Original subtitles

The Atlantic - immense, hostile and brutal.

The world's second-largest ocean,

so vast it generates weather.

An irresistible power that shapes lands with its unstoppable force.

To survive in the world's wildest ocean takes tenacity and strength.

This is the story of birth and death,

struggle and survival.

Where the Atlantic meets Europe,

where the land meets the sea,

this is a year in the wild.

The Atlantic stretches from the Antarctic to the Arctic,

from the Americas to Africa and Europe...

..where its ferocity is matched by its richness and diversity.

Summer has arrived.

The ocean is at its warmest.

Migrants and residents gorge.

Youngsters must grow and learn

before taking their first steps towards adulthood.

In the Atlantic's far north, summers are short,

heaping pressure on the animals that live there.

Iceland's most northerly peninsula is Hornstrandir.

Rising 1,500ft from the Atlantic Ocean,

it's remote and wild...

..home to a pair of Arctic foxes...

..and their two cubs

who have reached a critical point in their short lives.

Back in the spring,

they raised their five cubs on a diet of seabirds...

..which they plundered from nests

along some of the Atlantic's tallest cliffs.

Now, with seabird nesting season over, food is scarce.

Mum is forced to travel further and for longer to find food...

..leaving Dad to look after the cubs.

He's relocated to sea level

where he picks for bugs along the shoreline.

Only two of the five cubs remain,

their three siblings having already moved on.

They spend much of their time playing...

..seemingly unaware that they must soon start out on their own.

One has learned the beach is a good place to search for scraps

washed up by the waves.

This will become an important source of food as he grows.

CUB CRIES

The second cub is less resourceful...

..and cannot hide its excitement when Dad returns.

A seabird carcass is hungrily received.

But it can't rely on handouts for much longer.

The adults will soon reclaim this territory,

forcing the two youngsters to find a place of their own.

Starting life alone is a difficult and dangerous time

for many youngsters.

For some, it requires a massive leap of faith.

The island of Noss, just east of mainland Shetland.

It's a very big day in a puffin colony -

the culmination of their breeding season.

Every summer, hundreds of young puffins, called pufflings,

emerge from their underground burrows.

They take their first look at the outside world...

..and the 600ft cliffs they're about to jump off.

Back in the spring, the adults returned from a winter at sea...

..got reacquainted with their lifelong partner...

..and then renovated their nest.

Once mating was over,

they put all their energy into raising a single chick.

Fishing trips are long and regular...

..diving down to 200ft...

..to hunt fish and sand eels...

..which they carry home dozens at a time.

Late July...

and the youngsters are now old enough to care for themselves.

So the adults abandon their nests

and suddenly feeding stops.

If the pufflings are to eat,

they must take their very first flight from the clifftops

to the ocean below.

But there's an added danger.

Predatory gulls are waiting for them to emerge.

The only way to avoid them is to jump in the dead of night.

One by one they appear...

..warm up their flight muscles...

..make a few final adjustments...

..then take off into the inky blackness.

A life-and-death leap into the unknown.

Midnight on the Shetland island of Noss.

A colony of pufflings emerged from their underground burrows

to leap 600ft into the Atlantic Ocean.

The morning after...

it's obvious some didn't make it.

But the vast majority did.

One is still to jump.

The longer it waits, the greater the chance of predation.

A stumble...

but is saved by a ledge.

It must get at least 1,000ft out to sea

to be safe from the gulls.

It steels itself...

..then leaps...

to the safety of the ocean.

Puffling fledging is highly synchronised,

and is over in a couple of days.

The clifftop that's been a hive of activity since spring

suddenly falls silent...

..until next year.

Breeding season may be over for the puffins,

but along the Atlantic coast, it's still in full swing

for one of the world's most remarkable ocean inhabitants.

A male short-snouted seahorse waits for his partner to return.

She is out patrolling her territory...

..feeding as she goes, sucking up microscopic creatures.

The tiny fins on her head help her change direction.

The long fin on her back pushes her forward.

Her eyes work independently.

One focuses on what she is about to eat,

while the other searches for her next meal.

But she must also keep an eye out for predators.

A large spider crab approaches.

She changes colour to blend in with her surroundings.

Once the coast is clear, she moves off,

only to come across more crabs...

..forcing her to flee again.

Seahorses pair for life,

and unlike any other animal,

it's the male that carries, and gives birth to, their young.

They breed throughout the summer, giving birth to multiple broods.

They're reunited.

He puffs up his empty brood pouch to show her he's ready to mate.

And they dance.

Courtship will continue until they eventually mate.

He will then give birth to live young in about three weeks.

Courtship displays take on many guises.

Unlike the seahorse dance,

the world's strongest beetles attract their mate

by parading, bulking up, even giving presents.

Donana National Park, south-west Spain.

A vast wilderness of dunes,

woods and marshland...

..supporting a rich and diverse array of wildlife...

..including rare Retuerta horses,

which once roamed across much of this region,

but now only exist here.

Their existence provides food

for one of the dunes' most industrious little residents.

Dung beetles -

nature's recyclers.

They love poo.

They eat it, live in it,

even lay their eggs in it.

But first, they have to find it, move it and hide it.

A male dung beetle scans the air with his antennae.

Once he locates a dung pile, he moves in...

..cuts off a manageable chunk...

..then carries it off.

This is what he needs to win himself a mate.

Head down and bum up,

he rolls it in a straight line away from the dung pile,

using the sun to help him navigate.

Knocked off track by the terrain,

he quickly checks his bearings...

..before heading off again.

But another male catches a whiff and wants some.

A judo roll finishes off the aggressor.

Finally, he attracts a female.

She trails a few paces behind.

Even hitching a ride.

Once he finds a good place to bury it, he digs.

She waits patiently.

When the hole is about the right size, she moves in.

He follows.

Safely hidden away, they feed and mate...

..then move on to do it all over again.

This coastline is strategically important

to millions of migratory birds.

A place to refuel when flying between Europe and Africa.

But for some, this is also the journey's end.

Every year, greater flamingos arrive from north-west Africa

to feed and raise their next generation.

At four feet tall, they're the world's tallest flamingo.

They feed on shrimps, snails,

crabs and small fish, which they stir up with their feet.

Pigments in their food give them their distinctive pink plumage.

They're feeding for themselves and their offspring,

which they leave in a creche at the centre of the saltpan.

They group tightly together,

the smallest pushed to the outer edge.

With many parents away, they're vulnerable to attack

from predatory gulls that are circling above...

..waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

On a coastal lagoon in southern Spain,

a predatory gull circles above a flamingo creche.

Once it spots a small one at the edge of the crowd...

..it attacks.

The creche descends into chaos.

With its parents away feeding, it is powerless.

The assault is brief but violent.

The gull has learned that repeated strikes tire the chick out.

Eventually it collapses with exhaustion and dies.

For the flamingos, losses are unavoidable.

But the flock thrives and remains strong.

Across the Atlantic,

many summer migrants are now reaping the rewards of their long journeys.

Every year, the British Isles attracts

one of the most mysterious migrants of all.

The cool, shallow waters off the island of Tiree

in the Inner Hebrides

is the destination for dozens of basking sharks.

No-one really knows where they come from,

or return to in the autumn.

They're here to feast on small fish and invertebrates

which they filter from the water.

Driven by their massively powerful tails,

these 30ft-long sharks graze...

..their three-foot-wide mouths gaping,

straining up to 2,000 tonnes of water every hour.

Tiny creatures trapped by their gills are then swallowed.

They're not indiscriminate feeders,

but actively search for water rich in food,

then simply swim through their next meal.

The UK plays host to 40 species of shark.

Basking sharks are the largest.

But the most numerous large sharks are found off the Cornish coast.

As the ocean warms to 14 degrees Celsius,

blue sharks arrive...

..some having travelled 4,000 miles.

Their streamlined bodies and long pectoral fins

help them conserve energy while they swim.

Big eyes give them away as visual predators.

But they're also scavengers,

and their excellent sense of smell

helps them detect food many miles away.

A dead dolphin floating off the Cornish coast draws in the sharks.

Shaking their heads helps them slice through

the dolphin's thick, leathery skin.

The ten-foot-long adults dominate.

Smaller youngsters nip in to grab a bite when they can.

The 200lb dolphin is stripped of flesh in no time.

And the sharks move on to scavenge elsewhere.

On Scotland's Isle of Skye,

the two white-tailed eagle chicks have fed well.

They've outgrown their nest and are ready to move on.

Back in the spring, their parents fished well.

The chicks grew quickly.

Now, midsummer, food deliveries are starting to dry up -

a gentle hint to the youngsters that it's time to leave home.

The larger one warms up its flight muscles

in preparation for its maiden flight.

This is a dangerous time.

The sea loch lies 100ft below.

The mountainside is covered in thick forest.

Get take-off wrong and its first flight could be its last.

Suddenly...

..it's off.

Its very first flight.

Looking on, its sibling is now alone.

There's no time to waste.

Flapping and jumping help with confidence.

And suddenly, it's off too.

Their parents continue to bring them fish,

using an old eagle nest as a feeding platform.

The family will stay together for another two months,

until the youngsters learn to fish for themselves.

Then they'll head out on their own,

nomadic at first, before they find themselves a territory

and grow to become tenacious top predators, just like their parents.

For some, the transition from youngster to adult

takes just a few minutes.

Every year, off the Cornish and Welsh coasts,

thousands of spiny spider crabs emerge from the deep.

They're on a life-changing mission

that will culminate in their transformation

from adolescents to adults.

The Atlantic coast of south-west England.

Spider crabs are leaving the deep and heading towards the shore.

Just one or two at first.

But numbers soon increase.

Some have walked a hundred miles to get here,

covered in seaweed which they stick to themselves

to help with camouflage.

They're all adolescent crabs, around two years old.

In just two days, they'll turn into adults.

But before that, a remarkable transformation must happen.

Spider crabs have a tough shell

which they must shed before they can grow.

They crack open and start to emerge.

It takes 15 minutes to carefully extract themselves, legs and all.

More keep arriving, crashing into those in mid-moult.

Once out, they're soft and exposed.

It takes two days for their shell to harden.

During that time, they're vulnerable to predators.

Gathering in such huge numbers offers them some safety.

But they'll even eat each other.

One hasn't emerged fully and is cannibalised.

Vital fuel ahead of their long journey back to the deep.

The only sign of their remarkable migration -

cast shells strewn along the shoreline.

Late August, summer is drawing to a close.

But the Irish Atlantic has one last spectacle.

The ocean is at its warmest.

Plankton blooms, drawing in huge schools of herring,

which in turn attract predators.

Two miles off Ireland's Kerry coast,

around the Blasket Islands, gannets fish to feed their chicks.

Common dolphins race in...

..to fish alongside one of the world's largest predators.

Humpback whales.

The Irish Atlantic is home to a small number of humpbacks

all year round.

But their numbers peak in summer and autumn

as migrants arrive,

turning this part of the Atlantic into a major feeding ground.

They hunt by bubble netting.

Once they find a school of fish, one drops deep...

..swims in a circle...

..and blows bubbles from its blowhole.

This creates a curtain which the fish won't swim through.

Two humpbacks have developed a unique type of bubble netting

not seen anywhere else in the world.

While one makes a circle of bubbles,

the second remains at the surface, blocking the fishes' escape route.

The first whale swims up, mouth open...

..and devours hundreds of fish.

They then swap over roles so that they both get a turn to feed.

They're the only two humpbacks known to feed like this,

and proves that whales can be incredibly creative

when it comes to securing a meal.

The dolphins join them, picking off the fish that the whales missed.

For all the animals living in and around the North Atlantic coast,

life is about to become a race as autumn arrives.

Next time, the season of plenty gives way to the season of change...

..when animals must either migrate or prepare for winter's onslaught.

But for some, autumn is also the time of courtship...

BELLOWING

..and birth.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media