PLANET EARTH Shallow Seas

This hardly seems a good place to rear young but at least, there are no land based predators here. The only source of trouble is likely to be the neighbors so each nest is built just beyond pecking reach（啄食）. But what about food? There's only bare sand and the warm shallow sea beyond. Neither seem likely to produce enough nourishment to support bird life on this scale.



The answer is blowing in the wind. Sand whipped up by Shamals, offshore winds blows into the seas of the Arabian Gulf. With the grains come nutrients, which act as fertilizer and they transform the shallow sea into a rich fishing ground, So, paradoxically, it's the roasted sands of Arabia that prevent the gulf from being another desert in the sea.



The whale calf is now five months old. He's almost doubled in size and his days in his tropical nursery are coming to an end. It has been a warm and safe place in which to grow up, but there's nothing to eat here for his mother. She has been living off her fat reserves for the last eight months and she's close to starving. She must leave now, while she still has enough energy to guide and protect her calf, on the long voyage ahead.