Episode Synopses

EP1: WHALES AND US

Steve Backshall explores our changing understanding of whales and reveals we have much in common.

Whales are mammals just like us and despite living in an underwater world that couldn’t be more different from ours, we share so much. Steve dives into their underwater world on their terms to reveal the profound wisdom, complex family lives and advanced communication abilities that makes them so familiar to us. He encounters matriarchal Sperm Whales and rarely recorded Risso’s Dolphins in the Azores, playful Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas and singing Humpbacks in the South Pacific. With each meeting, he explores how, as we learn more about them, human perception of whales has shifted from fear and misunderstanding, to wonder and appreciation. He discovers that our historical misperception of whales made it easy to treat them as commodities during the era of whaling and that, even in the modern world, we are still causing them unwitting harm as their world of sound becomes increasingly noisy. Finally, Steve asks how a new golden age of discovery can allow us to better protect them in a rapidly changing world.

EP2: OCEAN HUNTERS

Steve Backshall reveals the ingenious hunting strategies of whales, the largest predators on the planet.

Contrary to myth, whales do not just swim around with their mouths open. All whales and dolphins are extraordinary predators, using sound, skill, teamwork, and strategy to catch their prey. Steve enters their world as they hunt to understand what makes them the ocean’s apex predators. An extraordinary face to face encounter with the most sophisticated of all, Orca, begins a journey that reveals the remarkable abilities of the ocean’s greatest predators.

In the Bahamas, Steve experiences super-sensing Bottlenose Dolphins that see through sand with sound and in the Azores comes close to huge Sei Whales lunge feeding on baitballs corralled by dolphins. From the largest animal ever to have lived, the Blue Whale, to the strange Boto dolphin feeding on piranha in flooded Amazon forests, their hunting strategies know no bounds.

Taking to freezing Arctic waters in Norway, Steve discovers how these ingenious hunters are even using us to help them catch their food. Yet as their world and ours collide, these varied strategies are putting them at risk from bycatch, entanglement and pollution and Steve asks what we can do to protect them.

EP3: OCEAN VOYAGERS

Steve Backshall journeys the globe with some of the greatest travelers on the planet.

Migratory whales clock up thousands of miles a year to reach special places where they feed, breed and raise their young. Steve meets those who face the longest journeys of all to uncover where they go, when, and why it’s worth starving for half the year to get there.

His odyssey begins in the birthing grounds of Tahiti, where one curious young humpback calf gives him the encounter of a lifetime. In Argentina, a female Southern Right Whale has also journeyed to give birth. Rare underwater footage captures her newborn calf taking its first drink of mother’s milk. Eager males are also here to mate. Yet this paradise is changing. Flesh-eating gulls attack the calves, reducing their chances of survival.

Migrating whales face a growing list of threats, from the danger of increasing ship traffic to climate change, affecting Grey Whales that give birth on migration rather than in safe birthing grounds.

In Norway, humpbacks arrive after their long voyages. Steve takes to a paddleboard, as he encounters a group feasting on herring and questions what their future may hold as their world changes.

EP4: OCEAN SURVIVORS - WHALES OF THE BRITISH ISLES

Steve Backshall returns home to ask, if whales have survived so much, what can we all do to ensure their enduring future

The waters of the North Atlantic are a global hotspot for whales and dolphins - home to a third of the world’s species. Steve travels to the British Isles to follow some specific stories of survival and meet the people striving to give whales and dolphins a future. He joins scientists making surprising discoveries about the lengths whales have gone to to adapt to changes we’ve caused to their ocean homes and asks how we can adapt our behaviour to give them a more successful future.

Fremantle is handling global distribution for Whale with Steve Backshall.