[00:00.39]The South Pacific is a vast ocean wilderness.
[00:04.64]Its waters are teeming with life,
[00:07.18]from tropical coral reefs that attract the great variety to the cooler,
[00:10.80]temperate waters that attract the great numbers.
[00:14.98]So why is it that in the midst of all this richness
[00:18.44]the world's largest predators
[00:21.13]can struggle to survive in this endless blue?
[00:25.98]Nothing brings home the challenges of surviving
[00:28.95]in the South Pacific better than the epic true story
[00:33.30]that inspired Moby Dick. On 23rd February 1821,
[00:38.41]a lifeboat was found drifting in the eastern Pacific.
[00:42.59]In it lay two American whalemen,
[00:45.60]barely alive.
[00:47.84]Their whale ship had been sunk by an enormous sperm whale.
[00:51.41]For a staggering three months,
[00:53.47]these shipwrecked mariners had sailed
[00:55.25]across four and a half thousand miles
[00:57.33]of what may be the loneliest region on Earth.
[01:00.82]For these sailors,
[01:02.21]the South Pacific had become a living hell.
[01:05.95]So what is it about this ocean that makes survival here such a challenge?
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