All language subtitles for 1Planet.Ocean.2012.1080p.BluRay.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX]

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(WAVES CRASHING)

NARRATOR: For a long, long time,

I contemplated the ocean
without understanding it.

I could feel the immense energy of its waters.

I was astonished by the depths of its blues.

I breathed the air of the wide open seas.

But in reality, I saw nothing.

Here at Shark Bay in Australia,

the cliffs whisper to me
the history of the Earth.

They are born from the life of the ocean,

a vast graveyard created by
billions of skeletons of marine animals

accumulated at the bottom of the seas
when the Earth itself was entirely ocean.

These organisms created the air that I breathe

and the atmosphere which protects me.

I see powerful tides
carving furrows in the sand.

I don't see that this movement
is the source of all life.

I see the winds shaping the dunes.

I don't see the deep relationship
between the earth and the sea.

I see the salt bleaching the arid earth.

I don't see what the ocean brings to life
on the continents.

I see immense prairies colonise the depths

that I have never seen on land.

But at Shark Bay, there is more than that.

Here are the origins of our story,

us, mankind.

It begins here,
with a colony of living fossils,

bacteria who live at the surface
of the ocean, called stromatolites.

I am a descendant of this form of life,

the most ancient known on Earth,
which came into being four billion years ago.

I come from here, I come from the ocean.

And now,

facing the ocean,
all I can see is us, mankind.

We are seven billion human beings.

More than the total number of people
who have lived on Earth

since the beginnings of humanity.

We have shaped the world in our image.

On the shores of the ocean,

we have built vast cities
where we live in our millions.

We have dug out ports,
flattened islands to construct our factories.

The ocean has brought us
all the mineral riches of the world.

We work materials, meld steel, cut and slice.

One hundred thousand of our ships
crisscross the seas.

All that lives, all that grows on the Earth
will one day pass through our iron grasp.

We even transport the forests.

We delve unceasingly into the ocean
to nourish ourselves.

We have become super predators.

We have canned the entire world,

600 million containers
that we can transport, thanks to the ocean.

The ocean that offered us
the possibility of globalisation.

The planet is ours.

But now, where are we going?

I am becoming aware
of the consequences of my power.

Overfishing, global warming,

depletion of resources, pollution,

my drive has taken me a long way.

I know this

because I am capable
of understanding what happens to me.

How have I gotten to this point

where I no longer see what is around me?

To understand that,
we have to return to the very beginning.

(RUMBLING)

In the beginning, the Earth consumed itself,

shaken by violent convulsions.

The fusing matter was subjected
to violent bombardments of meteors

coming from the solar system.

This battlefield gave rise to an atmosphere,

stormy, red with nitrogen,
carbon and hydrogen.

And water vapour,
which came from the galaxy.

The surface of the Earth
was like an enormous bubble

heated under pressure
to over 700 degrees Celsius.

Then the inferno cooled off
and the vapours condensed,

producing the greatest
of the terrestrial floods that occurred.

That was four billion years ago.

The flood covered
almost all of the Earth's crust.

The water washed the primordial rock,

eroding it away
and becoming laden with salts.

The Earth became a world of salty water.

This water was called the ocean.

An ocean planet was born.

In the Ice Age,

700 million years ago, the temperature fell.

The planet remained white
for 20 million years,

then melted because
of a powerful greenhouse effect

created by the carbon of the volcanoes.

Other glaciations followed,
alternating with warming.

From this period

there remain vast icy regions
at the north and south poles of the globe.

These regions work as coolers
in an immense climate system.

Close to the Equator,

the sun heats the ocean,
which seems to boil.

This contrast between the hot regions
and the cold regions

generates powerful air currents.

These are the winds, essential to this story.

The winds descend, cold and heavy,
from the polar regions

and collide with the hot, light air
of the Equator.

These winds,
curved by the rotation of the Earth,

form gigantic whirlpools.

On contact with the ocean,
these winds push the water.

They generate powerful marine currents

capable of moving millions of cubic metres
of water across the ocean.

Everywhere,
the ocean is furrowed by whirlpools,

some of which spin for years.

This movement spreads heat
from the surface of the blue planet.

The hot water of the tropics rises up
towards the poles.

Then this water cools,
becomes more dense, laden with salt,

and falls down into the depths.

The water of the depths travels further down
towards the bottom of the ocean,

pushed by its own weight.

It carries with it the polar cold.

Finally, it collides against the bottom

and returns towards the waters
of the surface, where it reheats.

It takes 1,000 years for a drop of water
to complete this ocean cycle.

These currents have created
a temperate climate on Earth.

It is to them we owe the creation
of a living planet.

When the sun is strong
and the currents mount to the surface,

an astonishing phenomenon occurs,

so gigantic that it is visible from space,

a blooming, an explosion of life.

This life which appears is called plankton,

"floating life",

because it cannot move itself
and drifts in the water.

This blooming gets its energy from the sun.

It occurs between the surface
and the first 100 metres depth,

where the rays penetrate the ocean.

Firstly, there are tiny algae

which spread like an immense floating prairie
between two expanses of water.

Just the biomass thus produced every year

represents half the vegetation of the planet.

Some microalgae resemble distant galaxies.

These are protists, very ancient organisms.

Despite their complexity,

most of them are nothing but a single cell
surrounded by a silica or lime skeleton.

At this level,

the distinction
between plant and animal is blurred.

Some of these green cells even have limbs
which push them upwards,

augmenting their surface area
exposed to the sun.

All these microalgae consume carbon
and produce, in return, oxygen.

Half of the air we breathe
comes from these microalgae.

The ocean is the blue lung of the planet.

This vegetable flowering
triggers another explosion of life,

that of billions of herbivorous animals
which come to feed off the marine prairie.

These animals measure hardly
a few millimetres, often much less.

They're classed as jellyfish,
crustaceans, cells, shellfish, larvae,

thousands of groups of species.

Among the most important of them
are the innumerable tiny shrimps,

the krill, which graze on the algae
night and day.

And the copepods,

a sort of tiny sea flea who swim by leaping,
propelled by their limbs.

The copepods are hunted by all
the carnivores in the plankton,

in particular these arrow-shaped predators,

voracious and armed with silicon teeth.

In this jungle,
prey and predators mingle constantly

and there is always a crustacean ready
to consume the preceding predators.

Each instant of life is an act of survival.

The plankton is an open book

in which we can read
the history of the ocean.

During three billion years,
life has evolved here,

in this marine prairie.

Some very ancient species,
like the gelatinous animals,

have only evolved in the ocean.

In perfect harmony
with the liquid environment,

they have an elastic body,

which allows them simultaneously
to suck in food and to move.

Sometimes, they hook on to one another,

forming immense chains
to facilitate moving in the current.

It looks chaotic,

but each living entity is organised
down to the smallest detail.

These explosions of life
eventually disappear,

devoured by a lack of resources
or wiped out by an invisible enemy,

an attack by a virus.

Billions of viruses,

whose biological role
is to regulate each explosion of life.

Nature doesn't tolerate excess.

All the species of the ocean
are dependent on this invisible plankton,

like a long chain of life.

At the end of the winter,

the mackerel depart from hibernation
in the depths of the ocean.

They come up to the surface,
seeking the marine prairie.

The fish have no leader,

and yet they manoeuvre in perfect formation.

Each fish is continuously aware
of the presences of its neighbours

and respects their distance.

This self-organisation
is a fundamental law of the group.

It enables them to hunt as a shoal

and increases the chances
of finding a rich feeding zone.

The first who finds something

can guide the others by a simple movement.

The sailfish is the fastest fish in the ocean.

It feeds on fish.

Its dorsal fin gives it exceptional stability
to achieve its predatory goals.

A 100-kilo sailfish will consume
in its lifetime 1,000 kilos of mackerel,

who themselves have consumed
10,000 kilos of zooplankton,

who themselves have grazed
on 100,000 kilos of marine prairie.

The food chain is a hierarchy,
a pyramid structure.

Some species choose to help one another.

Manta rays only eat plankton.

Their six-metre wingspan offers shelter.

In return,
the smaller fish remove the host's parasites.

Others opt for the whale shark,

the largest of the fish.

This traveller crosses entire oceans
in search of plankton.

It carries with it smaller fish
who live off its intake.

Solidarity also has a role
in this liquid immensity,

4,000 metres deep,
covering two-thirds of the planet.

Sometimes, this journey
is interrupted by land.

Here at Raja Ampat in Indonesia,

land appeared when the ocean retreated
two billion years ago.

These limestone hills
were previously at the bottom of the ocean.

Like at Shark Bay in Australia,

they are made of billions
of plankton skeletons,

piled up in the geological era
when the ocean covered the planet.

With the receding of the waters,

erosion sculpted the rock
into an elaborate graveyard,

a labyrinth of 1,500 islands
of fossilised plankton.

The Raja Ampat Archipelago

is at the heart
of a region rich in biodiversity.

Fourteen hundred species of fish live here,

and a quarter of all marine species.

Coming into contact
with these emerging lands,

probably struggling against exhaustion
and hunger,

some plankton abandoned nomadic life
and settled here.

That was 500 million years ago.

A revolution in the ocean.

This family of plankton
created the coral reefs.

Coral is a creature we rarely
actually see by day.

What we see in the daytime

is the calcareous skeleton
which serves as its shelter,

a skeleton that resembles a tree,
branches or leaves.

To survive in these waters
scarce in nutrients,

coral shelters an alga within it
which feeds by day on sunlight.

The algae have thus become
the driving force of the construction,

aiming to occupy the best place in the sun.

Each coral struggles against its neighbours
to gain more light

at the speed of a few millimetres per year.

This petrified forest

is the most densely populated
ecosystem on the ocean planet.

A veritable oasis.

You can hide here, and hunt here.

Each has its own territory.

Everything about life here is organised.

Even the colours of the fish
represent camouflage or seduction.

Like a marvellous marine city,
crowds pour in through the gates.

They come from far away
to get rid of their parasites

because only the reef offers enough diversity
to guarantee that kind of service.

Millions of years of evolution
have enabled each species

to find a place
and a role in this coral metropolis.

The scorpion fish camouflages itself,

while the spider crab lets itself
be colonised by shellfish

and becomes invisible when motionless.

Or you can hide.

As in every cosmopolitan city,
life in the reef is not spontaneous.

There are codes,
rules of social life to be respected

if you don't want to end up
in your neighbour's stomach.

Concealment becomes an art
for these octopi,

capable of changing the colour
and structure of their skin

to deceive their attackers.

Despite the risks of this collective existence,

many species use the reef as a nursery.

Of all the ocean,

it is still the place that offers
the best chance for raising a family.

Cuttlefish protect their eggs
by hiding them as deep as possible

in the branches of the coral
so that other fish cannot eat them.

But for how long?
Prey and predators are so close.

The tentacles of the anemones
are poisonous, even deadly.

Only clown fish can live among them.

They immunise themselves

by rubbing against the tentacles
from a very young age.

This natural vaccination

then enables them
to use the anemone as a refuge.

For those who do not know the reef,

this marvellous city is in fact full of dangers.

The xenid is not a flower,
but a coral without a skeleton,

an animal that traps the plankton
in its tentacles.

At night, the reef is even more dangerous.

The living part of the coral, the polyp,

is invisible by day, but appears at night.

This gelatinous creature
is a distant cousin of the jellyfish.

It also hunts with its tentacles.

Immobile in the reef,

it relies on the marine currents
to bring its prey.

Too bad for those who float too close.

Its tentacles immobilise everything
that touches them

by injecting a deadly poison.

Sometimes, even a digestive sugar
so powerful

that it can digest living things.

The reef is a dangerous predator.

Once trapped, the victim
cannot escape from these arms,

which pull it slowly towards the mouth,
where it will be digested.

Once a year, at exactly the same time,
at the spring full moon,

an extraordinary event occurs.

The reef enters its reproductive phase.

By millions, they release
male and female gametes.

Fusing together, they give birth to larvae.

The larvae of future coral reefs.

This release of eggs
happens only once a year.

It lasts for only a few hours,

and it depends on perfect synchronisation
between all the corals of a given species.

The larvae are dispersed by the current

for several days and nights
before landing further away.

They leave to conquer a new territory.

Those which survive
fix on the new walls of the deep sea

to perpetuate the immense coral city
which gave birth to them.

It's a constant expansion.

For 500 million years,

the coral have been growing,
dying and growing.

Their construction has built an empire
visible from the skies,

the biggest living construct of the planet.

All the fauna of the ocean

is linked to these oases of life.

In Polynesia,
the grouper make a long voyage

to come and lay their eggs
on the side of the reef

It's a huge meeting
for this normally solitary community,

who come to the lagoon
seeking shelter for their reproduction.

But this meeting is also attended
by marauding grey sharks.

In the course of their lives,

groupers start off female,
then change sex and become male

once they are above
a certain weight and age.

They leap forward, mixing their sperm.

The females, weakened by laying,
make easy prey.

The sharks attack.

They will massacre many of the grouper,

but this predation, paradoxically,
is vital for the grouper as a species,

who will otherwise reproduce too fast
and become too numerous.

Here again, nature does not tolerate excess,

there's always one predator waiting
just above another.

Hammerhead sharks are fearsome hunters.

Evolving 20 million years ago,
these animals are super predators.

Their hammer-shaped head acts
like a fin and promotes agility.

The position of the eyes, very far apart,
gives them 3D vision.

They hunt the fish and other sharks.

It's as if the cycle of predation
governed the evolution of species.

And here's where we appear in the story.

Here we are, people.

The last link in the chain of life,

we have no predator above us.

We began here,

on the other side of the mirror of the ocean.

We occupy the land which emerged.

Very long ago, to protect ourselves,

we built villages like those that still exist
at San Blas in Panama.

We can't swim like the fish,

so we conceived boats to cross the oceans.

And then we built a world

like nothing any other species
had built before us.

To build our towns,
we constructed bridges between islands,

we conquered the ocean via the land.

We learned to dig through mountains,

change the course of the waters
and even create islands.

We built an empire even bigger
than the coral cities.

Our walls, our enormous towns,
can be seen from the sky.

Through our intelligence, we,
weak humanity, became really very strong.

Rich or poor,

half the people of our world live
less than 100 kilometres from the water.

Almost the entire population
of sub-Saharan Africa

is concentrated on the coastline.

Just the city of Lagos in Nigeria
has 17 million inhabitants.

More than 100,000 people live
in the shantytown on the shore.

The population that migrated here
has no place on land,

so they turn to the sea.

Our population is constantly growing.

We are more than seven billion.

Every second that goes by,

there are two more people
on the planet to be fed.

And we are hungry,

so, naturally, we turn to the ocean to feed us.

Three billion human beings depend
directly on marine resources.

For almost a billion people,

fish represent their only source
of animal proteins.

The ocean is key to our survival.

Four million of our fishing boats
set out each day to attack the ocean.

The majority are just little boats like these,

which unload each morning
on the coasts of Senegal.

Our fishing has been
since the beginning a family craft,

practised and transmitted
from generation to generation.

Although it's a dangerous profession,

when people can't feed off the land,
the poorest turn to the sea.

Worldwide,

including indirect employment and families,

fishing sustains 500 million people.

Here, I see the abundance of the ocean.

The ocean brings us other food.

Since the very beginning of our history,

we have gathered
wild seaweeds on the shore.

They have existed for
three and a half billion years.

We learned to cultivate the sea
as we came to farm the land.

The seaweed needs only six weeks
of growth before harvest.

It requires only sunlight
and the movement of the currents.

Today in Bali in Indonesia,

we cultivate seaweed
and extract from it a nourishing gelatine.

This farming today
produces 15 million tons of seaweed,

exported all over the world.

Brown, green and red seaweed
serve all purposes,

medicine, cloth, fertiliser and food.

We trace out small portions of sea

and transform estuaries
into private concessions.

More than 500,000 hectares of the globe
are dedicated to cultivation of seaweed,

supporting a million sea farmers.

In South Korea, in the Wando Archipelago,

over 200 islands have converted
to farming seaweeds.

These magnificent expanses
are immense nets spread out in the sun,

which are used to dry the harvests.

Of the 30,000 species of seaweed
which grow in the sea,

only around 50 are edible.

Here, we grow kombu,

large seaweeds which can grow
to three metres in length.

In Asia, this seaweed is a basic food source.

These sugar-flavoured leaves contain
proteins, mineral salts and vitamins.

We have been fishing for 40,000 years,

constantly improving our fisheries
and our nets.

Fishing became an industry.

It's no longer a question of family,
but of investment and technology.

To increase our catch,
our fishermen formed fleets.

What changed everything is the invention
of the deep sea trawl,

a large net with a funnel-shaped opening
like the mouth of the whale shark.

Our nets are so large
that some measure 40 kilometres.

Or 25 miles.

Then entire factories took to the sea.

We use probes, radar,
and focus all our ingenuity

on hunting down marine life.

Every year, we fish 90 million tons
of wild fish globally.

Half this amount is fished by only
1% of our fishing boats.

Our trawlers, our seines, our nets
are so huge

that we no longer choose what we're taking.

We take whatever comes

and sort it later according to
the market value of the fish.

Alaska pollock, Atlantic herring,

we just scoop it all up.

There is no limit to our predation
apart from the fish quotas fixed by scientists.

But who can prevent us
from exceeding them?

Worldwide, 80% of commercial fish stocks

have been declared
fully exploited or overexploited.

Our fishing has reached a ceiling.
We are at a biological limit.

How could we have gotten to this point?

Our intensive fishing
sacrifices millions offish.

These are the waste, the rejects of the catch,

or just the fish
that got crushed to death in our nets.

Fish killed for nothing.

As the stocks near the surface run out,

we rake further and further,
deeper and deeper.

Our trawlers now go down
more than 3,000 metres.

We blindly fish a fauna we hardly know.

The fauna of the abyss,
that lives in the dark, alone and hungry.

In the abyss, the light gradually disappears.

Life flourishes around this absence of light,
and what a life.

At around 100 metres deep, the ctenophores.

These gelatinous creatures
possess luminous organs

to frighten off their enemies.

Still deeper, 1,000 metres below the surface,
in the ocean twilight,

we find the siphonophores.

These are the largest kind of plankton.

Some measure up to 50 metres.

Their organs are not spread out,
but grouped together.

On one side, they have their stomachs,

on the other,
the swim bladders they use to float.

Between the two, they deploy a net
to trap any food which falls from the surface.

Descending into the abyss is like travelling
back in a biological time machine.

There are maybe 2,000 species
of abyss-dwelling fish.

A terrifying bestiary.

Viper fish that can eat things
larger than themselves.

Gulper eels that gobble
everything which passes.

Survival is tough at 1,500 metres deep.

At around 3,000 metres,
there is no more light.

It's the kingdom of the vampire squid,
a prehistoric cousin of the squid.

The vampire squid has blue blood
laced with copper.

Its enormous eyes detect slight variations
in contrast above it, towards the surface.

Its vision is entirely adapted to the shadows.

The sedimentary plane, uniform and grey,

seems to stretch out of sight
and span lit by the camera.

When we approach this spongy marsh,
we see carnivorous sponges at work.

When waste touches the bottom,

crabs, eels and carnivorous sponges
gorge on it.

Invisible in the mud, billions of bacteria
break down what remains of the living.

Here, species live more slowly,

sometimes to 150 years old,

because of the extraordinary pressure
at minus 4,000 metres,

at the bottom of the sea.

Oxygen is scarce.

And yet, here we are.
In this world we hardly know.

Here we are
because we're afraid of running out.

We're looking to feed our addiction to oil.

The ocean seems to be made of water.

But in reality, it's an alliance
between life, chemistry and geology.

All the wastes, corpses,

particles of seaweed
which come down from the surface,

each tiny cell of the ocean
finishes its life here in "marine snow."

For millions of years,

dead plankton loaded with carbon has been
building up at the bottom of the seas.

It piles up in thick layers and gives rise
to these rocks, which we call limestone,

and which emerge in peaks
at each lowering of the sea level.

Sometimes, this heap of corpses
doesn't transform into rock,

but rather slowly melts down into
an organic substance, viscous and black.

Oil.

It exists everywhere, almost,
on the seabeds and on land,

where the ocean once covered the planet.

We began by pumping out
the shallow deposits.

But these reserves are already running out,

and we seek further and further,
deeper and deeper.

We're now exploring deposits
drilling up to 7,000 metres deep.

The last reserves of oil tomorrow

will be found in the most inaccessible zones
of the sea.

These flames are plankton burning,
life burning.

We have 20,000 oil rigs on the world's seas.

Every year, we burn the equivalent
of a million years of laying down of plankton.

Our industrial revolution has cost the planet
100 million carbon years.

We transport two billion tons of oil
every year on board our supertankers,

which are the biggest
mobile constructions that exist.

Oil is the main source of energy
for our civilisation.

This energy propels us beyond all limits.

In their gigantic holds,

these ships are carrying a part
of the bio-geological history of the ocean.

With this revolution, our lives have changed.

That of the planet also.

We need our ships so much

that we have cut America in two
to link the seas.

We created the Panama Canal,

a slash of 80 kilometres
right through the jungle.

Every year, 13,000 ships
can go faster and further.

(SHIP HORN BLARING)

A ship crosses the mountain
every 45 minutes.

To feed the locks of our canal,

we created an enormous lake,
Lake Gatun, which stocks rainwater.

When the rains are scarce,
the canal risks technical failure.

Stocks of raw materials, gas, factory ships,
transport of vehicles, cruise ships,

an infinite diversity of vessels.

We transport three quarters
of our merchandise by the ocean routes.

The admiral ship of all our boats
is the container ship,

ships carrying thousands
of identical metal boxes.

The riches of the world
which power our factories

produces new wealth,
which gives us the means

to transform our villages into immense cities.

Here in Panama City, there was only jungle.

Today, money is flowing in tides.

Rotterdam, Durban,
San Francisco, Singapore,

our ships weave a web
between the continents.

The ocean brings together our towns
into a single world.

All the sea routes converge on Asia.

Of the top 50 ports in the world,
11 are in China.

And the most important is Shanghai.

It's located at one end
of a 34-kilometre bridge,

on an island in the open sea
which was razed to build a freshwater port.

It's the biggest port in the world.

On the kilometres of quayside,

giant cranes unload every year
30 million containers,

which will be exchanged, re-routed, stocked.

Who knows where our boxes are going
and what they contain?

Container transport is like a game,

of empty boxes to be filled,
and full boxes to be emptied.

We have 600 million containers
circulating on the ocean.

They are the key link
in the world we have created.

The ocean made globalisation possible.

The demand is so great

that our fleet of container ships
has tripled in under 10 years.

Three thousand cargo ships are currently
under construction

in the shipyards of Korea, China and Japan,
which provide 90% of the world's production.

Everything here is oversized.

Gigantic yards employing
more than 10,000 workers

cut and extend the existing ships.

We assemble ships over 400 metres long,

the area of four football fields.

This relentless growth of the ship industry

is only responding
to another industrial need.

The world's factories have moved here.

The ocean has enabled
the globalisation of our industries.

A single ship can bring
an entire forest to our factories,

which transform it into paper, planks,
furniture, manufactured products.

China is the world's top importer of logs.

Thanks to the oceans, no forest is safe.

Over 500 million tons of raw materials
arrive in Shanghai every year by sea.

Supplies of crude steel, coal, wood, copper,

all the scarce minerals
that we take from the planet.

Right around the port zone,
our factories melt steel,

to produce a new chemistry
for other factories

which construct, assemble
and wrap products

destined to be exported all over the world.

The life of seven billion people is connected
to this part of the world.

What can these fishermen catch here,

in the waste from the factories
and at the heart of this dehumanised world?

Our tentacular towns sprout like mushrooms.

Shanghai is a symbol of our headlong rush.

Twenty-three million people are living
in the Shanghai megalopolis.

Over 6,000 buildings
have sprung from the earth.

Twenty thousand new building sites
are in progress,

a frenzy of construction
climbing towards the sky.

Every country in the world dreams of having
the growth rate of Shanghai and China.

Our cities are spreading beyond the land,

but owe their fortune
to being at the gates of the ocean.

Planet ocean has become our planet.

But if we were wrong?

The ocean that we came from
seems so far from us today.

In barely 200 years,

we have violently disrupted four billion years
of the natural history of the world.

We no longer see the beauty of life,

but only what it can do for our species,
what it enables us to produce.

Everything that lives around us
suffers from our existence.

We leave footprints everywhere we go.

They say these sperm whales
are dreaming, head downward.

Maybe it's us that's dreaming,

thinking that we can carry on
in this frenzy of growth

without any consequences.

One hundred thousand
of our ships crisscross

the seas of our planet unceasingly.

The more our needs grow,
the more numerous our machines become.

No matter what we do,

our industrial civilisation is destroying
the natural world around it.

The risk of pollution has become a threat
to everything that comes near us.

Our gigantic motors burn
tons of petrol and oil by the hour.

We spit out polluting materials
in all directions into the air and the ocean.

In the polar regions,
the permanent ice cap is melting

as a result of global warming.

There are no factories here, no machines,

and yet this heating up is caused
by our own carbon emissions.

Fossil energy,
the oil we need for our civilisation,

is causing the ocean to overheat.

But the melting of the Arctic
has another, more serious consequence.

In the North, the melting
of the permanent Arctic ice caps

is revealing open ocean.

The waters absorb the solar heat
that the ice used to reflect back.

This phenomenon is amplified.

The ocean itself is accelerating the warming.

In Greenland, as in the Antarctic,

the glaciers which cover the protruding land
are made of fresh water.

Their melting sends streams
of fresh water into the salty sea.

The great circulation of marine currents

that flow around the globe
and regulate the climate

is gradually blocking up.

What will be the consequences?

In human memory, no such change
has ever been experienced.

So we can't know.

Over 20,000 kilometres away,
very far from the polar regions,

climate change is already having an effect.

It's invisible from the surface.

To see it, you have to dive
to a reef in the tropics,

like on the edge of the Blue Hole in Belize,

the second largest coral reef in the world.

Corals are highly sensitive
to changes in temperature.

A difference of less than one degree
for a few weeks is enough to kill them.

Only a reef of white skeletons remains.

These white areas are spreading.

Scientists are very worried.

A quarter of corals on our planet
have died in the last 50 years.

The immediate problem is not their death,
but rather the impact of their disappearance.

Dying, they leave nothing behind.
The marine oasis becomes a desert.

Further out to sea,
the immensity of the ocean hides other facts.

After the coral, it's the state of health
of the plankton which becomes critical.

Scientific missions
are multiplying on this ocean

that we are just beginning to discover.

They're trying to understand
what is going to change in marine life.

The life that feeds us.

It seems that the plankton,
the base of all the food chains,

is moving toward the polar region
where the waters are still temperate.

In 50 years, it has moved
1,200 kilometres further northwards.

This redistribution of plankton
is already having an effect on marine life.

Every year, cownose rays migrate

between Brazil and the temperate zones
in search of food.

Every year, the journey takes them
a little higher, a little further north.

Global warming is disrupting
the ecology of the ocean.

With this change,
our fishing territories are also changing.

But I know that
we can't stop ourselves from fishing.

In Chile, where a quarter
of the world's tonnage is fished,

the sea supports thousands
of traditional fishermen and their families.

Many are heavily in debt
to pay for their boats.

Commercial species are becoming scarce,

so they are turning to what remains.

We didn't eat Chilean sardine
and Peruvian anchovy in the past.

But now we fish over 10 million tons
of them per year.

Extraordinary pressure on a single species,

the only one remaining in these waters.

Right along the coast of Chile,

a powerful current rises up
from the bottom of the ocean.

It's still rich in plankton,
and the sardines are abundant.

This is an upwelling current.

It churns the water, bringing nutrients.

Seals and birds come to hunt the small fish,
which gather around these rising waters.

The Chileans fish with a seine,

a very long net that closes
over 40 tons of catch.

Five hundred thousand fish in each net
that a machine sucks up into the hold.

Though sardines only live a few years,
they reproduce rapidly.

These blue fish are the last
still holding out in this world.

We don't eat these fish.
We catch them to make fish meal.

Fish meal which feeds farmed fish.

In total, 25 million tons of sea fish
are raised every year,

most of the production
coming from Norway and Chile.

We only raise species with high market value,

sea bream, salmon and bass.

Four kilos of wild sardines are needed
to produce one kilo of farmed fish.

Our fish farming is an industry
based on a wild resource.

And when there are no more sardines,
what will we do?

As our resources run out,
we go further and further.

The high seas are a free zone.

Two-thirds of the ocean belongs
to everyone, and so to no one,

and so belongs to the first to use it.

Off the coast of West Africa,

rogue ship-owners send poor fishermen
to pillage the last zones rich in fish.

On their ramshackle boats,
these men are abandoned,

with rations arriving once a month,
if they're lucky.

Men in boats that seem
to have no value for anyone.

In Mauritania,

the port of Nouadhibou has become
a graveyard of pirate fishing ships.

Hundreds of boats seized off this coast,
abandoned wrecks,

probably already replaced by other ships.

The pirate boats gather
in the least watched zones,

like the African sector.

Out at sea,

the illegal ships transfer their cargo
onto authorised ships

to be able to sell their catch legally
on the international markets.

Some estimates rank this illegal fishing
at 26 million tons of catch,

a quarter of the global total.

Profit rules the seas.

In the sea, 90% of the biomass
of the predators has disappeared.

One of the last of them,
the Atlantic bluefin tuna,

is on the verge of extinction.

Nevertheless, it is fished legally
in the Mediterranean,

one of the last refuges of this species,
which comes here to reproduce.

The tuna are captured in a very large net
which shuts like a pen.

The catch is towed back alive,
then fattened up in a farm

before slaughter,
then sold on international markets.

These fish are a luxury resource.

A top quality tuna can weigh 300 kilos

and be sold for over 500,000 euros.

Corruption and lies are everywhere.

The tuna fishing fleets benefit from
millions of euros of European subsidies.

We respect no quotas,

we don't take any precautions at all
for the preservation of the species.

At this rate, the tuna will be extinct
within a few years.

We deplete this common good

because it belongs to no one
and it brings in a lot of money.

And tomorrow, what will we have left?

Today, there are 400 marine areas
which have been declared dead,

empty of resources,
or even incapable of sustaining life.

Other species are proliferating.

Jellyfish have existed on Earth
for almost a billion years.

They have survived
all known types of extinction.

Red tuna were one of their predators.

The disappearance of the tuna
destabilises a millennial balance.

All over the ocean, scientists and fishermen
are noticing more and more jellyfish.

The ocean is becoming a mass of gelatine,

and this imbalance is a trap waiting for us.

Far from the land, far from where I live,

the ocean is hiding from us another fact.

The currents are dispersing our chemistry,

the pollutants of our industrial creation
across the whole globe.

More than 46,000 pieces of plastic
per square kilometre on average

across all seas.

What is killing these birds
comes from my home,

even though I live thousands
of kilometres from here.

We tip six billion kilos
of plastic waste per year into the sea.

Plastic, which doesn't decompose,
but which micro-fragments.

What these birds are eating, the fish will eat,

and in turn I will eat

as we delve into the ocean for our fishing,
for our fisheries.

Polluting the ocean to this point
means poisoning ourselves.

The ocean is so vast that we came
to believe it had infinite resources.

We were wrong.

The ocean planet in reality
has only a limited capacity for renewal,

which we have to learn to manage.

That's why, since the dawn of time,

everything that lives on Earth
respects rhythms and limits.

That's the origin of the famous law
of natural equilibrium.

For myself, I want to stay on the Earth.

I want to have a place tomorrow
on our living planet.

For a long time, I watched these fish.

I think I am a little like them.

I evolve through consensus, in a group.

Even if I understand what's happening to us,

I can't just choose to radically change
the way things are going.

But maybe our shared awareness
will trigger a chain reaction

and save our species.

I want to believe that we can react in time.

Twenty years ago, in Rio,

people came together for a major
conference on the future of the Earth.

That was in 1992.

In that year,

our political elites voted
for 2,500 recommendations

for protecting the planet.

I believed that was the symbolic
beginning of a new era.

But it was only the beginning of a long road.

Since then, what has happened?

There have been other conferences,
other Earth summits,

with very little result.

The risk of unpopular decision,

competition, corruption, passivity,
have prevented any action.

But we, humanity,

have made an enormous leap forward
in the last 20 years.

Our awareness has evolved.

We are worried about the issue
of the environment.

But that's not yet enough.

Time is catching up with us.

At this rate, we are headed for catastrophe.

What's striking is that
we don't see what's happening.

Even at the heart of this city
facing the ocean,

the disgusting pollution means
we cannot go into the sea.

We had to build a pool to swim
in the most beautiful bay in the world,

the bay which has become dangerous
to our health.

In Rio, like everywhere in the world,

we built a colossus, a symbol of eternity,

as if to protect ourselves.

He contemplates the ocean,
but what can he do for us?

No religion, no belief will save us.

It's not a time for believing
in the promises of heaven.

Only our intelligence enables us
to foresee and prepare our future.

We can still change direction.

There's still time to imagine a humanist
and responsible stewardship of the planet.

To remain on our ocean planet.

(CALL RESONATING)

(INAUDIBLE)