Newfoundland - The easternmost tip of North America

In Newfoundland, at the easternmost tip of North America, the landscape is pristine, dramatic, and very sparsely populated. In summer, icebergs occasionally drift along the steep cliffs. When the "Titanic" collided with an iceberg and sank just 300 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in 1912, the last radio messages were picked up in a small wooden hut on the Avalon Peninsula. Today, most Newfoundlanders live on Avalon. There are particularly many seabirds here. In Witless Bay, the newborn puffins are ready for their first descent into the Atlantic. But some stray onto the coastal road, attracted by the lights of the hotels and restaurants. In doing so, they run the risk of being run over. A team of volunteers saves the lives of countless young birds: The Puffin & Petrel Patrol goes out at night dressed in high-visibility vests to collect the puffins. Biologist Sabrina Wilhelm then brings them back to Green Island, home to the largest puffin colony in North America. Here, the birds catch up on what they should have done long ago: the first dive of their lives. Hasan Hai and his friends are known throughout Newfoundland as the MerB'ys, male mermaids. For the third time, they are putting together a calendar for which they pose in colorful makeup, beard, tail fin and full of irony on Newfoundland's most beautiful coasts. The MerB'ys are convinced that macho posturing and the concealment of feelings are out. Sales of the calendars now bring in several hundred thousand dollars a year for a good cause. This time, the money goes to an association that fights domestic violence in Newfoundland. Kim Orren and her husband Leo Hearn also have to deal with outdated role models. The couple teaches girls and young women how to catch fish professionally on the open Atlantic. The fishing industry is still firmly in male hands. Leo now reveals the secrets of fishing to women, unlike generations of men before him. Jill Curran has saved the condemned lighthouse house in Ferryland from ruin. Her grandfather was the last keeper here, and the building had been rotting since the 1990s. In 2002, Jill quit her job in the oil industry and invented what she calls Lighthouse Picnics. Guests can spread out all over the hill and are found by the service crew thanks to a self-developed system of former signal flags. The service crew consists exclusively of women ranging in age from 17 to well over 70. From the lemonade to the bread to the roast beef, everything on the hill is homemade. And in the bay in front of it, the whales pass by. Dan Barter of Florida searches for the roots of his own family history with his grown daughters in Newfoundland. As a young boy, he rowed with his grandfather in a homemade wooden boat. Now the extended family spends their annual vacation in the small town of Winterton, working with boat builder Jerome Canning to build a traditional dory. But before that, the daughters have to become real Newfoundlanders: Whoever dares to kiss a dead cod and empty a glass of rum in one go gets a certificate of naturalization straight away.

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