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I would say my entire lifestyle is dangerous. Ready up deep. Ready. So mission of the day it's fruit dropping to help the forest regenerate. Five. Oh. Three. Two. Go. Uh 5:15 in the morning. This is how I wake up here in the jungle of Borneo with the sound of the gibbon. My name is Shani. Uh I'm originally from France, but I live for the last 25 years in Indonesia in Borneo in the forest. I'm the CEO and founder of the Kalaweit Foundation. We work in Borneo, Sumatra, and Mentawai to save animals and forest.
So I will have a quick break first before to go to the river and set up the plane. From a very young age uh I was passionate by gibbon and I wanted to help the real gibbons wild. I'm still fighting every single day to um help all these animals who have been uh victim of the illegal pet trade and deforestation and also to work with local community to try to protect forest, save small uh patch of forest uh from the palm oil industry or from the mining industry. So I got my breakfast. Now I'm going to the river. Uh it's just 200 m from the house. Hey morning, Puma. Uh the seaplane is waiting for me there with the crew.
I have to do some check. Then the mission of the day quite important it's fruit dropping to help the forest regenerate in some parts of the reserve. Morning. So it's important every single flight to check the gas, make sure there's no water in it. You don't want the engine to stop over the jungle. So, very important pre-flight. And when Abdi is doing it, uh I'm checking all the structure of the plane. Uh we have to be very careful because we are in a very humid uh environment. And that can impact the plane. So, this is the mission of the Uh we call that buah asam in Indonesian.
Uh it's a big family of the tamarind in English, I think. Uh so, the mission of the day is to uh drop all these fruits uh over the forest, especially where the forest uh have been destroyed a few years ago because of fire. We already released and dropped uh hundreds of kilos of fruits in some part of the reserve to help the vegetation to regenerate. Pre-flight complete. Now, time for the seaplane to get wet. Never feel like you are working. Uh it's not a joke for me. It's just my life. If you take it out of my life, nothing left. So, now the seaplane is in the water. And uh with Abdi, uh we're putting uh all gear, safety equipment, of course, a
life jacket. So, inside the plane, I have here some uh some food, military food in case I have to spend some few days in the forest. I have a knife. I have a 20-m rope with a harness if in any case I get stuck in a tree and a satellite phone. So, this is a minimal equipment uh when you spend your time flying over the jungle. The stress is mixed with adrenaline. It's what I like. I'm sitting in a important. The seaplane allow us first of all to patrol the forest to make sure there is no deforestation in the particular area. And also as we are doing as this morning dropping seed and fruits to help the forest regenerate.
Ready up there? Ready. It's so efficient but it's so also great fun and I love to mix fun and the fight. It is one of my big pleasure. Okay? Okay. Okay, you can start in five, four, three, two, go. Everything is about local people. Everything is about Indonesian young generation and doing it with this is the most important thing and the thing I want to share with my kids. And you know, that great feeling that we make a difference today. My name is Kieran Avery. And I live and work here in northern Kenya where I'm involved in community conservation.
Northern Kenya is a critical landscape for the people, the livestock and the wildlife that live there. Uh so, this is where I wake up. Um this is home. Quite a lot of resident wildlife. And this chap is near the house. And I'm not sure we can get him out of the bushes into this bucket, so we're going to release him a long way away. I'm employed by um a US-based B Corp called Native. Uh my role is operations-based, so I'm field-based looking at projects on the ground with human population growth. Uh there's been big changes in northern Kenya over the last 50 years, and ultimately the land
is struggling to support um the number of livestock that the people have here. This is the tool um which is invaluable for these landscapes where it's so big. You're talking about millions of hectares. It really opens up the landscape to us. And today um I'm really interested in checking out these areas to the east of the project um in here. The aim is to work with communities um who are all pastoral communities to look at their livestock management so that they can utilize the ranges in the most efficient way um and in doing so uh grow more grass cuz it is a severely degraded landscape.
It brings these communities together who normally fight each other and in effect brings back that sort of nomadic pastoralism that has always worked and kept these places as unique and wild as they always are. I'm a vet by training, so uh you know, I'm privileged enough to be called in every now and then to help out with the occasional wildlife translocation or rescue. Uh elephants getting stuck in mud is actually quite a common occurrence um in these dry areas just because of that draw to sort of depleting water sources after the rains.
The people give us a key a ring in the morning to say, you know, there's elephants stuck in this mud, and there's no way they're going to get out themselves. The dead weight of an elephant is remarkable and when they're stuck in that mud, it just makes it even more challenging. We had to call in a four-wheel drive tractor from a nearby neighboring ranch who generously donated that. Um we had to immobilize the animals while we got the ropes around them. Quite a bit of an epic. Three elephants safely removed. Now we just have to wait to wake them up.
We managed to remove all of those elephants and they walked away unscathed and will rejoin their families. Yeah, on to the next spot to see what's going on. Uh so the giraffe relocation that we undertook was uh an absolute mission. Uh we had to move a handful of uh Rothschild giraffe um who were stranded on an island within a lake in the Rift Valley because of the rising lake levels had as I say become stranded on this land and it was shrinking and there wasn't enough food for them. Moving giraffe across water is about as risky as it comes. What we had to do was to build a barge um which could take the weight of a giraffe and obviously be
stable enough um with a height of a giraffe. Being as possible remain relaxed and then yeah, you'll be in his new home. Exciting times. This project um along with Ruko, the community conservancy is really exciting because it's effectively reintroducing Rothschild giraffe back to their native range. Yeah, we were just thankful that it was a ultimately a success. I feel so privileged to be working in this space. It really pioneer the way forward for a lot of these arid areas where pastoral communities are currently struggling just with you know, modern-day challenges of as I say human population growth
and the climatic changes we're seeing. And I will give it everything I've got. Biggest waves I ever see on the water, it's more than 25 m. Here we go. My name is Dino Carmo. I'm from Nazaré. I'm a jet ski driver in Praia do Norte in Nazaré on the big waves. I've lived in Nazaré all my life. In 2015, we set up Nazaré Jet to offer a range of big wave jet ski service. From towing surfers onto waves and rescue them if they fall off. To getting camera operation and storage as close to the action as possible.
My life it's around of the ocean. My grandfathers are fishermen. When I'm young, I start going to the water alone with 5 6 years and believe me, I respect a lot of the seas and now I'm 1,000% confident to work on the water in all the world. Hello, good day. This is the harbor of Nazaré. Praia do Norte is a really dangerous beach. It's not a beach for beginners. The waves are giant, more than 20 m, a lot of wind, rain, and it's a really powerful wave. And yeah, I help in a lot of dangerous situation. This is our spot. Diogo is here start prepare radios. This is the radios as those to talk with the spotter. Diogo, check.
I start prepare now the jet ski. The important equipment I use is the jet ski as need a jet ski with a lot of power because on the white water if you don't have a lot of forces and a lot of power on the jet ski, the jet ski don't don't move. Check in the oil there. Fins. It's some problem. Perfect. Also as need a life sled on the back of the jet ski to do the rescue if someone's fall off the surfboard or fall out of the jet ski. This is the life sled. If someone fall or to rescue the surfer, it's much more easy going to the jet ski again on this board.
This is to put the feet under. All right? And you can fall back because this help you with your feet. Okay? Right now as are on the entry zone of harbor of Nazaré. When I'm come from the harbor to the big waves, when it's really giant, I'm nervous. It's normal. Everyone are Okay, and this side of the rock, you see the waves disappear because it's deeper on this side and on the other side it's it's much more shallow. And because these the waves are always breaking on the other side of the rocks, you see? When you are on the water after 10, 15, 20 minutes, you feel much more confident and you can do everything well.
The worst thing can happen in Nazaré, I think it's your jet ski stop. And then if it stop, you have problems to and they you put the guys you try helping more problems also because if the jet ski stop, maybe the wave catch the jet ski and after hit the guy. It's not normal as a accident, but sometimes accident pass and you need to stay attention all the time. You need the a good jet ski which it's really important. I'm happy because every day I'm working on the ocean. Keeping people safe and making people smile. And this is what makes me feel alive.
Hi, my name is Denali. I'm a geologist. It's really inspiring to be in a field where you feel like you have a real chance of discovering something important. I am obsessed with the ocean. It's why I got into this field to begin with. Right now, I am doing fieldwork at the East Pacific Rise, which is a mid-ocean ridge. It's located right about there. So, actually everyone on the crew, all of the scientists fly from wherever they're based out of to wherever the port location is and we meet up there. And then often a day or two later, we will actually board the vessel and head out to sea. So, these are the bunks. These
are where we sleep and the room is where we all get ready for work in the morning or evening, depending on whether or not you're doing night ops or day ops. Uh sometimes I do a little bit of both and just don't sleep very much. The boat can rock quite a bit, so the railing is to make sure I don't fall off while I'm sleeping. After the first few days, you just kind of get used to it. I got up around 9:00 this morning and I've been doing work since then. I do usually sleep past breakfast, especially if I was up the night before. If I can, I always try to start my day having coffee somewhere nice on deck. It's just a really good start to the day and you can often see uh birds flying past the boat or you can see
dolphins or other animals swimming alongside the boat. A very big part of this research cruise is looking at the ocean floor, which is predominantly made up of a volcanic rock called mid-ocean ridge basalt or MORB, and trying to see if there is potential for another eruption at the East Pacific Rise sometime soon or if perhaps one has already happened. Day-to-day work as a PhD student varies a lot. Sometimes I'm drowning in Excel spreadsheets. Sometimes I'm cutting rocks in half or hitting rocks with a laser. And other times you're in the field. Uh I'm living on a boat or I'm living in a tent next to a volcano. So, there's a lot of variety and that is actually one of my favorite parts of the job.
The trip to Iceland was my first uh relatively independent field season. Very rare at that station in your career to get actual field experience at a currently erupting volcano. I would not trade that experience for the world. Though I was already pretty certain of where I wanted to go with my career, that trip definitely solidified that I wanted to be a volcanologist. In order to collect samples from the bottom of the ocean, you can use a number of different methods. For the specific research cruise I'm on now, we will be using what's called a rock core, which is essentially just a drill that takes a core of the rock from the ocean floor, which we then study. While I primarily am getting samples uh
using the rock core, I am also getting samples uh from the Alvin, a remotely operated vehicle that goes to the bottom of the ocean and collects your samples. This sample here is one that our amazing Alvin team collected while they were doing one of their dives. This is probably one of the nicest, shiniest mid-ocean ridge basalt samples I have ever seen. It's so glassy. I think it's magical. Honestly, I would go so far as to say it's romantic. To hold a rock that's from the ocean floor, the bottom of the ocean floor, that's crazy.
All right, so we did just finish rock coring. We did two rock core drops overnight. It is 4:30 in the morning. So, this is what they look like when they come off the rock core. Uh all these black bits are pieces of volcanic glass. It might not seem like very much glass, but uh we can do the analysis we need to do with just this much from each location. Now, I am going to bed. I never in a million years thought I would do this as a job. I didn't know this job even existed until suddenly it was the only job I'd actually ever wanted. I am genuinely excited to go into work every day, and I never in a
million years thought a future like that was possible for me. But with geology, it is.
