Soul of the Ocean

In these waters lies a complex world...

a natural realm built on relationships.

It's an ancient system of give-and-take...

where communities of life cooperate.

The diversity of creatures here is dazzling.

And everyone must play their part

to maintain the delicate balance.

Take a deep breath and discover...

the Soul of the Ocean.

Hold your breath.

Listen.

Watch.

Understand.

The more you look...

the more it changes your perspective.

Animals and places reach out to you.

They are all part of a global and ancient system

that could explain everything.

Hold your breath...

dive...

into a better world.

Sound travels further underwater,

and whale songs can cross an ocean.

Humpback whales have left Antarctica

and are heading for French Polynesia

in the middle of the Pacific.

The humpbacks come 4,000 miles to this reef

to give birth and sing.

Males escort each family, hoping to mate.

There's constant communication.

A calf nurses, sloppily, 50 gallons of milk a day.

The milk is so rich that it doesn't dissolve in the water,

but forms white droplets.

The humpback bulls sing on their heads.

We don't know why.

The songs are complex,

constantly changing as part of a rich culture.

There are elements of music and language,

but their meaning to each other we don't yet understand.

The song spreads from Polynesia

and echoes across thousands of miles of ocean.

Tides and currents, ripples and upwellings

connect the furthest reaches.

The ocean transports nutrients and animals

in a way impossible on land.

This is a single home, miles deep,

and full of life that can link almost anywhere.

In November, when the calves are strong enough,

the families return south to feed.

Humpback whales connect the ocean,

but the coral reef is where their song starts.

Each reef is a global city,

with waves of traffic and sounds and tastes,

even cultures,

moving back and forth over thousands of miles.

The city is fueled by an extraordinary alliance

between sunlight and coral.

Coral polyps are animals,

and living inside them are plants --

photosynthetic algae.

The algae are powered by sunlight to build sugars,

and the coral polyps gather nutrients and proteins.

This cosmopolitan community is built on relationships,

on creatures working together.

Each species of anemone fish has its own anemone,

a symbiotic friendship that neither can live without.

The stinging arms defend their personal clownfish

from reef predators like moray eels.

If an anemone fish feels really threatened,

it even can hide in the anemone's stomach.

It's also a safe home to a porcelain crab.

And specialist shrimp and baby damselfish

make it their home.

Companionships are everywhere you look.

An urchin and a crab.

Pygmy seahorses hide on gorgonian corals.

They've evolved to match their home.

Different kinds of fan corals

have different kinds of seahorses.

If a fan coral goes, its seahorses die, too.

Each species is like a cell in a body,

working together and part of a vast system

that only can exist because everything is connected.

It's different from land,

with its isolated islands and habitats.

The consequences of this are only beginning to be understood.

Beyond the reef, cooperation

can become even more personal.

Offshore of the Philippines,

a shrimp goby guards a burrow in the coral rubble.

A companion shrimp excavates and does the housework.

Gobies have good eyesight.

They scan for predators.

The shrimp is almost blind

and will only venture to the entranceway

if he, or she, can touch the goby with its antenna.

The physical contact between lifelong friends

is the heart of the relationship.

How they originally find each other to set up home

is a puzzle.

They are never seen living alone.

There are dozens of different species,

and each partnership is specific.

Both shrimp and goby usually have a mate,

and the couples get along well.

They may also take in lodgers. These ones are dartfish.

The shrimp never leaves the burrow, so what does he eat?

Well, the goby's food is... recycled to the shrimp.

Perfect.

At least one shrimp antenna

is always in contact with one goby.

They both react as one.

Relationships are not always so balanced.

Sharing the same reef is a family of convict blennies,

living in a burrow.

The baby blennies mimic venomous striped catfish,

and their disguise is convincing enough

to discourage predators from eating them.

The youngsters feed on plankton above the reef

without any danger.

Meanwhile, the adults hide.

They stay at home and clean and maintain the burrow.

They have never been seen to eat.

Only the youngsters feed,

on life drifting in from maybe thousands of miles away.

How the parents survive has long puzzled scientists.

Researchers studying them now believe

that the seemingly perfect parents

actually eat a few of their babies each night.

Cooperation raises some difficult questions.

In nature, there is dark, as well as light...

and all shades in between.

In communities full of competing interests,

hunger, and betrayal,

why would a shrimp go near a dangerous moray eel?

It's a cleaner shrimp.

The moray holds its breath.

Cleaner shrimps dedicate their lives to others,

and an extraordinary trust has built up

between them and the moray eels.

Everywhere you look, animals are not eating each other,

but cleaning each other.

Fish travel to a particular cleaning station

and often change color as a signal

that they're hoping to be cleaned.

They come far more often than they need to.

There's something about it that they like

and keeps them coming back.

Specialist cleaning stations

are on every reef across the Pacific.

Around Hawaii, green turtles come regularly,

often from hundreds of miles away.

Surgeonfish remove a green fuzz of algae.

The fuzz slows a turtle down, so a clean shell is important.

This turtle cleaning station is a very specific outcrop.

50 feet from here, surgeonfish have other jobs

and ignore the turtles.

There are service centers like this all over.

It's a global network.

3,000 miles to the east, off Mexico,

Clarion angelfish wait for a different customer.

A manta ray may have traveled thousands of miles

between appointments.

Injuries are tended to...

and tiny parasites or algae removed.

The angelfish gets a meal,

but that can't quite explain the relationship completely.

There's a much older alchemy, an ancient biochemistry

that creates a physiological buzz

out of doing things together.