Original subtitles

The Ocean....

the last frontier on earth.

So much is unexplored and unexplained.

To change that...

a kickass team of insanely talented specialists is

setting out to push the frontiers of what we know

about our oceans.

Oh my gosh.

Zoleka Filander, deep sea scientist.

Being a deep-sea researcher means

having front row tickets to the best movie that everybody

wants to watch.

Melissa Márquez...

Straight ahead, 12:00.

Shark biologist.

We just saw what no one has seen before.

Eric Stackpole...

Scan now!

Ocean tech innovator.

I love building tools that allow us

to see things in ways we've never seen before.

And Aldo Kane...

This is insane.

Former Royal Marine; special ops.

It doesn't get any more cutting-edge

exploration than this.

Their secret weapon...

...the OceanXplorer .

The most technologically advanced research vessel

ever built.

There's never been a more urgent need to understand

our ocean and the animals that call it home...

Because their lives and ours depend on it.

This time...

we're on the trail of the Arctic's ultimate predator...

Go, go!

The polar bear.

.

The OceanXplorer is deep inside the Arctic Circle...

in Svalbard.

400 miles North of Norway...

It's wild, remote, and frozen.

And Svalbard is home to around 300 polar bears.

Polar bears are actually considered marine

mammals on account of how much time they spend on ice.

Yeah, extraordinary really.

Polar Bears have evolved to thrive on the ice,

searching for pretty much one thing...

Seals.

In one of the coldest places on the planet,

calorie rich seal blubber...

is the difference between life and death for a polar bear.

But bears can only hunt seals when the sea is frozen.

When the ice melts, seal season ends.

The team is here in late summer...

The sea ice is almost gone,

tough times for the polar bear.

But recently it's become a lot harder.

Their ice kingdom is in danger...

so the team needs to find out if they can survive.

The Arctic region is warming

four times faster than any part in the world

and this is a huge problem for the polar bears

because the summers are longer

and this means that there's not enough sea ice.

But that's just open water.

Yeah.

He's just wandering.

When there's no ice here, bears are forced to

search for food on land.

It's hard to go here without thinking about

change, and how these pieces of ice are dwindling away,

and specifically is going to affect the behavior of the

Polar bears.

With this environment changing so rapidly,

the team's first mission is to find out if

Svalbard's bears still have enough to eat.

That means coming face to face with one of nature's

most dangerous predators.

Aldo leads the aerial team,

with two experts who survey the bears' health each year.

Jon and Rolf are both working for the Norwegian

polar institute up here in Svalbard, so they've got this

study that's been going for over 20 years now.

What they're struggling to work out is, is how the

climate's changing is having an effect on polar bears.

Almost every year, you know they would have

continuous sea ice down to the islands here, and as that part

of the year gets shorter and shorter it gets harder and

harder to, to be a polar bear.

Jon needs to sedate and examine as many

bears as possible.

Let's go over the fjord a bit.

With the climate changing, with sea ice

retreating further north, does that mean there will be less

seals for the bears here to eat?

The main thing it's less seals that are

possible to catch.

Right, right.

They follow the coastline looking for bears

that are on the prowl for food.

Do you see the fresh tracks?

Yeah, yeah.

Bear! There's a bear down there!

He's a big bear.

Rolf is a vet...

his job is to dart the bear safely.

The dart won't hurt the bear.

It should put it to sleep in minutes...

but it's not an exact science.

He looks out cold...

but they can't be sure.

If he isn't fully sedated,

he could easily kill Rolf and the team.

Yeah he's fine.

If you want to bring the...

Oxygen?

Oxygen, yeah you bring that and you

bring that there yeah.

You want to put it on?

Yep... wow.

The blindfold protects its eyes and helps to

keep it sedated while Rolf takes its vitals.

He's got deep, good breaths.

Beautiful.

Just the muscle...

- Yeah. - In these shoulders.

Try with your hands and compare with those.

Yeah, you can see just how specialized these are

for the way they hunt.

They're very specialized at waiting at

a breathing hole for a seal and it's got to catch it and

drag it away.

Rolf thinks he's around 8 years old.

Quite a lot of the adult males you see

their broken teeth, fighting a lot.

But this guy he's got really nice teeth.

He's in the prime of his life.

He's in the prime of his life really.

Yeah.

Try to see, yeah.

By this point in late summer, there's been very

little sea ice around Svalbard for almost four months.

He's a little bit thin.

He's a bit below average I would say, yeah.

Yeah.

A blood sample will show whether this bear is

eating seals, or something else.

Each one of these tubes will be tested for

something different?

Yeah, so you can get some indication about what

they have eaten, if he's eaten mostly seals or more

terrestrial food.

Starvation is, is the biggest um cause of

death for Polar Bears.

But what we suspect might happen is that where

we've seen the effects of sea ice loss, when things suddenly

get worse, it will be the youngest and oldest bears

that will be affected first.

There he is...

so that's him back on his feet now, he was under for

just less than an hour, the guys have got all their

measurements done now, given him the antidote to the

anesthetic, so he's now back awake.

Um, he's standing there just for a few more minutes

probably just while he gets his bearings,

and then he'll head off.

There's another bear that Jon is really

worried about.

A much older bear that he knows well.

She's called Lyra.

Jon first met her nine years ago,

as she emerged from her den with new cubs.

He's been following her ever since.

But the GPS collar that he fitted to keep track of Lyra

stopped moving.

It's a worrying sign.

Her collar data shows that after a long summer with no

sea ice, she spent two months walking almost 600 miles

up and down the coastline.

Jon believes she was searching for food.

Then she stopped moving altogether.

That was almost a year ago.

Should be somewhere here, should be to the right

here, should be just underneath.

So it's 20 meters now, about here.

Oh right.

There you go.

Lyra didn't make it.

What's sad is that she had two small cubs when we

captured her last autumn.

The cubs you think are dead also?

They, they are for sure dead.

If she died then...

Because there's no, no way they could have

survived without her.

Hm.

The mortality rate is quite high then?

It's pretty high among juveniles, so maybe

2 out of the 3 you know dies.

Oh wow.

Within a bit more than a year.

Yeah.

Seeing a polar bear that's starved to death

was really quite emotional for me.

To think what she has gone through, losing her two cubs

and wandering hundreds of miles looking for food.

You hear about temperatures rising and ice melting,

but this really brings it home

when you see the fate of a family.

For the rest of the team, seeing the speed of

change here is equally shocking.

The amount of sea ice that we're losing just

from changes in the environment is greater than

the amount of rainforest we're losing in the last 50 years.

Seeing this loss makes their mission

even more urgent.

Climate change is not really something

you can see...

but here in Svalbard, you actually get to see it

happening right in front of your eyes.

Aldo and the helicopter team push on...

they need to find out if other polar bear cubs have survived

with so little sea ice.

There's a bear, yeah that's a bear.

A mother and a cub.

Both bears are safely darted;

the team has to work fast.

All good? She's okay, she's fine?

Yeah she's fine.

Good condition?

She's not too bad, given that she has a small cub.

And the cub is?

Doing well.

Jon's relieved to find a healthy family.

Is it a male cub?

Let's see...

That's a male yeah.

Yeah, male cub.

He will be 8 months, he was born about

new year's.

Jon knows this mother bear too.

He first met her seven years ago when she was just a cub herself.

It's now her turn to try to keep her baby alive.

This cub will, will still be breast feeding,

is that right?

Yeah.

I just checked that she had milk, so it's like

white milk, so I just note that, which means she's

still doing ok.

Sometimes you know if they're really food stressed,

they stop giving milk.

And that stress would come from the

environment and not being able to eat?

Yeah from too little food, too little to eat.

And the cub is fine?

Yeah.

In fact, he's on the heavy side.

This guy is a little chubby.

Yeah.

There we go.

Weighing mom requires all hands-on deck.

A bit more so she's almost on the back.

- There? - Yeah.

Alright she's off the ground.

Okay.

She's 385 pounds,

that means she's doing ok.

Jon can now keep track of both mum and cub with

her GPS collar.

She's starting to have some twitching.

Yeah, you gotta be careful, now is not

the time to put fingers in her mouth.

Rolf clears her airway and makes sure she

can't bite her own tongue as she comes around.

It's good to see them both back up and awake now.

Yeah.

It's great to see a well-fed mum and cub

at this time of year...

but with no seals to hunt, what are they eating?

The team's second mission is to investigate

if these bears are adapting to hunt new prey.

So Polar bears have always been adaptive.

They're opportunistic, they always have been.

But there isn't much else in Svalbard and around Svalbard

for them to eat.

So we need to figure out if they're switching to eat

something else.

Eric's up first.

He's on the trail of an animal

that could be filling the seal gap...

walrus.

So, walruses can weigh over 1,000 pounds

and they have this thick blubbery layer just like seals.

Could that be what the bears are eating?

That's what I want to find out.

With wildlife cinematographer David...

and polar safety guide Tom,

Eric heads for the walrus haul out.

If we do see a bear in the area, if either of

you see anything that looks like a bear, tell me straight away,

uh if I see a bear, I'll let you know, but the first thing

we're gonna do if there is a bear in the area is we're

gonna get back on the boat.

OK.

Some sort of animal poop.

Oh yeah look at that.

Let's, you know what that is?

Um. I mean it's sizable.

I know, it's kind of a big animal.

- I mean it's not walrus poop... - No.

- And it's not fox poop. - No. It's too big for that.

It has fur in it as well, I mean, so that means

it's a carnivore's poop.

I mean...

This could be polar bear poop?

Yep.

They've been here.

Yeah okay.

Something's been in this area.

Alright well the, uh, the evidence is, is

mounting that perhaps we've got bears.

As they inch closer,

they get a polar bear's eye view

of the walrus colony.

They've been spotted.

Get down.

Alright.

Don't move.

Look at the size of them.

They beat a hasty retreat.

By the time they reach the boat...

they're not alone.

They're pretty curious...

you might actually wanna push off right now.

- Yeah? - Yeah.

All right.

They're sluggish on land, but in the water, that is their

turf and they know how to handle themselves in it,

so they can be very, very dangerous, especially to a

boat like this where you know if they got aggressive with

the boat, it could puncture the, the hull.

This is an inflatable boat...

so these are these moments where you don't really know

what nature's gonna do.

We're done, we're gonna get out of here...

All right, we gotta go.

One encounter is not definitive, but it seems very

unlikely to me that a bear of any size is going to be able

to attack a fully grown adult walrus.

On the other side of Svalbard, the helicopter

team is also looking for clues.

It really does boil life down into the

absolute basics of, of wandering around a barren

wilderness looking for your next meal.

Yes. Oh yeah absolutely.

These bears are definitely eating

something substantial.

He is fat.

Yeah, super fat.

They spot a clue.

Oh is there some sort of carcass down there.

Just in front of you, 12:00.

Oh there is something here.

That is a reindeer carcass.

Look at that.

Ah, there's another carcass there, look?

Yeah.

This is uh interesting.

Jon has only ever seen bears scavenge

dead reindeer.

Reindeer up here.

Yeah, lot of reindeer here.

It's not long before they see the evidence

they're looking for.

It's a bear.

On the hill right this side of the snow line.

Oh yeah, yeah.

He's on the move.

Yeah he looks fat.

He's very nice condition.

Yeah.

He's sort of stalking up these little

valleys to where the reindeer are.

Perfect terrain for a reindeer ambush.

That's the thing with the bears, they're not

really evolved for running or for that sort of predation,

but I guess if the terrain suits that's just like

classic ambush country.

Yup it is.

It was thought that polar bears couldn't

outrun something as fast as a reindeer, but they're using

the terrain to their advantage.

As a sniper it's my job to close the distance to the

target using cover and that's exactly what the bear's doing,

before it uses a final burst of speed.

It seems that some of Svalbard's polar bears

have found ways to hunt new species

in the long summer months...

a possible lifeline as their home gets warmer.

So that's very interesting.

Professional reindeer hunter.

Yup.

Analysis of the blood Jon's taken from the

sedated bears tells him exactly what they've been eating.

Bears here are now consuming a higher proportion of

land-based prey than before.

So, I guess with it becoming warmer up here

and less sea ice, they have to adapt their behavior and,

and their hunting strategy.

So there is a couple of things we've seen

studying these local Svalbard bears, is that bears use much

more time on land, and we also get evidence that reindeer

actually are taken by polar bears, like what we saw,

you know the reindeer carcass.

Mission accomplished.

The team has witnessed the evidence for themselves,

that polar bears might be able to adapt and survive

in a warming climate.

It's a Hollywood ending...

but nature doesn't do Hollywood endings.

Polar bears in their prime might be able to switch

from seals to reindeer.

But for new-born cubs, that's just not an option.

Polar bear cubs are totally dependent on

their mother's milk.

Mom gives birth in winter and keeps her cubs in the den for

the first three months while she nurses them.

When they all emerge in spring,

she's running on empty and her cubs need solid food.

Her salvation comes in the form of a unique,

frozen hunting ground,

found at the base of Svalbard's massive glacial cliffs.

Glaciers are an accumulation of snowfall

over thousands of years, and this forms a huge ice sheet.

Where that ice meets the ocean, it gives the sea ice

a solid structure to latch onto.

And it's the sea-ice that's vital for

polar bear mum's in spring...

It's where the seals have their pup's.

For a starving polar bear mum,

these seals are the difference between life and death.

These feeding grounds depend on

glaciers like this reaching the ocean...

and there's the problem...

Svalbard's glaciers are melting...

fast.

If glaciers retreat onto land, the sea-ice no longer has a

strong anchor, it breaks up and drifts away,

taking the seals with it.

Nearly a fifth of Svalbard's glaciers have now retreated

onto land.

If this trend continues, do polar bears even

have a future here?

For their final and most important mission,

the team wants to answer the question,

how fast are these glaciers retreating?

The OceanXplorer has arrived at the largest

glacier in Svalbard.

Austfonna.

This 3,000 square mile slab of ice is ten times bigger than

New York City.

Every summer, meltwater pours off it...

and as the temperatures increase, these waterfalls are

expected to get bigger.

Are these uncontrolled rivers melting the glacier faster?

The team brings in top ice scientist Andreas Alexander.

Hello, nice to meet you...

Andreas Alexander is a glacial

scientist, he studies the way the glaciers are changing

over time, and he's been doing this for many years, so he's an

expert in all the subtle ways glacial movement may be

affecting the environment around it.

Melissa Márquez will also be helping Andreas

on this mission.

Glaciers are changing up here very,

very fast, they're melting and every year we get more melt.

What is happening at the edge where the ice meets the ocean?

We don't know how much water actually is flowing through

this channel, how fast is the water flowing, at what

temperature is it?

And a big challenge that we are facing is,

we can't measure it.

Lucky number 7.

But Andreas hopes to change that with a

new piece of tech...

Oh my gosh.

This is a drifter.

Here we go.

The plan is to drop it into a river 10 miles

inland on the glacier.

It will travel down the rapids, recording the water

speed and pressure on the ice.

Finally, if the drifter makes it to the front of the

glacier, it'll tell us how much these rivers and

waterfalls are influencing the rate of retreat.

For us to be able to gather any information

from these drifters, they have to be deployed upstream enough

so that they'll follow the stream for enough distance to

collect good data and then go over the waterfall

into the ocean.

No easy task,

how do you get to the headwaters of a glacier?

You walk.

The rivers form a dangerous maze...

one wrong step and you risk broken bones, or worse.

Some rapids there.

Yeah.

Uh-oh... that's big.

That's a big one.

Whenever you're ready.

Three, two, one.

Yeah.

Here we go.

And let's get out of this.

Go, go.

Nice one.

Dig in the axe yeah.

Stand on those toes...

there you go, good work.

After ten miles of trekking they reach a

suitable deployment spot.

A river big enough to go all the way to the front of the glacier.

I'm just letting the boat know that

we've got these two drifters that we're about to send out

and I've gone ahead and sent the GPS coordinates.

Then we are ready to deploy yeah?

Alright.

And wish it the best.

Wish it good luck.

Good luck.

Ok and three, two, one, and off you go.

Three, two, one.

Two drifters are away.

Waiting on the ocean, Eric and Zoleka have the difficult task

of finding the drifters...

if they've survived the rapids.

You can scan now...

we're just waiting for this terminal to show a signal.

I haven't heard anything yet, nothing yet.

Oh, we've got one we've got one.

Yeah, we got one.

It should be off our port bow somewhere;

I think it's closer to the glacier.

Oh my gosh, the swell is not helping!

I can see it...

my 12:00...

I've got eyes on it.

Both devices have made it

out of the glacier...

but they've landed in dangerous waters.

Oh, calving just happened, oh, oh my gosh.

So, what is the plan here?

We're gonna do a drive by and try and pick it up.

Got it.

I mean look at this the whole glacier is disintegrating as

we're up to it we really have to be careful here.

He's got it, he's got it, he's got it.

Great Job...

okay we're ready for number two if you're able to get that out.

Two of them in.

For the very first time, Andreas's drifters

have been successfully retrieved from the ocean

after a glacier deployment.

In the ship's mixed reality lab, the team is eager to see

what secrets they reveal.

This basically shows what it looks

like just below the waterfall when it reaches the ocean.

Glaciers with no waterfalls are insulated by a

layer of calm, cold water at their base,

so they melt very slowly.

But here on Austfonna, the drifter data reveals

a different picture altogether.

But what we see now is you have the

fresh water coming in and that fresh water destroys the

insulation layer of the cold water, and what that will do

is create heat, and that heat is what's melting,

what's driving the melt.

Well it's a combination of warmer ocean water and then

the freshwater hitting and creating the currents and

those currents are the ones that are driving the ice melt.

Scientists had expected this glacier to

retreat at least 130 feet a year.

But from the new drifter data, Andreas has calculated,

around each waterfall, the rate of retreat could double.

And that's bad news for polar bear moms.

They need glaciers to reach the ocean so that sea-ice can

anchor to them and make a stable hunting platform.

This revelation is bittersweet for the team.

It's this really big sense of

achievement that we've got brand new data on how quickly

these glaciers are melting.

But what it's telling us,

well that makes me really worried for polar bears.

If the climate keeps warming, is there a limit to how much

more they can adapt?

We've seen that some of them can adapt,

but is it enough with their world changing so quickly?

This isn't just about polar bears.

So much of the Arctic is teeming with life.

It drives ocean currents, it moderates our climate...

So much depends on it.

But the team has hope for the future.

If the world keeps to its promise and

limits temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,

there should still be an ice kingdom for polar bears.

Svalbard's polar bears are just about

hanging in there for now,

but for them to have a real future...

that's on us.

Captioned by Cotter Media Group.