The wild places of Arabia are so hot and dry,
that they were virtually untouched by people for thousands of years.
But that ancient balance has shifted in the wake of one dramatic discovery.
Oil, and the wealth it has brought have transformed this land,
bringing the 21 st century to the desert.
Arabia's animals now live in a high-tech world.
But Arabia's people are beginning to use their technology to protect nature.
Dawn, at the Al Wathba camel race track,
on the outskirts of the city of Abu Dhabi.
For centuries, the Arabs held camel races to celebrate special occasions.
But in the last 50 years, camel racing has been transformed,
echoing changes that have swept all across Arabia.
Now, this is one of the richest sports in the world.
The winner of this race stands to win a million dollars.
The prize money at stake means that 21 st-century camel racing
has moved far beyond anything
these camel handlers' grandparents could have imagined.
In today's camel races,
modern technology is in the driving seat.
Literally.
To save on weight, jockeys have been replaced by robots
weighing no more than a laptop.
The camel trainers drive alongside.
They scream instructions to their camels
through a speaker on the robot.
The frenzy is added to
by the fevered excitement of the race commentator,
broadcasting live to the nation.
When an extra burst of speed is needed, each robot carries a whip
which the trainer operates by remote control.
In today's Arabia,
camel training has become a sophisticated business.
Scientific breeding and state-of-the-art training
have turned these camels into elite racing machines.
The average speed of a racehorse in Europe
hasn't changed in half a century.
While the average speed of a racing camel has increased by 30%.
To understand the vast changes
that have swept across Arabia in recent decades,
you have to go back millions of years.
Then, most of the Arabian peninsula was underwater,
forming the seabed of a vast ocean,
the Tethys Sea.
The waters were rich in tiny plants and animals,
which sank to the bottom when they died.
Over millennia,
the decaying bodies of billions of these tiny life forms turned to oil.
Oil was first discovered in the offshore waters
of the Gulf and the Arabian desert in the 1920s.
It was during the Second World War, and the boom years that followed,
that the global demand for oil started to skyrocket.
Arabia had struck it rich.
All across Arabia, the oil men found new supplies of black gold.
Today, close to a third of the world's oil
is supplied by the countries of the Gulf.
That's about three billion litres per day.
Twenty-five major oil terminals lie in Arabia's Gulf coast.
Every year, some 5,000 tankers pass through these waters.
It certainly doesn't look wildlife-friendly.
But in places, the impact on nature is not as negative as you might think.
The divers who service the platforms
get an exclusive view of some very exotic animals.
The legs of the platforms become encrusted with corals.
These, and the tiny animals associated with them,
in turn provide food for fish.
The rigs are home to dozens of beautiful species.
Like the Longfin pennantfish,
and the half-moon angelfish.
It's not just reef dwellers that are found here.
Fish from the open sea also gather.
Perhaps because the rigs offer shelter from predatory sharks.
Also, fishing near the rigs is banned,
allowing shoals to grow larger than anywhere else in the Gulf.
This is a popular spawning ground.
The female queenfish swims on her side as she distributes her eggs.
Males jostle behind her to be the first to fertilise them.
In summertime, the water is thick with eggs.
A feast for jellyfish.
This cauliflower jelly is a metre across.
But it's a tiddler, next to some of the diners attracted to this egg soup.
A whale shark.
At 12 metres plus in length, it's the biggest fish in the world.
A sight to take your breath away.
The diver needn't worry. Whale sharks only have tiny teeth,
and don't eat anything more than a few centimetres long.
Whale sharks feed by filtering food particles from the water.
Though jellyfish are not on the menu.
Every shark is accompanied by a cloud of remoras, or suckerfish,
which are thought to feed largely on the shark's faeces.
For most of their lives, which can be 70 years long,
whale sharks are solitary.
But there is so much food here
that groups of over 100 sharks can gather together.
These sharks are only in Arabian waters for the summer.
Where they go for the rest of the year is unknown.
Even in these waters, much of their life remains a mystery.
They feed for just a few hours every day,
then disappear back into the depths.
What they get up to down there, nobody knows.
The fish life around the oil platforms also provides food for sea birds.
Ninety percent of the world's Socotra cormorants
breed on low-lying islands in the Gulf.
During the breeding season, from March to November,
temperatures on the ground can reach a scorching 70 degrees centigrade.
The cormorants flutter their throats to keep cool.
Despite the heat,
successful colonies like this one off the coast of Bahrain
can be tens of thousands strong.
But appearances can be deceptive.
Although some large colonies do remain,
over half have disappeared in the last 50 years,
and oil pollution is thought to have played a large role.
The oil industry is a lot cleaner than it was,
but parts of the Gulf remain polluted
because of the legacy of large spills in the past.
This was the site of the world's largest ever oil spill.
During the Gulf War in 1991,
the Iraqi Army set fire to huge numbers of oil wells,
and nearly two billion litres of oil were lost.
No one knows just how many fish and seabirds were killed,
but it certainly had a dramatic impact.
Oil does eventually break down naturally,
but it can take many years for all the toxic chemicals to disperse.
The risk of further oil spills will remain a threat to wildlife
while so much oil passes through the Gulf.
Along the Gulf coast,
the seabed is kept fertile by dust blowing in from the desert.
That means these shallow waters
are every bit as important for wildlife as the deep seas.
But to exploit the food that's on offer here,
you need the right equipment.
The beak of the lesser flamingo
is the only beak that's built to be used upside down.
It's lined with bristles which filter out prawns and algae from the water.
It's the pigment in this food that turns flamingos pink.
Young birds start white and become pinker with age.
The rhythmic feeding and swallowing looks like a graceful ballet.
But the flamingos aren't above using those beautiful beaks as weapons
to fight over personal space.
And space is a key issue for the Gulf's flamingos.
Many of the lagoons they rely on have been swallowed up
by Arabia's fast-growing cities.
This city centre wetland has been protected by an edict from the very top.
Sheikh Mohammed, the Ruler of Dubai.
But the pressure on many other wild places continues to increase.
The population of the United Arab Emirates alone
has risen by nearly 10,000% since the 1960s,
leading to an explosion in construction and trade.
The most extreme expression of the wealth of the Gulf cities
is in Dubai.
Home to more skyscrapers per square mile than anywhere else on Earth.
This forest of concrete, glass and steel
is towered over by the Burj Khalif a.
At half a mile high, it's 300 metres higher than any other building on Earth.
As well as going up, the Gulf cities are spreading out.
This is The Palm.
It's an extraordinary feat of engineering.
But each frond was created by dredging sand from the seabed.
And on the seabed is a grassland as rich as the plains of Africa.
The warm, sun-drenched waters are perfect for seagrass,
the only flowering plant in the sea.
Just like the African grasslands,
these underwater plains are home to many predators and prey.
A bluespotted ribbontail ray hunts for buried shellfish.
A blue triggerfish has the same quarry in mind.
Small fish, like this blenny, have to lie low.
An annulated sea snake -
two metres long, and one of the most venomous in the world.
The snake can hunt for up to two hours on one breath.
Hole-dwelling blennies are a favourite prey.
Not all the reptiles here are voracious hunters.
Unlike most sea turtles, green turtles prefer a vegetarian diet.
Like the whale sharks, many turtles are accompanied by remoras.
These ones are squabbling over access.
Each remora has a suction pad on its head,
which it can stick to animals to get a free ride.
A turtle shell is easy to stick to, and worth fighting over.
The growth of the Gulf cities threatens the seagrass plains,
and all the weird and wonderful animals that depend on them.
A dugong-
Closest relative, the elephant.
Dugongs eat almost nothing but seagrass.
Using their flexible lips to pull up both the stalk
and the nutritious roots beneath.
A group of remoras are trying to hitch a ride on this dugong.
But he's not tolerating the hangers-on.
Every spring, the Gulf's dugongs gather together
in what are thought to be mass migrations between feeding grounds.
Protecting those feeding grounds from development
would go a long way towards protecting the dugongs.
But nobody yet knows where they are.
Luckily, help is at hand.
This is a project run by the Abu Dhabi government.
It aims to find out where the Gulf's dugongs are going
by fitting them with satellite transmitters.
They've called in some assistance from the far side of the world.
To the other boat, can you guys keep on our starboard side?
Australian scientist Richard Campbell
works with two Aboriginal Australians.
Dwayne and Phillip grew up hunting dugongs for food,
and now put their skills to a different use.
Even for an expert, finding a dugong isn't easy.
They only take a breath every five minutes or so,
and barely break the surface.
The team need eyes in the sky.
Once the dugong's been spotted,
Dwayne and Phillip use their expertise
to approach with as little disturbance to the animal as possible.
Dwayne speared his first dugong from an open boat at the age of 12.
But today, he's going to have to grab the dugong.
A third of a ton of slippery muscle.
It's not for the faint-hearted.
- You're gonna catch him, Dwayne? - Yup.
Dwayne gets a loop around the tail.
And the team work fast
to secure the dugong safely to the side of the boat.
Protecting the Gulf's dugongs
means that a few will have to carry satellite transmitters.
But each one weighs just half a kilo,
and tied around the tail, they do no harm.
This is a chance to take some useful measurements.
You're on there, Yusuf?
- Yes. - Yes?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Two, seven, two. 2.72!
Nearly three metres. A good size.
This would've made for quite a feast in Phillip's youth.
The team also takes skin samples for genetic analysis.
The hairs on the body are a clue to the fact
that dugongs' ancestors used to live on land.
That's DNA, mate. You don't need much.
After just a few minutes, the dugong is released.
Mission accomplished for the team.
- Good job. - Yeah.
Information about this dugong's movements
will help determine which regions of the Gulf need to be protected
from future development.
In the great desert heartland of Arabia,
the relationship between people and nature goes back a long way.
The Arabs survived here by hunting the desert's animals.
And for 4,000 years, one very special predator
has helped them catch their prey.
The falcon.
For many Arabs, falconry remains a passion,
bordering on obsession.
Mohammad Al-Kaabi
comes out from the city to fly his birds every weekend.
This is Hathi.
Pedigree falcons like her can cost as much as $100,000.
Hathi's trained to return to Mohammed using a lure that simulates her quarry.
It's a workout that keeps her agile and in top condition.
Mohammed is showing his sons, Salim and Saif,
how to put Hathi through her paces.
This is a rite of passage
that Arab boys have enjoyed for thousands of years.
It's time for the boys to get hands-on.
It's crucial to keep calm.
A falcon must learn to trust its handler,
or it will never fly back to him.
In the morning, the boys will move on to the next lesson.
Traditionally, that's hunting live prey.
Sadly, the Arab love of hunting with rifle, dog, and falcon,
has pushed some desert animals, like the houbara bustard,
to the brink of extinction.
But with the appliance of science,
there is now a solution that can keep everyone happy.
With a lure attached to the back of a remote controlled plane,
Mohammed can stretch the falcon to its limits.
No wild animals will die today.
But the thrill of the hunt is just as strong.
Mohammed's sons are growing up in a world that's increasingly aware
of the need to look after our natural resources.
That's particularly challenging here,
because of the difficulties of living in one of the hottest,
driest places on Earth.
For much of the year, Arabia is so hot
that many people are at their most active after sunset.
Even at night, the heat can be unbearable.
So much of people's time is spent indoors
in air-conditioned spaces.
Dubai is home to the world's largest shopping mall.
Kept cool all year round, good for the ski slope and the ice rink.
Dubai by night is a vision of the most energy-hungry society on Earth.
The richest Arab countries use more energy per person than anywhere else.
And virtually all of it comes from burning fossil fuels.
As well as contributing to climate change,
that makes these countries very reliant on oil.
And the Gulf oil wells will start to run dry within the next few decades.
But there is an even more pressing problem for Arabia
than its huge demand for power.
Every night of the year
Dubai puts on the biggest water show on Earth.
The fountains reach as high as a SID-storey building.
Perhaps because it's a desert, Arabia is addicted to water.
The Gulf states consume more water per person than anywhere else in the world.
In Saudi Arabia and Jordan
water is pumped from hundreds of metres underground,
and brings life to the desert.
Huge fields of crops, each one several hundred metres across,
dot the landscape over huge areas.
Clearly visible from space.
These man-made oases have had a huge impact on nature.
Songbirds now flock into the desert.
This is a perfect place to drink and grab a well-needed shower.
The fields are also rich in food like grubs and worms.
They even have their own public transport system.
Thousands of birds have changed their migration routes to visit these fields
on their journey between Europe and Africa every year.
Some species, like the pied wagtail and the wheatear,
are familiar in the UK.
Others, like the hoopoe and the Bluethroat,
usually spend their summers further east in northern Russia or eastern Europe.
But the songbirds who stop off here don't have things all their own way.
Birds of prey also migrate.
And they too gather here in huge numbers.
These aerial predators aren'tjust here for a shower and a drink.
All that flying builds up a healthy appetite.
Of all the songbird hunters to gather here,
perhaps the most graceful is one that might be seen on the Scottish moors.
A hen harrier.
The harrier has a dish-shaped face like an owl.
This helps catch sound,
enabling it to hear the slightest rustle of a hidden bird.
And the long, narrow wings can turn on a sixpence.
It's pied wagtail for dinner.
In the short term,
this type of agriculture is good news for the birds.
And provides jobs for local people.
But it uses water at a staggering rate.
The underground reservoirs will begin to run dry within the next 10 years.
The land will be desert once again,
and the people who work here will lose their livelihood.
The fields sum up a problem that faces all of us.
How to meet people's needs in a world of limited resources?
But the immense wealth that's made Arabia a world leader
in energy and water consumption
is now being used to try and find solutions to those same problems.
This is the solar power plant for the most futuristic town on Earth,
Masdar.
Lying on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi,
Masdar is a prototype for the cities of the future.
A hundred percent carbon neutral, but with all mod cons.
Some features are simple ideas borrowed from traditional Arab architecture.
The overhang from the floor above shades those below.
And the streets are narrow
so that they are shaded from the intense heat of the sun.
Any breeze is captured in a wind tower and channelled down to the street.
Combined with a light spray of water,
this can lower the temperature at ground level by 15 degrees centigrade.
Simple solutions like this
create a cool outdoor space even in midsummer.
In Masdar's vision of tomorrow,
transport will be underground, in unmanned pods.
Doors opening.
Welcome to Masdar city.
Here, in the heart of oil country,
are the designers of Masdar taking us on a journey into the post-oil future?
Arabia's cities are already world leaders in design and architecture.
If the concepts from Masdar can be expanded here,
then maybe they can also lead the way in reducing our impact
on the world around us.
Arabia is a place where people and animals have lived
alongside each other for thousands of years.
Oil money has changed Arabia.
But there is still a deep affinity for the natural world.
Even today's ultra-high-tech camel racing
still has the Arab love of camels at its heart.
At the end of each race,
after the robots are dismounted and the prizes distributed,
the camels are pampered like beloved family pets.
Hand fed alfalfa and dates.
The Arab people have never forgotten
that it was their relationship with the camel
that enabled them to survive the inhospitable deserts of Arabia
in the first place.
If that deep connection with wildlife can be maintained,
then there will always be a place for nature
in the heart of Arabia.
Spectacular gatherings of whale sharks
appear every year off the coast of Arabia.
But getting close to the biggest fish in the sea
proved a challenge for the Wild Arabia team.
Director Liz White, and cameraman Hugh Miller
are travelling out to the middle of the Gulf,
midway between Qatar and Iran.
They've joined up with a team of whale shark scientists.
- Did you change any of them? - Yeah. Good.
The scientists want to understand more about
the mysteries of the Gulf's whale sharks.
But they know that getting close to them will be particularly difficult.
The sharks here are quite different from elsewhere because they swim quite fast,
so getting all of the data that we need from one shark here
is gonna be a bit of a challenge.
Hugh has been tipped off about these high-speed sharks,
so he's brought a secret weapon.
So this thing on the back here, with the propeller,
is gonna drive me through the water in a stable manner.
Before Hugh's had time to prepare his kit,
word comes from the bridge.
The boat crew have spotted a group of whale sharks.
From here we can just about make out the fins if they turn the right way.
We're just gonna go and check it out and see how many are there.
Watch out. There's one right in front of us.
Yeah, there's one right in front of us now.
With only his snorkel and his fins, Hugh goes into action.
We've definitely got three sharks here. Hugh and Dave are in the water.
They move pretty fast.
The guys are gonna be swimming pretty hard to keep up with them.
Sure enough, underwater, Hugh is struggling.
Whale sharks look like slow movers,
but every stroke of that massive tail pushes them forward at great speed.
Hugh can barely keep up,
and keeping a steady shot while kicking so hard is nearly impossible.
Much filming success, but an amazing experience for Hugh.
You don't appreciate how many sharks there are,
because the visibility means I can only see so far and, er... uh...
it's incredible, just to come up here and there's just black fins...
everywhere.
The scientists have also been pursuing the sharks with cameras.
They want to get ID photographs of as many individuals as possible.
The team uses specially-adapted spear guns
to attach the satellite transmitters.
Whale shark skin is over 10 centimetres thick,
so the sharks never feel a thing.
The scientists have collected sea water samples
that show why the sharks are here in the first place.
I've got four pots here, full of fish eggs.
So we can kind of say that the sharks
are certainly there to consume the fish eggs.
I mean, if you looked at the density of those,
I'd say that that was kind of two good-sized fillet steaks
in around about three minutes, urn,
and these sharks were feeding with us for five hours,
and after we had left the water they were still feeding.
Scientists and film crew are happy with the way things have started.
But as evening falls, the wind starts to pick up.
And the morning brings heavy seas and bad news.
I'm standing here with the weather forecast,
for the next 10 days,
and it looks like we're gonna have anywhere from 20 to 40 knots winds.
And there's no end to it. It's just wind, wind, waves.
And, er... the likelihood of seeing sharks in this kind of weather
is close to zero.
The dreaded Shamal winds blow from the northeast,
bringing clouds of dust from the Iranian desert,
and churning up the sea.
Even if they could see the sharks,
it would be too dangerous to launch the dive boats in this weather.
The Shamal can blow for weeks at a time.
All the crew can do is wait.
The science team take the chance to look over some of their 1D photos.
They have a program to help them recognise individual sharks
by the pattern of their spots.
Every pattern is unique. Like human fingerprints.
To everyone's relief, the weather improves sooner than expected.
Soon, signs of life are spotted from the bridge.
A school of botﬂenose dolphins, but no whale sharks.
Strong winds disperse the fish eggs, which the whales are here to feed on.
And the groups of sharks often break up as a consequence.
Liz makes use of a drilling platform as vantage point.
Whale sharks are often seen near the platforms
because fish gather to spawn here.
Watching the spawning fish is a popular pastime for the platform workers,
some of whom take notes on any whale sharks they spot
to help the research project.
While the crew are on board, there's an encouraging sighting.
Whale shark!
Where is he?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Could this finally be Hugh's chance to try out his new toy?
Ready?
Seems that everything is going smoothly...
Very unfortunate timing. What's happening right now is,
we have an aggregation straight ahead of us,
and now we have a big tanker coming in.
So we cannot launch any boats,
we don't know what's gonna happen with the aggregation,
if they're gonna disperse and dive.
I'm sure they are gonna dive,
because the tanker's heading right towards them.
These are anxious moments for the film crew and the scientists,
but the tanker takes a detour,
leaving the whale sharks undisturbed.
Now everything is good to go.
Immediately, the propeller starts to deliver on its promise...
giving Hugh a smooth ride alongside these gentle giants.
After his magical encounter,
Hugh does his bit for science.
He's frozen a few shots from his video camera
to see if he can help ID any of the sharks.
I think, Hugh, we have actually got a completely new individual,
looking at this side of it.
- We've just added it to the database. - We have just added it to the database.
Maybe we'll call him Hugh.
Brilliant, I'd love that.
I think Hugh is a good name for a shark.
Yes, it's a very good name for a whale shark.
Out at sea,
having given film crew and scientists a glimpse into his life,
Hugh the shark swims of into the depths.