Turtle: The Incredible Journey

The stories of the sea are hidden from us.

Below the shifting surface, a blue world exists.

Secret journeys are underway on invisible blue highways.

And an odyssey is beginning...

...200 million years ago turtles lived on land.

When the dinosaurs came they ran away to the sea...

...and became creatures of the tides and the currents.

But the land did not want to let them go and demanded payment.

So it is that every sea turtle must return to the land to lay its eggs.

And every baby turtle must start its life buried alive.

She has been digging for three days to reach the surface.

Her shell is still soft and she is no bigger than the palm of a child's hand.

With no teeth; No defenses; She has only her will.

The sea is just 40 metres away.

But for her, so small, the beach is a great divide.

She is not alone.

Every year from the start of spring nearly two million...

...loggerhead turtles are born on the beaches of Florida.

Sbe has only one thought... To escape.

The land is not her place.

She has just minutes to reach the sea.

Minutes to live or die.

From the land and the air, hundreds of hatchlings are taken.

With all her might she confronts the waves.

But many are thrown back by the surf.

As many as half can perish in the first hours of their life.

She keeps going.

With flippers the size of butterfly wings she pulls herself free of land's hold...

...and into the unknown abyss of the sea.

Now she is a pilgrim in a vast Atlantic Ocean...

...and has begun one of the greatest journeys on the planet.

But she will never forget where she was born.

All around her the new world of the sea changes and flows...

Liquid and elemental.

She keeps swimming for two days and two nights.

Then the water suddenly turns a clear crystal blue.

She's reached the winding edge of the Gulf Stream,

a powerful current flowing up from the Caribbean...

...all the way to the North Atlantic.

A great warm river moving with a flow 130 times that of the Amazon.

This will be her pathway through the ocean just as it has been for generations...

...of loggerheads before her.

She pushes on, deep into the flowing heart of the Gulf Stream.

And every few minutes she must come to the surface.

Like all reptiles the little turtle must breathe air.

After more than seventy kilometres, she finds what she is looking for.

A raft of seaweed... A life raft.

And for the first time in her life, she surrenders to sleep.

Now she belongs to the arms of the great current.

For hundreds of kilometres along the Gulf Stream,

the rafts of sargassum weed carry...

...thousands of little nurseries northward.

There is no turning back.

Other journeys are underway.

The Gulf Stream is the ocean's great highway.

Each spring the sea's restless nomads travel...

...fast and far on the current's flow,

Heading to the North Atlantic's feeding grounds...

...in time for summer.

The humpback has come from the Caribbean.

She has made this journey a dozen times in her life.

And is heading even further north than the others...

To the Arctic, 7000 kilometres away.

But the tiny turtle has the most incredible journey of all.

She can only travel at the speed of her raft...

Eight kilometres an hour...

The speed of the Gulf Stream current.

She must trust in her past... In all the many millions of years...

...turtles just like her have swum...

...for the safety of the open sea to be carried inevitably...

...across the mighty Atlantic.

For now, the raft is her whole world.

And she'd like to claim it all for herself.

But there are others who were here before her.

Schools of fish that gather for shelter and food.

And those who spend their entire lives inside the tangled weed.

And who cannot exist without it.

Like travellers in a circus caravan, each one is different.

A little odd... A little awkward...

A little magic.

And they are all hungry.

The seahorse favours tiny shrimp.

Which reminds her... she's hungry too.

There is room for everyone.

However strange.

And if it starts to get crowded...

Vacancies do come up.

But they are her travelling companions now.

And in the vast expanse of blue, the raft is their only retreat.

But the long weed lines attract others from the deep.

She is a blue shark, young and hungry.

For the first few years of her life,

she has been cruising in and out of the Gulf Stream.

Raiding the rafts.

One day they will meet again.

For both share the same journey through the ocean.

Below her the sea descends, falling into the abyss.

A place that has forgotten sunlight.

A place that makes its own stars.

Darkness loving creatures rise towards her to sift the Gulf Stream water...

...for microscopic food.

This nightly movement to the surface is the largest migration on earth.

And from the Caribbean to Florida, coral reefs...

...cast their spawn into the current just as...

...plants release their seeds upon the wind.

Such a flotsam of life is loosened into the Gulf Stream.

Everything that can not move itself is lifted and taken, channeled and directed north.

But there are eddies lurking on the edge of the current...

Exit ramps into the unforgiving Atlantic.

And those not strong to choose their own...

...direction might find themselves suddenly abandoned.

As dawn approaches, the night drifters sink downwards,

shunning all light but their own...

Going with the flow.

The little turtle sleeps on, trusting in the sea...

For it has brought her safely this far.

She cannot know that an eddy has caught her raft,

stolen it out of the Gulf Stream.

And while so many others will continue their journeys north,

she awakens to the sudden stillness of the Sargasso Sea...

...3000 kilometres wide, it is a stagnant sea in the middle of the North Atlantic.

Without wind or current, the sailing ships of old...

...were often marooned here for months.

But today's ships don't need the wind and the current.

The creatures of the raft were not magic after all,

but small and fragile.

Only the little turtle can survive without the raft.

Alone now, she swims deeper and deeper into the stillness...

Further and further from the Gulf Stream.

What drifts into the Sargasso Sea seldom leaves.

The oil left by ships willl be here for years.

There is no tide to wash and cleanse the trails of blackness.

Oil chokes young turtles.

And what the land discards, also collects here.

How shiny it is... How tempting to a hungry turtle...

And if she swallows it, she could die.

Her hunger possesses her...

She forgets everything but her need for food...

Even her fear...

Delicate veils sway gently in the water and lure her in.

The tentacles of the Portugese man of war are venemous.

They stun their victims, envelop and absorb them.

But after sharing the ocean with them for so many millions of years...

...the turtles have developed an immunity to their stings.

And a taste for their rubbery tentacles.

At last, she is not just prey but predator.

And now that she knows the rules, there's plenty to eat.

Years pass in this forgotten sea...

...but what does a turtle care for a few lost chapters.

Time for her is centuries, millennia.

Her ancestors saw the continents form more than 200 million years ago.

They survived the great cataclysms of asteroids and glaciers.

They outlived their old foes the dinosaurs.

Time is for her to grow strong.

For her shell to harden and her skin to thicken.

And so she becomes an ocean traveller.

Close to her fifth birthday, when she is nearly half a metre long,

she suddenly charts a course away from the Sargasso sea.

As if her ancestors have reminded her.

Her flippers like wings were made for travelling,

not for staying.

And she swims, sure and strong now.

After several months she rejoins the Gulf Stream...

...in time for the spring migration north.

At last she can continue her journey on the great current.

She takes her place among the other travellers of the blue highway.

The blue shark is here too.

But the turtle is no longer afraid of her.

She is bigger now and her shell much harder.

And the shark, now pregnant, is riding the Gulf Stream...

...to the other side of the atlantic where she will give birth.

It's a journey she will make every two or three years...

...for the rest of her life.

How fast and sure the blue shark swims...

And how a young turtle might envy such confidence.

Nearly 2,500 kilometres from her beach,

she approaches the wild waters of the North Atlantic.

Far out at sea, a spring storm brews.

It sweeps toward the coast of Nova Scotia.

Waves, bigger than whales, bigger than ships.

In just a few days they carry her...

...several hundred kilometres northeast along her path.

But the storm follows a different course to that of the Gulf Stream...

...and takes her like a captive toward the shore.

Exhausted, she can not catch her breath enough...

...to dive below the battering waves.

She is thrown towards the rocks.

Land reaches out to reclaim her... As if it has never forgiven her for leaving.

The jagged shores of Nova Scotia will smash her shell open.