In a way, we've come to the ends of the Earth. It's only a little bit more over a century that people were pushing across the Antarctic on land and exploring it, but the deep ocean around Antarctica is just as blank to us now as it was 200 years ago. We have the technology to reach into the ocean depths. It's such a mix of emotions— it is exciting, it is thrilling, and yet, it's also slightly terrifying. You're not quite sure what the outcome is going to be, but if you reach into the unknown, you are gonna come back with something that you didn't have before. No one has previously dived 2,000 meters in Antarctica. It's a huge opportunity to be involved in this kind of exploration. You're just seeing the world with fresh eyes for the first time. RADIO: Control, control, Deep Rover. My depth: 1,000 meters. Oh, we're really seeing some krill now. They're starting to come in. Krill are one of the most important parts of the ecosystem here. They are food for so many of the inhabitants here, and they're so numerous they really dominate the oceans around here. These particles we've seen raining down are marine snow. Iit's organic material that's sinking to the seabed and it's food here. It's thicker than I've ever seen it anywhere else in the world's oceans. That's beautiful. It's incredibly rich marine life we're seeing here, It's a sort of a living carpet. Just on one rock, I counted more than a dozen species, just by eye. That oxygen-rich water that's sinking past us is really giving us this lush, living landscape. Look at that ice fish just ahead. Oh, nice one. Nice one... Nadir, Rover. We've got a big "death star" over here... One of the animals that's amazed us, we've nicknamed the "death star." It's an Antarctic Sun sea star. It's got up to 50 arms, and the tops of the arms are covered with tiny little pincers that immediately snap shut when anything brushes past them. There aren't many fish predators that can cope with the cold conditions here, so it can wave its fishing rod arms about and they don't get bitten off. It's actually like traveling back in time. It's the invertebrates, it's the animals without backbones that dominate and dominate as predators, and that's how the oceans were more than 250 million years ago. What we're doing right now is exploration in its purest sense. We are seeing parts of our planet no one has seen before, that no one has ever visited before. If we all share in the exploration of our planet, then we will appreciate it. We'll all feel involved in its stewardship for the future.
Everyone should watch Blue Planet II, which this is from.
Wadsworth Constant applies if all you're interested in is the sea-floor life footage.
This is so incredible! I am truly jealous of the guys that get to do this kind of stuff. I can only dream of being involved in a project like that! Hope we get to see more soon.
Better keep a lookout for Leviathan-class carnivores.
I've heard that very deep ocean species have eyes but are actually blind. I wonder if shinning this bright light on them for the first time has any effect on them.
1000 meters? I guess they're getting pretty close to the lava biome.
The mysteries of the oceans terrify me.
Nobody tell the Japanese.....
I think this bodes well for us possibly finding life at the bottom of Jupiter's moon Europa!
I can't wait till we send our first submersible to that other world, and it finally melts through the ice layer, dropping into the liquid ocean, activating it's lights, as the camera focuses upon something...