NARRATOR: The secret world of the ocean floor
is a violent and mysterious place.
This is a crab-eat-crab world
of cannibals, alien invaders,
and creatures that never grow old.
But a sea change is coming
to this murky world.
On the jagged coast of Canada's Eastern shore.
A delicate and diverse ecosystem thrives
on the fringes of the continent.
Welcome
to the Wild Wild East.
NARRATOR: Along the Americas' northeast coast,
creatures living in the ocean depths
shape life above them.
Crustaceans and other creatures
hauled from the briny deep, bring wealth
and international acclaim from chefs and foodies.
Speculating on the secret life on the ocean floor
is the stock and trade of fishermen,
who need to know where the catch is.
But to most people,
what's really happening down there
is a mystery.
Down below is every bit as wild
as above the surface.
With brutal battles for territory,
bizarre animal behavior,
and struggles for survival
The most famous deep sea denizen
of the Wild, Wild East
is the iconic American lobster.
It's summer, and the lobsters are in the warm shallow waters
close to the coast.
Come winter,
shallow waters are chilled by the brutal cold
of the frigid air above.
Lobsters move out into the Atlantic to deeper water,
where the temperature is more constant.
Lately ocean temperatures are changing on a global scale,
More and more American lobsters
are being found further north,
possibly fleeing rising ocean temperatures
caused by climate change.
The lobsters' migration north is bad news
for the U.S. fishery,
and is leading to record catches
on Canada's East coast.
What crawls into these traps today
could wind up in fancy restaurants,
cooking pots and dinner plates
anywhere from Denver to Dubai.
But 100 years ago,
lobster wasn't a glamorous meal.
It was considered food fit only for poor people
working along the coast.
That's because dead, uncooked lobster
breaks down and becomes toxic quickly
and so it couldn't be shipped inland.
These days, modern fishing boats
with saltwater tanks on board
and live-shipping by air
have changed everything.
As a matter of law, to preserve
the lucrative industry, fishermen around here
are masters of the lobster's anatomy.
Juveniles, judged by the length of a particular shell segment,
must be released, so they have a chance to breed.
Egg-bearing females like this,
with thousands of shiny black eggs clinging to her underside,
are tossed back too.
Only one egg in ten thousand will make it to adulthood,
so returning a female lobster to the water today
is an investment in the future of a fishery
already facing change.
Down below, the world of the lobster
is dark and mysterious.
Life on the murky bottom
means lobsters sense the world
mostly through touch and scent.
They use their long antennae and powerful sense of smell
to find food and identify other lobsters.
Their eyes are made of thousands of little lenses,
but they can only sense movement and shadows,
and not much else.
Lobsters come in a broad palette of colors,
but they are mostly brownish green,
camouflaging with the ocean floor.
The red color lobsters are famous for
comes from a pigment bound in proteins
while the lobster is alive.
The proteins break down with heat,
so you only see that bright scarlet color
once the lobster is cooked.
Lobsters crawl around on ten legs,
including the big ones with the claws up front.
They have a reputation as scavengers,
but the truth is they will eat just about anything,
fish, crabs, and even other lobsters,
especially in places where populations are high.
Lobsters can be left or right handed,
depending on which side the large crusher claw is on.
This one is a lefty,
and this one's a righty.
The crusher claw is strong enough to break open a crab,
a clam or a mussel,
while the other smaller, more agile claw
on the other side, scrapes out the meat.
Lobster DNA is programmed for limitless growth,
but that doesn't mean they live forever.
Lobsters have to molt their shell every year.
And the bigger the lobster, the more energy it takes.
Some get so big
they die of exhaustion while molting.
The lobsters that end up on most dinner plates
are one-pounders,
just kids by lobster standards.
About 8 years old.
Along the shores of the Bay of Fundy,
lobsters aren't the only wild-caught creatures
making waves on menus.
The east coast scallop fishery
is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Scallops may not look like swift swimmers,
but underwater they reveal
some remarkable maneuvers.
The scallop is a bivalve.
Its shell is made of two symmetrical halves,
connected by a hinge.
The shells protect their soft internal organs,
the ones prized by chefs,
and by predators like this northern sea star.
The starfish's legs
are covered with hundreds of tiny tubed-shaped feet,
each one has a suction cup at the tip.
Moving in concert, all these little feet
let the starfish locomote across the ocean floor.
It can use its suction cups and powerful legs
to pry open the scallop's shell
and eat what's inside.
But the scallop has a few tricks of its own.
Unlike most other bivalves,
scallops can jump and even swim,
if only for short distances.
They achieve tiny jet-propelled bursts of speed
by clapping their shell together
and forcing water out.
It's thanks to their powerful adductor muscle.
That's actually the part of the scallop
most people are familiar with.
A tight squat cylinder of white muscle.
The scallop's orange roe,
which chefs call "the coral"
is also considered a delicacy.
Scallops and crabs are both popular menu items
for the American lobster, too.
Rock crabs are an important part of the food web here.
In some places they make up 50% of the lobster's diet.
They're also an important prey item
for other rock crabs.
Cannibalism is a fact of life
for crustaceans on the ocean floor.
That's why crabs and lobsters aren't farmed commercially
like other valuable sea species.
Put too many of them close together
and they start eating each other.
The shallower waters close to shore
are rough and tumble places.
Waves and tides turn
and churn the rocky bottom
and toss about the creatures that live here.
This Acadian hermit crab
protects itself from the elements and predators
by living in shells left by dead snails
and other molluscs.
The shells protect the soft abdomen
of these ten-legged crustaceans,
which aren't exactly crabs,
but are a sort of distant cousin.
Hermit crabs are true scavengers,
eating algae, plants,
and even other hermit crabs that have died.
Nowadays, there's a new predator on the scene,
who sends the hermit crabs scurrying away.
This is nothing less
than an alien invasion of these waters.
The green crab is moving north.
A native of Europe,
the green crab has been wreaking havoc
on North America's eastern waters since arriving
in ship's ballast nearly two centuries ago.
They're notoriously hard on plant life,
tearing up delicate meadows of eel-grass
as they seek out their prey.
Eelgrass forms valuable underwater habitats
by collecting sediment in shallow estuaries
and tidal areas.
The ribbons of grass form a protective nursery
for juvenile fish of several species.
These fish feed the birds, and so on,
onward and upward through the food web,
and it all begins here in the eelgrass.
Green crabs move in,
chopping the eelgrass with their claws
as they hunt for fish and clams,
and they reduce these meadows to underwater deserts.
In Canada's Kejimkujik National Park,
fishery workers and park officials
are waging war against these green invaders.
The green crab first appeared here in the 1950s.
The damage is clearly visible
in these shorn-off stalks of eelgrass.
Until recently, fishery officials
encouraged lobster fishermen
to catch the destructive green crab
to use as bait.
Bait's a big expense for lobster fishermen.
Lobsters love eating crabs.
Everybody wins, right?
Dead wrong.
The plan turned toxic,
because green crabs carry bacteria and other pathogens
that are dangerous for lobster.
Researchers discovered that in places
where the green crab flourishes,
the lobsters are catching those same diseases.
The crab-borne illnesses affect the lobsters' shell,
and make them more likely to die
before they can be shipped off to customers.
The green crab out-competes and displaces native crabs,
and a lobster cannot resist a crab dinner,
whether in a trap or on the ocean floor.
Even though this green crab escapes with his life,
his species could become a major threat
to the American lobster
and the people who depend on it.
To keep this problem from becoming a disaster,
fishery officials and park staff
are catching every green crab they can,
using jury-rigged lobster traps.
There's no market for green crabs here,
so these will be donated
to a wildlife rehabilitation centre
as food for birds and raccoons.
Officials keep close tabs on the crabs,
measuring and tracking every specimen they catch.
This is a male.
You can tell from that lighthouse shape on its belly.
This one is a female.
That beehive-shaped flap is where she would hold
up to 185,000 eggs.
The numbers have been stacked against
the park staff from the beginning.
This is the great blue hope.
Blue crabs are native to North America,
but never used to be found this far north.
In the last few years,
Park officials discovered them
in the waters near Kejimkujik National Park.
Tipping the scales at four times the weight
of their green cousins,
these blue bruisers breed faster,
compete for the same food,
and don't rip up the eelgrass.
And like all these cannibalistic crustaceans,
they love to eat other crabs,
including the green invaders.
To make a good thing even better,
blue crabs are a valuable commercial species.
Between the blue crabs and the trapping efforts
officials say they're seeing progress in the park.
When they first started this program,
they were catching up to one thousand crabs per night,
per trap.
These days they only average about seven.
Eelgrass is flourishing,
fish numbers are going up
and the shorebirds are returning.
Besides invasive parasites
and winding up on somebody's dinner plate,
the biggest threat to the lobster
is other lobsters.
As if cannibalism wasn't enough,
lobsters are also territorial,
and will fight at any provocation.
Lobsters make their homes in rocks and crevices
in the ocean floor.
They back their way in,
and guard the front door with their claws.
To encourage the growth of artificial reefs,
government officials deliberately sink
concrete structures called reef balls.
Lobsters are often the first tenants to move in.
In places where populations are high,
lobsters come to blows in battles over territory.
This lobster lost his crusher claw,
probably in a turf war with somebody bigger and badder.
Somebody like this.
This Big Blue fella weighs almost 20 pounds.
Most of his weight is in his massive, powerful claws,
smaller rivals know not to mess with him.
Lobsters learn to recognize each other
by the smell of their urine,
and will not fight one that has defeated it already.
A lobster has two bladders,
one on each side of its head.
Big Blue squirts a plume of urine
out through a nozzle right under its eyes,
chasing smaller lobsters out of their hiding spots,
just to remind them who's the boss around here.
The smaller lobsters take flight.
They back down in a hurry,
using their tail muscle and tiny fins
called swimmerets on their underside
to propel themselves backwards through the water.
Having bullied the smaller lobster away,
Big Blue settles into his home.
To the winner go the spoils,
but there's always another challenger.
If the contenders are more evenly matched,
and haven't fought before,
the fight takes on the ritualistic overtones
of a martial arts match.
This lobster isn't as large as Big Blue,
but he's making a move on his territory.
The lobsters size each other up,
claw to claw,
nose to nose,
streaming urine into each other's faces.
The chemicals in the urine trigger aggressive posturing.
Big Blue stands on the tips of his legs,
huge claws open, ready to inflict deadly damage.
The smaller lobster knows he's outmatched,
and begins backing off.
But Big Blue wants to leave him with a lasting impression.
The upstart won't challenge the champion again.
A lobster Big Blue's size
has thousands of showdowns like this on his record.
He could be more than 50 years old.
Nobody is sure exactly how long a lobster can live,
but some think their life span could exceed 100 years.
They don't get feeble or slow as they get older,
just bigger, stronger and more fertile.
Big Blue is just entering his prime,
with decades and thousands more battles
still ahead of him.
The waters of the North Atlantic are changing.
As the ocean warms, species are on the move,
and traditional fisheries are under attack
from toxic invaders.
It's a world few people ever see,
and fewer understand.
Yet it's incredibly important,
both for the complex relationships
between species and for economic reasons.
For creatures like the American lobster
to have a bright future
we need to shine a light into the darkest depths
of the Wild, Wild, East.
♪ THEME MUSIC ♪