BBC's 'The Blue Planet: Frozen Seas'

Life on the edge of a frozen sea is tough. Storms, fierce and unrelenting, blast the icy wilderness. The only refuge is under the ice, where there is an almost magical stillness and calm, cut off from the fury above. It is dark and cripplingly cold most of the year...but there is life in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.   This Saturday on GMA News TV, BBC’s The Blue Planet explores the frozen seas at both ends of the earth, where the lives of the animals are governed by the annual advance and retreat of the sea ice.

  The Arctic is a frozen sea surrounded by land, and here, an insatiable hunter, the polar bear, roams over the ice and the shorelines in search of any prey it can find. Arctic seals breed with the threat of polar bears in mind. Some do it on shifting ice, some nurse their pups in only four days, others give birth in ice caves where the pup is hidden. Beluga whales, trapped when vast tracks of the sea froze, keep a hole in the ice open by simply surfacing in it to breathe. Even they are easy prey for hungry polar bears.   Animals that do stay north for the winter are forced to use polynyas - areas of open water where the currentis so strong that the ice cannot freeze. Walruses return to the same polynyas year after year in the near certain knowledge they will find access to the water.   Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ice. Most animals choose to escape winter in Antarctica, but not the emperor penguins. They stay to incubate their eggs and rear their chicks during the worst weather conditions on our planet. Weddell seals are also able to cope; they keep their breathing holes open by scraping away the ice with their teeth. This gives them access to the sea beneath which is a welcome refuge from the howling winds.   Only in spring, with the retreating ice and light reaching the water, do animals get a respite. Plankton blooms, starting a food chain, feeding vast hordes of migrating fish, birds, whales, seals and polar bears. Walruses rake the seabed for clams. Minke and humpback whales gorge themselves on gigantic swarms of krill. But it is a brief indulgence, for the ice soon returns and pushes life back into the ocean.   BBC’s “The Blue Planet: Frozen Seas”, narrated in Filipino by Kara David, airs this Saturday, September 22, at 11PM on GMA News TV Channel 11.