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The Show "Deep Crisis" premiered January 28, 2002,

				Out West - Conquering the Columbia, Part 1 Biologists find ways to increase young salmons' chances of getting around dams and to the sea.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: When Lewis and Clark explored the West 200 years ago, they saw sights like this. On the Columbia River, the salmon were jumping very thick, wrote John Ordway, the expedition's senior sergeant. So, what are all these slots in here? ALDA: Today the Columbia is just one part of a settled and industrialized Pacific Northwest. It's not impossible to see a wild salmon jumping a waterfall, just a lot harder. Dams are the most visible of many reasons for the decline of the Northwest's salmon. Here on the Washington-Oregon border, the Army Corps of Engineers' McNary Dam, opened in 1953, reaches for a mile across the river. It's one of hundreds of large dams distributed throughout the enormous Columbia-Snake River system, which stretches across four states and up into Canada. Several of those dams completely blocked fish from going upstream, knocking out more than a third of the system's salmon habitat. The dams made life for the remaining salmon much harder. When young fish head out to the ocean, for example, they have to contend with this. McNary's electric generating turbines can kill young fish, but about 15 years ago the way the dam was run began to change. Is it that the environmental protection laws have required you to run the plant in the way that's best for the fish? MAN: Oh, yes. So it's not just running the plant; you have to worry about the fish as part of your job now? Guaranteed. I mean, when I first hired on the Corps, the most important thing in this facility was the safety of the employees, navigation law and power. Since I've been here, safety is number one, fish is number two. ALDA: You can see the result in the control room. The 14 turbines could together produce 980 megawatts, but today they're running at less than 860. This is a salmon smolt, a one-year-old fish that's ready to move downriver to the ocean. It's about to experience McNary's turbines firsthand and then report back. First there's a mild anesthetic, so a radio transmitter and flotation balloons can be attached. This is one of millions of smolts raised in hatcheries each year. At the last instant, a foam mixture is added to the balloons, and then... Now he goes down through the turbine? Yes, he's going right through the turbine. ALDA: Down it goes, 70 feet deep, through the spinning turbine blades, then out below the powerhouse. By now the flotation balloons will have inflated, so the fish will be somewhere downstream on the surface. Meanwhile the researchers are sending down a somewhat less lively instrument package. In the river below the dam, the recovery crew is on the lookout. Within minutes they pick up the radio signals from the fish and the instrument package. Three o'clock. ALDA: Surprisingly enough, the smolt made it through unharmed. In fact, around 90% survive if the turbines are run at flow rates which reduce forces on the fish, as they are today. Those forces can be measured with the instrument package, while turbine speeds are adjusted. Now, all the Army Corps's Columbia turbines are run to minimize fish losses. On a typical Columbia dam, half the structure is the powerhouse; the rest is spillway. As with the turbines, spillways are also now operated with fish in mind. ALDA: That's a great sound. It sounds like Niagara Falls. It kind of is like that, for a spillway. Today we're spilling about 100 kcfs. That's a spectacular sight. ( water roaring ) The ability to do a spill like this on the dam-- was that intended originally as a kind of a pressure valve when there were flood conditions? Correct. It wasn't with the fish in mind at all? No way. Now you open the spill for the fish as well as for the flood. And it's an interesting story, because originally when you had a spring runoff like this that's forced spill, it used to cause a lot of harm for fish because the water used to plunge straight down, supersaturate the water... uh, nitrogen... they'd get like the bends and it'd cause a lot of mortality. So all the dams have been retrofit with what they call "flip lips" that actually slides the water kind of out instead of plunging it down. ALDA: With flip lips, and if the flow rates are just right, approaching 100% of young salmon can make it through a spillway. So it doesn't sound too hard for a young fish to get past McNary Dam. But that's a small part of the challenges facing the Pacific Northwest's salmon. Let's take a look at the Columbia system from a salmon's point of view. In we come from the Pacific Ocean, through the estuary. We've been using our internal compass to get here, but now as we head upstream, we're beginning to pick up the distinctive smell that we remember from the water where we hatched four or five years ago. We're determined to spawn in the exact same river, lake or stream, and we're prepared to travel 500 miles inland-- a thousand or so river miles-- to get here. Now we've arrived in central Idaho or eastern Oregon. Once there were hundreds of different groups of us salmon in the Columbia system, distinct stocks that each used the system in its own unique way. We find the stream, find the right kind of gravel, find a mate, and make a nest for the eggs. Next spring the fry hatch, then hang out and grow for a year before hitching a ride as smolts on the following spring runoff. Down the river we go, out to sea for a couple of years to eat and grow. Today, more than half the Columbia's original stocks are extinct. For thousands of years, Native Americans were the only people who exploited the Columbia's salmon, but that couldn't make a dent in the ten to 15 million fish that returned each year. Then, as the numbers of settlers grew in the 19th century, salmon came under increasing pressure. Large-scale net fisheries were established in the Columbia estuary. Canneries were set up. By the 1930s, returning fish numbers were down by half. At the same time another bonanza was under way in the forests through which many salmon rivers and streams flowed. MAN: Timber! FILM NARRATOR: Chute them off the hillside, snake them down the creek, raft them down the river out to the Pacific, to Africa and Australia and Ireland. Feeder logs for the plywood mills of Japan, ties for the Trans-Siberian Railway, timbers for North China mines. ALDA: Logging was devastating for the salmon. It turned clear, cool streams into muddy, warm pools that no longer support spawning. Some attempts are made to protect streams today, but it's still a serious problem. And then on top of the fishing pressure and the logging...

				Out West - Conquering the Columbia, Part 2 Biologists find ways to increase young salmons' chances of getting around dams and to the sea.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: FILM NARRATOR: At Bonneville, Oregon, man takes up the struggle against the frontier. Cascade Rapids-- since pioneer days the graveyard of ill-fated ships-- in 1933 make way for Bonneville dam. America's conquest of the Columbia has begun. Just as the Nile is the lifeblood of the historic land it drains, so this river of the West is the key to the future of the Oregon country. An unshackled giant becomes a seaway to an empire, the promise of power for every corner of the Northwest. Power to make a million and a quarter acres bloom again. Power to push the city to the farthest county line, to bring better crops and better living to the farmers of the region. Power for the home, good light for Billy's eyes, electric cooking for Mother, the comfort of electric heat and electric cold. Leisure to replace the burdens of an outworn era. Power to make the American dream come true. ALDA: As far back as the 1870s, it was thought that we could have the American dream and salmon, too, by building these. It's a hatchery where young salmon are raised for a year until they're ready to go to sea as smolts. There are about a hundred hatcheries in the Columbia system, producing about 200 million smolts a year. All hatchery smolts are marked by clipping a fin that's not used for swimming-- an evolutionary leftover. This mark persists with the adult fish, so it's been possible to track how well hatchery fish do compared to their wild companions. Only about ten percent of the smolts in the Columbia system are wild-- spawned, hatched and raised naturally without human intervention. But up to 30% of the adults that make it back from the ocean were wild smolts. Wild fish do much better in the ocean and the river. Biologists think they're more aggressive, know how to avoid predators-- just smarter and tougher. Dams have made the river more difficult for all smolts, wild and hatchery. For example, there's not enough flow in the reservoirs behind the dams to carry young fish downstream, so they have to use precious energy to swim. Since the 1970s a lot of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars have been put into helping smolts down the river. The most important dams have been fitted with elaborate screen systems to catch the smolts and divert them around the turbines and spillways. This is just one part of one of the 42 fish screens at McNary Dam. The system works by directing the young fish up and away from the turbine intakes and into a separate channel inside the dam. The channel leads to a special fish-processing facility. At the heart of the system are stainless-steel screens that create a cushion of water to guide the fish. This is sophisticated and expensive engineering. McNary's screens alone cost $17 million. ALDA: The water is hitting that screen. COLEMAN: Correct. And it's backing up a little bit. Yes, and the fish are actually tumbling kind of back with their tail to the stream. Why are the fish going backwards? They're not really swimming to the ocean. They're just flowing with the current, heading to the sea. Oh, is that how they ordinarily go down? Yeah, there's a big spring runoff. Just Mother Nature takes care of them and flushes them. You know, you could have told... You could have asked me a million times; I would never have said, uh, "They go backwards to the ocean." I mean, that's... Okay, well... What's happening here? We're closing down shop. They've got work to do. You're okay. If you don't move, you're okay. You're okay if you don't move. It's not an unusual amount of water... ALDA: Dave Coleman took me down inside the dam to see the channel where the separated fish end up. We're entering the juvenile collection channel, designed to pass 2,000... ALDA: We're here at the height of spring runoff, when they're collecting 350,000 smolts a day. The screens are not perfect. They catch 75% of some species but only 30% of others. ALDA: Don't they get shaken up a lot? That's really going very fast, isn't it? That's engineered by the greatest fish design engineers in the world, and that's perfectly acceptable. ALDA: The quarter-mile-long channel is just the beginning of a peculiar journey for the young fish. I saw my chance to check if they really were going backwards. You can start seeing some of the fish right here. There's one. There's one. There's one. Oh, yeah, now I can see them. ALDA: Dave was right. They do go backwards. ALDA: You know what it is? When you go some place in the car, you can't find your way back because the scenery looks different in the other direction. They go backwards so they see what it looks like coming the other way, so they know where to go. ALDA: Actually they head into the flow because that gives them maximum control. The diverted fish emerge from the dam in this pipe, which loops down into the fish facility. A sample is anesthetized so they can be identified and counted. The Columbia has five salmon species and two closely related steelhead. Hatchery and wild fish are counted. ( clicking ) And now the smolts' journey is about to get more peculiar. For 15 years, about half the smolts in the Columbia system have been given a ride downstream courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers. They're loaded into specially built barges-- a quarter of a million fish at a time-- and driven downriver in luxury, safe from turbines, spillways, predatory fish and hungry birds. It takes a couple of days for smolts to get down below the Bonneville Dam, the last on the river. Almost all survive the barge trip, and a higher proportion of barged fish return as adults compared to those that came down the river on their own. But the return rate for both groups is very low, only a percent or two-- much less, it's believed, than made it back historically. There's a net system used to count smolts as they leave the river. One theory is that both groups are in poor shape as they go out to sea-- the barged fish because they have to cope with saltwater before they're ready, and the others because their river journey has been so stressful. Many smolts heading out to sea-- still backwards-- have electronic tags that the net system detects. They're called PIT tags-- microchips containing unique ID numbers. Once implanted, the tags stay with the fish for life. In the last decade, more than five million have been used on the Columbia, and they've revolutionized research. PIT tags have told us about the effects of barging. These fish are part of the continuing barging study. They've told us about the effects of turbines and spillways. They're a sophisticated tool to match the technology that, to the dismay of environmentalists, is now an integral part of the life of Columbia River salmon. These are fish that have been collected up on the face of the dam and through a series of pipes. ALDA: I'm at the McNary Fish Facility with Mike Schiewe, the biologist who runs much of the research on the effects of technology on fish. This is the, uh, juvenile fish separator, and this is where the different size juveniles are sorted. ALDA: The facility is a maze of pipes and channels equipped to detect PIT tags and automatically divert a fish that's part of a study, for example. If it were to detect a fish, now, there's... the, uh... what would happen is... ( detection door hisses ) And then the fish just drops down below. It's like an amusement park. Oh, it is, yeah. It's amazing. Let me do that again. ( door hisses ) So, what, the fish goes through here? Yes. And the tag is read by the computer, and that gate opens that fast. So by the time the fish gets there, the gate's open. That's correct. ( gate hisses ) It's an amazing system. It's what the computer age has brought to fisheries. ALDA: The computer age arrived on the Columbia just in time to help study a crisis. In the '60s and '70s, four new dams were built on the Snake River. Now Snake River fish had twice as many dams to pass to reach the ocean. Four salmon stocks began to collapse. They and eight more stocks elsewhere in the system were declared endangered. For West Coast salmon today, the count is 26 endangered stocks-- half of those that are left. The response at the eight Snake and Columbia dams was the measures we've seen-- fish screens, spilling water and adjusting the turbines. Even so, about ten percent of smolts are lost at each dam. Bypassing with barges helps make up some of the losses. ALDA: Does the fact that ten percent die lead you to think that maybe the dams are stressing the fish and that's why a lot of that ten percent may be perishing? Well, I don't think there's a question that the fish would survive at a higher rate without the dams. Um, we've made major improvements, I think, in the system and how it operates in the last 20 years. Survival now for the yearling fish, uh, is... is roughly 50% to 60% through the whole system-- the eight dams coming down from the Snake River to the, uh... below the Bonneville Dam at the Pacific Ocean. Uh, this compares with what the survival was about 20 to 30 years ago when there were only four dams in place. But we hit a real low point in the, uh, '70s, uh, when more dams were coming on-line when the operations were not as... as, uh... as safe for fish. Uh, so we're making progress in that regard. ALDA: We're heading back to where we picked up the smolt that came through the turbine. It's a measure of how unnatural things are that there's a program to reduce the number of predators that hunt salmon smolts. Smolts make easy prey in the reservoirs where there's no shelter and also as they emerge disoriented from the turbines and the spillways. MAN: Be careful not to touch the water when the generator's on. Okay. It might, uh, give you a little buzz. Don't touch the water while the generator's on. Liable to get electrocuted. ALDA: The electric shock stuns all the fish around the boat for a few seconds. These are American shad. They're a game fish introduced from the East Coast. ALDA: We're going to pick out the three important smolt predators. Those are all large-scale suckers. That's what we're looking for. Got a keeper. This is a walleye. ALDA: Now, that's a predator? That is a predator. ALDA: Back at the dock, the unfortunate walleye showed us where about 12 million smolts a year end up-- six percent of the smolts in the system. FRIESEN: That is a fish that just popped out of the stomach. ALDA: Then Tom Friesen did a surprising thing. Back in the water. Now, if he's a predator, why do you release him? He's going to be able to get more salmon, right? Walleye are pretty highly regarded game fish. So if we just removed all we could, there would be people upset that they couldn't fish for walleye anymore. And smallmouth bass are the same way. ALDA: So our smallmouth bass was also released. But not so the third fish. There's a million or more of them. They're not game fish, and fishermen are paid to catch them. That's probably a northern pike minnow. ALDA: It's hard to know how much effect this all has on how many adult salmon eventually make it back from the ocean, and that's the case with virtually everything we're doing on the river. This is the fish ladder at McNary, and right now it's full of returning adults. Last year was pretty good, too, with a million returns. That's good news, but it's confusing. They got down to only a quarter of a million returns in the 1990s, just when all the efforts to help juvenile fish survive the downstream trip should have been paying off. So there are still big unknowns out at sea. ALDA: Wow, these are big guys, aren't they? Oh, they're beautiful fish. These are, uh, summer chinook. They've been, uh, down through the system as juveniles and been out to sea for two, three, four years and now they're coming back. Do you count every single fish that comes through? Every fish that comes through the, uh... the ladder is... comes by this window. So this is where they come in? Yes, it is. What, you narrow it down so that you only get one at a time? Exactly. Now, that's a shad. Big chinook. Another chinook. That ladder looked like a pretty long, uh, structure. Is... Does that put them through more work than they would ordinarily have to go through to get up the river if there weren't a dam they had to climb up? Well, before the dams, they, uh, definitely climbed falls, uh, and so they went through those kinds of structures. Uh, sometimes they have a little trouble finding the entrance to the fish ladder, but once... once they do, uh, they move through it fairly quickly. Uh, fish ladders are one of the real success stories of, uh, salmon migration. ALDA: As the observers do the count, they distinguish between wild and hatchery fish. ( clicks ) Here's a wild chinook with its rear fin intact. And here's a hatchery fish with the fin missing. Overall about two-thirds of adults are from hatcheries. Hatchery fish saved the salmon fishing industry in the Northwest, but one concern is that hatchery and wild fish may interbreed. The remaining wild stocks could begin to lose their unique adaptations. Some wild stocks are now down to a few thousand returning adults. With some, only half of one percent of the smolts that went to sea make it back. So there may be a million salmon in the Columbia, but some may still be headed for extinction. It's vital, says Mike Schiewe, to preserve the variety of salmon stocks that we still have left. It's not just saving some salmon. It's trying to save as many kinds of salmon as you can. Otherwise you're just leaving them open to the elements and they could get wiped out at any... anytime. We couldn't predict when, huh? SCHIEWE: No, that's exactly right. You're buying insurance against, uh, variations that are bound to occur. Populations of fish rise and fall over the years, uh, and this, uh... this diversity of different life-forms utilizing the habitats and the food resources in different ways allow the salmon to persist at the levels that they do. So saving the diversity of salmon is every bit as important as just talking about numbers.

				Down East - The Extinction Vortex Biologists work to save the dwindling wild salmon stocks in Maine and eastern Canada.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: We're heading up the Narraguagus River in Down East Maine. For the biologists we're with, this rugged and beautiful country is in the grips of a catastrophe. This river, along with seven others nearby, is losing its last few wild Atlantic salmon, and they don't know why. It's spring runoff, and the traps in the river have been set to sample the two-year-old salmon smolts heading downstream to the Atlantic Ocean. Every year the numbers go down-- just 2,000 this year, one-tenth of the numbers in the past. MAN: One American eel. ALDA: The traps catch everything. The smolts they're looking for are wild, descended from wild parents that know only this river. One salmon smolt. Okay, we've got two smolts. ALDA: As in the Pacific Northwest, hatchery fish that are not adapted to a particular place are not counted as wild. Dorsal score? Zero. ALDA: The last wild Atlantic salmon in the U.S. are confined to eight Maine rivers, and all eight stocks are officially endangered. The numbers are incredibly low. In 2001, less than 150 wild adult fish returned to all eight rivers combined. The numbers of smolts heading out are correspondingly low-- for example, in the nearby Pleasant River. MAN: Our crew here is... I think they're really feeling the numbers going down. It's not just looking at them on paper. Having been here last year, handled 60, 70 smolts a day, this year we haven't even broke 20 smolts a day. ALDA: Things got this way in the Northeast for the same reasons the Columbia salmon declined. Atlantic salmon were once abundant everywhere north of the Hudson River. But change came with colonization. There was large-scale fishing. Thousands of dams were built to power mills and factories. The Connecticut River, a major salmon habitat, was completely blocked. Logging, agriculture and water pollution all took their toll. Throughout the Atlantic salmon's range, from Canada to Russia, the same processes were under way. It's now extinct in half the 50 or so major river systems it once inhabited. Healthy populations remain in parts of just four countries. The big concern is that numbers have continued to plummet, even after heavy fishing in the salmon's ocean feeding grounds off Greenland was stopped 15 years ago. In Maine, research is going on to try to understand the causes. They're going to implant an acoustic transmitter in a smolt and then follow it down the river and out into the Gulf of Maine. At the start of the research, they tested the effects of the implant and, surprisingly enough, neither the fish's behavior nor its health seem to be affected. The body cavity starts healing almost immediately postsurgery. Within a very short period of time everything will be back to normal and the fish will be on their way into the river and then out to sea. ALDA: Once the smolt has recovered from the anesthetic, it's released. ( transmitter beeping ) Okay, we got a good signal on him. ( transmitter continues beeping ) ALDA: They follow the fish for a few hours to make sure it's healthy and the system's working. BELAND: The signal's really strong. The fish is quite close to us, probably within 40 or 50 feet, right up against the riverbank. ALDA: Right now we know surprisingly little about the life of an Atlantic salmon smolt. BELAND: What we're hoping is by understanding where mortality may or may not be occurring... Is there a single smoking gun? Are there a number of factors each of which contributes a little bit? And in total, we're really sort of writing a missing chapter in the life history book. ALDA: An array of 20 remote receivers is set out in the river and the ocean just offshore. They'll record the signal if the fish passes. So far they've tracked 400 smolts, and only half have made it out to sea. That's as bad as the smolts that have to get through eight Columbia River dams, and it's a surprise. But there is a pattern emerging. BELAND: It's a little suspicious that we're having more mortality than expected, and it seems to be occurring disproportionately in or about the area where they first hit saltwater. ALDA: Research in Norway suggests that young salmon from acidified rivers have trouble regulating salt. So New England's notorious acid rain may be, if not the smoking gun, at least one of them. In the 1980s, the Pleasant River had a couple of dozen adult returns a year. It's just a few now-- in some years, none. It's called an extinction vortex-- not enough breeding adults to stay ahead of the losses. As a last desperate measure, biologists are trapping and removing smolts to be raised in captivity. This is the strategy being tried with the California condor, for example. Got a smolt! ALDA: The young fish has the special adaptations that suit it to just this river. As in the Columbia, the only way to keep wild fish in the river is to preserve each unique stock. KOCIK: There are differences between this river and the Narraguagus River right down the road, differences in rearing habitat that we think, over time, have led to local adaptations. So it's important to put fish back into the river their parents came from. ALDA: Young fish from six of the eight Maine rivers have now been removed for captive breeding. Genetic tests have confirmed that each river's fish are distinct. They're kept separately, and they're only bred within their own group. This is exactly what salmon hatcheries in both the Northeast and Northwest have not done, which is one reason hatchery fish have low survival rates. Their genetic adaptations have been mixed up so they don't know how to use particular places. A puff of air helps this Machias River female release her eggs. She was brought here as a six-inch-long smolt three years ago, so now she's ready to breed. Her mate has the same impeccable credentials. The eggs hatch in spring, as they would in the river, and in about a month they're one-inch-long fry. These are what will go back into the wild to the specific river their parents came from. We're on the Machias River for spring fry stocking. This river also gets very low or zero adult returns. MAN: Run her all the way through, Dan. ALDA: River-specific breeding and fry stocking have been in operation in six Maine rivers since the mid-1990s, with over a million fry a year distributed. Why don't we swing close to these little rocks over here and I'll put out a few? ALDA: It's no exaggeration to say that whether or not wild Atlantic salmon have a future in the United States depends on the river-specific program. If it doesn't work, there's very little chance that the species can recover on its own. The fry hang out in the river for two years, until they're ready to go to sea as smolts. Then they catch a ride on the spring runoff, like the Pacific salmon, and head out to Greenland to feed and grow. Two years later, the survivors should be back in the same river to mate, and the cycle begins again. We're back on the Machias River in the fall of 2000, five years since the river-specific program geared up on this river. It's the first year we could see a boost in the number of returning adults. WOMAN: Do you know how many there were here last year or the year before? MAN: The year before, I counted ten or 11 in here. ALDA: We're looking for salmon nests, or redds, in the gravel. There's no redds-- it's kind of surprising. This is a really nice spot here-- you have the ideal or the classic- type spawning gravel here. There's... here's one here. There's a redd? Mm-hmm. ALDA: The patch of disturbed gravel is easy to spot. Each female typically builds two redds during the fall spawning season, so it's not hard to estimate adult numbers by counting redds. The disturbance in the gravel is where the female flapped her tail to create a pile of stones to cover the eggs just downstream. Zero-five-eight-nine... ALDA: They note the GPS coordinatesof the redd so they can come back to check how it does. The Machias had 23 redds in the year 2000, representing two dozen adult fish-- not bad, but not a clear improvement. Numbers are unchanged or still declining in the other Maine rivers. So we don't yet know if the river-specific program is going to work. Wild salmon are in trouble everywhere, but there's no shortage of salmon. In the last 20 years, salmon farming has become a major industry, with more than 600,000 tons of fish produced a year. 80% is raised in Norway and Scotland, while Maine has a small industry. Small is relative, though. There's a hundred tons of Maine farmed salmon to each individual wild Maine fish. Everywhere, salmon cages are usually very close to salmon rivers. Biologists say the cages that give us cheap salmon are nothing but trouble for the wild fish. One problem is disease. In Norway, for example, they found that young wild salmon can pick up a lethal dose of parasites as they pass near farm cages on their way to the ocean. Salmon farmers check and treat their fish, but you can never be perfect. Another problem is escaped fish. Fish escape everywhere. Here in Norway an astonishing one million fish a year get out. Many run up the rivers and compete with wild fish for food and spawning sites. But Norwegian research shows the offspring are much less successful than their wild neighbors. On this river, scientists have developed an experimental system to remotely detect escaped farmed salmon. It's based simply on how the fish look. MAN: What we have built here is the monitoring unit with a transparent channel that the salmon has to swim through. And we're using five mirrors and a video camera to create an image with both a side view and a top view of the fish. ALDA: The video pictures are monitored a hundred yards from the fish ladder. A returning adult is about to get its picture taken. MAN ( speaking Norwegian ): ALDA: The system takes a frame of the top and side views of the fish, then makes a simple outline. ( conversing in Norwegian ) ALDA: The basic idea is that wild fish like this one are literally in better shape-- they're slimmer and their fins are sharper and less worn. EIDE: If you look at the left image of the wild salmon, you can see that the fins are very nice. The dorsal fin is more pointed than the farmed one, which shows signs of wear on the fins. ALDA: It's the same with the tail. Wild fish on the left... farmed on the right. Farmed fish get bitten and knocked around in the crowded cages. They also don't get much exercise, so they're fatter. The system's software makes a series of measurements on each fish's profile, then compares the results to typical values. It's right more than 98% of the time. On this river-- one of the healthiest in the world-- only about two percent of its 5,000 returning adults are farm escapees. It has no nearby farms, but other Norwegian rivers get up to 90% farmed fish. The danger is that interbreeding will steadily dilute the special local adaptations of native salmon until there are no fish left that know how to use a particular river. That is a real risk here in Maine. There have already been large farm escapes, and at some point the tiny remaining number of wild fish could simply get swamped. The challenge for scientists is to fully understand why Maine's salmon are still declining. That applies equally to many rivers in Canada, Scotland and Norway, which until recently were regarded as healthy. If the challenge is not met, then the future of wild Atlantic salmon is not bright.

				Rocking the Bluefin Boat A marine biologist cooperates with tuna fishermen to regulate, manage and save the stock.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: How long have you been coming out here with the fishing boats? I started on tuna in 1993. ALDA: It's early on a summer morning, and I'm going fishing with Molly Lutcavage, a marine biologist. We're licensed to catch giant bluefin tuna, but we're also licensed to attach satellite trackers to them, and there aren't many charter boats that can say that. Fishermen have been leaving this harbor for over 300 years, but it's only in the last 30 that anyone's gone after giant bluefin. How do you know when you're near a place where you're liable to catch a fish? Sometimes you see the fish jumping or see them on the surface. Sometimes just a lot of bait or birds, maybe. ALDA: We're heading out to the giant bluefin's summer feeding grounds. In the 1970s, a gold rush developed for bluefin, which are in demand for sushi. They can weigh up to 1,500 pounds, so a single fish may be worth thousands of dollars. The record is $173,000 for a fish caught near Japan. 50 miles out, we begin to see dolphins and whales. It means we're in the right area. ( whale blows and inhales ) LUTCAVAGE: We often actually track tuna that are following whales. They sometimes accompany fin whales or humpback whales, so most fisherman are very pleased to see the fins of the whales, because that's a sign that the tuna may be there as well. ALDA: Bluefin are ocean travelers. We know they feed here in summer and spawn in the Gulf of Mexico in spring. Across the Atlantic, we know they feed off the coast of Africa and spawn in the Mediterranean. We're on the Italian island of Sardinia. This is the village of Carloforte. Everyone's shown up for a celebration of spring. The 500-pound giant bluefin showed up to spawn, but the fishermen's nets were waiting, as they have been every spring for maybe 2,000 years. The traditional mattanza-- it simply means the "killing"-- is celebrated in many Italian fishing villages. Many Mediterranean countries have traditionally fished for tuna, but with the coming of industrial-scale fishing in the 1960s, traditional gave way to modern. Catches shot up and quotas were imposed on both sides of the Atlantic. Back in the Gulf of Maine, we've had a strike on one of our lines. The quotas were based less on bluefin biology than on how many had been caught in the past. Now biologists like Molly are trying to build up a scientific understanding of bluefin. High-tech tags like this one are one of the key tools. Our bluefin's putting up quite a fight. It's about 150 pounds, so it's a small one. ALDA: Our 150-pound fish is four years old and half the legal size for sale. It won't spawn until it's reached eight years. The official estimate is that there are up to 20,000 tuna over spawning age in the western Atlantic. The tag has to be anchored into the strong tendons around the dorsal fin. LUTCAVAGE: Wait for the shot. Nice one. ALDA: The tag was placed perfectly. But then it was decided the fish was likely to be in poor shape after the long struggle. So the catch was brought in to end up on the table. One noncommercial keeper per trip is permitted. Over the last five years, the boat has tagged about 50 fish for Molly. The tags are designed to record where the fish go, then at a preset date automatically release from the fish, float to the surface, and upload their data to a satellite. They're called pop-up tags. Pop-ups have revolutionized research on ocean travelers like bluefin. We no longer have to make guesses about their habits based on where they happen to get caught. But you still have to catch a fish before you can tag it, and for that, scientists like Molly depend on fishermen. These guys don't have to take Molly out for free or stay out after they've reached their two-fish-a-day bag limit. They see the value of good information. They know in the long run, it's the only thing that will preserve bluefin-- and jobs. Soon after we caught our fish, we almost literally ran into another boat that Molly works closely with. LUTCAVAGE: Yo! Hey! ( man yells ) LUTCAVAGE: We got it-- we got one. ALDA: Actually, they were just dropping off some fresh bread. This is a commercial tuna boat that uses nets. They're interested in good science, too. LUTCAVAGE: Thanks for the bread-- good luck! See you guys! LUTCAVAGE: It's a vital part of our research program, is the fisherman partnership. And not just recreational fishermen, but you can clearly see that the commercial fishermen here have been the backbone of our studies for years. And they've really given us our primary fishing and tagging platforms. They've done it, for the most part, on a strictly voluntary basis. They've brought all their expertise to the table. And we didn't have those skills, and we couldn't have done this work without their input. ALDA: Molly first began working with tuna fishermen in 1993. They were convinced, based on what their spotter planes saw, that there were more fish out here than the official estimates. Of course, fishermen always make claims like that, but here was a chance to really check out their story. Molly and her colleagues decided to simply count the tuna, using aerial photographs and a mapping system that they set the spotter pilots up with. Every summer for five years, the pilots handed in their pictures, and Molly's team laboriously counted every fish they could see. The results surprised even the fishermen. There were huge numbers. On one single day, 17,000 fish were counted just in the Gulf of Maine, about the same as the official estimate for the entire western Atlantic at the time. But could they have counted the same fish in different places? And also, how many fish might have been out of sight, below the surface? So next, they marked fish with acoustic tags and followed them. ( monitor clicking ) ALDA: The aim was to measure tuna swimming speeds, to eliminate double counting and also to assess typical diving behavior. LUTCAVAGE: We found out that they travel anywhere from 24 miles to, say, 30 miles in a single day, and that they spent less than ten percent of their time in a single day at the surface where we could see them. ALDA: They spend less than ten percent of the time at the surface. So does that mean on the day that you photographed 17,000 fish in one... in one part of the Atlantic that that might have only... the chances are pretty good that that was only ten percent of the fish in that area? We don't exactly know... Or do they all go down at the same time? You're absolutely right. It showed us that that represents only a small portion of the population that's going to be in the area, because we know that we're only seeing a tiny slice of the water column at the surface. ALDA: We're out on the commercialtuna boat we saw earlier. Molly's team now estimates that there are up to 65,000 giant bluefin just in the Gulf of Maine. The research headed off a move to get the western Atlantic quota cut in half. She was popular with fishermen, but environmentalists said she was irresponsible. The western Atlantic quota is about 10,000 large fish a year, which, it's believed, is sustainable. This boat's quota is 50 tons, about 200 large fish. The fishermen are happy to help Molly with her pop-up tag research, even though letting some fish go means it takes longer to fill their quota. In the last five years, this boat has tagged nearly a hundred fish, more than half the tags put out by all of Molly's collaborating boats. The last few fish in the net find they're not going to end up as sushi. It's probably fair to say that western Atlantic bluefin fishing is under control. It's well regulated, and catches are reasonable. Things are different on the other side of the ocean. We're back in Sardinia, where Italian scientists are preparing to take advantage of the mattanza to tag some bluefins with pop-ups. The bluefin quota in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic is enormous and probably unsustainable-- 20 times the west's. That's because of history and politics, not science. For years, catch quotas were based on the assumption that eastern and western bluefin are separate stocks. But scientists from both sides are now telling regulators they have to think again. So far on this side, they've got results from 23 pop-ups. Here are all the results to date-- Molly's, the Italian group's and also those from a Stanford University group that tagged fish off North Carolina. The clear evidence of the pop-ups is that tuna go all over the place, sometimes right across the ocean and across the theoretical dividing line that's used to separate eastern fish from western. Has this radically changed what we know about tuna? It's absolutely radically overturned what was thought about what bluefin did. Oh, in what way? To what extent? Well, I suppose the biggest point is that the fish are mixing at a much higher rate than was ever believed. So we immediately learned that these fish are not following the rules that everyone laid out for them and that there's no line down the middle of the ocean and that they hit and they turn around. So that was an eye-opener to, I think, fisheries biologists and managers, because they realized that what happens on one side of the ocean affects what happens to the fish in the population on the other side. ALDA: So it could be thatlarge catches in the east are being fed by good conservation in the west. If that's so, there'll be political problems down the road. The pop-up results offered another eye-opener: Many fish ended up in the spring in the wrong place. The giant fish that we assume were going to spawn after they got nice and fat and ready to go, they should have been in the known spawning areas during the spawning period, and that would be the Gulf of Mexico or the Med. And for the first three years in a row, none of the giant bluefin that we tagged here were in either known spawning area during the presumed spawning period. So that suggests that there's some area that you haven't identified yet. It raised the question is it possible that bluefin are spawning elsewhere. Or do they just take a break? Or do they take a break? It's amazing how much there is to learn about these. You've been studying them carefully for years. Absolutely. I think that our independent tagging studies have only raised more questions about what bluefin do for a living. ALDA: You can be sure that Molly and her fellow scientists are going to be raising questions about bluefin and about salmon for a while. Regulators are going to be uncomfortable with the process, and fishermen may or may not welcome the results, but the bluefin and the salmon could at least come out of it with a future.

Take a look at these related stories from the Frontiers Archive:

				Turtle Homecoming Researchers confirm that female sea turtles return to the beaches where they were born some 40 years later to lay their eggs. But how?
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: THEY'LL SWIM HUNDREDS OF MILES OUT INTO THE OPEN SEAS. THEN, AFTER 40 YEARS THE FEMALES WILL CRAWL ASHORE TO NEST AND THAT'S THE BEGINNING OF ONE OF NATURE'S MOST INTRIGUING MYSTERIES. MIDNIGHT ON MELBOURNE BEACH, FLORIDA. USING A SURVEILLANCE NIGHT SCOPE FRONTIERS WITNESSES THIS FEALE TURTLE EMERGING FROM THE SEA. SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG SUSPECTED THAT WHEN IT'S TIME FOR TURTLES TO LAY THEIR EGGS THEY RETURN TO THE VERY BEACH WHERE THEY WERE BORN. THE TURTLE'S 40-YEAR MIGRATION HAS MADE THIS THEORY VERY DIFFICULT TO TEST BUT THAT'S WHAT ANNIE MEYLAN AND BRIAN BOWEN HAVE SET OUT TO DO ON THIS STORMY SUMMER NIGHT. WE SHOULD GET SOMETHING BEFORE THE RAIN COMES. YEAH, I HOPE. Narrator: THEY FIND A FRESH SET OF TURTLE TRACKS. ANNIE AND BRIAN HAVE TO BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL NOT TO FRIGHTEN THE TURTLE WHO IS JUST SETTLING IN TO DIG HER NEST. HOLD MY BAG. I'LL FOLLOW YOU. ( thunder ) SHE'S JUST STARTING TO DIG THE EGG CHAMBER. WE PROBABLY HAVE ABOUT TEN MINUTES. Narrator: AFTER SEVERAL MINUTES THE TURTLE ENTERS AN EGG-LAYING TRANCE AND NOW, TV LIGHTS WON'T BOTHER HER. SHE'S LAYING HER EGGS HERE BUT WAS SHE ALSO BORN HERE 40 YEARS AGO? THE TRADITIONAL WAY OF FINDING OUT WOULD BE TO USE AN IDENTIFICATION TAG. NOTHING OVER HERE. THERE'S PART OF A TAG BROKEN OUT HERE. Narrator: AND THIS TURTLE DOES HAVE ONE. CAN WE GET A FLASHLIGHT? DO YOU SEE ANY NUMBERS? Narrator: BUT IT'S FROM JUST TWO YEARS AGO WHEN SHE FIRST NESTED HERE. TAGGING CAN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION OF WHERE SHE WAS BORN. THEY GROW SO TREMENDOUSLY IN SIZE FROM A FEW GRAMS TO MANY HUNDRED POUNDS IT'S HARD TO PUT A TAG ON THAT LASTS THAT LONG THAT YOU CAN PROVE THAT THAT TURTLE IS, IN FACT, THE ONE THAT RETURNED SOME 30 OR 50 YEARS LATER WHEN IT REACHED SEXUAL MATURITY. SO REALLY, AN INDIRECT WAY TO LOOK AT THAT PROBLEM IS TO LOOK AT THE GENETICS OF THE TURTLES ON THE BEACH. Narrator: TO LOOK AT THE GENETICS, THEY NEED TO TAKE A BLOOD SAMPLE-- EASIER SAID THAN DONE IN A GIANT TURTLE. IT'S ALL RIGHT, MAMA. DON'T WORRY. ( turtle sputters ) Narrator: THEY WILL BE TAKING BLOOD FROM MANY NESTING TURTLES AROUND THE WORLD. THERE WE GO. Narrator: HOW WILL THEIR GENETIC DETECTIVE WORK ANSWER THE QUESTION OF WHERE THESE TURTLES WERE BORN? I'M GOING TO HAND YOU THIS ONE. Narrator: SAY THESE ORANGE TURTLES HATCH ON THE BEACH IN FLORIDA AND SWIM AWAY AND THESE PURPLE TURTLES HATCH OFF THE COAST OF VENEZUELA. THEY ALL GET TOGETHER ON FEEDING GROUNDS IN THE CARIBBEAN. BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN IT'S TIME TO NEST? ONE POSSIBILITY IS THAT THE FEMALES RETURN RANDOMLY TO EITHER BEACH. IN THIS CASE, OVER MANY GENERATIONS ORANGE AND PURPLE TURTLES WOULD GET ALL MIXED UP GENETICALLY. THE OTHER POSSIBILITY, THE LONGSTANDING THEORY IS THAT NESTING TURTLES RETURN TO THE BEACHES WHERE THEY WERE BORN. IN THIS CASE, EVEN OVER THOUSANDS OF GENERATIONS FLORIDA AND VENEZUELA TURTLES WOULD REMAIN GENETICALLY DISTINCT. BACK IN HIS LAB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA BRIAN PROCESSES THE TURTLE BLOOD SAMPLES TO UNLOCK THE GENETIC CLUES. HE HAS TAKEN BLOOD SAMPLES FROM TURTLES IN FLORIDA AND VENEZUELA. SO, DO TURTLES RETURN HOME TO LAY THEIR EGGS? THESE DROPS OF GENETIC MATERIAL WILL ANSWER THE QUESTION. AND HERE'S THE UNMISTAKABLE EVIDENCE IN A SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON. ON THE LEFT, GENETIC SNAPSHOTS OF NINE FLORIDA TURTLES. THEY'RE ALL IDENTICAL. ON THE RIGHT, VENEZUELA TURTLES; ALSO IDENTICAL. BUT HERE'S THE CRUCIAL DISCOVERY. THE VENEZUELA TURTLES HAVE A BAND HERE THAT'S MISSING IN THE FLORIDA TURTLES AND THE FLORIDA TURTLES HAVE A BAND THAT'S MISSING IN VENEZUELA. THE TWO POPULATIONS ARE GENETICALLY DISTINCT. THE ONLY EXPLANATION IS THAT THE TURTLES HAVE BEEN COMING HOME TO NEST GENERATION AFTER GENERATION. THIS RESULT HAS ASTOUNDED US. WHEN WE STARTED THIS STUDY, WE THOUGHT IT WAS VERY UNLIKELY THAT ANIMALS THREE INCHES LONG CAN LEAVE A BEACH AND COME BACK 40 YEARS LATER TO THE SAME BEACH THAT THEY COULD REMEMBER WHERE THEY CAME FROM AND THEN FIND THEIR WAY BACK. Narrator: NOW WE KNOW THAT A TURTLE DOES MAKE THIS REMARKABLE JOURNEY HOME. THE NEXT QUESTION IS: HOW DOES SHE FIND HER WAY? ONE PART OF THE ANSWER IS THAT TURTLES MIGHT BE BORN NAVIGATORS. BIOLOGIST MICHAEL SALMON BELIEVES THAT TURTLES MAY HAVE AN INTERNAL COMPASS. MAYBE THEY CAN NAVIGATE THE WAY A SHIP'S COMPASS DOES-- RESPONDING TO THE MAGNETIC FIELD THAT RUNS BETWEEN THE EARTH'S NORTH AND SOUTH POLES. SALMON'S COLLEAGUE, KEN LOHMAN, HAS DESIGNED AN EXPERIMENT TO TEST THIS THEORY. THE LITTLE JACKET WILL KEEP THE HATCHLING IN PLACE WHILE IT'S IN THE POOL. OOPS, IT'S UPSIDE DOWN. ( observers laughing ) Narrator: THEY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE FACT THAT THE TURTLE IS ATTRACTED TO LIGHT TO START IT SWIMMING IN ONE DIRECTION. OKAY. Salmon: WE FOUND THAT IF THEY SWIM IN ONE PARTICULAR DIRECTION, IN THIS CASE EAST FOR ABOUT AN HOUR, THAT TURNS ON AN ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE TURNED OUT. Narrator: SURE ENOUGH, THE TURTLE CONTINUES SWIMMING EAST EVEN WITHOUT THE LIGHT AS A CUE. ONCE IT HAS BEEN ORIENTED, IT'S ABLE TO MAINTAIN A DIRECTION. BUT IS IT REALLY RELYING ON SOME SORT OF INTERNAL COMPASS TO DO THIS? THE BEST WAY TO FIND OUT IS TO CHANGE THE MAGNETIC FIELD AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS. THAT'S EXACTLY THE FUNCTION OF THESE WIRES SURROUNDING THE POOL. THEY CAN GENERATE A MAGNETIC FIELD AS STRONG AS THE EARTH'S BUT IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. IF IT'S RESPONDING TO THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD WE NOW EXPECT IT TO GO WEST. Narrator: SOON, THE TURTLE DOES HEAD WEST-- A CONVINCING DEMONSTRATION THAT IT IS RESPONDING TO THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC FIELD. THE DISCOVERY OF THIS INTERNAL COMPASS IS A BREAKTHROUGH IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF TURTLE NAVIGATION BUT ALONE, IT DOES NOT EXPLAIN THE TURTLE'S REMARKABLE JOURNEY. THERE'S ANOTHER MYSTERY: AT JOURNEY'S END, HOW DOES THE TURTLE KNOW SHE'S REALLY HOME? WHAT CUES DOES SHE USE? WELL, SCIENTISTS HAVE SHOWN THAT TURTLES HAVE A VERY KEEN SENSE OF SMELL SO MAYBE THEY FORM A MEMORY OR IMPRINT OF THEIR HOME BEACHES BASED ON SMELL. IF THIS IMPRINTING THEORY IS TRUE, IT COULD HELP SAVE A HIGHLY ENDANGERED SPECIES OF SEA TURTLE. RANCHO NUEVO, ON THE MEXICAN GULF COAST-- THE ONLY NESTING BEACH IN THE WORLD FOR THE KEMP'S RIDLEY TURTLE. 45 YEARS AGO TENS OF THOUSANDS OF KEMP'S RIDLEY TURTLES CAME ASHORE TO NEST HERE EVERY YEAR, AS THIS RARE HOME MOVIE FOOTAGE SHOWS. BY THE LATE 1970s, THE NUMBERS HAD PLUMMETED. ONLY A FEW HUNDRED NESTING FEMALES REMAINED. SCIENTISTS BELIEVED A SECOND NESTING BEACH MIGHT HELP SAVE THE KEMP'S RIDLEYS AND THEY USED IMPRINTING THEORY TO CREATE IT. FIRST THEY HAD TO CATCH THE NEW EGGS BEFORE THEY EVER EVEN TOUCHED THE SAND. THIS WAY, NO MEMORY OF THEIR NATIVE BEACH COULD BE FORMED. THE EGGS WERE FLOWN UP THE COAST TO PADRE ISLAND NATIONAL SEASHORE IN TEXAS. THERE, THE EGGS HATCH. AS THEY SCRAMBLE TOWARDS THE SEA THEY'RE GETTING THE SMELL OF THEIR ADOPTED HOME BEACH. IF THE THEORY IS RIGHT THE MEMORY OF THIS SAND AND WATER SHOULD GUIDE THE FEMALES BACK HERE WHEN IT'S TIME TO NEST. IT TAKES KEMP'S RIDLEYS ONLY TEN YEARS TO MATURE SO THE FIRST FEMALES SHOULD HAVE RETURNED ALREADY. BUT 12 YEARS LATER NO TURTLES HAVE COME BACK TO THE TEXAS BEACH. MAYBE THEY DIED AS HATCHLINGS. MAYBE THEY'LL COME BACK NEXT YEAR. OR MAYBE THE IMPRINTING THEORY IS WRONG. NOW, UNDER LABORATORY CONDITIONS THE THEORY WILL BE TESTED DIRECTLY BY TEXAS A & M BIOLOGIST DAVID OWENS. THESE KEMP'S RIDLEYS WERE BRIEFLY EXPOSED TO THE TEXAS SAND AND WATER WHEN THEY HATCHED AND HAVE BEEN IN CAPTIVITY EVER SINCE. Owens: THE EXPERIMENT ITSELF IS, TO SOME DEGREE, A LONG SHOT BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW THAT WE CAN DUPLICATE NATURE WELL ENOUGH IN THE LABORATORY TO CONVINCE THE TURTLES TO DEMONSTRATE THEIR NATURAL BEHAVIOR. Man on radio: I never loved you much when you were mine. Narrator: GRADUATE STUDENT HEATHER KALB IS ON A MISSION-- THE FIRST STEP IN THE ATTEMPT TO DUPLICATE NATURE. THIS IS THE VERY BEACH WHERE 12 YEARS AGO, THE TURTLES NOW IN THE LAB WERE HATCHED. THEY MOVED THROUGH THIS SAND AS THEY HEADED FOR THE OCEAN. AND THIS IS THE FIRST OCEAN WATER THEY SWAM IN. WILL A FEW BUCKETS OF SAND AND WATER CAPTURE ENOUGH OF THIS COMPLEX ENVIRONMENT FOR THE TURTLES TO RECOGNIZE THEIR HOME BEACH? IN THE LABORATORY VERSION OF NATURE, THIS IS THE OCEAN. THE TANK WILL BE DIVIDED INTO FOUR SECTIONS. TO ALLOW THE TURTLE TO SWIM AROUND FREELY THE DIVISIONS ARE CREATED BY THE FLOW OF WATER. FOUR STRONG CURRENTS ARE PUMPED FROM THE CENTER. THREE-QUARTERS OF THE TANK WILL BE FILLED WITH ARTIFICIAL SEAWATER. FOR THE FOURTH SECTION HEATHER TAKES THE SAND FROM THE PADRE ISLAND BEACH AND FILTERS THE OCEAN WATER THROUGH IT. HEATHER MAKES HER WAY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE TANK TO PUMP THE PADRE ISLAND SOLUTION INTO THE FOURTH SECTION. NOW, SHE IS READY FOR HER SUBJECT. FOR THIS STEP, TIMING IS EVERYTHING. IN NATURE, A FEMALE WOULD ONLY LOOK FOR A NESTING BEACH WHEN SHE'S READY TO LAY EGGS. THIS IS ALSO THE ONLY TIME SHE'D BE INTERESTED IN THE PADRE ISLAND SOLUTION IN THE TANK. SO HEATHER AND DAVID DO AN ULTRASOUND TO CHECK FOR FOLLICLES-- THE FIRST STAGE OF EGG DEVELOPMENT. Kalb: LOOKS REAL GOOD. Owens: AH, THERE ARE LOTS OF FOLLICLES. SHE'S SLOWLY GEARING UP. EVERY MONTH WE ARE SEEING LARGER FOLLICLES SO SOON THE EGGS SHOULD BE SECRETED AND SHE SHOULD BE HEADED TO WHATEVER BEACH SHE'D WANT. Narrator: TIME FOR THE EXPERIMENT. THIS STRUGGLING FEMALE WEIGHS ALMOST 100 POUNDS SO IT TAKES A FIRM HAND TO GET HER INTO THE TANK. AFTER 12 YEARS IN CAPTIVITY, WILL THIS TURTLE RECOGNIZE THE SMELL OF THE BEACH WHERE SHE HATCHED? RIGHT FROM THE START SHE HEADS DIRECTLY FOR THE PADRE ISLAND SECTION OF THE TANK... AND SHE SPENDS A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF TIME HANGING OUT THERE. IT LOOKS LIKE GOOD NEWS FOR THE IMPRINTING THEORY. THROUGHOUT THE TURTLE'S SWIM HEATHER WATCHES A MONITOR AND KEEPS CLOSE TRACK OF ITS POSITION. THE TURTLE IS STILL IN THE PADRE ISLAND SECTION BUT AS THE EXPERIMENT CONTINUES, SHE WANDERS ALL AROUND THE TANK. WITH THIS TURTLE, AS WITH ALL THE OTHERS THEY'VE TESTED THERE IS NO PATTERN AT ALL. Kalb: I'M A LITTLE DISCOURAGED WITH THE RESULTS. WE ALL HOPE FOR GOOD RESULTS RIGHT OFF THE BAT BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF DOORS THAT ARE OPEN AND I HOPE TO AT LEAST NARROW DOWN... I'LL STATE, "THIS IS WHAT'S BEEN DONE. LET'S TRY IT, BUT CHANGE SOME VARIABLES. " AND THAT'S THE ONLY WAY TO GET THE QUESTION ANSWERED. Narrator: SO THE VERDICT ON IMPRINTING THEORY IS STILL OUT. WE KNOW THAT NESTING TURTLES COME BACK TO THE BEACH WHERE THEY WERE BORN AND WE KNOW THAT AN INTERNAL COMPASS HELPS THEM GET THERE BUT HOW THEY RECOGNIZE THE RIGHT SPOT REMAINS A MYSTERY. I SURE HOPE HEATHER AND HER COLLEAGUES KEEP AT IT BUT THEY MIGHT BE AIMING TOO HIGH-- MAYBE TRYING TO GO TOO FAR IN ONE STEP. HERE'S HOW I THINK ABOUT IT. MY BUDDY DUKE ROAMS AROUND THIS NEIGHBORHOOD BUT HE ALWAYS COMES BACK FOR DINNER. HOW DOES HE KNOW WHICH HOUSE HAS THE FOOD? I'VE SET UP AN EXPERIMENT TO SEE WHAT DUKE CAN RECOGNIZE. THIS SNAPSHOT OF THE HOUSE IS A LITTLE SILLY. NOW, HERE'S A TUFT OF GRASS FROM THE FRONT YARD, A SOCK AND SOME OTHER THINGS THAT HE MIGHT BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY. JUST THINK OF ALL THE THINGS WE'D HAVE TO PUT TOGETHER TO REPLICATE DUKE'S NEIGHBORHOOD AND OTHER THINGS MIGHT NEVER OCCUR TO US BECAUSE WE DON'T SEE THE WORLD THE WAY CATS DO. SURE ENOUGH, DUKE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE VERY INTERESTED IN ANYTHING-- EXCEPT MAYBE GETTING OUT OF HERE. IT'S REALLY HARD TO DESIGN ONE EXPERIMENT THAT INCLUDES ALL OF THE FACTORS THAT COULD BE IMPORTANT. MAYBE HEATHER WILL GET IT WITH ONE INCREDIBLY CLEVER EXPERIMENT BUT IT SEEMS MORE LIKELY THAT THE ONLY WAY TO CRACK THE SECRET OF TURTLE NAVIGATION IS TO CHIP AWAY AT OUR IGNORANCE, BIT BY BIT.

				Whale Talk Different killer whale groups in Puget Sound use distinct dialects in their calls, while a captive young whale can switch from one dialect to another.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: EVERY SUMMER THE ORCAS-- OR KILLER WHALES-- RETURN TO THESE SHELTERED WATERS OFF WASHINGTON STATE. FOR MANY YEARS, THE WHALES HAVE BEEN PHOTOGRAPHED AND OBSERVED BY KEN BALCOMB AND JOHN FORD. THERE ARE 85 ORCAS THAT ENTER THE SOUND, AND FOR KEN BALCOMB THEY PROVIDE A SUBJECT OF ENDLESS INTEREST. Balcomb: I'M FASCINATED BY THEIR SOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND THEIR INTELLIGENCE. WONDER WHAT'S GOING ON IN THAT HUGE BRAIN OF THEIRS. Narrator: ORCAS ARE SO WELL ORGANIZED, THEY CAN TAKE ON ANYTHING-- LARGE WHALES, SHARKS, WHOLE SCHOOLS OF SALMON. Balcomb: THEY'VE GOT A FORAGING PATTERN. PROBABLY HAVE SOME FISH 60 OR 90 FEET DOWN, AHEAD OF THEM. THEY'VE PROBABLY ALREADY EATEN; THEY JUST WON'T LET THEM GET AWAY. THEY'LL FOLLOW THEM ALL DAY AND WHEN THEY'RE HUNGRY, THEY'LL EAT SOME MORE. Narrator: THE BIOLOGISTS RECOGNIZE EVERY WHALE IN PUGET SOUND. DORSAL FINS ARE ONE MARKER: FEMALES HAVE SHORT ONES; IN MALES THEY'RE TWICE THE SIZE. SOME FINS HAVE ODD SHAPES: THIS WAVY ONE BELONGS TO A MALE FROM J-GROUP OR J-POD, AS IT'S CALLED. WE JUST SAW J-1-- THE ONE WITH THE WAVY MARGIN TO HIS FLUKE; J-3, BENT OVER ABOUT HALFWAY UP; J-5, J-17... Narrator: THEY'VE DISCOVERED A WHOLE CATALOG OF DISTINCTIVE MARKS. THIS BIG MALE IS J-6; HE'S GOT PIECES MISSING FROM THE BACK OF HIS DORSAL FIN. THIS FEMALE ACQUIRED A CLEAR NICK OUT OF HER FIN AS DID THIS ONE. THEY'RE MINOR WOUNDS, PICKED UP DURING ROUGH PLAY WHEN THE WHALES WERE YOUNG. THEY'VE ALL BEEN RECORDED. KEN BALCOMB RECOGNIZES MOST OF THESE WHITE MARKINGS, TOO. THEY'RE CALLED SADDLEPATCHES. HE CAN TRACK ALL THE WHALES IN THE THREE PODS THAT USE PUGET SOUND. WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE, JUST Ks, MAYBE? WE'VE GOT K-1... TWO NOTCHES-- GOOD INDICATION OF THAT K. YOU CAN'T MISTAKE HIM. WHAT ELSE HAVE WE GOT? K-17, THERE HE IS. Narrator: THE IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM HAS BECOME THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING WHALE BEHAVIOR. AND KEN'S DISCOVERED THAT ORCA PODS STICK TOGETHER-- FOR LIFE. HERE'S THE NEW ONE, K-21. IT'S TRAVELING WITH K-18? YEAH, NEXT TO ITS MOTHER. WE SEE A NEW CALF AND IT'S RIGHT NEXT TO ITS MOTHER. WE KNOW IT'S ITS MOTHER BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS NEXT TO ITS MOTHER AND WE SEE IT NURSING FROM ITS MOTHER. THAT CALF GROWS UP. TWO OR THREE YEARS LATER, IT HAS A BROTHER OR A SISTER AND THEN THAT ONE IS NEXT TO HER. THE OTHER ONE STAYS ALONGSIDE, BUT NOT AS CLOSELY. Narrator: TODAY, THEY'RE RECORDING. IT MAY SEEM LIKE A QUIET DAY ON THE SURFACE BUT UNDERWATER, THINGS ARE DIFFERENT. ( orcas calling ) THEY'RE CHATTING, ALL RIGHT. ( orcas calling ) IT'S A S-2 CALL AND A COUPLE OF S-1s. SO, YOU CAN CONFIRM THE I. D.? IT'S DEFINITELY J's, NO DOUBT ABOUT IT. Narrator: THE CHALLENGE NOW IS TO TRY AND RELATE WHALE BEHAVIOR TO WHALE CALLS. EACH POD HAS ABOUT A DOZEN STEREOTYPE CALLS THAT THEY USE OVER AND OVER AND THEY CAN SOUND QUITE DIFFERENT FROM ONE ANOTHER WITHIN THE REPERTOIRE OF CALLS. SOME MIGHT BE A SQUAWK AND OTHERS MIGHT BE A SQUEAL WITH A UPSWEEP ON THE END. Narrator: THE SCIENTISTS SPEND LONG HOURS STUDYING COMPUTER VOICEPRINTS OF THE CALLS. J HAS THAT DISTINCTIVE DOWNSWEEP ON THE END SO EACH CALL GOES UP AND THEN ENDS ON A DOWNSWEEP. SO, YOU CAN SEE THAT ONE-- S-3. Narrator: THIS CALL IS ONLY USED BY J-POD. ( orca call ) NEXT IS L. Narrator: THIS ONE, ONLY L-POD USES. ( orca call ) IF EACH POD STICKS TO ITS OWN CALLS THEY MIGHT JUST BE RECOGNITION SIGNALS-- BUT IT SEEMS PODS SHARE CALLS. THERE'S THE J VERSION OF CALL S-2. Narrator: TAKE THIS CALL-- J-POD USES IT LIKE THIS: ( orca call ) AND L-POD USES THIS MODIFIED VERSION: ( orca call ) JOHN FORD'S DISCOVERY OF THESE "DIALECTS," AS HE CALLS THEM HAS ADDED A NEW LAYER OF COMPLICATION-- AND MYSTERY-- TO THE STUDY OF ORCA CALLS. AND IT'S LED TO AN UNUSUAL LABORATORY: SEA WORLD, IN SAN DIEGO. THE ORCAS LEARN THEIR TRICKS AND THEY ALSO KEEP RIGHT ON CALLING. BIOLOGIST ANN BOWLES. Bowles: SEVERAL QUESTIONS CAN'T BE ANSWERED IN THE WILD. HOW DO CALVES DEVELOP CALLS? WE CAN'T ISOLATE A CALF FROM OTHER WHALES TO DETERMINE EVEN WHAT A CALF CALL SOUNDS LIKE. IN CAPTIVITY, WE CAN WATCH THE INDIVIDUAL SEPARATED FROM ITS MOTHER AND OTHER WHALES SEE HOW IT BEHAVES FIND OUT HOW LONG IT TAKES TO DEVELOP ADULT CALLS AND OTHER BASIC INFORMATION. Narrator: THERE ARE THREE WHALES IN THIS POOL-- TWO ADULTS AND ONE TWO-YEAR-OLD. THIS IS CORKY, AND SHE'S FROM THE PUGET SOUND AREA IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. THIS IS KASSATKA, AND SHE'S FROM OFF THE COAST OF ICELAND. AND THAT'S ORKID AND SHE WAS BORN RIGHT HERE AT SEA WORLD. Narrator: TWO YEARS AGO, AS THE SEA WORLD CAMERAS ROLLED EVERYBODY WAITED IN SUSPENSE FOR THE MOMENT OF ORKID'S BIRTH. WHAT NOBODY KNEW WAS THAT AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIMENT WAS ABOUT TO BEGIN. LIKE HER WILD COUSINS, ORKID KEPT CLOSE TO HER MOTHER. SHE HEARD HER MOTHER'S CALLS-- AND SHE PICKED THEM UP. Bowles: AT ONE YEAR OF AGE SHE WAS STILL MAKING BABY BABBLE BUT THOSE CALLS THAT WERE DISCRETE WERE LIKE THOSE OF HER MOTHER'S, AND SHE WOULD GIVE THESE IN SEQUENCES OF CALLS, AS THOUGH SHE WERE IMITATING HER MOTHER. Narrator: THEN, SOON AFTER ORKID'S FIRST BIRTHDAY, HER MOTHER DIED. SHE STARTED SWIMMING WITH COMPANIONS UNRELATED TO HER-- WHALES THAT USE DIFFERENT CALLS. SO, SUDDENLY, THERE WAS AN EXPERIMENT GOING ON IN THE SEA WORLD POOL. THE QUESTION WAS, WOULD ORKID LEARN NEW CALLS? THERE WERE CERTAINLY PLENTY TO CHOOSE FROM. ( calling ) NOW, ONE YEAR AFTER ORKID WAS ORPHANED IT'S TIME FOR ANN BOWLES TO FIND THE ANSWER. OKAY, THE HYDROPHONE IS ABOUT TWO METERS DOWN AND A METER AND A HALF AWAY FROM THE ACRYLIC PANEL NUMBER ONE. WE'RE WAITING FOR THE CALF TO COME BY. Bowles: ORKID IS SWIMMING AROUND CLOSE TO THE HYDROPHONE. THERE'S A CALL-- IT'S ORKID. AND I CAN HEAR A RESPONSE IN THERE FROM KASSATKA, BEHIND. IT'S SUPER. Narrator: ANN BOWLES RECOGNIZES ALL THE CALLS IN THE POOL INCLUDING THOSE FROM A WHALE CALLED KASSATKA. I'M FINDING EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT I WAS HEARING OUT THERE WHICH IS THAT THEY'RE CALLING BACK AND FORTH TO EACH OTHER. THIS IS A TYPICAL KASSATKA CALL-- CLASSIC. THIS SEQUENCE IS ORKID FIRST, KASSATKA SECOND: ORKID, BUZZ WITH UPSWEEP; KASSATKA, BUZZ WITH UPSWEEP; IMITATING EACH OTHER. ORKID IS USING KASSATKA'S CALLS. Narrator: KILLER WHALES AREN'T LOCKED INTO USING STANDARD INHERITED CALLS. BUT THEY WOULDN'T NEED THIS LEARNING ABILITY OR THEIR DIALECTS JUST TO RECOGNIZE EACH OTHER OR TO ROUND UP SALMON. JOHN FORD BELIEVES WHALES ARE MUCH FARTHER ALONG. IN HUMANS, THE ABILITY TO LEARN SOUNDS IS THE KEY TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES; AND IT MAY BE THE KEY TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF POTENTIAL LANGUAGES IN WHALES. I DON'T BELIEVE THAT THEY HAVE THE SORT OF LANGUAGE WE DO BUT THEY MUST BE ON SOME POINT ALONG THAT ROAD TOWARDS TRUE LANGUAGE. AND I THINK THE DIALECT SYSTEM OF KILLER WHALES IS A VERY GOOD INDICATION THAT THEY ARE PROGRESSING TOWARDS THAT STATE.

				Green Invader Alien algae are smothering native marine life and livelihoods in the Mediterranean. And now it's in San Diego as well.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: How long have you been studying thisCaulerpa? MAN: More than ten years. Ten years. ALDA: We're in a small towjust down the coast from Nice in the south of France. Alex Meinesz, a biology professor from Nice University is taking me out fishing. In those ten years, how much has it increased? ALDA: As with thousands of places like it around the Mediterranean Sea this town depends on a mix of fishing and tourism for its livelihood. On peut monter? FISHERMAN: Okay. Okay, thanks. Bonjour. FISHERMAN: Bonjour. Patrick. Patrick, Alan. Alex, bonjour. Mais alors, au commencement... ALDA: We're on the Verg family boat. The waters around here have been fished for generations-- until now, that is. They don't fish here anymore. We had to persuade them to set their net out last night just so we could film the result. And the result is this. ALDA: There's some. MEINESZ: Caulerpa. Yeah. Caulerpa. Look. PATRICK: On arrte un peu, uh? Look-- and thisCaulerpa clogs the nets and the fish see the nets, and there is no fishes. Oh, I see. So it hurts fishing... it hurts fishing just because... They see the nets. It calls attention to the nets. ALDA: The weed, calledCaulerpa taxifolia,doesn't belong here. It's a tropical plant common in the Caribbean and other warm waters. The northern Mediterranean gets cold in the winter but somehow theCaulerpais surviving and thriving-- nothing can touch it. MEINESZ: When you broke it, there comes a kind of juice out of, you see? Does that juice have anything in it that keeps away predators? Yes, absolutely that are terpenes, caulerpenynes. And this is a kind of toxic matter and a repellent matter. So the fish don't eat it. So it repels fish, and does it... so... in this area, nothing is a natural predator. No. You see all the leaves are entire. Nothing... Nothing has been eating it. No, no eating trace. Yeah. On y va? On y va. (laughing) Holy moly! He really jumps in! ALDA: Alex took us into the shallow water near the town's bathing beach. Everything below was covered by theCaulerpa:rocks, sand, mud. There's nothing else down here-- no other plants, barely a fish. It's a classic example of an alien that just takes over-- like the brown tree snake in Guam. Nothing eats it, and nothing competes with it. It's full, huh? Yeah, there's a lot of it down there. All the bottom is covered. ALDA: TheCaulerpaarrived here about nine years ago. Advancing at an inch a day, it has ruined the fishing and it'll soon clog the town beach. It's the same disastrous story spread out along a thousand miles of Mediterranean coast. Caulerpais easily spread. It's carried along in fishing nets and there are millions of small boats in the Mediterranean all with anchors. MEINESZ: A little piece like this I put this in the water after six months, you have three square meters with this little piece. Any part of this? Any part, any part. ALDA: With its rapid spread from fragments and its cold-water survival Caulerpain the Mediterranean is behaving in ways that shocked marine plant experts like Alex. After years of investigation Alex is pretty certain he knows how this disaster happened. This is the aquarium at the famous Monaco Oceanographic Museum where Jacques Cousteau was once director. In the early 1980s, the museum along with several other European aquaria started using a decorative and easy-to-grow plant in their tropical tanks. The plant was Caulerpa taxifolia. It's still used here today, as it is around the world. Alex believes that somehow some fragments ofCaulerpa were released from the tanks into the sea. A museum diver first sawCaulerpa right outside the building on the bottom in 1984. It covered just one square yard. By 1989, when Alex first saw it, it covered two acres. By 1990 it was at nearby Cap Martin next year Toulon, a hundred miles away and now it's found from Spain to Croatia. With no natural enemies to hold it back theCaulerpahas been steadily smothering Mediterranean sea life. In the shallow areas, there's normally a complex community of over a thousand different species: algae, shellfish, worms and fishes, all based on meadows of native sea grass. In the darker depths, there's a different balance with the grass giving way to red sea fans. This is the steep 100-foot rock wall off Cap Martin once a favorite spot for scuba divers. The film is from 1996, shot as theCaulerpawas taking hold. Alex has been diving here every year since theCaulerpaarrived. As the alien plant advances, it blocks out light-- from the red sea fans, for example, which die off. Alex has seen the same process repeated all over the rock wall. Did this all originate with the Monaco aquarium? Genetic analysis has shown theCaulerpais a mutant strain unique to aquariums-- including Monaco-- and not found in the wild. But we'll never know for sure how it first got loose. In the summer of 1999 our underwater cameraman swam down the rock wall at Cap Martin to record the progress of theCaulerpa. The wall is now completely covered. The last sea fans are dying. The wall is essentially a biological desert. Once again, we're looking atCaulerpa growing in an aquarium. But there's something else-- it's a kind of slug and it's eating the weed. The result: all over the tank, ghostly white fronds of weed with their toxic juice sucked right out by the slugs. The slugs are being studied in his lab at the University of Nice by Alex Meinesz. In his view, they represent the single best hope for controllingCaulerpa taxifoliain the Mediterranean. We've jumped 4,000 miles across the Atlantic to the Indian River in Florida. Alex's slugs came from here, collected by Cecilia Miles a marine biologist from Florida State University. HereCaulerpais eaten and controlled by the highly specialized slugs as it is further south all over the Caribbean. The hope is that slugs from Florida-- the northern extreme of their range-- might be hardy enough to survive the Mediterranean winter. In the summer of '99 Cecilia collected and packed a batch of Florida slugs for shipment to Alex in Nice. The slugs had their own air supply for the flight and were escorted across the Atlantic by a French grad student. See you, Cecilia. Bye-bye. Thank you. ALDA: Here you were a student ofCaulerpa... ALDA: Alex has been studying different slugs for years. The Florida batch had been in residence at Nice University for about two weeks when I visited. I study on theCaulerpasince... ALDA: His work with slugs andCaulerpa is done on a shoestring budget in a makeshift lab behind the biology building. The Monaco Aquarium connection makes this a very political subject so research grants have been hard to come by. ALDA: So you've got a chance to see who's working out. Yes, who studies biology. Come in, please, come in. So... they're in there. I don't see any slugs. Yes... here! ALDA: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! Now, is he eating now? Yes, I think so. So these slugs really like that toxic stuff. Yes, ah, yes. They need the toxic because they take the toxins and they stock it in them and then the fishes doesn't eat it. Oh... Oh, I see! Oh, oh, so the slugs use the toxins to keep the fish away from them! Exactly, exactly, exactly. ALDA: The slugs have other highly specific adaptations toCaulerpa. They needCaulerpacells as part of their own metabolism and they have a special tooth which matches onlyCaulerpacell structure. Alex argues that the slugs are so exquisitely adapted to their one food that releasing them into the Mediterranean to control the invasion biologically would present a very low risk. I asked him about this. How do we know the slugs that you bring in won't adapt and find some other way to live in addition toCaulerpa? When the slug have no moreCaulerpa they cannot, in one generation, say "Ah, we shall change our tooth, our mouth our toxin, to eat other things." (laughing) You understand? That takes a lot of plastic surgery! You understand? Sure, sure! When there isCaulerpa, they eatCaulerpa. No problem, no problem. When they see there is no more Caulerpa,it is too late. It is too late. ALDA: Alex's slugs may be the only way to go. All kinds of nonbiological control methods have been tried like releasing poisonous copper from underwater electrodes... or simply scraping the weed off... vacuuming it up... freezing it with dry ice... scalding it with hot water... or cutting off its sunlight. But there's nothing that's practical on a large scale except the slugs. I asked Alex again is it really smart to release the slugs into such a paradise of food? All of a sudden, they're dining out every night. They're going to Maxim's every night and they're doing pretty well. Now you're liable to have some pretty fat, happy, healthy slugs around looking for trouble. No, no. You ever have a prairie ofCaulerpa with many slugs in it and then they control theCaulerpa and it is finished, that we think. But what you want? Do you want to have a Mediterranean Sea full withCaulerpa without any control method? We must have a predator for this invader. Without predator, theCaulerpa-- that is a risk that we see now. We can see, you have see it when we snorkeling. You see with the fishermen. It covered all the bottom and expands every year. So what do we do? Do we nothing or do we try this? ALDA: If you can't get rid of it, if the slugs don't work if the slugs are too dangerous, if the slugs work but governments won't let you use the slugs what will theCaulerpado? What will happen to the Mediterranean? What happen is exactly the same that happened since ten years. It extends. It extends every year, in new country, new regions. And we think that this algae is able to colonize most of the region of all the Mediterranean Sea. ALDA: Now fast-forward two years and 7,000 miles. We're back at the California lagoon where we began this program. Just like in France, the alienCaulerpahere is untouched by any natural enemy. It's capable of smothering the native eelgrass. The patch of bright greenCaulerpa was first noticed in the year 2000 suspiciously close to a storm drain outlet. Caulerpais widely used in home aquariums so someone probably dumped one out into a drain somewhere in the area. Getting rid of theCaulerpahere and in one more spot near Los Angeles is now the responsibility of Rachel Woodfield who works for an environmental consulting firm. Where did you first find Caulerpaaround here? Right out here in the eelgrass beds. We were monitoring the success of the native eelgrass beds and came across this bright green terror growing in there. We weren't sure what it was at first. We've all heard ofCaulerpa in the Mediterranean but to make the relation that this isthekiller algae-- it took us a little while to figure it out. Was it widespread by the time you first discovered it? It had spread throughout this small harbor area. It covers about five acres. So we built this boom around it to keep all the boats out and people who might want to come in and see it and might potentially spread it. ALDA: They decided to try killing off theCaulerpa a few square feet at a time-- something it's too late for in the Mediterranean. Portable frames are covered with plastic tarps which are sealed to the lagoon floor with sandbags. The underwater tent is then given a dose of chlorine and left for a few days. Everything inside is killed-- Caulerpaand native eelgrass-- but so long as they get all theCaulerpa only eelgrass will grow back. After a year, it seems to be working. We're at a manageable point right now. We have two infestations. They're deep back inland in lagoons. There's calm water. We're able to have the luxury to put these tarps down and deal with it and keep an eye out for it before it gets offshore. Is this the major threat or the only threat right now from an alien species in this... in these waters? This certainly is not the first exotic species that this lagoon has seen. However, this is the first species that really has the potential to cause some serious, serious harm to our coastline and that is at a state that is manageable.

				The Sea Within the Sea Threatened giant tuna and whales are tracked in the world’s first international marine park, the Ligurian Sea between France and Italy.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: IT'S THE VILLAGE OF STINTINO'S. ANNUAL SAGRA. THE SAGRA, OR CELEBRATION, IS FOR THE ARRIVAL OF THE TUNA. CELEBRATIONS LIKE THIS HAVE BEEN HELD AROUND THE MEDITERRANEAN FOR AS LONG AS PEOPLE CAN REMEMBER. IN JUNE, WHEN THE GIANT BLUEFIN ARRIVE OFF THE COAST TO SPAWN CELEBRATING THE BOUNTY OF THE SEA BRINGS THE WHOLE VILLAGE TOGETHER. BUT LIKE FISHERIES ALL OVER THE WORLD IN RECENT YEARS TUNA CATCHES HAVE BEEN DROPPING ALARMINGLY. SO NOW THERE'S AN URGENT NEED TO UNDERSTAND AND PROTECT THE REGION'S MARINE LIFE NOT LEAST BECAUSE IN SO MANY PLACES IT'S NOT JUST MARINE LIFE THAT'S THREATENED, IT'S COMMUNITY LIFE. THE FOCUS IS ON AN AREA JUST NORTH OF SARDINIA-- THE LIGURIAN SEA. AS OF 1999, IT HAS CONTAINED THE WORLD'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL MARINE RESERVE. THE WATERS ARE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN ATTRACTING IN SUMMER LARGE NUMBERS OF DOLPHIN, TUNA AND WHALES, COMING IN TO FEED. IT'S AUGUST IN THE LIGURIAN SEA AND WE'VE JOINED AN ITALIAN GOVERNMENT RESEARCH TEAM LOOKING FOR SOME OF THE AREA'S MOST ELUSIVE INHABITANTS-- FIN WHALES. THE MEDITERRANEAN HAS A LOT OF FIN WHALES ABOUT 4,000 IT'S BELIEVED. WE KNOW THEY CONCENTRATE HERE IN SUMMER, BUT NOT MUCH ELSE. ( blowing ) Man: TWO! SO, WE GOT THEM AT THREE O'CLOCK. Alda: TWO AMERICAN WHALE SOUND EXPERTS ARE VISITING THE TEAM. WHEN YOU SEE WHALES YOU GO, "DID I ACTUALLY SEE SOMETHING? " WOW, YEAH... BOY, THEY'RE MOVING. RAPIDO! Man: THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE WHALES ARE TOO FAST FOR US. WHEN THEY SPEED UP THEY GO FASTER THAN TEN KNOTS. Alda: JUST AHEAD OF THE BOAT, THE WHALES DIVE. Borsani: THEY USUALLY STAY DOWN FOR ABOUT TEN MINUTES. SO IT'S SEVEN MINUTES THEY HAVE BEEN DOWN NOW. Man: ONE O'CLOCK. Clark: OH... LOOK AT THAT. FANTASTIC... HOLY COW. ( blows ) Alda: THESE 100-FOOT GIANTS ARE FOUND WORLDWIDE BUT THEY WERE NEVER HUNTED IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SO THE POPULATION SHOULD BE HEALTHY. OUR WHALE SWIMS UNDER THE BOAT AT 18 METERS, 50 FEET DEPTH. BEAUTIFUL, LOOK AT HIM. 18 METERS, HUH? YUP. Borsani: SHE PASSED UNDERNEATH US. AND NOW, THE SECOND ONE IS HERE TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BOAT AT ABOUT TEN METERS. Alda: IT'S A RARE AND LUCKY ENCOUNTER SO CHRIS AND FABRIZIO TRY LISTENING FOR SOUNDS. FIN WHALES HAVE NEVER BEEN RECORDED IN THE MEDITERRANEAN. BUT, IF YOU LISTEN EVERY NOW AND THEN YOU HEAR THAT-- JUST A LITTLE BIT OF MODULATION IN THE TONE. YEAH, IT'S TOO SHORT. YEAH, IT'S ONLY ABOUT A SECOND LONG. Alda: THEY WEREN'T QUITE SURE WHAT THEY WERE HEARING AND WITHIN 45 MINUTES THE WHALES HAD VANISHED. Clark: IN THE LIFE OF A WHALE OR IN THE DAY OF A WHALE, 45 MINUTES IS NOTHING. YOU REALLY NEED TO LISTEN OVER MUCH, MUCH LONGER PERIODS. ( blowing ) Alda: CHRIS CLARK AND TOM CALUPCA HAVE BROUGHT ONBOARD UNDERWATER SOUND RECORDERS THEY DESIGNED TO BE LEFT BEHIND TO RUN CONTINUOUSLY FOR WEEKS. THE NIGHT BEFORE DEPLOYING THE RECORDERS FABRIZIO HAD TO COORDINATE THINGS WITH THE LOCAL FISHERMEN. ( speaking Italian ) Borsani: THIS FISHERMAN JUST TOLD US WHERE THEY TRAWL ON THE BOTTOM AT 500 METERS SO THAT WE CAN CHOOSE A LOCATION THAT WE'RE GOING TO TELL THEM WHERE WE ARE GOING TO PLACE TO POP-UPS. Alda: THEY'RE CALLED POP-UPS BECAUSE THE RECORDERS WILL FLOAT UP FROM THE SEA FLOOR ON COMMAND. THE TEAM IS PUTTING OUT TWO POP-UPS AND IT'S THE FIRST TIME THEY'VE TRIED. Clark: WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM. ( yelling in Italian ) LET IT GO! Alda: THE POP-UP DROPS ABRUPTLY INTO THE WATER BUT NOTHING SEEMS TO BREAK AND A FEW MINUTES LATER A SOLID ACOUSTIC COMMUNICATIONS LINK IS ESTABLISHED WITH IT. ( electronic beeping ) ( sonar-like beeping ) Man: THE THREE LONG BEEPS THAT MEANS THE POP-UP RECOGNIZED-- UNDERSTOOD-- THE MESSAGE OKAY. Alda: FINALLY THE POP-UP IS RELEASED TO SINK GENTLY TO THE BOTTOM, 1,500 FEET BELOW. WE'RE WITH ANOTHER ITALIAN TEAM THAT RECENTLY MADE A SURPRISING DISCOVERY ABOUT MEDITERRANEAN FIN WHALES. TINY SKIN SAMPLES WERE COLLECTED AND ANALYZED. THEY SHOWED GENETICALLY THAT MEDITERRANEAN FINS NEVER LEAVE-- THIS IS WHERE THEY SPEND THEIR LIVES. Borsani: NO GENES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN WHALES HAVE BEEN FOUND IN THE ATLANTIC AND VICE VERSA WHICH SPEAKS LOUDLY FOR A RESIDENT POPULATION. Alda: IF FIN WHALES ARE RESIDENT HERE THAT MEANS THEY'RE ESPECIALLY VULNERABLE TO THE SEA'S CROWDING AND POLLUTION. IT'S ESSENTIAL WE LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE WHALES SO WE CAN SAFEGUARD THEIR FUTURE. IT'S FALL, AND THE TEAM IS HEADING OUT TO COLLECT THE POP-UPS. WITH WINTER COMING IT'S THOUGHT THE WHALES WILL ALREADY HAVE LEFT. TOM WILL DIAL UP THE POP-UP ON THE SEA FLOOR TELLING IT TO RELEASE ITS BALLAST WEIGHTS. THERE IT IS! THE BUOY'S AT THE SURFACE. IT'S RIGHT OVER THERE JUST OFF THE BOAT, ABOUT 50 METERS AWAY. WE'RE IN A GOOD SPOT. Alda: IT'S A LITTLE LIKE A SPACECRAFT SPLASHDOWN. AND, IN TRUTH, THE POP-UP HAS JUST RETURNED FROM A LARGELY UNEXPLORED PLACE. 9:09 AND 30 SECONDS... NOW. WELCOME HOME! Alda: THE POP-UPS BROUGHT ANOTHER SURPRISE-- CLEAR RECORDINGS OF LOTS OF WHALES IN THE LIGURIAN SEA RIGHT INTO WINTER. SCIENTISTS HADN'T KNOWN THEY STAYED. ( whales calling with clicks ) ( people yelling ) Alda: THESE ARE SCENES OF A REAL BLUEFIN TUNA MATTANZA, OR "KILLING" SHOT IN SICILY IN THE 1940s. THERE'S NO BETTER EVIDENCE OF THE TREMENDOUS ABUNDANCE THE MEDITERRANEAN YIELDED. BUT CATCHES LIKE THIS HAVEN'T BEEN SEEN IN DECADES. WE'RE BACK IN SARDINIA FOR THE 1999 MATTANZA NEAR THE VILLAGE OF CARLOFORTE. WE'RE NOT HERE TO CATCH TUNA, BUT TO TAG AND RELEASE THEM. THE TAGS ARE SATELLITE TRANSMITTERS THAT WILL DROP OFF IN A FEW WEEKS AND SIGNAL THEIR POSITIONS. THE QUESTION IS THE SAME AS WITH THE WHALES: ARE THE TUNA MEDITERRANEAN FISH, OR ATLANTIC FISH, OR BOTH? IT'S PRETTY ROUGH ABOVE, BUT TRANQUIL BELOW. THERE ARE ENOUGH FISH IN THE NET FOR A FEW TAGS. IN TWO YEARS SO FAR, TEN TAGS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFULLY TRACKED. THEY SEEM TO SHOW THAT THERE ARE DISTINCT GROUPS OF MEDITERRANEAN AND ATLANTIC TUNA. WE HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THESE POPULATIONS SOON TO WORK OUT HOW TO REGULATE THE CATCH BEFORE RELENTLESS FISHING PRESSURE OVERTAKES THE SPECIES.

				Doctor Fish Veterinarian Howard Krum’s patients at the New England Aquarium range from sharks to wild seals and sea turtles.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Alda: IT'S MORNING ROUNDS FOR THE MEDICAL TEAM AT THE NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM IN BOSTON. Alda: YOU COME AROUND EVERY MORNING AND MAKE ROUNDS LIKE THIS AND CHECK FOR ILLNESS? YEAH, WE HAVE A CASE LIST JUST LIKE YOU WOULD IN A HOSPITAL AND WE'LL GO DO ROUNDS EVERY MORNING... Alda: DR. HOWARD KRUM IS THE LEADER OF THE VETERINARY TEAM HERE. AMONG HIS THOUSANDS OF POTENTIAL PATIENTS THE FISH HE'S MOST CONCERNED ABOUT IN THIS TANK ARE THE SAND TIGER SHARKS TWO OF WHICH HAVE DEVELOPED HUNCHBACKS. HOW LONG AGO DID YOU NOTICE A PROBLEM? WELL, IT TAKES WEEKS AND WEEKS TO DEVELOP AND IT STARTED VERY GRADUALLY BUT THEN, OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS IT'S ACCELERATED. SO ONLY WITHIN THE SPACE OF A FEW WEEKS THIS SEVERE DEFORMATION HAS OCCURRED? IT'S GOTTEN A LOT WORSE IN A SHORTER PERIOD OF TIME, YES. Alda: BUT TODAY, HOWARD KRUM HAS A MORE URGENT CASE TO TAKE CARE OF. HERE IN THE AQUARIUM'S HOSPITAL IS A VERY SICK PUFFER FISH AN ELDERLY PATIENT WHO IS REPORTED TO HAVE A SWOLLEN ABDOMEN... ALTHOUGH SHE COULD HAVE FOOLED ME. CALLED A BRIDLED BURRFISH HER PROBLEM IS DRAMATICALLY REVEALED BY HER X-RAY. Krum: AND WHAT WE NOTICED WHEN WE TOOK THE X-RAYS TO TRY TO FIGURE OUT WHAT WAS GOING ON IN HER ABDOMEN WAS THAT SHE HAD THIS MASS THAT APPEARS TO BE A STONE-- A CALCIFIED... LIKE YOU'D GET A KIDNEY STONE OR A BLADDER STONE. HAVE YOU EVER DONE THIS SURGERY BEFORE? NO, I HAVEN'T, AND I DON'T THINK ANYBODY HAS. Alda: THE NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM'S MEDICAL CENTER IS UNUSUAL NOT ONLY FOR ITS SOPHISTICATION BUT ALSO BECAUSE IT IS ITSELF ONE OF THE EXHIBITS. SO DR. KRUM AND HIS TEAM DO MOST OF THEIR FISH DOCTORING WITH AN AUDIENCE. FAST ASLEEP AFTER SWIMMING AROUND IN A BUCKET SPIKED WITH ANESTHETIC THE BRIDLED BURRFISH IS PREPARED FOR SURGERY. A TUBE CARRIES WATER LACED WITH THE SAME ANESTHETIC OVER HER GILLS TO KEEP HER BOTH ALIVE AND UNCONSCIOUS. I'M TOUCHED BY THE TEAM'S CONCERN AND IMPRESSED BY THEIR PROFESSIONALISM. BUT I'M A LITTLE SURPRISED THAT HIGH-TECH EQUIPMENT LIKE AN ULTRASOUND HEART MONITOR IS BEING USED ON AN AGING FISH THAT ISN'T EVEN VERY RARE. Krum: WHEN WE BRING AN ANIMAL HERE WE TRY TO GIVE IT THE BEST CARE AS POSSIBLE. WE FEEL LIKE THAT IS THE RESPONSIBLE THING TO DO, PERIOD. SO IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER IT'S AN AGING BRIDLED BURRFISH OR REALLY ONE OF THE MORE EXOTIC SPECIES WE'RE WORKING ON. WE FEEL LIKE WE HAVE TO DO WHAT'S BEST FOR THE ANIMAL TO THE BEST OF OUR CAPABILITIES. Alda: AFTER A TENSE 25 MINUTES OF CUTTING THROUGH THE TOUGH, SPINY SKIN AND OPENING THE BLADDER WITHOUT DAMAGING ANY BLOOD VESSELS... Alda: OH, MY GOD, LOOK AT THE SIZE OF IT! Krum: THERE WE GO. OKAY, LET'S KEEP THAT OUT OF THERE. Krum: SINCE THAT WAS THE FIRST TIME WE EVER DID THAT PROCEDURE IT'S GOOD TO GET PRACTICE DOING IT, PERIOD. WE'RE DOING SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY SO IT'S BUILDING UP A REPERTOIRE OF CAPABILITIES FOR OTHER ANIMALS. DO YOU THINK IT'S PREMATURE TO CONGRATULATE YOU ON A HISTORIC FIRST? UM, IT SEEMS TO HAVE WORKED SO FAR. WE'RE HAPPY THAT SHE IS RECOVERING RIGHT NOW. SO THANK YOU. ( roars ) Alda: NEXT ON THE VETERINARY TEAM'S ROUNDS IS A VISIT WITH GUTHRIE. Trainer: TARGET! NOW, WHY DOES HE PUT HIS NOSE ON THAT BLUE THING LIKE THAT? THAT'S A FOCAL POINT FOR GUTHRIE. IT GIVES HIM A POINT WHERE HE SHOULD BE WHEN THE TRAINERS ARE GOING IN AND OUT OF HIS PEN. IS HE, LIKE, REALLY GOOD AT STAYING ON TARGET? HE'S REALLY GOOD AT STAYING ON TARGET. BECAUSE I HEAR THAT I'M GOING INTO THE PEN WITH YOU. YOU ARE GOING INTO THE PEN. I JUST HEARD THAT A SECOND AGO. ( laughs ) GET ON THE TARGET, WOULD YOU, GUTHRIE? GET ON THE TARGET. HOW DO YOU MAKE HIM GET ON THE TARGET? TARGET! WHY DOES HE DO THAT FOR YOU? BECAUSE I HAVE THE FOOD. YOU HAVE THE FISH IN YOUR POCKET. DON'T FORGET THE TARGET THING, OKAY? KEEP THAT IN MIND. YEAH, OKAY, OKAY. WATER! Alda: GUTHRIE, AS YOU'VE PROBABLY GUESSED BY NOW IS A PERFORMING SEA LION. I'M GOING TO GO IN FIRST AND... THE LAST PERSON IN, SHUT THE GATE BEHIND US. LAST PERSON IN, SHUT THE GATE. Alda: GUTHRIE'S BEEN TRAINED TO COOPERATE... VAY IS MIR! WATCH OUT! Alda: ... BUT HE WEIGHS WELL OVER A QUARTER TON. SO IF WE WANTED TO DO AN EYE EXAM... I'M LOOKING FOR A QUICK WAY OUT OF HERE. WE CAN GO DOWN AND TAKE A LOOK AND HE'LL HOLD HIMSELF STILL AND HE'LL LET US SHINE THE LIGHT IN HIS EYE-- THAT'S GOOD. AND NOW SHE'LL REWARD HIM FOR DOING THAT. GUTHRIE, OPEN YOUR MOUTH. OH, VERY GOOD! A LITTLE WIDER... HOLD IT... BLACK TEETH! TERRIFIC. A LITTLE, UH, A LITTLE YELLOW ON THE TIP OF HIS TONGUE THERE. HE'S KISSING THE CAMERA NOW. YOU KNOW WHAT HE DOES? HE MAKES A KISSING SOUND! ( roaring ) ANOTHER MEDICAL BEHAVIOR THAT GUTHRIE CAN DO IS IF HE HAD ANY RESPIRATORY PROBLEM-- IF HE HAD SNIFFLES OR SNEEZES OR WE THOUGHT THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH HIS LUNGS-- WE COULD ASK HIM TO BLOW IN A PETRI DISH WITH MEDIA ON IT SO IT'S A VERY EASY WAY TO GET A SAMPLE FROM UP... IN HIS NOSE AND HIS UPPER RESPIRATORY... OH, SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT GROWS? SO HOW DOES HE DO THAT? BREATHE. ( sniffing outward ) GOOD BOY. AND YOU CAN SEE, EVEN ON THAT THAT'S PLENTY OF SAMPLE. YEAH, YEAH. GUTHRIE, GRIN. Alda: I CAN UNDERSTAND TRAINING HIM SO THAT HE'LL ACCEPT MEDICAL PROCEDURES-- EXAMINATIONS AND THAT KIND OF THING-- THAT'S GOOD FOR HIS HEALTH. DOES TRAINING HIM TO PERFORM IN A SHOW FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT OF HUMANS-- THAT EXTRA TRAINING WHICH DOESN'T REALLY DIRECTLY SEEM TO AFFECT HIS HEALTH-- IS THAT GOOD FOR HIM OR BAD FOR HIM OR DOESN'T IT MATTER? I THINK IT'S ACTUALLY GOOD FOR HIM. IT ACTUALLY STIMULATES HIS MIND, AND HE ENJOYS IT. GOOD JOB, GUTH! Alda: WATCHING HIM PERFORM, IT'S EASY TO BELIEVE THAT AT LEAST MOST OF THE TIME, GUTHRIE DOES ENJOY IT. IT'S BACK TO THE IDEA OF ENRICHMENT AGAIN. GOOD JOB, GUTHRIE! ( audience applauds ) ( barking softly ) Alda: OUR LAST STOP TODAY IS TO CHECK ON SOME HARBOR SEAL PUPS THAT HAD BEEN FOUND ABANDONED A FEW WEEKS AGO ON NEW ENGLAND BEACHES. MY REPUTATION AS A SKILLED ANIMAL HANDLER HAD OBVIOUSLY PRECEDED ME. SO WHAT WE'RE GOING TO DO IS HAVE YOU BOTTLE-FEED NUMBER ONE. AND YOU MIGHT JUST WANT TO PUT THESE ON. AGAIN, YOU DON'T WANT TO GET BIT. I DON'T WANT TO GET BITTEN. WHY DON'T I WANT TO GET BITTEN? WELL, UM, SEALS CAN HAVE A... THEY'VE GOT A BACTERIA IN THEIR SALIVA THAT CAN POTENTIALLY BE VERY HAZARDOUS TO US. IF YOU GET BIT AND YOU GET SOME OF THAT SALIVA IN A CUT OR IN THE OPEN WOUND IT CAN BE VERY TOXIC TO YOUR SYSTEM AND IT CAN GO SYSTEMIC. WHAT, DO YOU THINK I'M CRAZY? I'M NOT CRAZY. I'M FUN-LOVING, I'M CURIOUS, BUT I'M NOT CRAZY. YOU FEED IT. ( laughs ) WELL, IT'S JUST A BOTTLE AND THERE'S NOT GOING TO BE A LOT OF RISK... THAT'S GOOD, YOU FEED IT. I'LL BE OVER HERE AND I'M SURE IT WILL BE VERY CUTE. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? Alda: "NUMBER ONE" IS ONE OF SEVERAL HARBOR SEAL PUPS BEING REHABILITATED HERE AT THE AQUARIUM BEFORE BEING RELEASED BACK INTO THE WILD. THEY'RE FED NOT MILK BUT A SPECIAL FISH MASH. Handler: AND I THINK HE'S ALL DONE. Alda: MANY OF THE ABANDONED SEAL PUPS ALSO HAVE MEDICAL PROBLEMS. "NUMBER FOUR" WAS SUFFERING FROM MALNUTRITION WHEN HE WAS BROUGHT IN A MONTH AGO. ( pup barks hoarsely ) Krum: LET'S TAKE A LOOK IN HIS MOUTH. JUST LIKE WE DID ON THE SEA LION WE'RE TAKING A LOOK AROUND. OF COURSE, THESE GUYS AREN'T TRAINED. WE DON'T WANT TO TRAIN THEM BECAUSE THEY'RE GOING TO BE RELEASED. WHAT ABOUT JUST HANDLING IT LIKE THIS? DOES THAT HAVE AN ADVERSE EFFECT ON ITS BEING ACCEPTED BACK INTO THE... IT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE. THESE ANIMALS, AS FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS THEY ARE ACCEPTED BACK INTO THE WILD, AND OFF THEY GO. Alda: AS IT HAPPENS, SEAL NUMBER FOUR WILL HELP TEST THE BELIEF THAT REHABILITATED PUPS MAKE IT WHEN RELEASED. FOUR MONTHS AFTER MY VISIT HE'S BEEN BROUGHT TO A BEACH IN BIDDEFORD, MAINE NEAR WHERE HE WAS ORIGINALLY FOUND. GLUED TO HIS BACK IS A MINIATURE TRANSMITTER THAT WILL RADIO DATA UP TO A SATELLITE. Krum: WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO IS REALLY JUST TRY TO COMPLETE THE STORY. WE KNOW WHERE THE ANIMAL CAME FROM. WE KNOW WHAT WAS WRONG WITH IT. NOW WE FEEL THAT IT'S HEALTHY AND SO NOW WE'RE GOING TO TRY TO TRACK IT AND FIND OUT WHERE IT IS AND HOW DEEP IT'S DIVING AND HOW MUCH TIME IT SPENDS OUT OF THE WATER THAT KIND OF THING SO HOPEFULLY WE CAN GET THE FINAL PICTURE AND KNOW HOW WELL HE DOES. Alda: UNDER THE GAZE OF THE LOCAL MEDIA SEAL PUP NUMBER FOUR AND A COMPANION CHECK OUT THE REAL WORLD AFTER A COZY FIVE MONTHS IN DR. KRUM'S CARE AT THE NEW ENGLAND AQUARIUM. AFTER ITS RELEASE HERE IN MID-OCTOBER THE PUP WAS TRACKED FOR OVER A MONTH DURING WHICH IT SWAM DOWN TO CAPE COD AND APPEARED TO BE DIVING AND FORAGING SUCCESSFULLY. AND AS WE'LL SEE IN THE REST OF OUR SHOW THIS IS ONLY ONE EXAMPLE OF HOW ZOOS AND AQUARIUMS ARE INCREASINGLY PLAYING A ROLE IN THE LIVES OF ANIMALS IN THE WILD. Alda: