(WATER GENTLY LAPPING)
(TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYING ON FIDDLE)
(WAVES BREAKING)
Off Ireland's west coast,
lie some of the most remote islands in Europe.
For Europeans, they were the very edge of the world.
Impossible rocks, sought out by a handful of humans
looking for God, and wild creatures
in search of shelter and food.
Today, the humans may be long gone,
their ancient churches and homes deserted.
But nature has moved in.
(FLUTE PLAYING TRADITIONAL MELODY)
My name is Eoin Warner
and I've spent my life travelling the length of Ireland
in search of its precious wild places
and the elusive animals that make them their home.
(GROANING)
(SPLASHING)
I'm now in the far south
and final stage of my Atlantic adventures,
exploring the hidden worlds
that are Ireland's Wild Islands.
(MUSIC INTENSIFYING)
(BELLOWING)
(MUSIC FADES)
(WATER RUMBLING)
I'm heading south, always south,
the mountains of Kerry
and the Dingle Peninsula on the horizon.
You have to be very careful when you come
to this part of the world, because you just fall
under a spell.
The people, the language, the music,
the landscape, its beauty.
And for me I think, the Dingle peninsula
and all of these islands,
they're like every part of this country that I love,
distilled into one tiny, little corner.
I'm into the third and final stage of my island odyssey.
I began on Rathlin, off Ireland's north-east coast,
and worked my way west and south.
This final stage will bring me around Kerry's magical islands
before hitting my home county, Cork,
and the end of my adventure.
South of Clare,
the Dingle peninsula guards the approaches to Kerry.
And the first islands you bump into are The Maharees.
This is Illauntannig,
the island of Saint Seanach
and, sure enough, Illauntannig is home
to an early Christian monastery,
said to have been founded by the saint himself
in the 6th century.
Almost nothing else is known about him,
but his monastery walls still stand
after more than a thousand years of Atlantic storms.
(MANDOLIN PLAYING)
Kerry's early Christian monks were legendary seafarers
and it's somehow fitting that, today,
these islands are host to the greatest travellers
in the entire animal kingdom.
(CAWING)
Every spring, Arctic and Common Terns
leave the Southern Hemisphere
and fly halfway round the planet to rear their chicks
on the safe grounds of the Maharees.
Closely related, they're hard to tell apart.
Common terns have black tipped beaks,
while those of their Arctic cousins
are bright red right to the end.
Any of these Arctic terns will travel
up to 70,000kms in one year.
Right down to the Antarctic Peninsula and back again -
the longest migration of any animal on earth.
Like that is just mind boggling.
(CAWING)
And they spend their lives in this perpetual migration
between the Northern Hemisphere and its summer
down to the Southern Hemisphere and its summer.
All of that amazing journey starts here,
on a little island off the Maharees peninsula.
♪
Both species mate in April and May
and the eggs are laid in the days after.
(SQUEAKING CALL)
They're also very brave parents,
they're very defensive of their chicks
and they have no problem in harassing a much larger bird
if they get too close.
(TRILLING, CAWING)
This Oystercatcher seems to be just looking for trouble.
But the chick's best survival strategy
is to stay well hidden.
♪
And as soon as the parents come back
with their sand eels in their mouths,
they come rushing out for a feed.
(CHIRPING)
♪
The reason these amazing birds are here
is because of our long summer days,
they need those days to gather as much fish as possible
to feed their young, to fledge them quickly
for that long, incredible journey
back down to the Antarctic.
And that's the crazy thing about these birds
and these huge migrations, is that no one shows them
where to go or why they should go there.
And they're the mysteries in nature
that I don't think we'll ever understand fully
why or how it happens. And maybe that's better.
But it's no less amazing.
(LOUD CHIRPING)
So often, when you look at the ocean
and that featureless surface,
it can seem so empty, devoid of life.
But then that minor miracle occurs.
Push your face through that mirror
and a whole garden of Eden is revealed.
The waters around the Maharees
are renowned for their abundant life.
Like everywhere intensive fishing has taken its toll.
But these backwaters of Tralee Bay
are still home to some very special creatures.
Remarkable survivors that have changed very little
since dinosaurs ruled the earth.
(SLOSHING)
Stingrays.
At high tides near the full moons of summer,
they come in from the deep to breed,
cruising these shallow waters in complete silence.
At the very base of the tail,
you can see the barb, their defensive weapon,
and that's where they get their name.
Their sting is extremely painful,
but if you keep your distance, there's little to fear
for these are shy and gentle creatures.
And they're in danger.
Worldwide, their numbers are plummeting from overfishing.
A sad story for remarkable survivors
that have been around for 150 million years or more.
This place is so special,
to them and to so many other ray and skate species.
They're here because Tralee Bay is a sanctuary for them.
They're protected. There's no tangle nets here.
Protection works, legislation works,
people's action works. And it's not about
the next generation or the younger generation.
Each one of us is complicit
in the changes that are happening,
each one of us can make a difference.
(GURGLING)
♪
It's funny how, you know, mountains are always measured
in feet above sea level,
but you really rarely ever see one
coming up straight out of the sea like this.
The whole immense size of Mount Brandon.
Brandon's named after St. Brendan the Navigator,
who set off to find the New World to the west
from just round the corner at Brandon's Creek.
(MUSIC BURSTING)
Today, Brendan is the patron saint of the US Navy
and Christopher Columbus is said to have consulted his voyages
before his own trans-Atlantic adventures.
The ancient texts describe Brendan reaching Arctic islands
of ice and fire in the 6th century.
Some claim he was the first European
to reach North America itself.
Early in the voyage,
Brendan stopped to rest on a small island.
Lighting a fire, he soon discovered
he wasn't on an island at all -
but the back of a giant beast.
(POWERFUL WHOOSHING)
♪
Today, some of the largest whales on the planet
still visit these waters off County Kerry.
The fin whale is the second largest creature
to have ever lived.
(POWERFUL WHOOSHING)
Big whales like deep water,
and out here the seabed quickly drops to 100 metres or more,
which is why these fin whales can be seen so close to land.
One minute they dominate the waves,
their loud blows jetting 8 metres into the air.
Seconds later they're gone,
the ocean empty and silent.
(GENTLE RIPPLING)
In my mid-teens, I was sent to the Dingle Peninsula
to learn Irish by my mother.
It was my first time actually seeing the Irish language
spoken as a community language -
spoken by old people, by young people.
(MUSIC RISING)
I found an affinity with the Irish language
when I came here that time,
and I always promised myself that I would learn it properly,
someday. So in my mid twenties,
I left my career and came down
and I spent a year in a cottage.
And I never thought at the time
how it would impact the rest of my life.
But there I met my wife and...
And it's funny how one year in your life
can change the rest of your journey.
(MYSTICAL MELODY PLAYING ON FLUTE)
Almost every day of that year,
I walked this coast
haunted by some brooding characters just offshore.
Until 70 years ago,
the Blasket Islands were one of the last true outposts
of an ancient Gaelic culture.
Home to a community of native Irish speakers,
whose language and stories were some of the last whispers
from a fast-fading world.
Those people are gone now,
and today the Great Blasket Island
is home to one of Ireland's greatest wildlife spectacles.
At first glance, it looks almost like a pile of rocks.
Then the rock begins to move.
(LIVELY TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYING)
There can be a thousand grey seals hauled up on this beach.
It's like a scene from Antarctica.
They spend up to two thirds of their lives out in the ocean -
but twice a year they have to come ashore,
to mate, give birth, and moult.
(FLAPPING) (GROWLING)
Grey seals have two layers of fur,
which they must shed every year...
a hugely uncomfortable business.
(SHUFFLING) (GROANING)
They're so itchy and they just haven't got
the limbs to scratch what they want to scratch.
You can see them arching themselves,
just trying to find that one patch that they can't reach.
and then they'll just resort
to rubbing themselves in the sand again.
(SNORTING)
(GROANING)
You really see the conflict happening
when the tide is filling,
because it's pushing the individuals
further and further up the beach
and there's less and less beach left there for them.
And you'll find in particular the big beach masters,
the big males are constantly snapping and snarling
at anything that comes near them.
(SNARLING)
And come breeding season,
all hell breaks loose.
(WAILING)
(GRUNTING)
(ROARING)
(SNARLING)
(WAILING)
It's easy to forget that most of these animals' lives
are spent in or under the water.
And it's that real torpedo shape
that gives them huge manoeuvrability,
but also speed and power under the water.
And any time I go freediving,
I try to emulate that movement, try to mimic it,
but unfortunately, I ain't no seal.
They don't just come here from Kerry or Cork,
they come from northern France,
from the west coast of Scotland, all to these places,
because this is one place, where they feel safe.
And it's safe because there's no humans living here anymore.
♪
Back in 1916, there were 176 people living on the island.
And you have to really respect the people who lived here.
That was a really, really hard graft.
They were completely isolated.
And ultimately, that's the reason
that people left this island.
The vast majority of the islanders,
they went to Springfield, Massachusetts
in the United States.
You wonder how they would see the island now today,
with their houses ruined
and the beach left to the seals. They couldn't imagine
this number of seals here.
(BELLOWING)
And to think that these animals were almost extinct,
a century ago. These were the first animals
where there was international legislation
brought in to conserve their numbers in 1914.
Like this is just a national treasure,
absolute national treasure.
(WAVES CRASHING)
Just a few kilometres west of the Great Blasket,
is Inis Mhic Uileáin,
where just one family scraped a living out of the Atlantic.
(JAUNTY TUNE PLAYING ON MANDOLIN)
Every island I've been to on this journey
has its own personality, its own character.
And this island, Inis Mhic Uileáin, is no different.
What's really special about it,
is that you're elevated at all times,
which gives you the most amazing vistas.
And being on a small island,
you're just surrounded by the sea,
the constant sound of it.
You can taste the salt in the wind.
(GULLS CALLING)
(FIRE CRACKLING)
The gulls are going to sleep,
the last call of the evening.
This is the most westerly habitable island
where families were raised, in Europe.
Spending a night here on Inis Mhic Uileáin
is such a privilege because so few people have ever lived here.
The last people, the Ó Dálaigh's,
they left in 1903.
They raised 10 children on this rock,
on the edge of the Atlantic.
One by one, all of their children
left for the new world, left for America.
This is splendid isolation,
and I feel so lucky to be part of it.
(GENTLE MELODY RISING)
It's almost as if the landscape is unreal,
it's so perfect, so perfect.
(BELLOWING)
(LENGTHY BELLOWING)
(BELLOWING CONTINUES)
The calls of Red Deer have echoed across Ireland
since the Stone Age - 5,000 years ago.
These are some of the last survivors
of the original bloodline.
Their numbers were decimated
from deforestation and hunting by humans.
So much so that there was only about 70 animals left
in the 1960s, in Killarney National Park.
There was a big danger, they would hybridise
with introduced sika deer.
And it was thought a really inventive idea
to bring these animals out to Inis Mhic Uileáin,
where there would be a pool of their genetics here
to repopulate the mainland if anything ever happened
to the Red Deer there
through hybridization or disease.
Only 13 animals were brought out here in the eighties.
And over that time, they've flourished.
The stags this time of year are the most regal looking.
They're at the peak of their condition.
(BELLOWING)
This is the rut -
this is what separates the men from the boys
as they compete for the females.
(SLOSHING)
Smell plays a vital part in the process.
Wallowing in mud helps spread
the stag's masculine scent all over his body.
(GRUNTING)
At the end of the day, these animals don't want
to fight each other because if they fight,
there's a chance that they're gonna get injured
or lose a lot of energy. So there's a lot of posturing
to see who is going to be the king of the island.
(GRUNTING, BELLOWING)
But when they do clash, it's serious.
(CLANGING)
♪
(TRIUMPHANT BELLOW)
It's the females, the hinds, who pick their stags.
They're the ones who are going to choose
who's going to father their offspring.
They're looking for the stag
with the deepest bellow, who can bellow the longest,
who has the finest and largest set of antlers.
Only the strongest, fittest males
will mate and carry on their genetics
for the next generation.
(WAVES CRASHING)
(GULLS CALLING)
To watch what must be
one of Ireland's most beautiful animals
in one of the most spectacular settings...
..it is just magical.
The complete and utter wildness of this corner of Ireland.
All you have to do is just take one look
at this whole landscape, how it's being cleaved
and carved by the sea.
And strangely enough, this little corner
of the Dingle Peninsula
has probably the largest concentration
of wild mammals in the whole country.
(POWERFUL WHOOSHING)
(GULLS CALLING)
A playground for some of the most
impressive animals on Earth.
After a century on the edge of extinction,
humpback whales reappeared in Irish waters in 1999.
Since then, Kerry has become a hotspot
for these wonderful animals.
They come here for the rich feeding.
(WHOOSHING)
(GULLS CRYING)
Bubble netting is a favourite trick.
In a remarkable display
of co-operation and intelligence,
humpbacks will blow rings of bubbles
to trap the fish inside,
that then can then be scooped up in giant mouthfuls.
(WHISTLING)
(GULLS CRYING)
(UNDERWATER CALM)
And what better way to round off a fine feed
than a spot of pec-slapping.
♪
Is this play or a message to a mate?
We may never know.
Always on the move,
humpbacks can travel 8,000 kilometres a year
up and down the Atlantic,
between rich fishing off Norway
and their breeding grounds off Africa or the West Indies.
(PIANO PLAYING MELODY)
Since their reappearance at the turn of the century,
over 100 different humpbacks
have been recorded passing through these waters.
It is just wonderful to see them back.
We are on the very edge of Ireland.
And up ahead of us,
Sceilg Bheag and Sceilg Mhichíl.
(TINKLING MELODY ON PIANO)
"I tell you the thing doesn't belong to any world,
you and I have ever lived or worked in."
"It is part of our dream world."
George Bernard Shaw was right -
there is nowhere quite like Skellig.
(HAUNTING VIOLIN MELODY PLAYING)
Two pinnacles of sandstone,
dropping sheer into the Atlantic.
♪
When you come up on Sceilg Bheag at a distance,
you see this white haze around it.
And as you get close, you realise
that white haze is thousands and thousands of gannets.
(FURIOUS CALLING)
50,000 gannets
choosing this rock to nest and breed
and bring on the next generation.
(CAWING, SQUAWKING)
And they're such a magnificent bird -
almost 6 foot across in wingspan.
And the colouration, the brightest of whites
blending into that beautiful kind of mustard yellow
and those piercing blue eyes.
(GANNETS CALLING)
Sceilg Bheag or "Little Skellig",
is one of the largest gannet colonies in the world.
The birds spend the winter
roaming the entire Atlantic
until spring draws them back
to this cathedral in the ocean.
(COOING)
1,500 years ago,
a group of monks set sail from mainland Ireland.
Their mission was to build a monastery
on the very edge of the world.
On the most extreme place in all of Christendom.
(GENTLE MELODY PLAYING ON GUITAR)
They chose Skellig Michael.
♪
Over hundreds of years,
the monks built their staircases to the sky.
It strikes you as you first begin to climb the steps,
the amount of time that was put into them -
from chiselling out individual steps
into the bare rock, to physically moving
every single stone, one by one.
(CAWING)
Over 600 steps lead up
to one of the most magical ancient sites on Planet Earth.
♪
Skellig's early Christian monastery.
The monks lived in these dry stone cells
and had a number of tiny chapels
for ceremonies and prayer.
Most still intact
after more than a thousand years on this isolated pinnacle.
And when the monks came here,
they gave complete dedication of their lives.
Their life's work was to purify themselves,
to ready themselves for the next world.
For these monks, they were looking to
build a monastery in the clouds, in the sky,
as close as they possibly could get to God.
Until very recently, until 600 years ago,
we believed the world was flat
and this was the end of the known world.
All you see is sky and sea.
But for them, they had no knowledge
of what lay beyond that. This was the frontier,
the very liminal part of human civilisation.
(SEA ROARING IN DISTANCE)
You really get an appreciation of how these monks lived.
And you can almost imagine in dark, windy,
cold nights like this,
that lovely soft glow of light...
.. seeping through the cracks of the cells,
from an oil flame,
as the monks worked by night.
And things haven't changed that much
in the last thousand years when the monks were living here.
The same sounds of water, and of wind.
(LOW GUTTERAL COOING)
And there's one other sound.
And as the night matures and grows darker,
the sound gets stronger
and it's an unworldly sound.
I can only imagine what the monks
must have thought when they heard it first.
(PERSISTENT, RAPID BIRD CALLING)
Legend had it that the calls were dead sailors,
returning to torment the living.
(CALLING HEIGHTENS)
But these are the calls of a creature
that has travelled from the Antarctic ocean and Brazil,
to rear their young on Skellig Michael.
The Manx Shearwater.
Supreme flyers,
shearwaters are hopeless on land.
And easy prey for the giant gulls
that patrol the island by day.
So this male has picked the very darkest night
to return to the nest.
Somewhere in the monastery,
his mate and chick are patiently waiting for him.
They call to each other in the darkness
to help guide him home.
(SING-SONG SQUAWKING)
(TRILLING CALL)
For days, even weeks,
they've been waiting for him to return
with a belly full of fish for the chick.
(LOUD SQUAWKING)
And she is just delighted to see him.
♪
Shearwater's pair for life
and the parents' powerful bond,
brings them back year after year
to raise a single chick on Skellig.
(SQUEAKING)
These are very demanding youngsters,
requiring up to 70 days care
before they can survive on their own.
(WHISTLING CALL)
It's now Dad's turn to babysit.
Mum is starving.
She must head to sea before the gulls come hunting
in the first light of dawn.
Because of the lack of lights out in these islands,
there's a depth of darkness
that you just don't get in the mainland anymore.
And that depth of darkness really reveals the night sky.
That's one thing that we're really losing
with the rollout of strong LED lights.
We're losing the connection with the sky.
We're losing with connection... with darkness in general.
(LULLABY-LIKE MUSIC)
When you're sailing
you tend to feel the wind in the sails
before you actually feel the wind on your face.
And you just get that squeak of the ropes
as everything tightens.
And you are sailing...
.. and saying goodbye to Sceilg Mhichíl.
(GANNETS CALLING)
I'm now heading
into a very familiar part of the world.
My home county, Cork.
This is the closest part of this country to my heart,
this is Bantry Bay. This is where I grew up.
This bay was also where I grew to love the natural world.
I remember the excitement of anything new,
anything unusual,
from strange ducks to stray dolphins.
But recently Bantry has become home
to something very special indeed.
♪
The largest aerial predator
to hunt in these skies since the Ice Age.
White Tailed Eagles.
(SPLASHING)
For the last 100 years, there were none,
they had been persecuted to extinction.
But in recent decades, a wonderful initiative
has brought these magnificent birds
back to Irish skies.
Almost 150 chicks were gifted by Norway,
and slowly but surely, they're settling in.
Critical to their success is breeding -
the new arrivals raising families of their own.
Garnish Island is tucked away
at the head of Bantry Bay.
And here is a remarkable symbol of hope -
a nest with some of the first sea eagles
to be born in Ireland in more than a century.
You can see the haze, the heat haze
and there they sit and wait for their parents to visit.
(SPLASHING)
And this male is the first bird
to sire Irish-born sea eagles
in this country in over 100 years.
He was born in Ireland and now he's siring
the next generation, and that is really special.
But when you see how well this has worked,
you begin to imagine as to the other animals
that were wiped from this stunning landscape
and how the skies could look again,
how the woods could feel again
if we bring them back.
Bantry Bay is where I became an adult,
and it's here I learned how to sail.
My early childhood we'd spend a lot of time
going to the various islands within the bay
in my Dad's boat.
Dad was obsessed with boats generally,
but above all he loved these boats,
Galway Hookers.
My father worked at sea for years,
and that's all he ever wanted to do.
He was... half-married to it, I guess.
When a new oil terminal was built on the island ahead of me,
Dad got a job there as a ship's pilot,
guiding the tankers in to offload their oil at the jetty.
It was perfect.
He could spend his days at sea,
and still be home for dinner.
But one night, everything changed.
Unfortunately, in 1979,
just off Whiddy Island in front of me,
the Betelgeuse oil tanker broke its back and exploded,
killing all 50 people on board, including my father.
So many things went wrong that shouldn't have gone wrong,
especially when you see the old jetty,
twisted and rusted, and half-melted
from the heat of what happened that night.
And it was an awful way...
.. to lose your life, between drowning and fire.
(GENTLE MELODY ON GUITAR)
The scar both physically and emotionally is still there.
(EMOTIONAL) And even now, sailing towards it...
(COMPOSED) It's not easy.
(FEMALE VOICE SINGING IRISH MELODY)
♪ Faoiseamh a gheobhadsa
♪ Seal beag gairid
♪ I measc mo dhaoine
When your father dies at such a young age,
you're robbed of so much.
Like, I would've loved for him to have shown me
how to sail a boat like this.
♪ Maidin is trathnona
♪ O Luan go Satharn
But you know, when someone goes,
I believe that part of them lives on through you
and certainly for myself and my brothers,
the love of the sea -
being on it, sailing on it,
swimming and diving underneath the surface of it,
it is so strong in us all.
(SINGING RESUMES)
♪ Faoiseamh a gheobhadsa
♪ Seal beag gairid
♪ I measc mo dhaoine
♪ O chra chroi
♪ O bhfuar d'aigne
♪ O uaigneas duairc
Fastnet Rock,
the southernmost point of Ireland
with a beautiful lighthouse sitting on top.
Its name in Irish is very descriptive -
it's Carraig Aonair, the Lone Rock.
And it carries a huge significance
to a lot of the emigrants that left these shores
in the 19th century, fleeing the Famine.
Because this was the last sight they saw
before hitting the New World.
These Atlantic stretches off County Cork
feel the most exposed of all Irish waters to me.
Due west and the first stop is Canada,
due south, Africa.
Year round,
the Gulf Stream brings warm water from the Caribbean,
blessing Ireland with mild winters
and buckets of rain.
(SPLASHING)
The Gulf Stream also brings life.
(TINKLING PIANO MUSIC)
One of the most beautiful fish in the sea.
It's like all of the ocean's colours
have been distilled into one animal.
Blue shark are among
the greatest ocean wanderers.
Found all over the planet,
they follow their prey, herring, mackerel and squid,
wherever it takes them.
Apex predators, at the top of the food chain,
they are curious creatures and show no fear.
I wish they were more fearful.
For they are the most heavily fished sharks on the planet,
hunted for their meat and the insane demand
for shark fin soup.
Fate and an ocean current
brought them to these seas off County Cork.
A journey not unlike my own.
Both of us in search of a rich, clean ocean,
where the creatures of the wild still swim free.
(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC BUILDING)
(MUSIC CONTINUES)
This journey, I've been looking forward to for so long,
and now I know because I'm rounding the Fastnet,
that it's coming to an end.
From the northernmost point of this island
up in Inishtrahull,
down to the Fastnet, the southernmost point.
But like any journey, it's more than going from A to B.
(MUSIC BURSTS)
On this journey, I was hoping to find places
where Ireland's wild creatures still flourish.
(SQUAWKING)
To find echoes of our once wonderful wild world.
I feel elated, tired...
.. so privileged to have been able to see what I've seen.
This journey has been about getting a small glimpse
into the lives of the animals that make
the most extreme edge of this island their home.
Remarkable creatures
who have survived centuries of hunting and harassment,
but still cling to life in the vast sea of uncertainty,
that we humans have created.
Long may they live,
out here on the edge of the world -
on Ireland's Wild Islands.