Galapagos

The series begins with the birth of the islands and an exploration of what makes them unique. They were born out of volcanoes and are plumbed directly into the heart of the planet – 1,000 km off South America they are at the centre of many different ocean currents which bring an extraordinary mix of life to their shores and they are constantly changing. This is one of the most volcanically active regions on earth with well over 60 eruptions in the last 200 years. The team captured the latest eruption of Sierra Negra when a huge column of smoke was cast in the sky and over a million cubic metres of lava were shed per hour on the first day. As for the wildlife, the mixture of cold and warm waters support a wide range of marine creatures, including vast shoals of hammer-head sharks and the distinctive Galapagos garden eels. For land animals, getting to Galapágos is a lot tougher. Those that have made it had to cross the open ocean on rafts of vegetation, swept out from the mainland on flash floods.

When Charles Darwin visited the Galapágos Islands on 15 September 1835, his experiences and studies of the unique environment would change the understanding of life on Earth. With dramatic reconstruction and stunning wildlife images, Galápagos explores the hidden side of the islands, revealing why, more than any other place, they are a showcase for evolution. Through their movement on continental plates, they have spread into a group of islands each with its own character, ocean currents and climate. Life on the islands has been forced to adapt to change or die. Tortoise shells have changed shape to fit the island they inhabit; flowers have become yellow to attract the only bee that made it here; finches have turned into warblers; and cormorants have lost the power of flight – trading it for streamlining and a magical life searching for fish in the sparkling Galapágos waters. But not all life here is confined to the Galapágos. Frigate birds come from miles around, sperm whales visit the waters to breed and human visitors also come to see the environment that changed the course of history.

The geological forces at work in Galapágos are complex and unpredictable; so too are the many ocean currents that unite here. Among the 13 islands and over a hundred rocky outcrops and islets, nowhere is more unforgiving and more unpredictable than the island of Fernandina, crowned by the most active of all volcanoes. Yet female land iguanas are forced to climb over 1,000 metres to its summit to find the only warm, soft sandy patches in which to lay their eggs. The ever-changing islands, with eruptions occurring every few years, make it hard to find a foothold. But mangroves are inventive pioneers, their salt-tolerant seeds settling on unforgiving lava terrain to create dense labyrinths of vegetation which are crucial nurseries for fish, offering precious shade from the equatorial sun. Even on the most exposed shorelines, fur seals find daytime shelter in lava grottos, formed by volcanic lava flows. The remotest island, Roca Redonda, is little more than 300 metres tall but it still forms an important platform for nesting seabirds. Like all the other islands, under-sea exploration reveals that it’s just the summit of an enormous undersea volcano.