30:00
When I think about the Caribbean's coral seas, I'm surprised to learn that its story begins here at the Panama Canal, a gateway to a very different world. Panama sits at the narrowest point of North America. This is the Pacific Ocean, and 60 km that way is the Caribbean. The Caribbean's clear blue waters are peppered with more than 7,000 islands, countless sandy beaches, and vast coral reefs. And it's full of beautiful and bizarre animals that I'm still yet to meet. As I travel up its coast, everyone alive. I want to find out how this paradise came to be and how something so small holds the key to all life here. From the open ocean to the
tropical forests that fringe these shores, there's literally a jaguar walking down the beach right towards us. The Caribbean Sea is completely different to anything I've seen so far on my journey around North America. Leaving the deep, productive waters of the Pacific behind, I head north to its warm, shallow seas. The Caribbean has captured my imagination since I was a young girl, and I can't quite believe how beautiful it is. Its crystal clearar waters are amongst the richest on Earth with over 60 species of coral that support more than 12,000 different kinds of plants and animals.
Many that are found nowhere else on Earth. But there's a curious contradiction here. Around the world, warm, crystalclear waters like these are often a sign of a lifeless sea low in nutrients and plankton. But this sea is as rich as any I've seen on my travels. It's a paradox that only makes sense when you take a closer look. Inside each of these corals are millions of microscopic algae. And it's the relationship between the coral and these tiny plant-like beings that's the key to everything here. The coral give the algae a safe home. And in return, when the algae photosynthesize, they produce energy that allows the coral to grow.
Together, these unlikely partners have been building huge underwater cities for millions of years. The reefs define the Caribbean Sea, but their influence extends far across the ocean. Creatures travel from thousands of kilometers away to feed, find shelter, and breed here. Like this humpback and her young calf. And of the seven species of marine turtles roaming our oceans, six choose to lay their eggs here. The turtles aren't only here for the riches of the reef. The coral has one further gift. It's fragments of the coral itself that makes up much of the sand on these beaches, giving them their distinctive white color and providing the perfect
substance for turtles to safely incubate their eggs. Coral underpins all life here in the Caribbean, even far in land. Its influence draws a predator close to my heart out of the jungle and down to the shore. So, I'm heading north over the border into Costa Rica to see if I can find them. Navigating these jungle roads is difficult at the best of times, but in the rainy season, it feels almost impossible. This is kind of what you expect here on the Caribbean coast. Those warm, moist trade winds push in from the east and as soon as they hit those hills, well, the heavens open.
Hold on. Here we go. Everyone alive. Good. We made it. But it's worth it. The further into the forest I go, the more wildlife I see. Spider monkeys swing through the trees and peckeries block my path. All promising signs that I'm in the right place for the elusive predator I hope to see. And to think that somewhere in there jaguars is uh yeah, pretty exciting. Notoriously shy, I have no chance of finding this secretive cat without some local knowledge. This is like a valley. You cross all those mountains and now you are inside the woods in that mountain.
Yeah. Victor Guidamas has been studying Costa Rica's coastal jaguars for over 10 years. And today he's taking me to a hidden location where they've been hunting turtles along the beach. But to get there, first we have to hike through 20 km of wilderness. I've actually spent quite a bit of time with jaguars. So I was in the Brazilian panau for around 6 weeks observing them, tagging them, and it's a very different environment there. But in that time, I saw just how resourceful and adaptable jaguars really are. They eat everything from birds to primates, peckeries, and deer. But a lot of people don't realize they actually hunt turtles. And the idea that I may be seeing that here just blows my mind. But it's not going to be easy
because they're so wary. Almost all the images we have of them have been captured on remote cameras. This should be a good tree. Okay, cool. Set up the camera. All right. So, how many jaguars are in the area? So far, we have identified in our last census about 20 individuals. Wow. Okay. That's a lot for one small area. Yes. Yeah. You want to help me out hold? Yeah, sure. So, where are you thinking? Which sort of direction out like that?
There you go. Yeah, that's good. You should use this to back up the camera. And so, how much time are they actually spending on the beach when there is the nesting season? Yeah. They spend like 50% of the time on the beaches. Remember, like the sea turtles are not available the whole year. Yeah. Right now you can see a lot of jaguar because this is the nesting season. Lot of food in a small area. That is the call of the howler monkey. It feels like a bit of an exciting change in the air. The rain's just started. The light is dropping. And that is the perfect sound to enter us into a long night. To see a jaguar after dark, we'll need a
special bit of kit, an infrared camera. They've got such incredible eyesight, it's actually six times stronger than ours at nighttime, and they can see absolutely everything. Part of me also knows how clever jaguars really are. And I wouldn't be surprised if a jaguar probably knows I'm already here. Kind of a terrifying thought. All right, think that's us. Good to go. Let's power up. Within minutes of sunset, turtles begin to emerge out of the sea to lay their eggs. So, I've been on this beach now for about an hour and a half, and this whole story is unfolding literally in front of
my very own eyes. Heading above the high tide line, they begin to dig their nests. You know, while in many ways this is a remarkable intimate thing to be able to witness here in the dark, she's completely relaxed, oblivious. I'm here. There's part of me which is thinking at any moment a jaguar could come out of that bush and take her in an instant. So, uh, yeah, I'm sitting here slightly apprehensive and let's see what happens. 6 hours later. A pair of eyes. Okay, so there's literally a jaguar. I cannot believe it. Walking down the beach right towards us. I've got the eye shine just about on here. We're just going to stay nice and quiet and try and
just give this jaguar some space, but it's coming right for us. As it closes to less than 10 m away, my heart rate sores. Oh god. Wow. Okay, look at that face. Never in a million years did I thought I'd be sat on a beach looking at a jaguar. I lost him. Okay. I'm a bit speechless. I've been sat on this beach getting eaten alive by mosquitoes for about 8 hours and every single second was worth it. Oh, he's back.
Oh my gosh. For 20 magical minutes, the jaguar and I stare at one another. Without this infrared camera, I wouldn't be able to see him. But he knows exactly where I am. A reflective layer in his eyes gives him his great night vision. But he also has an acute sense of hearing that can pick up the smallest of russles or flicking of sand. And you can see the turning of the ears there. They're really able to listen out to their environment. He leaves without a meal. But I soon find out he's planned ahead for nights like these. [panting] Look, look, look.
Wow, [screaming] look at that. Okay, this is it. It's a turtle cache and less than 24 hours old. This is pretty gnarly, but there's enough meat left for this jaguar to come back. Or at least that's the hope. So, I reckon we could set hide up and then we'll be good to go. There he is. I can just see his ears. Wow. That the carropase from the turtles actually blocking him, but he is there. He's feeding. This is it. And it's extraordinary because not only has he successfully hunted this jaguar, but then he's dragged this whole turtle from the beach across a river and then back into the forest where he stashed it. And this is part of their natural behavior here. It's an extraordinary thing to see.
With the strongest bite force of any cat, the jaguar makes short work of the turtle carcass. He is just ripping apart this turtle. In the time I'm there, he eats at least 3 kilos of meat. This goes to show how much meat comes from one individual turtle. And if you're a jaguar that largely relies on prey that's hard to come by, like peckeries and deer, well then a turtle seems like a very good choice for a meal. It's very fatty. It's a big animal. And on the beach when they're coming up to me, they're a bit of a sitting duck. I've got some footage to show you. So, this was what we actually found after spending hours on the beach. about 8
hours, 4:00 a.m. Suddenly, a pair of eyes were shining out of the dark and we saw this guy. Wow, this is awesome. Yeah. So, I think this is a male. But do you know who this is? Yeah, you're right. This is a big male. We have been recorded this male since 10 years ago. Wow. Okay. What do you know about him? We speculate that this is probably one of the fathers on most of the cops that are around the area. Wow. Okay. So, he's got quite a reputation.
Mhm. And uh he is just ripping this turtle apart. Wow. With the help of tracking collars and camera tags, Victor and his colleagues are beginning to uncover just how important turtles are for Costa Rica's jaguars and how their scraps in turn support countless other species. The jawers open up these sls of energy from the sea to the ground. And some other species like bolters, like aposums, gray foxes as well as crabs. Yeah. Can take the advantage of the meat and the energy in this individual that pass it away. And it benefits the wider ecosystem as a result.
Yeah. Look at that. Awesome. Come on. It has been a sweaty, intense, and wet few days, but it's really been incredible tracking jaguars along this coast. It seems that wherever I go in this continent, land species depend on the sea for their survival. And it's no different here in Costa Rica. It really uh it really reminds you how linked our oceans and land really are. And if you go back to the beginning of the Caribbean story, prehistoric clues suggest this partnership between land and sea was key to its formation, too. I travel southeast to the remote islands of Bokast del Toro to meet a team who have been digging in the sand looking for fossils which might explain how this coral wonderland came to
dominate these seas. Aaron Oay and John Syolski are paleobiologists based at the Smithsonian Bokast del Toro research station. So why is this particular place really important? Panama has this amazing long history of geological collisions and tectonic movements that changed essentially the oceans circulations and that eventually had consequences on life on Earth. So I used the fossil record to try and reconstruct what life was like many millions of years ago to try and work out how did we end up with what we have today.
Right then, John. How do I use one of the these bad boys? Yeah. This is our tool for fossil hunting. All right. So, this is what we call a rock hammer or rock pick. All right. What's your dominant hand? I'm a lefty. All right. Southpaw. So, you want to give that a good grip. Okay. All right. Two keys. Yeah. Don't drop the rockhammer. Okay. It's an important first one. I can do that one. And second, as we're going to be coming back, make sure to keep that out of your face, right? So your head's always going to be the side.
Pretty much after that, you really can't mess up. Right along this cliff, the lapping waves slowly eat away at the rocks, exposing fossils dating back over 3.5 million years. This is a really cool area. This is this obvious, almost perfect line of fossils that we have. This is just layers and layers of past dead animals that kind of stacked on top of each other and got squished together with sediment on top of it. This is beautiful. Yeah, it's incredible. Right. And what does this layer tell you? It tells us about what was living in the past. So, if you kind of imagine modernday ecology, we'd go out onto a reef. We go into an ecosystem and scuba
dive and monitor all the living things. Now, this is our way to do that for an entire ecosystem, but in the past. So we have this incredible preservation. So we can start to remove these snails, these clams, and we can actually understand some of the biodiversity that was occurring at this time 3 and a half million years ago. I guess I didn't expect to see it so clearly and just so well presented as well in this cliff. Not only do these cliffs have spectacular bands of fossil evidence, they're also littered with concretions, tiny egg-like rocks. many of which contain fossils inside.
I'm obsessed with these concretions. They're like little packets of fossil surprises here. So, I'm going to try and actually get one out the wall that's embedded, but let's go for it. It's very addictive, but it is hard work in this humidity and heat. It is a lot. Look at that. Woohoo. And uh just like that, there's a shell. Awesome. 2 hours into the fossil hunt, we make a fascinating discovery. This is like really clear. Yeah. So, this is something different than we've seen before. already know one that helps explain where the Caribbean's vast coral reefs came from.
So, this is what we call a solitary coral. All right? And this is much different than the type of coral that most people recognize as coral reefs today. These weren't reef developing corals. And what's fascinating about this is actually this same species of coral, which is 3 and a half million years old, is found here, but it's also found on the Pacific side. What that shows us is that at a time three and a half million years in the past, these oceans of what we call the Caribbean in the Pacific today were actually connected. So the land that we're standing on, which is Panama and Costa Rica, didn't exist.
It took huge geological forces to create Panama and Costa Rica. As the North and South American tectonic plates pushed towards each other, underwater volcanoes were forced to the surface. changing the fate of these waters forever. So those volcanoes happened more and more over time and they created land mass and land mass and as that rose out of the ocean that slowly began to kind of choke off that connectedness and eventually around 3 to 2 and 1/2 million years ago we finally got that final amount of uplift that cut off those two oceans completely. Yeah. The formation of Panama and Costa Rica played a major role in biodiversity on our planet.
The land bridge between North and South America made it easier for animals and plants to migrate between the two. In North America today, the apossum, armadillo, and porcupine can all trace their roots back to ancestors that traveled up from South America. and the ancestors of bears, dogs, horses, and even jaguars all moved in the other direction. But while the new land linked continents, it separated the oceans. As that ismas formed and closed off, we suddenly get two very different basins. So we have an environment in the Pacific probably similar as to it was before, highly nutrient, highly climatically variable. And then in the Caribbean, we have more stable, warmer temperatures, crystal clear, low nutrient water, which
causes different types of animals to be able to survive and thrive. The separation of the two oceans led to a mass die off of plankton feeders in the Caribbean, like this solitary coral. And in their place rose a new empire. Reef building corals working in partnership with the tiny algae hidden within them began to dominate, finding a way to survive and thrive where others could not, forming vast structures and islands that pockm mark this isolated sea. What's cool is that this solitary coral then tells a story really, doesn't it? It's that whole collection on a wider scale. That is bonkers.
Bonkers to me. No, absolutely. Saying goodbye to Aaron and John, I head north towards the greatest coral structure in all of the Caribbean and the second largest reef in the world, the Great Mayan Reef. This stretch of coast was once the epicenter for the great Mayan civilization which ruled these waters for over three millennia until the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. And right along this coast, temples and buildings literally rise from the forest. The Mayan are often referred to as the people of the corn. Archaeologists used to think of them as an inland farming people, but new discoveries suggest they relied on the sea far more than we realized.
The sea provided the Mayer with the ability to trade, obtain salt, harvest vast amounts of fish from these productive waters. And today I'm off to see an animal that they had particular reverence for. One whose bones were actually used in many of their rituals. The manatee. Manatees are voracious herbivores that spend up to 8 hours a day feeding on the seagrass in these shallow warm waters. These meadows only exist because the Great Mayan Reef acts as a vast protective wall, sheltering the seagrass behind from storms and erosion. And it's home for many of the reef fish I've seen on my travels so far.
They spend the first years of their lives in these calm, shallow habitats, which they share with their gentle neighbors. The manatees use their dextrous lips to pull and tear plants, and their flippers like feet to walk over the sand. Gentle giants, manatees don't do anything fast. In fact, they're so slowm moving algae can grow on their backs. This requires a regular visit to the reef for an appointment with striped parrot fish. It's another partnership that works for both creatures.
The parrot fish get a good feed and the manatee get a good clean. But this gentle way of life is under threat. With more people and boats sharing the same inure water, collisions are on the rise. In BISE, manity numbers have been reduced to less than 1,000. At the Wild Tracks Rehabilitation Center, I meet up with Paul Walker. He and his team of volunteers are devoted to rehabilitating and reintroducing injured and orphaned manatees back into the wild. And today he's keen to show me the latest arrivals. So over this side we have the intensive care pool which is where we keep the um neonate cars when they first come in. They're often in a critical condition.
How old is she? She's 8 or 10 days old. Very young. Still has the umbilical scar. Yeah. She has a respiratory problem. Almost certainly a partially collapsed lung. So, she actually has to be supported in the water. So, the injury she has, is that common for the manatees that you get coming in here? Yes. But for bigger manatees, typically this kind of injury is caused by a boat collision, which is the biggest threat to manatees in Bise. um boat comes along, you get blunt force trauma which can actually cause a lung to collapse. So, we've had quite a few of those that we have to deal with. We just have never had a newborn calf with an injury as grave as that before. As Paul shows me around, I learn it's a big day for two of the resident manatees.
After 2 years of roundthe-clock care, best friends Tess and Toby are nearing their release back into the wild. both came in as orphan calves. Tess, the female, had been um stranded for quite some time. She was critically ill when she came in. Took us several weeks to stabilize her. Um a few weeks after she came in, Toby, um was brought in. His mother had been killed by a boat either that day or the previous day. So, he was still well fed and in great shape. Um they've gone through rehab together. So, they're like Siamese twins now. They do everything together.
Amazing. Um and it'll be interesting to see. They're now just starting to move into the soft release phase, which is where they start learning about finding seaggrass, foraging seagrass, navigating from one patch to another. So, they're learning those basic life skills out there before becoming fully wild. Before they're released, they'll each need to get a satellite tag so Paul can keep tabs on them. This is high action manatee conservation here. Let's uh they're actually now planning on getting this manatee onto the surface so they can reattach a tag that transmitter that's going to tell them everything about the manatee's life. So
yeah, they have to move quick. This manity can't be out the water for long. I'm just going to put one additional one here since they're sufficiently strong. They are snapping leaves. Um hold the tail down. You can hold that with both hands now. Almost through. Tag on. There's time for one more feed before they head back into the wild. Wow. I've done a lot of things in my career, but I don't think I can ever say I fottlefed a manatee. It's uh this is pretty special. Love being able to see their dextrous lip, this mouth that kind of acts like a bit of a hoover for a lot of their the seaggrass that they feed on out in the wild. Yeah.
She's a lot heavier than I expected. It makes sense. This is a big animal. Tummy's fall. Tess leads Toby out to sea. Okay, they are slowly coming out. Almost there. They're just coming out the gate right now. This is it. This is their first moment out in this lagoon in the wild. What a privilege to be standing here and be part of this really magical experience. After 2 years of roundthe-clock care, it's a huge moment.
This is a really critical day, not just for these two manatees here, but for the whole conservation team as well. The hours of effort and the days of work that goes into protecting a species, it's extraordinary. And uh this is not a day I'll be forgetting anytime soon watching these two just head off into the sunset. It's beautiful. Like much of the life here, the manatees owe their survival to the reefs offshore that protect their seaggrass homes. But beyond the reefs is a world I'm yet to explore. So I head into Mexico and the northern tip of the great Mayan Reef. At a secret spot around 20 km offshore, these waters draw in one of the biggest and most mysterious animals in all of the Caribbean.
It's an annual spectacle shrouded in mystery and one I want to help solve. So, I team up with local marine biologist Raphael Deapara. Anything at the surface I should be looking for? We look for the first dorsal and the tail. Okay. Sometimes you can see them racising up from the surface. Okay. Nothing yet. I'd imagine if it's 7 m, I'll see it, right? Absolutely. For sure we will see it. Okay. Raphael has spent the last 20 years trying to understand why every year, like clockwork, the biggest sharks on the planet choose to gather here in huge
numbers. And today, I'm going to help him with his research. Nothing yet, but this is super exciting. 20 kilometers offshore, right in the deep blue wilderness of the Caribbean. 3 2 1 We send the drone up for a better view. Here we go. [snorts] Oh, what's this? I've got one. Woohoo! Beneath me, the unmistakable outline of a whale shark. Oh my gosh, from the air. That is so enormous. Not only is this the biggest shark in the world, but it's the largest fish in the world. They can reach up to 18 m. And this one's not quite that size, but it is still huge.
Opening its massive mouth, it begins to feed. This is what they are amazing for. Unlike many other sharks, they are in fact filter feeders. They move through the water, sucking in gallons and gallons with their mouths wide open. Its scale underwater is simply breathtaking. The shark ignores our presence as it feeds around us, but its prey is barely visible. Raphael has discovered these waters are thick with tiny microscopic fish eggs at this time of year. It's this feast that brings this oceanic wanderer here.
The fish eggs are from a type of tuna, funneled, collected, and concentrated by the currents. Somehow, the whale shark knows exactly where and when to arrive to take advantage. Where they've come from remains a mystery. To solve it, we have one thing in our favor. Every whale shark on the planet has a unique spot pattern. My job is to get close enough with a camera so Raphael can identify the sharks and add them to his catalog. But keeping up with whale sharks when they're in feeding mode is easier said than done. That was honestly incredible. My first time ever seeing a whale shark. And as first encounters go, that did not disappoint. It sounds really obvious, but you know, obviously their beautiful colorations, those stripes and spots are
just breathtaking, but their size is what did it for me. It's like a bus coming towards you. It's just so impressive. Can you see it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, turn it. There are a couple of them just perfect. I mean, the perfect uh shot for the photo ID. Wow. The fidial area. With video like this, Raphael has identified over 1,600 different individuals, many of which return year after year to feed on the annual glut of fish spawn. At its peak, over 400 whale sharks gather in this tiny patch of ocean. It's the biggest aggregation of whale sharks on the planet.
They are feasting on fish eggs. Okay, they love fish eggs. The Mexican caviar. But despite these extraordinary numbers, whale sharks are in trouble. In the last 75 years, their population has harved. To protect them, it's critical that Raphael finds out where they're coming from, where they go next, and what pressures they encounter. Is kind of still a mystery. They just simply disappear from here. Some of them go inside the Gulf of Mexico, others go down to the Caribbean, some others go adventure further in the mid-Atlantic. So little by little, we're trying to fit every piece of this big puzzle of knowledge about whale sharks.
Big puzzle. You know, they're traveling thousands of kilometers and then aggregating back here every year. Yes. Besides that, uh um nobody knows where they are giving birth or where they reproduce and how and so on. So there's so much we still don't know about these sharks, which is amazing. And that's fascinating because every unsolved question could become a new project. Raphael's data reveals that many of the world's whale sharks visit the coral reefs of the Caribbean on what seems to be a tour of fish and coral spawning events. But this world they rely on is facing its own challenges. For my final stop, I head to the
southern tip of the Great Mayan Reef and the island of Roatan. I'm joining coral biologist Michelle Serato, who's been studying the reefs here for the past 5 years. How special are the reefs here in Rotan? So here in Rotan, we're in the second largest barrier reef in the world. We have about 60 species of Sony corals, um many, many fish, sharks, anything you can imagine. But Michelle is seeing big changes happening here. Just last year, we had a very big bleaching event all over the American Reef. The water is getting a lot warmer. Uh, we're seeing a lot more coral diseases. Scary.
Yeah, really scary. Roatan is actually where I first learned to dive 10 years ago. I remember it then as being pristine and full of life. So, I'm nervous about what we might see. Sea fans and brain corals sparkle in the sunshine. It feels every bit as healthy as the reef I remember. But as we move along the vast structure, things begin to change. The corals start to fade, and there's less and less life around me. It feels eerie. Most of these ancient corals are now lifeless skeletons.
The microscopic algae that once lived inside the coral and powered the whole reef are gone. Now another kind of algae carpets the corals in a sea of green. Just a handful of fish move through the dead city. Without the healthy coral, life collapses quickly here. This is what happens when waters get too warm and corals are heat stressed. They begin to eject the algae they depend on for food Many of these corals are actually still alive, but without their major source of food, they're more susceptible to disease and death.
It's a shock to see, Some species of coral are able to withstand the high temperatures. Next to the reef, Michelle and her team have been painstakingly transporting healthy corals, creating an underwater nursery. By working out which corals are heatresistant and using their fragments to recede the reef, they hope to bring it back to life, back to its former grandeur, but it's a challenging task. Coral reproduction is shrouded in mystery. Many species only reproduce once a year in a magical coordinated display that appears to be triggered by exact water temperatures and a full moon.
Like clockwork, a blizzard of tiny eggs and sperm fill the reef. These fertilized eggs carried on the currents are the spark that could build future coral cities and ensure the Caribbean's ongoing survival. What a way to finish this leg on my journey. The Caribbean coast is as rich as any I've visited so far on my travels and still full of so many mysteries that scientists are trying to solve. But now it's time for me to head north to the lowlying east of the continent. And this is a place where the boundaries between land and sea are in a constant state of flux which provide their own unique set of challenges and opportunities for the life there.
