Deep Ocean: The Lost World of the Pacific (2015) - full transcript
The same submarine which successfully captured the world.
The tropical waters
of Southeast Asia
are home to some of the richest
coral reefs on the planet.
But hundreds of meters beneath the surface
lies a world where time had stood still.
Here, creatures from the far
distant past still survive.
Now a team with
scientists and film makers
have joint forces to explore
this largely unknown world.
With the state-of-the-art submersible,
they descend deep below the surface.
This is truly a living fossil here.
And discover prehistoric creatures
that have survived virtually unchanged
for over 400 million years.
It's a lost world hidden
in the depths of the sea
where primeval creatures have
lived since the earliest times.
Following the reports
from local fishermen,
the team set off in
search of a strange fish
that is said to lurk
in these waters.
Have you ever seen that fish before?
- I caught one.
It's a journey full of surprises
and extraordinarily encounters.
And finally,
after a year of exploration.
Oh shit, this is what,
this could be it.
This is it mate.
- Yeah? - Yeah. - We got them.
They discover a bizarre fish
that few people had ever seen,
and encounter some of the
ocean's most elusive inhabitants.
This is gonna be awesome.
It's the journey of a lifetime.
DEEP OCEAN
THE LOST WORLD OF THE PACIFIC
The island of New Guinea
in the Pacific Ocean,
it's a wild paradise that still remains
largely untouched by modern civilization.
A scientific research vessel is here to
explore the uncharted depths of these waters.
The Alucia is equipped
with the latest technology
including a deep sea submersible that
can dive to depths of 1,000 meters.
The crew are carrying out final safety
checks to the submersible Nadir.
No one before has attempted to
dive in these waters with a sub.
The expedition is led by
marine biologist, Mark Ardmann.
Ardmann is an expert in
the ecology of coral reefs
and has been studying
them for over 20 years.
He's worked in these waters for
over a decade and knows them well.
Their first stop is the Raja Ampat
Islands of the west end of New Guinea.
Okay sir, ready? Let's go.
The warm waters are
teeming with colorful fish.
Nowhere in all of seas of the world
is there a greater diversity of life.
Over 500 species of corals live here,
they in turn support a myriad of fish
that depend on them
for food and shelter.
Tropical waters are
surprisingly poor in nutrients,
but the corals produce enough food to
sustain a vast community of marine creatures.
Ardmann has identified over 1,500 species
of fish in the shallow waters here,
confirming that this is one of the greatest
biodiversity hot spots in the world.
But Ardmann has long been wanting
to explore the deeper ocean.
It all started with an extraordinary
discovery that he made over 15 years ago.
He was traveling around the
island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia.
So, it was on my honeymoon in 1997.
We were in Manado when we
are doing some diving there,
and I always like to go to
the fish market just to see
what the people are catching there.
So we went quite early in the morning.
My wife saw it first.
Very intrigued by what this was.
It was something she'd never seen before.
So she called me over and
asked me what this was.
Ardmann immediaterly recognized
the bizarre looking fish.
And I said, oh my goodness,
it's a coelacanth.
The coelacanth is a very rare fish that
was once thought to be the ancestor
of all land-living
backbone animals.
It has armor-like scales
and large bulging eyes,
and fleshy fins
that resemble limbs.
Very surprised to see,
it's something I'd known as a child
but obviously never
seen a real one,
so it was fantastic and a
really big surprise to see.
Until the live specimen was caught
off the coast of South Africa in 1938,
the coelacanth was
thought to be extinct.
It had only been known from
fossils over 80 million years old.
And the discovery of a living
specimen was a scientific sensation.
It was over a meter and a half
long and weighed nearly 60 kilos.
News of the strange primeval fish
soon spread around the world.
50 years later, Ardmann himself,
found another coelacanth in
Asian waters far from Africa.
It was a different species and once again
the strange fish captured our imagination.
Since then, a few more specimens had
been recovered in Indonesian waters
but only in a handful of places.
Ardmann believes that their range
maybe much wider than we think.
He's long had the dream of conducting a full
scale exploration of the deep Pacific Ocean.
Other prehistoric creatures
such as deep-sea sharks
and nautilus,
have already been discovered here
and he hopes one day to
find the coelacanths too.
There's an important question about
why we have so many of those here?
What about the deep tropical sea?
And perhaps really try
to unlock some of the mysteries of
the deep tropical ancient seas here.
The expedition that Ardmann
and his colleagues are planning
will require much preparation
and take over a year.
From inside this submersible,
the team will have an unobstructed view,
nearly 360 degrees all around them.
The sub is also equipped
with a high resolution camera
that can capture even softer
shades of color underwater.
With final preparations complete,
the sub is ready for its descent.
I think that there's an extremely good
chance that coelacanths are found right here.
We're in the right place and
I'm extremely excited about this
and yeah, I'm just ready to go.
Ardmann is excited and nervous.
Guys happy?
- Very happy. Ready to go.
The sub weighs nearly eight tons.
It will be lowered into
the sea by a huge crane.
It's Ardmann's first dive into
the deep below the coral reef.
Nearer to the surface, the
swimmer clear, am I clear to vent?
Oh, yeah, you're clear to vent.
Hey guys.
Here we go. All right.
Fingers crossed.
The sub slowly
descends into the deep.
The lower they go,
the darker it gets.
Very little light penetrates
these gloomy depths.
Surface, surface Nadir, depth
now 34 meters on the wall, over.
Nadir, surface, steady 34 meters
on the wall, loud and clear.
Got a whole phalanx of little tiny
squid. directly in front of the lights.
Surface, surface, Nadir,
depth 170 meters.
The lights were okay.
Are we on the bottom?
- Yeah.
The seafloor is very different
to the coral reef above.
Bare and barren,
there is little sign of life here.
At last they spot something,
the strange heart-shape creature
at the end of the stalk.
It's a rare comb jelly that
was first discovered in 1941
by the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, who
was also a passionate marine biologist.
This jelly-like creature lives attached
to a rock at the bottom of the sea
and feeds in the most
extraordinary way.
It throws out long sticky filaments which
catch tiny prey drifting by in the water.
Surface, surface, Nadir, depth, 22...
- The sub is now descended
to below 200 meters and is entering
what is known as the twilight zone.
Very little light penetrates
as deeply as this.
That sea urchin is beautiful.
- Oh that's...
The red one right there?
- Yeah.
The sea urchin looks quite different to most
modern day urchins, having fewer spines.
In fact, it more close to resembles
fossils from 200 million years ago
and belongs to a primitive group
known as the pencil urchins
because of the thickness
of their spines.
The team notice another unusual
creature on the seafloor.
This is truly a living fossil here,
if we can get up on that video
and I think this is one of
the things that we rarely see.
So these are sea lilies
which are now on stalks.
This is basically exactly
what they look like
in a fossil record hundreds
of millions of years ago.
Here we go. There,
and one up there. Over there.
The sea lily looks just like those found
as fossils dating back 400 million years.
It has ranged very
little over millennia.
Perhaps sensing the sub's
presence as it approaches,
the sea lily begins
to wave its arms.
It may look like a plant
but it is in fact an animal
and if in danger, it will
resort to a remarkable strategy.
It detaches itself and
uses its feathery arms
to crawl over the sea floor
in search of a safe spot.
The sea lily may have retained its
primitive form for millions of years,
but it's also hardly enough to
have survived into the modern age.
Discovering these living fossils has
been quite overwhelming for Ardmann.
If we had a week of this...
- Oh my God.
Stalked sea lilies like these were once
far more abundant than they are today
and then found mostly
in shallow waters.
400 million years ago, thick
carpets of these strange creatures
covered the sea floor forming
spectacular underwater meadows.
The warm shallow waters were rich in
plankton and there were few large predators.
The nautilus, an ancient
relative of the squid, octopus,
haunted small marine
invertebrates such as trilobites.
Overtime, more former developed
predators began to appear,
primitive sharks,
and huge armored fish.
With powerful jaws and the
ability to swim swiftly,
these formidable hunters
rule the shallow seas.
While many prehistoric
creatures became extinct,
the sea lilies and
some other species
survived as living fossils
in the twilight zone.
The key to their success
was their ability to adapt.
During the age of the dinosaurs, even
bigger and more ferocious predators appeared
in the shallow seas.
Large swimming reptiles
like the plesiosaur.
Now, slow moving animals without
weapons of their own, made easy prey.
Those that lived in deep waters were largely
unaffected by this struggle to survival.
They are descendants of the
living fossils that we know today,
the coelacanths and the sea lilies.
Here in the deep there
were few competetors
and it was too dark from
most predators to find them.
The sub has returned
to the surface.
The first dive completed.
- Thank you sir.
You're welcome.
- It's a fantastic trip.
I would say it was other worldly,
it was truly a lost world
that we encountered.
I think that if we had some more time here,
that we would definitely find coelacanths.
The team start planning for their
next phase of the expedition.
We gotta take a look here.
Ardmann decides to focus his search
on finding prehistoric fish
including the coelacanth.
But where should he start to look?
Coelacanth are thought to be nocturnal,
hiding away in caves and rock crevices
around 200 meters
below the surface.
There are hardly any maps of
the seafloor around New Guinea.
From the little information he has,
Ardmann decides to focus on a small island
called Wuvulu of
the northern coast.
I think that Wuvulu looks to me from
the maps to be probably the steepest
and a few divers that I've spoken to
talked about very large caves there so that
could also be quite interesting.
So that's the general habitat
that we're going to look for.
General topography is something
like quite steep and the caves.
If coelacanths do live in these waters,
Wuvulu could have the right kind of habitat.
They set course for this
remote and little visit diver.
If we can confirm the
existence of coelacanths here
in Northern PNG, it will be actually
a very significant scientific finding,
it will open the
possibility that coelacanths
are found of course throughout
this western pacific rim.
So we're very excited
about this possibility.
30 hours later, the ship has reached its
destination just north of New Guinea.
Wuvulu is about five
kilometers long.
The team head towards the shore.
On the way, they encounter a
fisherman in his small canoe.
He's just caught an oilfish
nearly two meters long.
It's a deep sea fish usually found
at depths of around 500 meters.
Where did you catch this?
This is the place for them.
It's definitely a good sign
of good coelacanth habitat
which we already know from
what we've seen in the sample.
It sounds like coelacanths and oilfish
maybe found in the same kind of habitat.
Ardmann and his team head towards the local
village to see if they can find out more.
The island has a population
of some 900 people,
most of them making a living from fishing.
Everyone thinks they're a fish expert.
Have you caught any of this fishes before?
- Yeah. - Yeah?
Including this one?
- Yes, but this one normally,
we use to catch this fish at night.
- Right.
But what about the coelacanth?
- This one is very rare. - Very rare, okay.
Ardmann then gets to
meet a veteran fisherman
who gives him a crucial
piece of information.
Let me ask you some questions. Have
you ever seen that fish before?
I caught one. - You caught one?
- A small one. - A small one, yeah?
Did you catch that during the day or
at night? - At night. - At night, yeah?
And was it also in the same kind
of depths as this fish or, yeah?
About 200 to 300 meter deep.
- Yeah?
Quite deep, yeah? Okay.
Was that a long time ago or?
- No, no. - Just recently?
This year.
- This year, yeah? Okay.
Ardmann asks the fisherman to take them to
the spot where he caught the coelacanth.
The Wuvulus have a traditional way
of catching fish from the deep.
They tie a strip of leaf to a stone
and use it as a weight to lower the
line down to 200 meters or more.
After that,
it's simply a waiting game.
Next morning,
a tropical storm is brewing.
Despite the difficult conditions,
the crew continues to prepare the sub
for another dive.
They want to get as close
as possible to the shore.
Then the plan is to follow the
coral reef wall down into the deep.
Once underwater, they're
sheltered from the storm above.
And they discover that the
reef drops straight down.
Surface Nadir,
passing through 60 meters.
Conditions are good, visibility is
good. We're on the face of the wall.
They head for the location
pointed out by the fisherman.
Let's go down here.
A large fish is lurking inside a
crevice, could it be the coelacanth?
No, it's not.
It's a kind of grouper fish.
The team seem a bit disappointed.
But then, a massive grouper swims
right up to the sub's window.
It's a giant, maybe a meter long.
As groupers mature, they are
known to move into deeper water.
It peers into the sub,
fascinated by the alien visitors.
This is a novelty even for Ardmann.
Surface Nadir, depths, 200 meters.
All systems good.
It's the fisherman's anchor, you see that?
- Oh, yes.
It's the weight from
a deep sea line.
This maybe the place where the
fisherman caught the coelacanth.
Might be a stuck sea
lily right there.
It's another sea lily confirming that
they're now entering the twilight zone,
the threshold into the lost world.
Creatures like this are
few and far between.
These waters are barren,
sustaining very little life.
But something is
floating towards the sub.
They's like that for sure.
It's a nautilus, another living
fossil once common in the shallow seas
but now,
largely confined to the deep.
Surface Nadir, we have a nautilus.
Its large shell contains
gas-filled flotation chambers
with much it controls
its buoyancy and depths.
And it moves by squirting water out
through a siphon, a form of jet propulsion.
The team have already had superb
views of two primeval creatures,
it's a promising beginning.
They're now at a
depth of 200 meters.
Ardmann notices that the surrounding
seascape is gradually changing.
Still looks like the twin here,
of caves.
It's, is it?
The rocks are riddled with holes.
These caves are formed
thousands of years ago
by wind and waves eroding
the limestone cliffs
of a small island that is
now sunk beneath the sea.
There could be a coelacanth
hiding in one of these crevices.
The team decides to embark on the
systematic search of the caves.
Day after day, they dive
for eight hours at a time.
But it's not easy to find
a fish hiding in the dark.
Getting the sub close
to holes and crevices
in strong currents is a challenge.
It seems an endless task as
they check hundreds of caves.
Nothing seen.
Have coelacanths already been fished
to extinction in these waters,
or are they too shy
to reveal themselves?
It's frustrating and
they have nothing to show
for their efforts
but sheer exhaustion.
The team faced a difficult decision.
Should they stay or move to another site?
After much consideration,
Ardmann decides
to take his chances
on the new location.
They head east towards the
Kaniet Islands 200 miles away.
Far out in the Pacific, the Kaniet
islands are still uninhabited.
Untouched by man, the coral reefs
are healthy and well preserved.
And the water is
rich in marine life.
Ardmann hopes that here
in these pristine waters,
they may find the creature
they're looking for.
The sub descends into
the crystal blue water.
The team have their hopes set high.
Even at 200 meters,
the light still penetrates.
The water is exceptionally clear.
Oh, they're all around us,
holy shit. They're everywhere.
The team are astounded by the sheer
numbers of fish at these depths.
It's unlike anything
they've seen before.
Suddenly, they come across
a whole complex of caves.
Catacombs in there.
- Jesus.
Openings large and small lie
in the surface of the rock.
Some are so large that the
submersible could easily fit inside.
A large grouper
disappears into a hole.
This place definitely
has potential.
Great point was rich with
interesting caves but strong current.
To find their quarry, Ardmann
has brought along a new gimmick.
It's a compact camera called the drop
cam that can be taken down into the deep.
The back of bait is tied
to the front of the camera.
Oh, but it goes straight there.
And within minutes,
it's attracted attention.
Oh, no, no.
That's the end of our...
- A huge grouper has ripped the bait bag
right off together with
the arm of the rig.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Surface Nadir,
we were just attacked
by a very large grouper and
he tore the whole bait arm
of the front of the frame.
Back on their mother ship, the technicians
hurried to build a second system.
They managed to assemble all the parts and
even replaced the frame with a sturdier one.
Is that okay?
- Okay.
The camera is rigged
again and the contraption
will be left for the next 24 hours.
The drop cam uses red light the
deep-sea creatures can't detect.
This should allow us to see
the animals behaving naturally.
A nautilus has been
lured in by the bait.
And it's soon joined by another.
The new comer seems to be
watching the first with interest.
Now, it's trying to pull
the first one off the bait.
With a strong arm tactics
and jet propulsion,
it wrenches its rival off the food.
It's a surprisingly vigorous battle
between these two living fossils.
Down in the deep, food is so scarce
that every morsel is heavily contested.
The large bag of bait
continues to attract others
and is soon the center
of a feeding frenzy.
It's the last day
of the expedition.
Aboard the Alucia, preparations
are underway for the final dive.
The dome is given a good clean
and the crew also decides to
change the lights on the sub.
One light is replaced with a red one
since it works so well with the trap cam.
He'd made decrease
visibility a little
but it will ensure that they
don't scare off the animals.
Still optimistic. We don't get the
mare, looking forward to this last dive
and crossing fingers we get to it on
the last dive. It's happened before.
Surface Nadir,
depth 210 life spawn okay,
heading south.
They have entered
the twilight zone.
It's time to switch off the bright
lights leaving only the red.
It's working. The fish seem unperturbed
by the large sub above them.
And then.
Has gotta go for, he really is...
This is gonna be awesome.
A massive grouper
attacked the fish.
A ferocious predator like this would like
to scare off any coelacanth in the area.
Ardmann decides to take
the sub down even further.
Surface Nadir, depth 275 meters,
last border cave.
This deep, it's virtually pitch-black
and there's almost no sign of life.
It seems unlikely they'll
find anything here.
Just as the crew are debating
whether to turn back.
There's a fish there having bright eyes.
- Wide eyes.
You like the wide eyes.
You know what fish has wide eyes.
Very suspicious.
Then you go straight to that.
It's a big tube, whatever it is.
Oh, there's a couple of them.
Oh, shit, is this what, this could be it.
- This is coelacanth. - This is it, mate.
Yeah.
- We've got him.
High five!
- Good boys.
We nailed him.
- Where?
Right? Let's make sure. At least
I think that, let's make sure.
My God! Oh, they got something.
Yeah, it's them...
Are you sure, 'cause there's
something else? There's something,
they've got a weird something on it.
- What is this?
Well, that's a cast... That's not
a coela, that's something else.
But maybe right behind it, I...
Bizarre animal though, look at it.
But there's a second above which...
You gotta film this.
- You gotta film this.
It's a creature Ardmann
has never seen before.
It swims slowly along the seafloor.
It has a large head like a
coelacanth but a spotted body.
And beneath its belly, there are
strange appendages or feelers.
Ardmann has no idea
what this fish could be.
Is it possibly a new species?
I thought we had a...
What do we gotta call this fish?
An unknown species?
- Talking of weird fish.
Man, look at these things.
Surface Nadir, we have two
coelacanths-looking fish.
Variety, unknown.
There is astonishment
in the control room.
It sounds like,
they have just found a new fish,
so it looks very much
like a coelacanth.
That dorsal fin is exactly
carbon copy of a coelacanth.
The strange fish shows
little sign of fear
even when the sub moves in closer.
A second one is lurking
further back in the shadows.
Ardmann is fascinated and decides
to follow the mysterious creature.
But then to their surprise, the
fish starts to swim towards them.
It appears to be
interested in the sub.
It's a close encounter
of their third kind.
Wow, that is close.
He thinks we're shelter.
So it's about 1.2 meter of fish.
And the other?
- 1,2, 1....
It's a weird fish.
As it passes overhead, it clearly
extends its curious appendages.
Could it be using these to
feel the surface of the dome?
And then,
it even swims upside down.
It clearly has three antennae-like
structures on both sides of the body.
It's, wow!
They look like that tripod.
Feelers on the bottom
here at the animal.
The fish appears to stroke the rock
with its antennae as if
exploring the surface.
The longest antennae
extend just beyond the fins
and the animal is able
to move them at will.
The tips of the strange
feelers flatten out to a point
and seem to be soft and tactile.
Should we, do you wanna do
some red light filming? Yes. - Yeah?
Ardmann switches to the red light to see
if the animal will behave any differently.
It heads off slowly towards
the back of the cave.
It seems to have lost interest in the
sub and continues with its normal life.
It swims into a narrow crevice.
Though they wait, it doesn't
appear to be coming out again.
This must be its home.
Slowly circling around,
it appears to be checking out
its surroundings gently propping
the walls with its feelers.
For creatures that live in the dark, other
senses such as touch become more important.
Ardmann is intrigued,
what is this strange creature?
The crew on the surface
try to identify the fish
from the information they've
received from the sub.
They come to the conclusion
that it might be a new species
that was only recently described.
He says there's something there
but a not as pronounced
as the coelacanth.
In fact, it turns out that the fish
was first discovered in Japan in 2008.
The specimen is preserved in the
Museum of Natural History in Kanagawa.
Dr. Hiroshi Senou who
first described it,
explains that it's a very
rare kind of deep-sea fish.
It has a skeleton made
mostly of cartilage
and a strange soft gelatinous nose.
There are only four recorded specimens
of this jellynose in the world.
This is one of them.
Dr. Senou points out its strange pelvic
fins which are typical of the species.
They have evolved into three long,
narrow fin rays which look like antennae.
It's almost certainly the
same fish that Ardmann
and his team
encountered in the deep.
I think this video that
we are able to capture
of the jellynose is probably
in many ways more valuable
than any video of coelacanths, given
that this group is so poorly known
and there's really no existing
footage of anywhere near that quality.
In fact most of the photos
and video that we have
are just simply dead specimens, so this
is really spectacular footage and I think
that there's a lot that's gonna be able to be
learned about this special group of fishes.
The jellynose hides in narrow
caves deep within the ocean
which is perhaps why it was not
caught until the 21st century.
Even today, we know virtually nothing
about it and how it lives in the deep.
The expedition's footage provides the
first clues as to how this curious fish
may have managed to
survive at such depths.
A tiny fish swims
up to the jellynose
and briefly comes into contact
with its sensitive feelers.
Surprisingly,
the jellynose doesn't react.
Even though food is scarce
in this environment,
the jellynose showed no sign of feeding
the entire four hours
that the team followed it.
Like many deep-sea fish,
it seems to conserve energy
by swimming very slowly
in the cold water
and can therefore survive
on very little food.
But how did the jellynose come to live in
one of the most inhospitable places on earth?
Genetic analysis suggests
that its ancestors evolved
in shallow seas, some,
a hundred million years ago.
At first they prospered,
but were then driven
into deeper water by the
arrival of powerful predators.
In this impoverished environment, they
evolved to withstand periods of starvation.
And this may be how the jellynose
survived the extinctions
that befell many other
species on earth.
66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the
land and plesiosaurs dominated the seas.
A gigantic meteorite,
10 kilometers in diameter
collided with our planet with
catastrophic consequences.
The intense heat burnt over
half the earth's forests.
Giant tsunami swept
across the continent.
It may well be this that
wiped out the dinosaurs.
The shock waves of the impact
released underground sulfur
into the atmosphere which
turned into deadly acid rain.
The sulfuric rain killed off
the plankton in the shallow seas
and many marine animals
including the plesiosaurs
are thought to have
died of starvation.
The acid rain, however,
never reached the deep.
It was neutralized by
seawater on the way down.
So many creatures that lived in
the deep seas were able to survive.
Already adapted to living
in the sparse environment,
these animals now had an advantage.
Moving slowly to conserve energy and
able to endure periods of starvation
helped the ancestors of the
jellynose to survive in the deep.
That certainly is Ardmann's theory.
It's clearly something
from the lost world.
It would appear that these
animals actually have a,
an ecology or behavior
which is very similar
to the coelacanths,
so it's dwelling inside of caves.
It's well camouflaged
against the back of the cave
hovering there, but then if
it's disturbed it will come out.
From our limited observations
from the submarine, it appeared
that these fishes really are probably quite
dependent on the caves where they're living.
So I would say that the caves are probably
a very important part of their habitat.
The yearlong research
has come to an end.
Ardmann and his team have
discovered a lost world
of pre-historic creatures still living
in the deep waters of the tropical seas.
A nautilus, virtually
unchanged for 400 million years
slowly bobbing through
the dark water.
And sea lilies standing
tall on the ocean floor.
It's a world where time stood
still and living fossils survive.
This barren environment
where most marine creatures
could not survive has cradled these
ancient animals in a virtual time capsule.
Exploring these tropical seas
just 200 meters below the surface,
we found a very unique and
special place unlike anything
that I've ever experienced before. The
deep sea of course is a very vast area.
Interestingly, very little
explorations ever been done
in this region and it's
largely still a mystery.
But by using cutting-edge technology
like the Triton submersible,
we've been able to really shed some
light on this very unique place
and understand much
better this lost world.
The astounding encounter with
the bizarre fish, the jellynose
that leads a austere
life in the dark waters
was the highlight
of the expedition.
It was revealed that the
deep sea still remain
a mysterious and unexplored world.
Over 90% of our oceans are so deep but
they're normally far beyond our reach
and they remain the least
known part of our planet.
of Southeast Asia
are home to some of the richest
coral reefs on the planet.
But hundreds of meters beneath the surface
lies a world where time had stood still.
Here, creatures from the far
distant past still survive.
Now a team with
scientists and film makers
have joint forces to explore
this largely unknown world.
With the state-of-the-art submersible,
they descend deep below the surface.
This is truly a living fossil here.
And discover prehistoric creatures
that have survived virtually unchanged
for over 400 million years.
It's a lost world hidden
in the depths of the sea
where primeval creatures have
lived since the earliest times.
Following the reports
from local fishermen,
the team set off in
search of a strange fish
that is said to lurk
in these waters.
Have you ever seen that fish before?
- I caught one.
It's a journey full of surprises
and extraordinarily encounters.
And finally,
after a year of exploration.
Oh shit, this is what,
this could be it.
This is it mate.
- Yeah? - Yeah. - We got them.
They discover a bizarre fish
that few people had ever seen,
and encounter some of the
ocean's most elusive inhabitants.
This is gonna be awesome.
It's the journey of a lifetime.
DEEP OCEAN
THE LOST WORLD OF THE PACIFIC
The island of New Guinea
in the Pacific Ocean,
it's a wild paradise that still remains
largely untouched by modern civilization.
A scientific research vessel is here to
explore the uncharted depths of these waters.
The Alucia is equipped
with the latest technology
including a deep sea submersible that
can dive to depths of 1,000 meters.
The crew are carrying out final safety
checks to the submersible Nadir.
No one before has attempted to
dive in these waters with a sub.
The expedition is led by
marine biologist, Mark Ardmann.
Ardmann is an expert in
the ecology of coral reefs
and has been studying
them for over 20 years.
He's worked in these waters for
over a decade and knows them well.
Their first stop is the Raja Ampat
Islands of the west end of New Guinea.
Okay sir, ready? Let's go.
The warm waters are
teeming with colorful fish.
Nowhere in all of seas of the world
is there a greater diversity of life.
Over 500 species of corals live here,
they in turn support a myriad of fish
that depend on them
for food and shelter.
Tropical waters are
surprisingly poor in nutrients,
but the corals produce enough food to
sustain a vast community of marine creatures.
Ardmann has identified over 1,500 species
of fish in the shallow waters here,
confirming that this is one of the greatest
biodiversity hot spots in the world.
But Ardmann has long been wanting
to explore the deeper ocean.
It all started with an extraordinary
discovery that he made over 15 years ago.
He was traveling around the
island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia.
So, it was on my honeymoon in 1997.
We were in Manado when we
are doing some diving there,
and I always like to go to
the fish market just to see
what the people are catching there.
So we went quite early in the morning.
My wife saw it first.
Very intrigued by what this was.
It was something she'd never seen before.
So she called me over and
asked me what this was.
Ardmann immediaterly recognized
the bizarre looking fish.
And I said, oh my goodness,
it's a coelacanth.
The coelacanth is a very rare fish that
was once thought to be the ancestor
of all land-living
backbone animals.
It has armor-like scales
and large bulging eyes,
and fleshy fins
that resemble limbs.
Very surprised to see,
it's something I'd known as a child
but obviously never
seen a real one,
so it was fantastic and a
really big surprise to see.
Until the live specimen was caught
off the coast of South Africa in 1938,
the coelacanth was
thought to be extinct.
It had only been known from
fossils over 80 million years old.
And the discovery of a living
specimen was a scientific sensation.
It was over a meter and a half
long and weighed nearly 60 kilos.
News of the strange primeval fish
soon spread around the world.
50 years later, Ardmann himself,
found another coelacanth in
Asian waters far from Africa.
It was a different species and once again
the strange fish captured our imagination.
Since then, a few more specimens had
been recovered in Indonesian waters
but only in a handful of places.
Ardmann believes that their range
maybe much wider than we think.
He's long had the dream of conducting a full
scale exploration of the deep Pacific Ocean.
Other prehistoric creatures
such as deep-sea sharks
and nautilus,
have already been discovered here
and he hopes one day to
find the coelacanths too.
There's an important question about
why we have so many of those here?
What about the deep tropical sea?
And perhaps really try
to unlock some of the mysteries of
the deep tropical ancient seas here.
The expedition that Ardmann
and his colleagues are planning
will require much preparation
and take over a year.
From inside this submersible,
the team will have an unobstructed view,
nearly 360 degrees all around them.
The sub is also equipped
with a high resolution camera
that can capture even softer
shades of color underwater.
With final preparations complete,
the sub is ready for its descent.
I think that there's an extremely good
chance that coelacanths are found right here.
We're in the right place and
I'm extremely excited about this
and yeah, I'm just ready to go.
Ardmann is excited and nervous.
Guys happy?
- Very happy. Ready to go.
The sub weighs nearly eight tons.
It will be lowered into
the sea by a huge crane.
It's Ardmann's first dive into
the deep below the coral reef.
Nearer to the surface, the
swimmer clear, am I clear to vent?
Oh, yeah, you're clear to vent.
Hey guys.
Here we go. All right.
Fingers crossed.
The sub slowly
descends into the deep.
The lower they go,
the darker it gets.
Very little light penetrates
these gloomy depths.
Surface, surface Nadir, depth
now 34 meters on the wall, over.
Nadir, surface, steady 34 meters
on the wall, loud and clear.
Got a whole phalanx of little tiny
squid. directly in front of the lights.
Surface, surface, Nadir,
depth 170 meters.
The lights were okay.
Are we on the bottom?
- Yeah.
The seafloor is very different
to the coral reef above.
Bare and barren,
there is little sign of life here.
At last they spot something,
the strange heart-shape creature
at the end of the stalk.
It's a rare comb jelly that
was first discovered in 1941
by the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, who
was also a passionate marine biologist.
This jelly-like creature lives attached
to a rock at the bottom of the sea
and feeds in the most
extraordinary way.
It throws out long sticky filaments which
catch tiny prey drifting by in the water.
Surface, surface, Nadir, depth, 22...
- The sub is now descended
to below 200 meters and is entering
what is known as the twilight zone.
Very little light penetrates
as deeply as this.
That sea urchin is beautiful.
- Oh that's...
The red one right there?
- Yeah.
The sea urchin looks quite different to most
modern day urchins, having fewer spines.
In fact, it more close to resembles
fossils from 200 million years ago
and belongs to a primitive group
known as the pencil urchins
because of the thickness
of their spines.
The team notice another unusual
creature on the seafloor.
This is truly a living fossil here,
if we can get up on that video
and I think this is one of
the things that we rarely see.
So these are sea lilies
which are now on stalks.
This is basically exactly
what they look like
in a fossil record hundreds
of millions of years ago.
Here we go. There,
and one up there. Over there.
The sea lily looks just like those found
as fossils dating back 400 million years.
It has ranged very
little over millennia.
Perhaps sensing the sub's
presence as it approaches,
the sea lily begins
to wave its arms.
It may look like a plant
but it is in fact an animal
and if in danger, it will
resort to a remarkable strategy.
It detaches itself and
uses its feathery arms
to crawl over the sea floor
in search of a safe spot.
The sea lily may have retained its
primitive form for millions of years,
but it's also hardly enough to
have survived into the modern age.
Discovering these living fossils has
been quite overwhelming for Ardmann.
If we had a week of this...
- Oh my God.
Stalked sea lilies like these were once
far more abundant than they are today
and then found mostly
in shallow waters.
400 million years ago, thick
carpets of these strange creatures
covered the sea floor forming
spectacular underwater meadows.
The warm shallow waters were rich in
plankton and there were few large predators.
The nautilus, an ancient
relative of the squid, octopus,
haunted small marine
invertebrates such as trilobites.
Overtime, more former developed
predators began to appear,
primitive sharks,
and huge armored fish.
With powerful jaws and the
ability to swim swiftly,
these formidable hunters
rule the shallow seas.
While many prehistoric
creatures became extinct,
the sea lilies and
some other species
survived as living fossils
in the twilight zone.
The key to their success
was their ability to adapt.
During the age of the dinosaurs, even
bigger and more ferocious predators appeared
in the shallow seas.
Large swimming reptiles
like the plesiosaur.
Now, slow moving animals without
weapons of their own, made easy prey.
Those that lived in deep waters were largely
unaffected by this struggle to survival.
They are descendants of the
living fossils that we know today,
the coelacanths and the sea lilies.
Here in the deep there
were few competetors
and it was too dark from
most predators to find them.
The sub has returned
to the surface.
The first dive completed.
- Thank you sir.
You're welcome.
- It's a fantastic trip.
I would say it was other worldly,
it was truly a lost world
that we encountered.
I think that if we had some more time here,
that we would definitely find coelacanths.
The team start planning for their
next phase of the expedition.
We gotta take a look here.
Ardmann decides to focus his search
on finding prehistoric fish
including the coelacanth.
But where should he start to look?
Coelacanth are thought to be nocturnal,
hiding away in caves and rock crevices
around 200 meters
below the surface.
There are hardly any maps of
the seafloor around New Guinea.
From the little information he has,
Ardmann decides to focus on a small island
called Wuvulu of
the northern coast.
I think that Wuvulu looks to me from
the maps to be probably the steepest
and a few divers that I've spoken to
talked about very large caves there so that
could also be quite interesting.
So that's the general habitat
that we're going to look for.
General topography is something
like quite steep and the caves.
If coelacanths do live in these waters,
Wuvulu could have the right kind of habitat.
They set course for this
remote and little visit diver.
If we can confirm the
existence of coelacanths here
in Northern PNG, it will be actually
a very significant scientific finding,
it will open the
possibility that coelacanths
are found of course throughout
this western pacific rim.
So we're very excited
about this possibility.
30 hours later, the ship has reached its
destination just north of New Guinea.
Wuvulu is about five
kilometers long.
The team head towards the shore.
On the way, they encounter a
fisherman in his small canoe.
He's just caught an oilfish
nearly two meters long.
It's a deep sea fish usually found
at depths of around 500 meters.
Where did you catch this?
This is the place for them.
It's definitely a good sign
of good coelacanth habitat
which we already know from
what we've seen in the sample.
It sounds like coelacanths and oilfish
maybe found in the same kind of habitat.
Ardmann and his team head towards the local
village to see if they can find out more.
The island has a population
of some 900 people,
most of them making a living from fishing.
Everyone thinks they're a fish expert.
Have you caught any of this fishes before?
- Yeah. - Yeah?
Including this one?
- Yes, but this one normally,
we use to catch this fish at night.
- Right.
But what about the coelacanth?
- This one is very rare. - Very rare, okay.
Ardmann then gets to
meet a veteran fisherman
who gives him a crucial
piece of information.
Let me ask you some questions. Have
you ever seen that fish before?
I caught one. - You caught one?
- A small one. - A small one, yeah?
Did you catch that during the day or
at night? - At night. - At night, yeah?
And was it also in the same kind
of depths as this fish or, yeah?
About 200 to 300 meter deep.
- Yeah?
Quite deep, yeah? Okay.
Was that a long time ago or?
- No, no. - Just recently?
This year.
- This year, yeah? Okay.
Ardmann asks the fisherman to take them to
the spot where he caught the coelacanth.
The Wuvulus have a traditional way
of catching fish from the deep.
They tie a strip of leaf to a stone
and use it as a weight to lower the
line down to 200 meters or more.
After that,
it's simply a waiting game.
Next morning,
a tropical storm is brewing.
Despite the difficult conditions,
the crew continues to prepare the sub
for another dive.
They want to get as close
as possible to the shore.
Then the plan is to follow the
coral reef wall down into the deep.
Once underwater, they're
sheltered from the storm above.
And they discover that the
reef drops straight down.
Surface Nadir,
passing through 60 meters.
Conditions are good, visibility is
good. We're on the face of the wall.
They head for the location
pointed out by the fisherman.
Let's go down here.
A large fish is lurking inside a
crevice, could it be the coelacanth?
No, it's not.
It's a kind of grouper fish.
The team seem a bit disappointed.
But then, a massive grouper swims
right up to the sub's window.
It's a giant, maybe a meter long.
As groupers mature, they are
known to move into deeper water.
It peers into the sub,
fascinated by the alien visitors.
This is a novelty even for Ardmann.
Surface Nadir, depths, 200 meters.
All systems good.
It's the fisherman's anchor, you see that?
- Oh, yes.
It's the weight from
a deep sea line.
This maybe the place where the
fisherman caught the coelacanth.
Might be a stuck sea
lily right there.
It's another sea lily confirming that
they're now entering the twilight zone,
the threshold into the lost world.
Creatures like this are
few and far between.
These waters are barren,
sustaining very little life.
But something is
floating towards the sub.
They's like that for sure.
It's a nautilus, another living
fossil once common in the shallow seas
but now,
largely confined to the deep.
Surface Nadir, we have a nautilus.
Its large shell contains
gas-filled flotation chambers
with much it controls
its buoyancy and depths.
And it moves by squirting water out
through a siphon, a form of jet propulsion.
The team have already had superb
views of two primeval creatures,
it's a promising beginning.
They're now at a
depth of 200 meters.
Ardmann notices that the surrounding
seascape is gradually changing.
Still looks like the twin here,
of caves.
It's, is it?
The rocks are riddled with holes.
These caves are formed
thousands of years ago
by wind and waves eroding
the limestone cliffs
of a small island that is
now sunk beneath the sea.
There could be a coelacanth
hiding in one of these crevices.
The team decides to embark on the
systematic search of the caves.
Day after day, they dive
for eight hours at a time.
But it's not easy to find
a fish hiding in the dark.
Getting the sub close
to holes and crevices
in strong currents is a challenge.
It seems an endless task as
they check hundreds of caves.
Nothing seen.
Have coelacanths already been fished
to extinction in these waters,
or are they too shy
to reveal themselves?
It's frustrating and
they have nothing to show
for their efforts
but sheer exhaustion.
The team faced a difficult decision.
Should they stay or move to another site?
After much consideration,
Ardmann decides
to take his chances
on the new location.
They head east towards the
Kaniet Islands 200 miles away.
Far out in the Pacific, the Kaniet
islands are still uninhabited.
Untouched by man, the coral reefs
are healthy and well preserved.
And the water is
rich in marine life.
Ardmann hopes that here
in these pristine waters,
they may find the creature
they're looking for.
The sub descends into
the crystal blue water.
The team have their hopes set high.
Even at 200 meters,
the light still penetrates.
The water is exceptionally clear.
Oh, they're all around us,
holy shit. They're everywhere.
The team are astounded by the sheer
numbers of fish at these depths.
It's unlike anything
they've seen before.
Suddenly, they come across
a whole complex of caves.
Catacombs in there.
- Jesus.
Openings large and small lie
in the surface of the rock.
Some are so large that the
submersible could easily fit inside.
A large grouper
disappears into a hole.
This place definitely
has potential.
Great point was rich with
interesting caves but strong current.
To find their quarry, Ardmann
has brought along a new gimmick.
It's a compact camera called the drop
cam that can be taken down into the deep.
The back of bait is tied
to the front of the camera.
Oh, but it goes straight there.
And within minutes,
it's attracted attention.
Oh, no, no.
That's the end of our...
- A huge grouper has ripped the bait bag
right off together with
the arm of the rig.
Oh, Jesus Christ. Surface Nadir,
we were just attacked
by a very large grouper and
he tore the whole bait arm
of the front of the frame.
Back on their mother ship, the technicians
hurried to build a second system.
They managed to assemble all the parts and
even replaced the frame with a sturdier one.
Is that okay?
- Okay.
The camera is rigged
again and the contraption
will be left for the next 24 hours.
The drop cam uses red light the
deep-sea creatures can't detect.
This should allow us to see
the animals behaving naturally.
A nautilus has been
lured in by the bait.
And it's soon joined by another.
The new comer seems to be
watching the first with interest.
Now, it's trying to pull
the first one off the bait.
With a strong arm tactics
and jet propulsion,
it wrenches its rival off the food.
It's a surprisingly vigorous battle
between these two living fossils.
Down in the deep, food is so scarce
that every morsel is heavily contested.
The large bag of bait
continues to attract others
and is soon the center
of a feeding frenzy.
It's the last day
of the expedition.
Aboard the Alucia, preparations
are underway for the final dive.
The dome is given a good clean
and the crew also decides to
change the lights on the sub.
One light is replaced with a red one
since it works so well with the trap cam.
He'd made decrease
visibility a little
but it will ensure that they
don't scare off the animals.
Still optimistic. We don't get the
mare, looking forward to this last dive
and crossing fingers we get to it on
the last dive. It's happened before.
Surface Nadir,
depth 210 life spawn okay,
heading south.
They have entered
the twilight zone.
It's time to switch off the bright
lights leaving only the red.
It's working. The fish seem unperturbed
by the large sub above them.
And then.
Has gotta go for, he really is...
This is gonna be awesome.
A massive grouper
attacked the fish.
A ferocious predator like this would like
to scare off any coelacanth in the area.
Ardmann decides to take
the sub down even further.
Surface Nadir, depth 275 meters,
last border cave.
This deep, it's virtually pitch-black
and there's almost no sign of life.
It seems unlikely they'll
find anything here.
Just as the crew are debating
whether to turn back.
There's a fish there having bright eyes.
- Wide eyes.
You like the wide eyes.
You know what fish has wide eyes.
Very suspicious.
Then you go straight to that.
It's a big tube, whatever it is.
Oh, there's a couple of them.
Oh, shit, is this what, this could be it.
- This is coelacanth. - This is it, mate.
Yeah.
- We've got him.
High five!
- Good boys.
We nailed him.
- Where?
Right? Let's make sure. At least
I think that, let's make sure.
My God! Oh, they got something.
Yeah, it's them...
Are you sure, 'cause there's
something else? There's something,
they've got a weird something on it.
- What is this?
Well, that's a cast... That's not
a coela, that's something else.
But maybe right behind it, I...
Bizarre animal though, look at it.
But there's a second above which...
You gotta film this.
- You gotta film this.
It's a creature Ardmann
has never seen before.
It swims slowly along the seafloor.
It has a large head like a
coelacanth but a spotted body.
And beneath its belly, there are
strange appendages or feelers.
Ardmann has no idea
what this fish could be.
Is it possibly a new species?
I thought we had a...
What do we gotta call this fish?
An unknown species?
- Talking of weird fish.
Man, look at these things.
Surface Nadir, we have two
coelacanths-looking fish.
Variety, unknown.
There is astonishment
in the control room.
It sounds like,
they have just found a new fish,
so it looks very much
like a coelacanth.
That dorsal fin is exactly
carbon copy of a coelacanth.
The strange fish shows
little sign of fear
even when the sub moves in closer.
A second one is lurking
further back in the shadows.
Ardmann is fascinated and decides
to follow the mysterious creature.
But then to their surprise, the
fish starts to swim towards them.
It appears to be
interested in the sub.
It's a close encounter
of their third kind.
Wow, that is close.
He thinks we're shelter.
So it's about 1.2 meter of fish.
And the other?
- 1,2, 1....
It's a weird fish.
As it passes overhead, it clearly
extends its curious appendages.
Could it be using these to
feel the surface of the dome?
And then,
it even swims upside down.
It clearly has three antennae-like
structures on both sides of the body.
It's, wow!
They look like that tripod.
Feelers on the bottom
here at the animal.
The fish appears to stroke the rock
with its antennae as if
exploring the surface.
The longest antennae
extend just beyond the fins
and the animal is able
to move them at will.
The tips of the strange
feelers flatten out to a point
and seem to be soft and tactile.
Should we, do you wanna do
some red light filming? Yes. - Yeah?
Ardmann switches to the red light to see
if the animal will behave any differently.
It heads off slowly towards
the back of the cave.
It seems to have lost interest in the
sub and continues with its normal life.
It swims into a narrow crevice.
Though they wait, it doesn't
appear to be coming out again.
This must be its home.
Slowly circling around,
it appears to be checking out
its surroundings gently propping
the walls with its feelers.
For creatures that live in the dark, other
senses such as touch become more important.
Ardmann is intrigued,
what is this strange creature?
The crew on the surface
try to identify the fish
from the information they've
received from the sub.
They come to the conclusion
that it might be a new species
that was only recently described.
He says there's something there
but a not as pronounced
as the coelacanth.
In fact, it turns out that the fish
was first discovered in Japan in 2008.
The specimen is preserved in the
Museum of Natural History in Kanagawa.
Dr. Hiroshi Senou who
first described it,
explains that it's a very
rare kind of deep-sea fish.
It has a skeleton made
mostly of cartilage
and a strange soft gelatinous nose.
There are only four recorded specimens
of this jellynose in the world.
This is one of them.
Dr. Senou points out its strange pelvic
fins which are typical of the species.
They have evolved into three long,
narrow fin rays which look like antennae.
It's almost certainly the
same fish that Ardmann
and his team
encountered in the deep.
I think this video that
we are able to capture
of the jellynose is probably
in many ways more valuable
than any video of coelacanths, given
that this group is so poorly known
and there's really no existing
footage of anywhere near that quality.
In fact most of the photos
and video that we have
are just simply dead specimens, so this
is really spectacular footage and I think
that there's a lot that's gonna be able to be
learned about this special group of fishes.
The jellynose hides in narrow
caves deep within the ocean
which is perhaps why it was not
caught until the 21st century.
Even today, we know virtually nothing
about it and how it lives in the deep.
The expedition's footage provides the
first clues as to how this curious fish
may have managed to
survive at such depths.
A tiny fish swims
up to the jellynose
and briefly comes into contact
with its sensitive feelers.
Surprisingly,
the jellynose doesn't react.
Even though food is scarce
in this environment,
the jellynose showed no sign of feeding
the entire four hours
that the team followed it.
Like many deep-sea fish,
it seems to conserve energy
by swimming very slowly
in the cold water
and can therefore survive
on very little food.
But how did the jellynose come to live in
one of the most inhospitable places on earth?
Genetic analysis suggests
that its ancestors evolved
in shallow seas, some,
a hundred million years ago.
At first they prospered,
but were then driven
into deeper water by the
arrival of powerful predators.
In this impoverished environment, they
evolved to withstand periods of starvation.
And this may be how the jellynose
survived the extinctions
that befell many other
species on earth.
66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the
land and plesiosaurs dominated the seas.
A gigantic meteorite,
10 kilometers in diameter
collided with our planet with
catastrophic consequences.
The intense heat burnt over
half the earth's forests.
Giant tsunami swept
across the continent.
It may well be this that
wiped out the dinosaurs.
The shock waves of the impact
released underground sulfur
into the atmosphere which
turned into deadly acid rain.
The sulfuric rain killed off
the plankton in the shallow seas
and many marine animals
including the plesiosaurs
are thought to have
died of starvation.
The acid rain, however,
never reached the deep.
It was neutralized by
seawater on the way down.
So many creatures that lived in
the deep seas were able to survive.
Already adapted to living
in the sparse environment,
these animals now had an advantage.
Moving slowly to conserve energy and
able to endure periods of starvation
helped the ancestors of the
jellynose to survive in the deep.
That certainly is Ardmann's theory.
It's clearly something
from the lost world.
It would appear that these
animals actually have a,
an ecology or behavior
which is very similar
to the coelacanths,
so it's dwelling inside of caves.
It's well camouflaged
against the back of the cave
hovering there, but then if
it's disturbed it will come out.
From our limited observations
from the submarine, it appeared
that these fishes really are probably quite
dependent on the caves where they're living.
So I would say that the caves are probably
a very important part of their habitat.
The yearlong research
has come to an end.
Ardmann and his team have
discovered a lost world
of pre-historic creatures still living
in the deep waters of the tropical seas.
A nautilus, virtually
unchanged for 400 million years
slowly bobbing through
the dark water.
And sea lilies standing
tall on the ocean floor.
It's a world where time stood
still and living fossils survive.
This barren environment
where most marine creatures
could not survive has cradled these
ancient animals in a virtual time capsule.
Exploring these tropical seas
just 200 meters below the surface,
we found a very unique and
special place unlike anything
that I've ever experienced before. The
deep sea of course is a very vast area.
Interestingly, very little
explorations ever been done
in this region and it's
largely still a mystery.
But by using cutting-edge technology
like the Triton submersible,
we've been able to really shed some
light on this very unique place
and understand much
better this lost world.
The astounding encounter with
the bizarre fish, the jellynose
that leads a austere
life in the dark waters
was the highlight
of the expedition.
It was revealed that the
deep sea still remain
a mysterious and unexplored world.
Over 90% of our oceans are so deep but
they're normally far beyond our reach
and they remain the least
known part of our planet.