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It covers more than one third of our planet.

More than all off the continents combined.

For 200 million years, it has teemed with life,

built new species.

It's moods power weather systems.

Touching every creature on Earth.

Leviathans are on the move.

Grey whales headed south, hugging the coast of California.

They left their feeding grounds in the arctic two months ago

and will swim nearly non stop until they reach

their destination.

The grey whale has the longest mammal migration know,

a 10 to 12,000 mile round trip

and it's all for this.

Three massive lagoons on the west coast of Mexico's

Baja peninsula.

The first whales begin arriving in January.

Pregnant females who conceived here last year

have returned to give birth.

The other adults are looking to mate.

At 16 miles long and four miles wide,

San Ignacio Lagoon is the last untouched whale nursery

on Earth.

Connected to the Pacific by a narrow sandy channel,

it is an ecosystem unto itself.

Ocean currents infuse these waters with food

and visitors from the deep.

Each with in it's own season.

Swarms of migrating squid feasted

on by juvenile great whites.

Four of the worlds seven marine turtles feed here.

Pristine mangroves host nesting birds in late fall.

The tidal cycle is critical to the health

of this ecosystem.

Down to the smallest invertebrate.

Retreating waters flush the lagoon clean.

Decaying matter is carried off into the ocean for recycling.

The incoming tide brings nutrients and oxygen rich water.

The evergreen mangroves are hard at work 24 hours a day.

An endless labyrinth of loops anchored in the sand,

buffers the salt marsh against hurricanes and storm surge.

Down here, hundreds of species find shelter.

Crabs, fish eggs, and hatchlings thrive in the shadows.

At least 70% of the worlds tropical fish

need mangroves like these for part of their life cycle.

The lagoons bounty also draws airborne visitors.

Osprey.

These powerful raptors will build a nest on nearly anything

to keep their young up and away from predators.

The roof of an old outhouse works just fine.

Adults hunt in shifts.

Wandering crows would be glad to snatch a chick.

At just a month old, they can't fly yet

but they know how to keep their room clean.

With a life span of 20 years, Osprey can cover more

than 150,000 miles in search of good hunting grounds.

No one knows how or when whales found this desert sanctuary

but it has everything a mother could want.

A muddy bottom rich with food.

Extra salty water helps newborns float

and while killer whales ambush calves in the open ocean,

they wouldn't dare enter a shallow lagoon teeming

with 1,000 adult greys.

Mothers swim their calves back and forth across

the lagoon, building up their strength

and endurance for the long swim home.

Whalers discovered Baja's nursery lagoon in the 1850s.

Harpoon a calf and you quickly learn what a 50 foot

40 ton mother can do to a skiff.

It's said that one in four whalers who worked these waters

was maimed our killed.

The survivors had another name for these ferociously

protective moms.

Devil fish.

Still, they hunted grey whales for nearly 100 years.

The grey whale is now protected and they seek us out.

You are about to witness one of natures great

and grand mysteries.

A phenomenon that began in the 1970s.

It only happens in Baja's nursery lagoons.

Mother whales approach fishing pangas with their calves.

Some even lift their newborns up.

Eye to eye with the species that drove these whales

to the brink of extinction.

Some interactions last a moment.

Others an hour.

When they leave the protection of the lagoons,

the behavior stops.

The Atlantic's grey whales were hunted to extinction.

In the 1940s, there were

just a few hundred pacific greys left.

Today, there are about 20,000.

By May, the whales are gone, swimming north back

to the Arctic.

If this calf survives the wild pacific, she'll be ready

for motherhood in about eight years.

Some migrations remain a mystery.

Very little is known about the rare and illusive

black sea nettle.

It wasn't described and named by science until 1997.

These jellyfish wander the Pacific

between Southern California and Baja,

eating phytoplankton and smaller jellies.

Fully grown, a black sea nettle's bell can be three feet

across with stinging tentacles 25 feet long.

About every 10 years, they appear in swarms of hundreds

then vanish into the deep.

The Pacific ocean seems custom made

for secretive carnivores.

Every October, great white sharks begin gathering

at Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Mexico.

The males arrive first.

At 12 to 16 feet and 2,000 pounds, they are intimidating

but they are dwarfed by the ladies.

Females arrive a month later and they can be giants,

up to 20 feet long and 7,000 pounds.

Just what they are doing here, no one knows for sure.

A congregation of the sexes suggest mating

but pregnant females are here too.

Perhaps to ambush migrating elephant seals.

We have five senses.

450 million years of evolution have equipped

these apex predators with seven.

But they are useless against nets, hooks, and long lines.

We once thought females couldn't reproduce

until they were 15 years old.

We were wrong.

Make that 30 years.

The silly notion of marauding sharks has begun to fade.

So have many species of shark.

We kill 100 million every year for sport,

baseless folk medicine, even cosmetics.

When the festivities at Guadalupe Island wind down,

this shark heads east in search of sea lions.

He knows exactly where to find them.

Towering volcanic cliffs mark the gateway

to the Sea of Cortez.

A 700 mile long slice of blue water between mainland Mexico

and the Baja peninsula.

This rocky finger of land broke away from the continent

about seven million years ago and began sliding westward.

Pacific waters fill the void.

The Sea of Cortez is the most diverse sea on the planet.

Home to more than 5,000 species of fish and invertebrates.

Ever flowing tides, southerly winds, and rising

sun warmed water create strong deep currents.

A ceaseless engine powering this unique ecosystem.

The current pulls nutrients from the cold depths

feeding fan corals and plankton.

The best fish food there is.

Hungry mobulas gather by the hundreds,

gliding through the water column.

This ancient cousin to the shark is less than three feet

from tip to tip.

Unlike great whites, which have been tracked

by satellite for decades, very little is know

about mobula migration patterns, where they mate,

or give birth.

But they have only one pup at a time.

Scooping up plankton en masse

is an effective feeding strategy.

It's also dangerous to their very survival.

A single commercial fishing boat could decimate

this shoal in hours.

Harvesting their gill plates and fins for distant markets.

The mobula has reached near threatened status.

Plankton eaters come in all shapes and sizes.

But none as more important than these.

Pound for pound, they are probably the most nutritious

fish in the world.

Sardine, anchovy, and herring.

The super food of the oceans.

They feed countless carnivores, above and below water.

Great schools course through the Eastern Pacific

and Sea of Cortez, migrating, feeding, spawning.

The sardine has one brief mission in life.

Reproduce before something or someone eats it.

When the United States went to war in 1917,

so did the sardine.

It was the perfect food to can, ship, and feed millions

of soldiers.

The sardine supply and it's uses seemed endless.

Animal food, ingredients for paint and explosives,

even soap.

Decades without fishing regulations or self restraint

took it's toll.

By the end of World War 2, the sardines were gone.

A total collapse of the sardine fishery

in the Eastern Pacific.

It has never fully recovered.

A single sardine is helpless but they create safety

in numbers.

Disappearing into a flashing ribbon of silver

is an excellent way to avoid being singled out

and eaten.

But not everyone is dazzled by the show.

There's always a predator or two that can crack

your defenses.

Striped marlin find a school of sardine hiding in the deep

and drive it upward.

Sea lions spot the action and join the hunt.

The sardine are surrounded by the fastest pinniped

and second fastest bill fish on Earth.

There's nowhere to run or hide.

At 10 feet and 400 pounds, the striped marlin

can hit 50 miles per hour.

The sardines last hope is to create a big ball,

tire out their attackers, and disappear into the rocks.

The predators carefully time their plunges.

Being skewered or rammed could be fatal.

Fish blood in the water is like a siren song

calling the hungry from miles away.

Sea lions are among the great whites favorite foods

and they know it.

This one seems to be just passing through.

Still, one brave soul keeps on eye on the interloper

while the others dash back to safety.

These hunters will venture nearly 300 miles off shore

in search of food.

But this is their realm.

Shallow rocky waters.

Few creatures navigate crashing waves and ripping currents

like the California sea lion.

They are indeed the king of the coastline.

They can sprint to 25 miles per hour,

avoiding predators or catching prey.

Unlike their cousin, the seal, this mammal has ear flaps,

long front fins to walk on land, and they are highly social.

A colony can be 1,500 hundred strong.

But there's no doubt who's in charge around here.

At seven feet and more than 800 pounds,

this bull has 20 or so females in his harem.

There aren't any lazy kings among pinnipeds

and no one inherits anything from dad.

A pretender to the throne must be as big and fat

as possible for the breeding season.

If he can beat up and drive off the current champion,

the bulls job has just begun.

He fasts, living off stored blubber while defending

his patch of rock from rivals and trying to attract

more females.

Endless patrolling for predators and troublemakers

eventually takes it's toll.

Most bulls last just a few weeks before a rival sends

him packing.

Females can reach six feet and 220 pounds

and like most parents, there's no rest for the weary.

Experienced moms flip upside down to take a breath.

Their eyes never leaving the little ones.

Juveniles are like puppies, full of energy and mischief.

Anything interesting needs investigation,

becomes a chew toy or a game of keep away.

Antagonizing a damsel fish is just good clean fun.

But make no mistake, a sea lion will let you know

when she's had enough of your nonsense.

For all it's acrobatic grace, the California sea lion

is a champion among deep divers and built for it.

They can collapse their lungs and slow their hearts

from 90 beats per minute to just 20.

Blood is shunted away from tissue that doesn't

need much oxygen, so that specialized muscles

can grab the extra O2.

All of this allows a sea lion to hold it's breath

for 15 minutes and safely dive to 900 feet

in search of squid.

Three dozen islands are scattered about the Sea of Cortez.

Most were created by explosive volcanic activity.

Some are tiny barren bits of rock.

Others are large enough to have their ecosystem

and grow the greatest cacti on Earth.

The mighty Cardon.

These slow growing succulents, or water storing plants,

can live for hundreds of years.

A giant can reach 60 feet high, nine feet in diameter

and weigh 25 tons.

The cardon shrug off the worst hurricanes the Pacific

can gin up.

They go months on end in this desert oven without

a drop of rain.

But when it comes to reproduction, this cactus

has a problem, pollination.

Those nodules near the top are blossoms

but they are sealed tight.

Opening them in the heat of the day is a bad idea.

Flowers get cooked and the cactus loses precious water.

Mother nature has a solution.

A secret army of pollinators.

Somewhere down there.

Without it, the reign of the mighty cardon

would come to an end.

When night falls, the blossoms open,

emitting a pungent odor.

Hungry pallid bats emerge from their caves and crevices

and follow their nose.

Other bats have evolved long tongues to efficiently

extract the flowers nectar.

Not the pallid bat, but it's the cardon's best friend.

Working hard for every drop of sugary liquid,

they are coated with a layer of pollen.

Flitting from blossom to blossom like a furry bumblebee,

they pollinate the cacti.

The bats get an energy drink and the cardon get

to reproduce.

Pallid bats are the size of a mouse,

with the wing span of a crow.

They're also well equipped to climb, crawl, and hunt.

Like other bats, they use echolocation to fly

from roosting site to hunting grounds.

Then they fall silent.

Extra large ears are exquisitely designed to pin point

the location and distance of the slightest noise.

Sooner or later, the prey reveals itself.

In hand to hand combat, the scorpion always loses.

Some scorpion stings could easily kill a mammal this small

but these ambush predators seem immune to the venom.

A pallid bat can eat half it's body weight in a night.

As the night shift winds down, a whole new set of hunters

reports for duty.

Common dolphin.

They prefer shallow coastal water where fish

are more easily trapped.

Small pods join together, sometimes by the hundreds.

Dolphin are among evolution's great masterpieces.

Perhaps second only to us in intelligence.

About 55 million years ago, it's ancestor

was a wolf like creature land that began foraging

in swamps and rivers.

Eventually, nostrils moved to the top of it's head.

Finger like paw bones fused into fins.

Aquatic life streamlined and shrank it's body

but it's brain grew by leaps and bounds.

The dolphin, as we know it,

emerged about 10 million years ago.

New studies suggest that their echolocation

is far more complex then we ever imagined.

The dolphins sends a focused train of clicks

out into the water like a flashlight beam.

The sound bounces back in the shape of the object struck.

Creating a rapid series of 3D images in the dolphin's brain.

Even in pitch black water, they see the world around them.

It's as though they're watching a 3D movie with their ears.

Some predators prefer to go it alone.

Cormorants have been hunting like this for 17 million years.

It's ancestors plied the seas when dinosaurs

walked the land.

Along with dense bones and wetable feathers,

you might think evolution gave it special eyes

for hunting under water.

Not so.

Down here, they see no better than you do.

What they have is great technique.

Holding their breathe for three minutes or more,

cormorants can dive 150 feet down.

They dash along the bottom or rocky crevices,

flush out a fish, and snatch it.

These birds work hard for every meal.

Others live in a penthouse and get room service.

Brown pelican chicks.

For now, they're perfectly camouflaged to match

the guano covered rock.

It's late morning

and you can almost hear their bellies growling.

Each will consume more than 100 pounds of fish

before they can fly and hunt on their own.

That's two months from now.

Until then, mom and dad are on the job.

The pelican may be funny looking to us

but it's a formidable predator.

With a wing span just shy of seven feet,

they glide low over the water.

A tick of aerodynamics that rewards less work

with more speed.

You're looking at a true living fossil.

Almost unchanged for the past 30 million years.

Evolution gave the pelican it's stamp of approval

when our ancestors were fluffy little monkeys.

This is what the pelicans are looking for, sardine.

Out here, a splash is a dinner bell, everyone comes running.

Brown pelicans plunge from as high as 100 feet in the air.

Just before hitting the water, their body rotates,

protecting their neck, throat, and arteries

from direct impact.

Air sacs under the skin absorb the blow

like a layer of bubble wrap.

The shock wave stuns fish six feet deep.

Their bill expands like a balloon, scooping up three gallons

of water and sardine.

Everyone will eat their fill today.

To our eye, the ocean may look like an alien world.

It's citizens roaming about searching for a meal.

A place to hide.

But there are highways, rest stops, land marks,

and small towns.

The big cities are sea mounts.

Ancient volcanoes that don't quit reach the surface.

The Pacific has far more than any other ocean.

Some are spits of rock a few hundred feet tall.

Others are vast mountain ranges so massive

that their gravitational pull

gathers the ocean up around them

causing a bulge on the surface that can be measured

by satellites.

Sea mounts are so numerous and so large

they comprise the single largest habitat on Earth.

Hot spots of life greater than deserts, tundra,

or tropical forests.

They cover an area larger than South America.

Currents flowing across the sea floor strike the rock

and are pushed up to the surface.

Nutrient rich water feeds the plankton

and plankton feed giants.

Fully grown, giant mantas can be 23 feet across

and weight 3,000 pounds.

They have been soaring through the oceans

for some 20 million years.

Science has just begun to unravel their ancient secrets.

These mantas have the largest brain of any fish.

Bigger than a whale shark ten times their size.

A manta, like a dolphin, can recognize itself in a mirror.

As social animals, they feed cooperatively.

We once thought individuals could be identified

and counted by their permanent markings.

New research indicates that mantas can indeed

change their colors and patterns.

We may well be counting the same mantas again and again.

Greatly over estimating their numbers.

Like all rays, the demand for their gill plates

has exploded.

So has the manta hunting business.

Females have but one pup every two to seven years.

The giant manta is on a fast track to extinction.

The Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador.

An 8 million year old experiment cooked up

by plate tectonics and the Pacific ocean.

Land iguanas washed up here about the time the islands

were formed.

Some went inland, others adapted to life on shore.

Measuring in at 28 pounds and four feet long,

males are three times the size of females.

But this is what makes them unique.

The Galapagos Marine iguana is the worlds only

sea going lizard.

These agile swimmers can hold their breathe

for up to an hour.

They're probably the most dangerous looking vegetarians

you'll ever meet.

Buffeted by waves and currents, the iguana grips the rock

with it's powerful claws and fills up on algae.

The Galapagos sits smack on the equator

but this is no tropical beach.

A powerful current from Antarctica sweeps up the coast

of South America and courses through the islands.

These waters are full of nutrients and thoroughly chilled.

A 10 minute swim can steal one third of a reptiles body heat

so they only feed once a day.

The rest of their time is spent warming back up,

conserving energy.

Special nose glands clean excess salt from their blood.

The biggest males gather harems of females

and that means keeping challengers at bay.

A bobbing head is the age old warning.

Don't make me come over there.

But when your bluff is called,

you go to battle.

The only thing hurt is the losers pride.

If iguanas are the old timers around here,

meet the new kid on the block.

The giant Galapagos tortoise.

They split with the Argentine tortoise

just 2 million years ago.

Like the iguana, enough washed up here to reproduce

and evolution worked it's magic.

It's a phenomenon called island gigantism.

No predators, no competitors, and unlimited food

can quickly turn a little guy into a monster,

one that eats salad and naps 16 hours a day.

Fully grown, they can reach five feet across

and more than 500 pounds.

This herbivore can survive without food or water

for up to a year.

A spectacular feat of adaptation that nearly destroyed them.

When whalers and pirates realized the tortoise

could provide fresh meat for months on end,

the pillaging began and continued for 200 years.

Though they are protected today, only 10% remain.

Studying the curious creatures of the Galapagos

inspired Darwin's theory of natural selection.

But he only saw half the story here on land.

The rest is out there.

The Galapagos islands sit at the intersection

of three major Pacific ocean currents.

From the south, north, and west.

Three streams of nutrients from the deep

serving up a buffet of plankton, krill, fish eggs,

and crab larvae.

Migrating whale sharks gather here to feast.

This is the largest fish that has ever lived,

averaging 30 feet long and 20,000 pounds.

Some get far bigger.

It takes a staggering amount of energy

to power these docile creatures.

As the shark rams through the water,

super efficient filter pads directed it of the gills

as fast as it comes in, trapping food in it's throat.

In the right conditions, a whale shark can consume

three million calories in a day

and when they find an especially rich patch of plankton,

they hover in place and vacuum it up.

Like a five star hotel, the Galapagos draws customers

from far and wide.

Humpback whales from the Antarctic rendezvous here to mate.

Sea turtles entrust their eggs to the islands

sandy beaches.

And in the deep, exclusive clubs meet in secret.

This is one of the last places on Earth

where the scalloped hammerhead gathers in numbers.

During the day, they cruise close to shore.

You won't see them wasting energy chasing fish.

These predators hunt with state of the art technology.

The curves on their cephalofoil, or hammer shaped head

give it more surface area and more receptors

to detect electrical fields.

The advantage comes at night,

when they venture into open water.

Hammerheads navigate by the Earths magnetic field

and dinner comes to them.

Under the cover of darkness, squid rise from the depths

to feed.

They find an army of hammerheads in wait.

They hone in on the minute electrical currents

in the squids nervous system and capture them

in pitch black water.

These sharks once sat atop the food chain.

Today, they top the poachers wish list.

The scalloped hammerhead disappeared from the Mediterranean

in the 1960s.

89% are gone from the Atlantic, 99% gone from the waters

of South Africa.

It takes 15 years to replace just one poached female.

Even those shoals, in the Galapagos, are but a shadow

of what once was.

Created by shifting continents and molten rock.

Reaching from Asia to the Americas, from pole to pole.

These waters reigned supreme before humans walked

the Earth.

It touches every creature in every ocean

and sustains life on land.

The wild Pacific.