An immersive audio experience from Frozen Planet II. Tune into the sounds of planet earth.

The Arctic Ocean lies across the top of the northern hemisphere and over the North Pole itself. In winter, the sea ice extends across an area of over five million square miles. But off the coast of Arctic Russia, a tiny pocket of water has been kept open by the continuous stirring of 30 trapped belugas. These four-metre-long Arctic whales are superbly adapted for hunting far beneath the surface of the sea ice.

Nearby fish and squid have run out long ago and these emaciated whales have been imprisoned by the ice for five months. All they can do is wait amongst the ice. Spring finally reaches the north of the planet, air temperatures creep above freezing. The impenetrable ice ceiling begins to fracture. Small life-saving channels open up. As tides and currents pull ice apart, the beluga find themselves in a labyrinth of
shifting ice floes that could close their breathing holes at any point... and so drown them.

They are not the only whales here. Narwhal, the unicorns of the sea, are closely related to beluga. This pod is also trying to find a way through the ice maze. These two kinds of whale appear to socialise. Who knows what is going on between them. But soon they set off on a journey together through the shifting fields of ice.

As the spring sunshine strengthens, the broken pack ice off the coast of Greenland becomes a nursery. A harp seal pup - born just a week ago - calls to its mother. She has only one pup a year and will only produce milk for 12 days - one of the shortest nursing periods in
nature - just long enough for him to develop a thick layer of blubber thanks to his mother’s milk which is 50% fat. And his mother stays alongside while he learns an important survival skill for any
seal.

It will soon be time for the pup to learn to swim! Show less