When National Park-scientist Kai Abt and ranger Karl-Hanz Hilderbrandt register seals from the window of their small aircraft, you could think that you are flying over the South Seas. Yet, in the gleaming sand banks of the turquoise of the Wadden Sea they are not looking for some pirate treasures but for seals. Their population has grown, precisely because they are protected and registered from the air in the National Park Wattenmeer. The oil production on Germany´s only offshore platform, Mittelplate, is subjected to strict regulations. GPS data-based animations show how delicate the life of seals is, even in this UNESCO unique landscape. It shows all the movements of five seals and of all ships crossing the North Sea. You get it at a glimpse: despite all protected areas, seals cross the routes of huge vessels, because a seal can swim up to 50 kilometres per day to look for food.

At the arrival point of most of the big ships, there starts a new story of this episode: the container port in Hamburg is almost completely automated. 52 cranes, 84 transport vehicles and 12 tractor units are driven by computers and load hundreds of containers. 9 mega container vessels, that can transport up to 10,000 containers, set their anchor in Hamburg every week, plus endless smaller vessels. Goods from everywhere on earth are then loaded on trains and trucks in unique efficiency and make their way to our supermarkets. The stocks are optimised day and night. Yet only from above can you see the stunning beauty of the endless loading activity.

On the Autobahn reality strikes back: with the GPS date based animation of the routes of trucks of a middle-size forwarder association it is evident why transport often ends there, where it annoys us most: in traffic jams.

Christian Tyrok and Thomas Schechtriem repair high voltage power lines – via helicopter and on an helicopter. This is much quicker than using a crane. Where are the most important power lines in Germany? And who makes sure that we can switch on the tv set or make a coffee or take a hot shower every minute of the day?

The last episode of „Germany From Above“ deals with rivers and seas both in the real and the metaphorical sense: from the archaeologists that dive in the Constance Lake looking for prehistorical remains, to the river police that monitors from an helicopter the ship traffic on the river Elbe, from the departure of the legendary Queen Mary that exites every time thousands of people in Hamburg, to the monitoring of gas pipelines in the Ruhr Valley.