Bear yes they definitely the same species these are the same bears that everybody fears in the Rockies you know the great Predator the dangerous animal in luck is just like a cow in a field right in front of us these Bears haven't been hunted since 1920. the instinctual fear of people just has been washed away in generations of sort of a peaceful coexistence we treat them with respect and treat us with respect [Music] this Trail looks almost like a fair freeway to me generations and generations of bear traffic just over and over have just worn these grooves these trails are like super highways that just interconnect all of the drainages and the food sources the Bears use just a very complex network of trails all up and down the cabinet Coast so obvious how they keep their feet into each track on left foot and right foot and I have no idea what the significance of that is and I you probably don't either no it's one of the mysteries of bears well let's follow this Trail and see where it leads us [Applause] [Music] we're right in the heart of the largest population to protected bears in the world four to five thousand in this area four to five thousand brown bears yes all within the national park all protected [Music] [Applause] it's absolutely miserable out right now it's cold it's windy it's rainy it's bare weather there's a mother with a cub and they're just wandering around and we've done a couple things to help us get shots one of which is we're facing away from the wind and the rain the other thing is we've gotten low and if we're really quiet and we move slow they're likely to come very close to us we're not approaching them we're going to allow them to approach us she may go right back up on that Ridge this is good this is gonna be great this Cub and this mother are on this High Ridge overlooking this plane with at least 13 adult Bears so she's a little reticent to getting down low she wants to know where all bears are because occasionally boars will take a cub and so she's very cautious she's looking around she puts her head up getting a really nice shot this is a long ways I'm shooting probably at least a half a mile away a thousand millimeter in overcast conditions very slow shutter speed that's a great shot [Music] that's an awesome shot it just really shows the power of the bearings the whole body so I photographed bears for 20 years I've never gotten a shot where the bear is standing straight up like a human staring straight at me and it's really looked threatening but in reality it's just standing up to get a better luck foreign [Music] rolls around the Bears appear at it out of nowhere the Bears know when low tide is I don't know if it's by smell or just internal timing but they they're very in in tune with the tides and the timing of the tides hallow is famous for its clam-eating bears foreign [Music] there's a bear over there and you can see behind her she started to dig there's piles where she's dug a hole and then moved on to the next one I think each hole's probably a plan but I really like about this shot is the simpleness of the landscape you can see all the claws the feet there's just nothing impeding our view of this beautiful bear and it's extraordinarily beautiful with the long golden fur just blowing in the breeze I love the background the light and the thing that I like the most is the fact that it's totally unaffected by our presence it's a very candid way of photographing a wild animal in a beautiful simple landscape [Music] a brown bear is superbly equipped it's a digging bear of all the seven species of bears these are the diggers he's got this great big hump which is really a big hunk of muscle and they've got extra long claws if you compare a bear claw to a polar bear claw or a black bear cloth they're shaped differently but they're meant for digging thank you yeah [Music] whenever I'm photographing a new environment I love not only to shoot the grand landscape but also the intimate details I've found a really nice shot of washed up kelp and seaweed I've made it important by zooming in with a macro lens I love doing that I love revealing things that people often pass by [Music] foreign [Music] Coast is incredible every time we turn around there's a new species right now I've got tufted puffins on a beautiful lichen covered rock these are beautiful little birds they're almost comical they look like clowns I'm using a thousand millimeter lens with a 1.4 which is the equivalent now of a 1400 millimeter lens to bring them in and to get a satisfying View [Music] foreign [Music] behind me there is a bald eagle nest literally in the grass and I've situated this camera slightly above so I can take in the dark background of the distant mountains what I'm waiting for and what I'm hoping for is a bald eagle literally landing at the nest with its wings spread out with follow Focus I can just stay on this bird [Music] I've been waiting for an hour and I can see it just coming it's about a couple hundred yards off but as soon as it gets close [Music] foreign [Music] that is funny beautiful female looking up at us gonna sit down gonna sit I love it now it's gonna fall fall fall ah nice behavior look at how it's just playing with his paw it is so roly-poly it looks and Exhibits Behavior like a panda I love this look at that scratching [Music] it's hard to stay up [Music] whenever I'm shooting a bear or any animal that is exhibiting some comical Behavior like this Bear right now it really affects the emotions of the people that ultimately look at the photos often one single Salient photo that really connects with people is a very effective way of winning their support [Music] that's a really big boar over here his name is snaggletooth [Music] you can see the that canine that sticks out this jaw was broken in a fight it's probably a little female during The Mating Season oh wow he's got blood on his shoulders he must have gotten in a mating fight he was running around and there was two males over there and they may have gotten a fight yeah he got bit [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] stuff to watch yeah it can be pretty brutal sometimes it's that basic evolutionary Force to mate it's very strong in these Bears and the difference between mating and not is a very powerful force for these guys absolutely and it was amazing to watch the female she's just sitting back watching these two guys fight over she wants to see who her new boyfriend's gonna be God that was frightening I'm still just shaking from that that was a good moment [Music] when I'm photographing a mother in a cup like this it's usually when they come together there's some sort of quick interaction momentarily they come together they touch noses or the baby sometimes cuddles up against the mother's chest those are the bones I try to click and it's often just anticipating when they're coming together being ready for it like now [Music] that's nice the baby is just relaxing and rolling just doing what little babies do ah that is so cute [Music] play is so important for bears and they play throughout their lives mothers play with their cubs and young Bears play with other beers even sometimes big males play with other big males it's a rich part of the bear's life they're an incredible incredible creature and they're capable of extraordinary Behavior it is so nice to see these animals just playing just sheer enjoyment of playing and interacting and they obviously are the same age these are two females that just are having a great time just great to watch this they look like sumo wrestlers fur coats just full of energy full winter coats they couldn't look any better than this oh nice move nice move great Behavior wow that's a take down a pin that's four points right there [Music] to have a trust a bond of trust between a wild animal and a human being in their environment it just makes you feel good you feel like you're connected to the whole ecosystem here coming out here with these bears sitting here making eye contact with them unarmed on their terms I've been all over the world looking at wildlife and different things and I really think it's the greatest Wildlife Experience on Earth it's one of the world's greatest jewels you live and you work in a great environment don't you yeah it's in my blood this is a special special place [Music] it's high summer here in the Brooks range in the heart of the Arctic wildlife refuge and the landscape that's teeming with life I'll be wrapping down the conga Hut River to the fast and beautiful coastal plains I'm art wolf join me on this episode of travels to the edge [Music] I'm wondering [Music] 500 miles north of Anchorage the mountains of the Brooks range stretch West to Canada's Yukon Territory the North Slope and its rivers drain onto the vast coastal plain and into the Arctic Ocean the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lies in the northeast corner of this region [Music] foreign North to The Refuge I make a stop at a remote glitchen community on the southern edge of the Brooks range in Arctic Village I had a great chance to talk to Sarah James a glitchen Indian activist about Caribou Wilderness and the importance of the Arctic plain how important are the Caribou really to the question oh well we're terrible pupils food are on our table and it's our tools these are clothing and it's our story it's our song it's our dance slowly depending on caribou and make us who we are and when that get Disturbed then we lose our way of life why is it so important to keep the coastal plain intact every year for thousands of years the Caribou go to the coastal plain because the food is there and it's a safe place for them and it's just like a woman you know when when we have our child we want it quiet clean and private and that's what it is for the Caribou there and we want to keep it that way that's our responsibility [Music] [Applause] I'm joining River guide Bob Dietrich and naturalist Nicole Whittington Evans on this Arctic Journey we're heading to the North Slope of the Brooks range to pick up the concacad river from there we'll float through some of the most remote Wilderness in North America so where are our best chances do you think to see the terrible well they're moving across the coastal plain a lot of them kind of north of these little mountains here that a lot of them come right on through this pass which is sort of a shorter cut the richness of this area is incredible all right all right all right everybody in foreign [Music] this is what I love when you first get on the river the beginning of the day and you just float in every fold every Bend in the river reveals something new this is exciting it's a great way of seeing the Arctic because we're so quiet as we float down come around a Bend there could be Caribou on the bar [Music] or no sheep up on the ridge ahead and this is just the beginning foreign [Music] people do in the lower 48 which is get on Rivers too for the sport this is more of a transportation through a wild country they're so wide open so you can see wildlife for long distances [Music] these mugels Nest on these gravel bars and they probably have chicks out there now so they get pretty aggressive when you get near the chicks like that one gave us a warning shot sometimes they really scream at you and die bomb you here goes incoming here we go [Music] there's a lot of fossils a lot of shells with fossilized shells within the rock along the shore so this was all at one time an ocean bed wasn't it yep you can sort of see all those layers incredible I'm just so anxious to see our first Caribou it's amazing how the large animals can just disappear in this what seems to be Wide Open Country yeah with this low valley here and that low valley there it looks like a natural funnel for migrating caribou wow look at the striation and the ice and the blue color fantastic right from here I can see blue blue and then the mountains right above and it makes its eyes look like 40 feet tall so it's just a juxtaposition which is great let's just pull over and get up on top of the ice and uh kind of scout where we should be going just jumped off the raft to explore this off ice which is one of the really primary elements of the Arctic landscape it builds up over the winter months as the river freezes and each subsequent freeze adds another layer until it goes from the bottom all the way to the top some of the soft ice will be as deep as 12 feet which is a pretty extraordinary stuff as I hike along the rivers that flow out of the Brooks range I can find a lot of evidence of this ancient seabed many many rocks hold fossils chitins and other Crustaceans are really obvious in these rocks and like everything else that I do I love the photograph various scales from the grand Landscapes to the wildlife to live in the Brooks range and now I'm going to concentrate on doing macro shots of just these shells these fossils locked in the rock [Music] [Music] up in the Arctic as with every location I'm traveling these days climate and the warming of the earth is changing in profound ways and in the time that I've traveled in the RNA looking back maybe 25 years I've seen now entire microclimates of trees Sprout and grow we're looking at Balsam poplars growing in Ravines that were once barren wow this is a beautiful Forest I would never have predicted this is on the North Slope of the Brooks range yeah I know a very few Pockets like this up here at all Just Flowers these are these little white flowers are beautiful the Lupine are very very pretty one of the interesting things about these flowers this far north is that we're not experiencing a lot of bees buzzing around us and pollinating the flowers and that that's because the temperatures are too cold often for bees to actually function and so the alternative in a climate like this is that mosquitoes pollinate flowers like this [Music] what I like about being in here is when you're on the Arctic Slope everything's so open and austere and beautiful but for the mind and the spirit it's kind of nice to have a change of pace [Music] this is a wonderful place to be right now there's an Arctic air that's about 15 or 20 feet away under some dead branches so it feels secure the only thing I see moving right now is it's uh the whiskers it's just and occasionally the ears are moving from the mosquitoes but otherwise if it just stays still you don't see them and they're quite happy that's nice my mission always is to show things I mean I not only want to get a shot of a lot of caribou and the big Mega fauna but it's also the little things [Music] foreign [Music] because it's actually designated all the way to the ocean as a narrow strip of wilderness out into the coastal plains [Music] I'm gonna stop on the far side of that Creek well oh my God [Music] we saw these sheep from the raft and we've beached the raft and walked a couple hundred yards across the The Sandbar to get closer and it's just a really nice view of a couple young males and a couple females and a baby very casual very relaxed foreign wild white sheep in the world they really are uniquely adapted to this vertical landscape and in fact is why they survive because they are chased by Wolves frequently and so they don't venture too far from these Cliffs above the river [Music] we've just seen a herd of bull Caribou it's our first uh herd and they're standing on some ice down here beautiful antlers if we have the ability to get off this river near the office and come up over the edge and get a good shot we're gonna try that we don't know whether we'll be successful because off ice and the Rapids is pretty difficult to land a raft [Music] work anymore I don't think they've seen us yet [Music] wow look at that they're heading towards the river if we get a crossing that's going to be fabulous that would be a great thing to see [Music] this is really nice isn't it these are beautiful animals and look how they spread out so that they all have a good view they've just turn around they're running towards us this is what's so incredible look at they're literally running at us look how large their antlers are and when they stop they all get the front row seats that's what's so amazing about these animals so adapted to long distance running now look at that oh beautiful beautiful oh it's just like flowing water that is as beautiful as it gets wow what drama [Music] that was so beautiful to see all the same forms with the water that is sheer drama look at the power of getting out of that water gotta do the muscles and then I came towards us I guess a good one it's almost like a platoon of soldiers I love these Caribou I mean they give you a lot of opportunity and they're so uniform I mean that's look at that every antler is so huge I love their dark eyes too yeah their eyes yeah they all look like they've been in fights and lost [Music] look at the way this sand has filled in the lower portions of these grooves in the ice and it's just beautiful patterns repeated throughout this entire surface on a day when the clouds have really shrouded these mountains and I can't find any Caribou I love to find and get lost into the abstract world it's interesting to me how nature repeats itself on various levels right now the patterns remind me exactly of the graceful curves within the antlers of the caribou and when I photographed really fine details on the carpet of the tundra there's also a lichen called Caribou lichen that is almost identical to the shape of the antlers itself thank you [Music] so these Arctic rivers are known for their Rapids but this is a pretty good set yeah this is the biggest set of Rapids on the on the river and that's why we came up here to scout it out a little bit before we just blindly went into it [Music] you guys ready to get wet foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's amazing to me when you start flying over this land and you start to see the trails of the Caribou etched into the soil and in some cases it's probably a foot or more deep and these trails really ageless it's almost like an eloquent writing of the Caribou onto the land itself absolutely and there playing out an ancient Rhythm that has gone on for thousands and thousands of years [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Caribou migrated a long way yeah it's incredible they actually the porcupine caribou herd travels farther than any other terrestrial mammal wow and uh they travel an average of 2500 miles a year so they'll come all the way through these mountains back into the National Wildlife Refuge to drop their young [Music] [Applause] plane bird their calves they share this uh birthing ground with millions of migratory Birds who also lay eggs and hatch their young right there on the coastal plain the Arctic plane really on a clear day is quite an extraordinary sight because you look to the south towards the Brooks range and you got this this skyline of glacier-clad Peaks and to the north it's just this white thin line of ice that lies along the Ocean Edge and in between is the Arctic plane this giant Nursery [Music] this is great it's midnight up here in the Arctic in the land of the Midnight Sun and there's a huge herd of caribou moving across the slope and they're just seemingly floating across it's so sinuous this line of caribou it's a great subject for this camera it seems at times that every square foot of this Tundra has a subject from the Micro World of the lichens and the Mosses to the small birds that make their nests within this carpet of the tundra right in front of me I have a beautiful nest of Lapland long Spurs and five little babies so perfectly camouflaged within the complexity of the tundra I'm moving in really quick and getting a quick shot [Music] great there's just very blase to my presence which is the best time to start to get really nice behavior one of the best shots is when they both stand up on their back legs and they look around there's a nice catch light in the eye there's no wind it's a very even overcast it's perfect condition foreign [Music] we're at a great spot right now we've come low enough on the conga cut river that now this entire Valley has broadened out just beyond these last Foothills lies the great coastal plain so these Caribou are coming out of all the side channels migrating right past our camp up and over these ridges and out onto the plane [Music] there's got to be at least 500 bull Caribou going at this slope on great [Music] Alaska's North Slope is a vast area at this time 94 of it has already been handed over for oil drilling and other types of Industrial Development four percent 94 of it wow if we allow oil drilling and Industrial Development on the remaining piece the small piece of the coastal plain in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge we will be losing a tremendous piece of America's heritage playing really exemplifies true Wilderness this is the place I think of when I think of the word welders foreign it's the coldest windiest highest and driest continent on the planet it's a landscape shaped by wind Rock and ice this is Antarctica a place like nowhere else on Earth I'm art wolf join me on travels to the edge before exploring Antarctica the planet's southernmost continent I couldn't resist a quick stop in the remote Falkland Islands which lie east of the tip of South America surrounded by the cold South Atlantic the Falkland Islands are an isolated Sanctuary for marine mammals and birds that thrive in these high latitudes I'm on a very remote island off the north east corner of the Falkland Islands known as steeple Jason this island has never been inhabited by man and consequently it is absolutely covered in black brown albatrosses tens of thousands of pairs Nest on this island [Music] one of the nice things that I experienced while I'm sitting here photographing these albatrosses is the sensation of these birds coming directly overhead as they're Landing or catching the currents [Music] some Albatross is literally circumnavigate the globe between nesting Seasons so there are birds that are born to fly and they only come ashore once during the nesting season otherwise these birds are on the wing off the land and out over the air currents although their numbers are declining this is still the largest Black Rob Albatross Rookery in the world literally hundreds of thousands of birds are nesting in this sprawling plane all the way to the Sea and to photograph it I'm choosing to shoot patterns basically shooting the repetition of every bird shape that is evenly spaced across this plane [Music] foreign [Music] these isolated Islands present a unique opportunity to get close to one of the world's rarest Raptors I've got a great shot right now of this caracara which is Australia the caracara also known as a Johnny root this is an opportunistic bird of prey that is always looking for the exposed egg or the unattended baby I'm shooting it with a wide angle lens and I'm really bringing in this beautiful rugged Coastline the beautiful deep blues of the ocean the surrounding black brown albatrosses and it just makes a great shot [Music] as evening approaches tens of thousands of nesting Birds settle in for the night [Music] [Music] at the very end of the day light is coming really at a bleak angle to these very calm black brow Albatross is really beautiful dark sky in the distance and is just the perfect shot to end the day [Music] from the Falkland Islands we're heading 600 miles farther south across the notorious Drake Passage to Antarctica [Music] thank you [Music] foreign I've just spent the last two days at Sea crossing the Drake Passage and now the rewards Antarctica [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it is amazing fantastic life really really excited to be here [Music] [Music] I've asked Jeff Renner for a primer on the geologic history of this Frozen landmass so what can you tell me about the Antarctic peninsula in particular well being a geologist I I look to the rocks at primarily and one of the earliest childishers down there did identify the Antarctic Peninsula as an extension of the Andes in fact it was called the antarctandes the geology of the Andes is similar to the geology which is in the peninsula it's dormant here it's finished now the volcanic activity is finished but it was a volcanic island dog would you consider Antarctica a desert well by definition a desident is not necessarily a temperature controlled by but it's the amount of precipitation and sure enough Antarctica's clusters perhaps the driest it's a cold as it does against a hot desert the snowfall where we are it's Maritime so you may be getting 15 to 20 feet of snow a year not so on the mainland the East Antarctica there's snowfall maybe only half half an inch or so a year but the difference there is is that it doesn't go it stays it accumulates and it then it gradually turns to ice and then flows outward from the interior to carve off of through the glaciers then you gradually get this huge mass of floating ice that is an eye Shelf foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] asked what is my favorite place to photograph on Earth and without hesitation I always respond Antarctica and South Georgia Island virtually anywhere I take my camera and aim it I've got a great image whether it's the ice and the Beautiful way the light reflects off the water and these beautiful mountains got a small Rookery of gin two penguins Sitting on This Rock Promontory with this beautiful backdrop of a glacier all these Gentoo penguins are incubating eggs and they've made a nest literally out of tiny Pebbles there are no grasses there are no sticks down here in the Antarctica so they make do with what they've got all day long they still Rock after Rock after rock until the nest they're stealing from no longer has rocks Stone Thief Stone Thief look at that bird there's no pride in these birds they'll come over 10 feet away steal the rock that this bird has really worked hard to steal from other birds [Music] you've always got to keep your eye on these guys you never know when they're going to sneak up behind you and steal things out of your pack [Music] thank you [Music] I've got a very interesting shot here it's of Gen 2 Penguins nesting on a rock in the distance and in the foreground I'm incorporating the bones of a humpback whale which undoubtedly was harvested during the Heyday of the whaling industry that really was centered here in the Antarctic during the beginning of the last century [Music] thank you [Music] one of the interesting birds that lives here is the blue eyed chick it's actually a Cormorant that also feeds in the Krill Rich Waters here in these very very cold Seas the distinctive thing about the blue eyed shag is the blue eye and it is such a beautiful color it's almost a deep cobalt blue that Rings the eye foreign [Music] to get which is a really nice framing of this mountain now with these very abstract almost magical icicles hanging down and each icicle has a little Frozen drop [Music] oh this is beautiful thank you [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] as remote as this continent is it hasn't escaped the influence of man history Professor Tim Bowman describes the early history of whaling here what do you know about the whaling industry down here I mean when did it start and what was the extent of it well whaling began in the Antarctic in a serious way in 1904 when C.A Larson established a base in south Georgia but it affected the whole of the Antarctic region and over a period of time there are huge numbers of whales were taken until the industry basically shut down [Music] what we're looking at in terms of numbers is over a million killed whales and if you want to take that million whale figure and make it real look out over the ocean if you're anywhere down here look into the bay we have a bay behind us right now look out there do you see a spout I'm telling you in 1904 you'd have had a hard time counting the spouts you could have walked ashore on the backs of the whales [Music] I'm intrigued by the way the residue of the whaling industry is disintegrating and aging lichens attached to this metal as it breaks down and there's a lot of textures and colors that I find very intriguing thank you I really love the way these rivets have really exploded and disintegrated as the cold and the ice Works its way into the recesses and they just explode [Music] during the process of thawing and freezing it just really wreaks havoc on metal and as cracks appear lichens establish a foothold and the whole thing now becomes a study of texture and color and that's really what I'm after thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] these Zodiacs are absolutely perfect for this environment they have the ability just to be like many icebreakers pushing through the ice getting us into great great positions [Music] the thing that I think defines an Arctic more than anything is ice and behind me is a classic Iceberg and unlike any Iceberg I've photographed before this one is full of icicles and it presents a new subject in a beautiful ethereal way [Music] this is about as Dynamic an environment as you'd find anywhere and everything's changing nothing stays the same all the configurations of the icebergs are constantly moving around in these currents I could just stay here and shoot all day long [Music] there are several Weddell seal pups just frolicking in and amongst the ice that's building up along the shore they're very very young and yet even at this age they're practicing behaviors that will really serve them well as adults so sparring and engaging and always trying to get the upper hand with their other baby will teach them the necessary skills as adults to really survive in this really difficult and harsh environment yeah yeah [Music] really nice gentle expression which is just the perfect counter to this really hostile World he's very curious he's just playing like all babies would completely unafraid of us [Music] hello and I'm staying very low so he's really really curious and wow just beautiful it's those moments throughout my career that I take home and I'll remember the rest of my life those nice engaging moments between photographer and subject where there's just this Bond of trust and it's really what it's about this is a classic Antarctic scene a deli penguin sitting on ice right along the shore I've got icebergs in behind them that are really distinctive in their shapes and then really dramatic clouds in the distance these lenticular clouds which are really indicative of high winds in the atmosphere it is truly Antarctica foreign [Music] there are 17 different species of penguins the adeli like the emperor are truly birds of the ice they are at the most of staged by penguins [Music] I got a really nice pair of Adelie Penguins just sitting there and the way they're flippers if I move my camera ever so much it's like they're holding hands right now I've got a beautiful side of a single penguin and I'm framing it through an iceberg on the beach that has a natural hole in it so it's really a nice way of looking at a penguin and yet again a different way [Music] I've got a beautiful pattern of about 60 Adelie penguins and they're black and white coloration is really really striking in this late afternoon light oh beautiful beautiful [Music] oh and here's one coming in oh there they go wow [Music] thank you I feel like a fox and a chicken coop here there's so much to shoot I love the patterns of the eyes the late afternoon light the austerity of this place for me is magnificent oh wait a minute look at this it's great just keep heading towards this iceberg there's a great Iceberg we're approaching and as the light gets lower the icicles hanging off they overhang really are catching the light six to seven tenths of this Iceberg lies below the surface of this water and that's what's so deceiving about it oh this is a great shot right now all the icicles are really highlighted by the light and I've got a nice great backdrop wow if this doesn't exemplify Antarctica I don't know what else does [Music] my mission as a photographer is really to translate the environment I love the challenge myself to record the environment to show people maybe the Antarctic they've never seen before [Music] foreign South Georgia island is bitterly cold Wild inhospitable and yet it has one of the largest concentrations of wildlife found anywhere [Music] and is my favorite place on Earth I'm art wolf join me on travels to the edge [Music] foreign [Music] the southernmost tip of South America is Cape Horn Antarctica lies 800 miles to the South the remote island of South Georgia lies to the east of these two continents exposed to the full Fury of the Southern Ocean joining me on this journey is one of the world's foremost authorities on seabirds Peter Harrison and Explorer and naturalist Shirley Metz this is the wildest Island I can think of there are only a few hundred people in the world that have ever Surf and navigated this island because it's it's a fearful place [Music] it's Coastline this is as Wild As It Gets in south Georgia we will feel as though we are in Antarctica true and proper tell me about this area was here that Shackleton came in after his 800 mile journey to this day is still gasping at The Open Boat journey of 800 miles [Music] what do you think is in store for us okay two and a half to three days of rolling around in the windiest stormiest Ocean on the world run into a first class storm with 30-foot Seas albatrosses are being tossed around very very dramatic but I am getting some great shots [Music] [Music] if ever a place said primordial it has to be South Georgia especially in this pre-dawn light The Sounds the smells the sights of all these penguins and elephant seals this is the place that I love to come back to year in year out [Music] it's really early in the morning and the light hasn't quite gotten up to where I can really start to do my work so I like to walk around with my subjects and figure out a place to photograph them [Music] let's go down to the beach get some photos we'll have a little lunch [Music] [Music] a lot of penguins here biggest colony in the world of King Penguins [Music] a few years ago we only had say 200 000 king penguin players on South Georgia now over 400 000 pairs of King Penguins why do you think they're increasing at such an amazing rate well I think the Earth is warming and the warmer ocean around South Georgia the pullback of all of these glaciers and so on it has benefited the king penguin [Music] I'm like a kid in a candy store there's so much to work with [Music] if a community of designers got together I don't think they could have designed a more beautiful bird golden yellow stands out so regally against the Silvers silver and gold in a beautiful shape on the top of these birds and it's just so fun to work with the color and the design of them [Music] what I tried to do after having established a sense of place to these birds is find the details it's those little moments that you capture on film that you bring away that really play nicely with the larger perspective foreign [Music] these are amazing these elephant seals they are so enormous multi-tunned animals that come ashore to rest and to give birth to little seals and these are actually mid-sized males right now they're just incredible how high they can reach they can stand up much taller than me and then they Spar like this [Music] [Applause] they're sparring they're interacting there's little babies all over the place they make absolutely gropes sounds they're amazing animals [Music] when I go into a new environment I like to shoot an establishing shot with a really wide angle [Music] I love working with overcast light right now I've got the best of both worlds I've got overcast light but blue sky behind very very classic calm morning which is really an unusual event on South Georgia right now everybody's calm I'm calm it's peaceful [Music] this is the only island in the world where you can actually come and sit with wandering albatrosses Peter this is a big bird tell me about this bird while it's not only big art it is the biggest the biggest flying bird in the world there's nothing that is bigger males weigh about 24 to 25 pounds in weight that's a Thanksgiving turkey size but with wings 11 to even 12 feet uh from Wing to twelve feet two basketball players side by side I guess that's right I can fit Under One Wing there and they'd still have a few inches on me thank you very long-lived Birds long lived longer than iron I'm 60 years old that bird on the right could be 70 years old 70 70. [Music] and not only that these birds when they fly they fly five to six hundred miles in a single day when the youngster leaves this Nest goes out onto the ocean for the first time spends the first seven years minimum at Sea by the time it gets back it will have flown one and a half million miles in its lifetime these birds are estimated to fly some 15 million miles that's around 18 round-trip Journeys to the moon and back nothing flies further than an albatross sadly they are threatened in the 20 odd years that I've been coming here we've had numbers on South Georgia plummet from 4 000 Birds now down to less than 1 800 Birds we've lost half in about 25 years foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] s present a formidable challenge for photography here on the island because they're so aggressive Southern fur seals were nearly hunted to extension in the early 1900s in fact they thought they were extinct and since the early 1900s they've gone from maybe 30 animals to 2 million in such a short time one of the most extraordinary comebacks of any animal species and right now these animals have come back with a vengeance they're extraordinarily aggressive very territorial [Music] a bite they will charge you from 100 feet away I've had tripod legs sheared off and a force to be reckoned with [Music] surely it's amazing how this south coast of South Georgia is so much more glaciated and rugged looking oh very much so and this is where Shackleton ended up coming after his 800 mile Journey he arrived here on King hack and Bay he spends about four or five days here gets resupplied Nails the nails to the bottom of the soles of his feet and then makes the journey up over the spine of South Georgia to the other side 36 hours across the glaciers over mountains that were never ever traveled before not mapped not explored no food up in the mountains so they had to take all of that with them incredible story yes I I don't think very much replicated at all still today and that's when men were men an incredible journey and an amazing a rescue given the fact that nobody died on his entire trip that was always something that Shackleton claimed that no man was ever lost under my command thank you [Music] this is a freshwater lake left over from a receding Glacier and in this Lake are hundreds of young wieners elephant seals that were born probably a month or so ago and they've been fed on very very rich milk from their mothers and now the mothers have gone out to sea to replenish their nutrients but for right now these pups are jousting and playing and just hanging out in this very benign water foreign wide angle I've approached him from very low to curious animals if you want to get unusual shots you get into unusual positions and by staying low letting them look into my lens they'll come right up I get these distorted wide angles which can often be fantastic and I love these kind of perspectives because if you just stand up from five feet up looking 30 feet away it looks like you're looking at these animals and now I want to kind of interpret their landscape interpret their environment and you do that by getting into their environment on their level these guys are known as wiener simply because they've been weaned from their mothers And when they see somebody like me laying on the beach they may in fact think I'm mother so they come in close and I just love this interaction with these wild animals and I'm careful not to touch them hey okay come on you wanted you one oh there we go now he's so curious who's he gonna Touch My Lens don't touch my lens oh Ah that's what I said don't do that ah excuse me look at it that's you do you trust me do you think I look like your mother [Music] that's it baby your diamonds more feeling oh yeah [Music] [Music] okay [Music] it's miserable outside blowing rain it's cold and yet some of the best shots I've ever shot are in these very conditions right now I have a small group of macaroni penguins that have just emerged from the sea and I've bundled up one of the few times not using a tripod because I'm just maneuvering the camera every couple of seconds now if the wave comes up and totally soaks me it'll be well worth it because these are beautiful shots really really nice even a reflection in a little Pond and there's a fur seal right behind them so they've hopped right into me and they're coming right up me and goodbye this is up close and personal because this first seal has scared them so they're not so concerned about me as much as the fur seal [Music] [Music] thank you this is a very windy day here and I cannot find any Penguins or seals on this really remote beach but what I can find are some beautiful landscapes but on a very intimate level what I'm framing up here is just a close study of these beautiful lichens that thrive here in these very cold conditions on South Georgia Island they're among the oldest slowest growing plants on Earth I love this I mean it's great for the mind and when you're photographing Wildlife you're so caught up in following the action but here your mind can relax you can really get into the moment [Music] [Music] well you sort of know a lot of history about this place well I come maybe two or three times a year and every time we always come to Griffith and decide if the largest of our waiting stations and there is there is a lot of history here Griffith was the first of the whaling stations here at South Georgia and it was started off in 1904 now what you have to imagine art is that Cumberland Bay at that time was full of Wales and I mean full not like a whale here or there I'm talking of hundreds and hundreds of whales they never left the bay they caught hundreds and hundreds of whales all they had to do was to row out put the Harpoon in the whale and bring the scrot that's what a dead whale is called back into the the harbor [Music] by the 50s the whales were getting harder and harder to catch these same boats that caught whales just in this Bay now they were going over 200 miles from this island to find Wales actually ended around 1965 1966. so about 55 years 55 years the combined whaling stations of South Georgia took 175 250 whales they range from the biggest the blue to the rarest down in these Waters which was the southern right whale nothing escaped the harpoons here this is also the final resting place for a famous person Shackleton finally came to rest here he died in the bay here his men erected a cross on the hill he told his wife my heart is always in the South and if you go to the graveyard you'll see that every single grave is buried with the head facing north to Europe sir Ernest Shackled on the boss is the only person with his head in his heart facing south to the continent he loved quad Antarctica what a Fitting Place for him to be foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] to see this great opportunity there's a family a person several females and a dope Bowl really nice moment with these otherwise very aggressive seals [Music] there's three pups two are the typical black and one is this beautiful cream color one in two thousand occur with this color face right in front of us what's nice about this is the seal pup's eyes are so black it's a great contrast the shots that I'm looking for are when the baby and the mother's heads come together and there's a moment of nurturing and it just really plays well to the camera [Music] thank you [Music] despite its isolation and extreme climate South Georgia Island remains a remarkable Oasis of wildlife there's simply no other place like it in the world foreign wolf join me next time on travels to the edge [Music] [Music]

Channel: Real Wild

Views: 612,535

Keywords: full documentary, wildlife documentary, wild animal, real wild, animal documentary, animals

Id: f2UQFoCd3eQ

Length: 113min 16sec (6796 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2022