[waves crashing] [calm music] [fish splutters] [tense music] [waves crash] [mystical music] - The beaches of Southern California; a whole slice of America's popular culture got its start right here.

Beach parties, The Beach Boys, surfing, and all those surfing movies were born right here on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

But few of the millions of people who bask in this California sun realize that just beyond those waves lies one of our country's greatest wilderness areas; a place inhabited by some of the most awesome and bizarre creatures on the planet: giant jellyfish, basking sharks, and the largest animal that ever lived, the blue whale.

Howard Hall has spent three years in these coastal waters making a film that is quite simply the most remarkable underwater film I have ever seen.

[waves crashing] [beach goer speaking indistinctly] Along the crowded coast of Southern California, life revolves around the ever-present sun and the ever-changing sea.

[waves crash] But even those who can master the mighty Pacific surf have little sense of the other world that lies beyond the shining waves.

[water gurgles] [ominous music] This mysterious realm has its own strange forests, planes, and deserts.

[calm music] And the amazing variety of life here is ruled not only by heat and cold, darkness and light, but by tides, currents and storms.

These govern the seasons in the sea.

[calm music] Summer in a forest of seaweed.

In the waning afternoon light, pilgrims glide through the amber glades of giant kelp to keep an ancient and urgent appointment.

[ominous music] At twilight, hundreds of bat rays rise from their daytime slumber.

They unfurl their four-foot wings to join in a nuptial flight.

[mysterious music] No one knows how far they travel to take part in this trans-like courtship and who can guess by what subtle insinuations they make their choice of mate.

[mysterious music continues] Somehow the choice is made and the courting pair peels off from the swirling dance.

In gentle foreplay, the male rubs his back against the female's belly.

She may still reject him by darting away, but if pleased, she slows her wing beats and they mate.

[mysterious music continues] For two weeks, they join in these nightly moonlit flights and then as mysteriously as they arrived, each bat leaves alone.

[waves crashing] A surface current flows south along this rugged coast, pulling water up from the depths just offshore.

The forest of giant kelp, which rides the undulating swell, thrives on this upwelling of cold water, rich in nutrients.

[water gurgling] The floating canopy is a powerhouse, harnessing sunlight to nourish this dense undersea forest.

Stretching 100 feet to the surface, these are the largest seaweeds in the world.

Many more thousands of animals live here than could without the giant kelp.

This fish is one of the most colorful.

The bold Garibaldi stands out in brilliant contrast to the algae while the giant kelp fish almost disappears among the fronds.

It mimics the color, shape, even the movement of the blades.

At the base of each blade, gas-filled swellings cause frond to float.

No seaweed needs roots; they absorb nutrients directly from seawater, but without being anchored to the rocks by a holdfast, the whole plant and the animals at shelters would simply float away.

From forest floor to canopy, the kelp is home to a perfusion of different creatures.

Like a forest out of fable, it hides many mysteries.

[ominous music] Modeled like a Stonehenge monolith, the 40-foot hulk of a gray whale materializes out of the emerald gloom.

[calm music] It is midway on the longest migration of any mammal 5,000 miles from the Bering Strait to its breeding grounds into lagoons of Baja California.

It was always thought that gray whales fasted while migrating, but this one scoops up a great mouthful of kelp, perhaps to snack on the shellfish that cling to the weed.

[water sloshing] Their coastal migrations made the grays easy prey for whalers.

By the 1920s, they were almost extinct.

Today, after 40 years of full protection, 18,000 make the journey south each year.

Their passage signals the advent of winter.

But there are marine mammals that make the kelp forest their home year-round.

[birds cawing] [water trickles] Southern sea otters once ranged all along the Pacific coast, but cursed with luxurious fur coveted by human beings, they, like the whales, were almost annihilated.

Although protected now, the otter's recovery has been slow.

Only a 10th of its original number clings to life in the kelp.

[water gurgling] The otter rolls in the trailing fronds, tucking itself into the ultimate waterbed.

Now it can rest securely without fear of being swept into the pounding surf.

[waves crashing] The winter swell begins to grow, a rougher ride for the great blue heron.

The storms of winter, a force to be reckoned with both above and below the surface.

[water gurgling] [wind howling] Driven by the wind over the wide Pacific, the swell builds.

Even 100 feet below, the surge is felt, violently stirring oxygen and nutrients into a fertile brew.

[waves crashing] 20-foot waves tear the kelp to tatters.

Kelp shreds are a vital food source both here and in the ocean depths, where much of it will settle.

In severe storms, whole kelp forests can be torn from their moorings, set adrift by the awesome power of the waves.

[waves crashing] Even in its rage, the surf remains a playground.

[water sloshing] [seals bellow] Harbor seals play in the foam and catch a wave when they can.

As the surf spends its fury, they dry their coats in the last rays of the winter sun.

[waves crashing] The dying sun and rising moon work their magic on the tides.

The mid-winter moon casts a spell, conjuring a ghostly invasion from the open sea.

[enchanting music] Opalescent squid rocket out of the abyss like living missiles.

Their multitude darkens the moon shadowing the sandy plane just outside the kelp forest.

[enchanting music continues] Each night they migrate to the surface to feed, but this night they have no thought of food.

They have come here to breed.

[enchanting music continues] Propelled by bursts of seawater, the males jet after the females and grasp them in an embrace of blushing tentacles, the color dissuades her other suitors.

The male then uses a special arm to deposit his sperm beneath the female's mantle.

Once the transfer is complete, the female has another task to perform.

She produces an egg case almost as long as her body, which she packs with more than 200 eggs.

Then she searches for a sandy place to secure her precious cargo, digging down several inches to bury the small anchor that tethers the egg case.

Late comers attach their egg cases to other clusters creating fantastic bouquets of new life.

Intent upon their urgent mission, the squared ignore all else.

Males frantically mob the remaining virgin females occasionally flushing with success.

Death stalks the frenzied swarm, pelagic stingrays enfold the squid in their dark wings.

They have followed the school from the open ocean to gorge on the distracted squid.

Yet even those that escape the stingrays will not survive this night.

Having poured every last bit of their strength into the next generation, the entire school dies.

The mid-winter dance is done.

Only corpses remain for the sanddabs to squabble over.

Decorator crabs and even anemones share in the feast.

[somber music] But their eggs will inherit the sea.

The squid have left their legacy for the future.

[music builds up] The steady rhythm of sun, moon, and earth brings spring to these waters, awakening desire in the California sea lions.

These adolescents aren't old enough to actually produce young, but they enjoy this tender encounter, rocking gently in the ocean's embrace.

[enchanting music] Sea lions are so playful it's hard to tell whether they do things for pleasure or for more practical reasons.

No one knows why they carefully select and eat small stones, but they do, perhaps they're for ballast or to dislodge internal parasites.

Or perhaps they simply enjoy the taste.

Sleek and sassy California sea lions are the most graceful of all the seals.

Gregarious by nature, the rocky shallows swarm with sea lions as the breeding season approaches.

[sea lion squeals] [sea lion squealing] By early June, the adults have gathered at the rookeries.

Each mature bull is crowned by a sagittal crest the symbol of his breeding status.

But right now, the females are giving birth on the beach and they won't be ready to mate until their pups are three weeks old.

Only then will the bulls attempt to claim breeding territories.

For now, they while away the warm spring days in gentler pursuits.

[water bubbling] Just offshore from the sea lion nursery, sea otters warm themselves on the kelp forest canopy.

[water trickling] Whenever they're on the surface, they vigorously rub every inch of their coats.

This captures an insulating layer of air in the dense fur that keeps out the chill when they dive.

These endearing clowns play a vital role in the balance between predator and prey in the kelp forest, for otters love to eat sea urchins and sea urchins love to eat kelp.

Few other denizens of the kelp forest put sea urchins on the menu.

This gentle six-foot ogre is a wolf eel with a face worthy of its prickly prey.

The urchin spines are no protection from the wolf eel's massive jaws and grinding teeth.

Unfortunately, there are too few wolf eels to keep the urchins in check.

Without sea otters to control them, urchin populations can explode.

A slow motion army of urchins with as many as 300 per square yard devourers everything in its path.

Eating through the holdfast, they set whole forests adrift, leaving behind what is aptly called an urchin barren.

[ominous music] Once the urchins have eaten their way through a grove of kelp, they've no choice but to move on.

Setting off across the sandflats in search of greener pastures, it's a dangerous crossing.

[ominous music continues] The white urchins which live here easily overwhelm their larger cousins.

Condense the work of several hours into a few seconds and this apparently peaceful gathering is revealed as an attack, violent and deadly.

[ominous music continues] Viewed at this speed, the sandflat comes alive with life and death struggles.

Bat stars also hunt down the migrating urchins.

They turn the urchin over with their powerful tubed feet to reach its unprotected parts beneath.

Then they insert their stomachs into the urchins mouth and digest it from the inside out.

A swarm of white urchins cleans up the scraps.

Seen at high speed, starfish have a surprisingly active social life.

In our normal timeframe, however, life on the sand plane seems to grind to a halt.

Compared with the kelp forest, there seems little life here, but there is enough potential prey to keep this swell shark well fed.

A timid creature it hunts at night by ambush, and for its own safety, can wedge its body in a rock crevice by swelling up, hence its name.

The swell shark is doubly equipped to hunt in darkness.

Not only can it sense the weak electric impulses produced by the muscles of its prey, but its eyes are sensitive to the faintest glimmer of light.

This female is bent upon another task.

She lays an egg, one of the few she will produce this year.

It's safe inside a leathery capsule disguised as a piece of kelp.

She abandons her offspring to its fate, but it will have 10 months to grow before it must take its chances on the reef.

Until then, it will be safe in its mermaid's purse.

It begins swimming months before it ever plies the open sea.

Almost a year later, having outgrown the safety of its home, the young shark secretes an enzyme dissolving the seal of the egg case.

Free at last, it sets off in pursuit of its first meal, already too big to be attempting meal itself.

A different bit of kelp debris turns out to be yet another magic purse with its own tiny genie about to emerge.

Like the swell shark, the horn shark has spent months in its egg case living off its yolks sac.

It leaves its sanctuary a perfect six-inch miniature of the four-foot adult.

Driven by hunger, it strikes out towards the sand plane, unaware of the formidable predators that lurk there.

Luckily, it packs a secret weapon.

With a gulp, the horn shark is inhaled.

Then with a gasp, it sped out.

Miraculously, it is whole and unharmed.

True to its name, the horn shark is armed with a spine at the base of its dorsal fin.

A painful surprise when rammed into the tender roof of its attacker's mouth.

Its hiding place exposed, the ray-like angel shark glides off like a sinister-flying carpet.

Unlike sharks, squid have colossal numbers of defenseless young in the hope that some will beat the odds.

Only a tiny fraction of these minute hatchlings will survive the next year and return to breed.

[enchanting music] First, they join the living stream of plankton that flows out of the kelp forest, feeding many mouths.

[enchanting music continues] Like a specter out of nightmare, the basking shark sweeps through the plankton.

The gaping maw of this 30-foot monster could easily engulf a human being, but his prey is microscopic.

His gills expanded into a giant sieve raked plankton from the living meadows of the sea.

[elegant music] Small schools of these harmless giants follow the plankton ridge currents, but sometimes the currents kidnap even stranger animals of the open sea.

[dark music] A gigantic pelagic jellyfish floats out of the blue.

It is a new species never seen before and has extravagantly thrilled oral arms trailing some 20 feet from its mouth.

[dark music continues] An entire squadron of these inner spaceships has been carried off course.

[dark music continues] Even the huge pulsating bell three feet across cannot fight the current.

Sadly, shipwreck is inevitable for these magnificent vessels and for the host of passengers sailing with them.

The jellyfishes fringe of stinging cells protects this young slender crab, which feeds on plankton caught in the mucus coating.

But just what this bizarre dance is all about remains a mystery.

Is the crab enjoying a significant partnership or is it just an accidental tourist caught up in the impending disaster?

Between deadly whip-like tentacles and stinging oral arms, young jackfish carefully pick their way.

They are not immune to the jellyfish's venom but the protection that it offers repays them for the occasional twinge.

The resident fish of the nearby kelp forest descend upon this unwitting visitor to their world.

They nibble on the oral arms despite their lining of stinging cells.

For the Garibaldi, the venom only seems to enhance the flavor.

[dark music continues] Although these Garibaldi may never meet this type of jellyfish again, they swim daily among its relatives.

These anemones were free swimming jellyfish themselves before they turned upside down and settled permanently onto the sea floor.

Their bodies are encased in a protective tube leaving only their tentacles exposed, richly armed with stinging cells.

Like a living minefield, they wait for the current to sweep plankton within their grasp.

Upon contact, their deadly tentacles coil downward delivering minute prey to their gaping central mouth.

This poisonous blossom also acts as a defense, but no defense is perfect.

[enchanting music] The rainbow nudibranch drops in for a meal.

It's a sea slug with a taste for tube anemones.

It creeps up the anemone's protective tube, arching up and over to grip the slippery tentacles with its vice-like mouth.

Who has swallowed whom?

The anemone's retreat wasn't quick enough.

It has lost a mouthful of tentacles.

But the anemone will recover from its haircut and the nudibranch gets away with much more than a meal.

Remarkably, it manages to swallow the tentacles without triggering their stinging cells.

Instead, they migrate through its digestive tract to surface fully armed into feathery gills on its back.

It wears this stolen armor as a defense against its own predators.

[enchanting music] Nudibranchs advertise their secondhand stinging power with vibrant colors, so they have few enemies.

One of these is a close relative.

It's a sea hare called Navanax.

It tracks the nudibranch across the rocky reef by following its telltale trail of slime.

Inside Navanax's swollen gut, the anemone's stinging cells will finally be digested.

Another killer of the reef emerges from its sea cave.

The moray eel uses its acute sense of smell to detect the approach of its victims and octopus is its favorite prey.

Six feet of swirling eel ties a vicious knot and rips off one of the octopus's arms.

The moray retreats into his lair with his prize, leaving the octopus to grow a new arm.

If it survives long enough, all this action has attracted a sharp-eyed harbor seal.

The octopus falls back on its best defense, transforming its color and texture to match the rock, but the seal isn't so easily fooled.

[cheerful orchestral music] The harbor seal returns to the shelter of the kelp forest and these warm still days of summer, coastal waters have the clarity of crystal.

The kelp fish changes its color to match the algae citron view.

Summer has transformed the kelp forest into an amber cathedral.

You can almost see giant kelp grow, the fastest growing plant on earth.

It adds as much as two feet a day.

Each frond rises 100 feet with another 100 feet floating on the surface.

The harbor seal rocks in its cool day bed buoyed up by the tangle of great golden loops.

The kelp forest may be the most productive ecosystem in the world, and it spreads its wealth widely, feeding creatures that never see its sunkissed blades.

It is a tremendous fish nursery, A fact which the harbor seal appreciates.

Summer is the season when the Garibaldi breeds.

The male tends the nest, a patch of algae which he cultivates on the side of a rock.

He removes anything that might endanger his nest, especially algae-eating urchins.

A diligent gardener, his vigilance against the urchins is tireless.

He weeds his algae garden with meticulous care by removing every kind except the one he prefers, his nest becomes a dense mat of red algae.

Once it's ready, he displays above the nest to attract the attention of a passing female.

As she approaches, his excitement grows.

The female may enter as many as 16 nests before she finally finds one that meets her standards.

She prefers large nests that already contain eggs like this one.

As soon as the last egg is laid, he quickly escorts her off.

She might eat some eggs.

He then returns to fertilize his latest clutch.

They will take a few weeks to hatch.

As they develop, he mouths the eggs frequently to aerate them and remove debris.

He fearlessly defends his nest, warning off all comers.

In this case, a school of senorita fish.

The cabezon is another father who guards his brood with great vigilance.

He perches over his dark green egg mass to keep a close lookout for danger.

But once the young hatch, all eyes and twitching tales, they're on their own.

Most will survive for only a few days.

As with the squid, the cabezon survival depends on the few hatchlings that evade capture.

The rest feed other mouths in these fish-rich waters.

Only a very few Garibaldi are lucky enough to survive their first year.

These spotted yearlings hide within a forest of sea urchin spines, a refuge from the schools of jack mackerel that streamed through the kelp.

[enchanting music] They sweep in from the open sea drawn by the abundance of food.

[enchanting music continues] The foundation of all this life is the giant kelp.

As it breaks down, it feeds the plankton.

On this near invisible drift of life feed clouds of shrimp-like krill, themselves food for creatures great and small.

[frenetic orchestral music] The school of anchovies drive the krill into a tight ball making them easier to feed upon.

But in the sea, predator can all too quickly become prey.

[ominous orchestral music] A blue shark, 12 feet of elegance and power.

Now it's the anchovies' turn to be rounded up.

The school shrinks from the patrolling blues like a single organism, each individual darting for safety at the center of the whirling mass.

But this time the anchovies are lucky, the sharks have other prey in mind.

Krill have been found in the bellies of blue sharks before, but until now it was a mystery how they could feed on such tiny animals.

Here's how.

Without the help of their more usual prey, these sleek hunters could never indulge their taste for shrimp.

It's a strange liaison between anchovy, shark, and krill.

Left unmolested, krill spread out into a rosy haze.

But there are animals that are designed to comb this diffuse feast from the sea.

[dramatic music] One is the largest animal that ever lived, the blue whale.

Three times the size of the largest dinosaur, 100 feet long and weighing 300,000 pounds, the blue whale is an animal of staggering proportions.

It exists only on krill.

With a sideways lunge, it opens its colossal mouth.

Its pleated throat balloons out, swelling to the size of a large living room and engulfing an entire school of krill.

[dramatic music continues] Its 20-foot long tongue will squeeze the water out through its baleen, a gigantic sieve, which retains krill by the tongue.

Brought to the edge of extinction by whaling, there are only a few thousand of these titans left.

The blue whale wanders the open sea.

But like all ocean creatures, its fate is tied to the health and fertility of our coasts.

[waves crashing] The residents of the kelp forest remain behind, safe within their amber glades, safe that is as long as we protect the wilderness beneath the waves.

[waves crashing] [dramatic music] [enlightening music]