On the volcanic island of New Britain, a handful of animals have learned to live with the sporadic anger of the Earth. When ash from an eruption invades their habitat, the choice seems simple: stay and adapt, or leave.

Whether the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Colombia, Chile, Italy or Iceland, each of these countries is home to active volcanoes that are a threat to the populations settled at their feet. Every day, lava, ash, gas, bombs and avalanches are likely to slide down the gaping mouths of these rock giants. To avoid disasters, vulcanologists are asked to anticipate and warn, they are asked to be prophets and to know how to analyze the volcanoes' slightest tremors. Around the world, these volcano doctors use their tools and knowledge to try and protect those who live beneath the Earth's fire.

In the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean, tectonic movements construct or swallow islands following the wrath of the earth or the sea. In the Tonga archipelago, two little-known animals have learned to cope with these ephemeral lands risen from the ocean depth: the sooty tern, a seabird that never dares wet its wings for fear of drowning and the Alvin shrimp, a blind shellfish that can find its way around the abyss. When an underwater volcano becomes an island, the fates of these two extraordinary living paradoxes are linked.

Around the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua, life has struggled for thousands of years to re-emerge from the ashes. Underground, vampire and other bat species have colonized the miles of tunnels created by hot flowing magma. In the crater - once filled by a giant lava lake, parakeets and vultures have made their nests on cliffs exposed to toxic gases. On the flanks of this still active mountain, the vegetation has been burnt away by lava flows leaving long barren stretches that are recolonized over hundreds of years, beginning with the lowly lichen and ending in flourishing forest. At the foot of the volcano, fields, pastures and towns have now grown over the oldest lava flows. In this harsh environment, nature struggles to conquer ash and lava before the next eruption erases its efforts...and the phoenix must rise again.

Time and again, over the centuries, Alaskan volcanoes have erupted and poisoned the environment. Scientists have only just begun to piece together what might have happened nearly 2,000 years ago, when one race of salmon faced the death of their natal river and were forced back to the open ocean - on an extraordinary adventure. Navigating between the sulfurous waters, bears, sharks and eagles, the fish escaped the earth's wrath to give birth to descendants that continue their pioneering journey to the heart of an active volcano.