Born of Fire

S1 E1: The series begins with the birth of the islands and an exploration of what makes them unique. They were born out of volcanoes and are plumbed directly into the heart of the planet 1,000 km off South America they are at the center of many different ocean currents which bring an extraordinary mix of life to their shores and they are constantly changing. This is one of the most volcanically active regions on earth with well over 60 eruptions in the last 200 years. The team captured the latest eruption of Sierra Negra when a huge column of smoke was cast in the sky and over a million cubic metres of lava were shed per hour on the first day. As for the wildlife, the mixture of cold and warm waters support a wide range of marine creatures, including vast shoals of hammer-head sharks and the distinctive Galapagos garden eels. For land animals, getting to Galapgos is a lot tougher. Those that have made it had to cross the open ocean on rafts of vegetation, swept out from the mainland on flash floods.