Dive into the Deep Dark Ocean in a High-Tech Submersible!

So we've now dropped below 200 meters deep. Okay, they've seen a shark. What? There's a shark somewhere around here. Welcome to the Scientific Research Ship Baseline Explorer. We're just off the coast of Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean. 775 miles from New York, 1,051 miles from Florida, 3,237 miles from Cornwall. I'm Greg Foot, I'm the onboard science reporter, and today I'm getting the chance to dive down into the deep ocean in a submersible called Nomad. I'm excited. Yeah, I've been waiting a very long time for this, so let's get down there. Hello, sir. Can I come in? Oh, it is a bit small, isn't it? All right, see you topside. Yeah, I think we're ready to slide you into position. Oh, we're flying. Yeah, let's turn this on. Turn that side a bit. We're in. I guess we're ready to go then. Yeah, good, thank you. Oh, it's so good to be in here. I've been waiting for this for such a long time. So they're starting to release straps now. Roger that, doing a thruster. So I'm going to test my thrusters. There's Kenny. Oh, that's my first glimpse. Of underwater. That is my first glimpse of the underwater. Roger that, here we go. Thank you, Jeremy. Okay, so we're well clear. So we're positively buoyant right now, are we? Yep. Inside the big gold tanks that you look on the side here, those are our main ballast tanks. So they're full of air. And they're keeping us right up out of the water. And then in behind us, we have what's called a variable ballast tank. And that's what we use to fine adjust our trim on the bottom. So excited. So, so excited. Topside, topside, this is Nomad. Topside, go ahead. Yeah, my hatch is secure. Life support is running. Pre-dive safety briefing has been completed. We're looking for permission just to open our vents and just get out of this heat. Roger that, opening vents now. Okay, so tell me what happens as we open the vents. So you can see the air starting to come through there. Yep, and it's going to tip forward. And then it's going to roll back in a minute. So that's our start. That's quite a scary feeling actually, isn't it? Yep. Is that a little jellyfish? Yep. Just there? Yep, little jelly. Nomad, Nomad, you're welcome. Yeah, go ahead, Nemo. Yeah, I'm at your port side, heading your way. You want to come this direction a little bit? Roger that, turn around. Topside, Nemo. You there? Ah, yes. Our hatch is secure. Life support systems are on and running. Our safety briefing has been complete. Visual on Nomad. Request permission to open vents and dive. Nemo copy, sending. Nomad copy, heading down. Down we go. You're going to hear a little bit of air release. You'll hear it again. And we're on our way. It's so beautifully smooth, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Get away from the wave action. So you can already see, at just 15 feet down, that it gets a lot bluer the deeper you go. And that's because the sunlight that's coming in is getting absorbed and scattered by all the water around us. And actually, the red gets absorbed and scattered first, which means it just gets bluer and bluer and bluer on the way down to the depths. Topside, topside. This is Nomad. My depth is 24 feet. My heading is 240. My life support is OK. And my vents are secure. So we just hover here for a little bit? No, we're still going down. Are we going down? Yeah, yeah. You just can't tell at all? No. So we're sinking. Is that a co-pilot job, just to clean the windows? Absolutely. I can do that? Yeah. Yeah, there they are. That is a phenomenal sight. It's like they're flying. They are. Isn't it? Yep. Whoa! Yeah, hi guys. We see you. There he goes. Look at him spin. I think it's spinning fast. Wow. Very maneuverable. You're just giving them a little pirouette. Give them a little spin, a little dance. The ocean is the planet's beating heart. It produces a lot of the oxygen that life needs to breathe. It's home to so much fish that feeds so much of the world. And also, it drives the temperature of the planet as well. And just like measuring the pulse to get a sense of the health of the body, we can measure the ocean currents down here in the deep oceans to get a sense of the health of the whole planet and, of course, the deep ocean. And that is what Nekton is doing. Nekton's scientific mission is the XL Catlin Deep Ocean Survey. And right now, I am 565 foot down in this incredible submersible with Kelvin doing just that. So we've now dropped below 200 meters deep. And that means that we've left the sunlight layer, which is known as the epipelagic zone. And we've dropped down into the twilight area, or the mesopelagic zone. And right here, it is really dark because all the light, the sunlight, has been scattered and absorbed. And it means it's very dark and very eerie and very alien. But there is still some light here, just it's very, very faint. And if we were to go down below 1,000 meters, we would then go right down deep, down into total darkness, right down into the midnight zone. Oh my word, what's that? That's the wall right there. Oh my word, this is phenomenal. So we've made it to our deck. We're at 250 meters. It's like a wall that's just suddenly appeared in front of us. So we're in this field of wire corals. And there's a few little fish dancing around as well. And we can see some other kind of sprouting corals on the rock. I mean, that's not the scientific name because I don't really know what it is. So when we're up on the ship at sea level, we say that the pressure is one atmosphere. And that is essentially the amount of pressure pushing down on top of us from the whole of the atmosphere, all of that air pushing down on our shoulders. Now, it's actually quite a lot, but we never stop and think about it because we've grown up with it, we've evolved to deal with it. But as you dive deeper and deeper into the water, with all of that water on top of you, that starts pushing down on you. And that's why the pressure increases. And actually, it goes up by one atmosphere every 10 meters. So we're at 820 feet now. Or we could say 25 atmospheres because we're at 250 meters. Which is easily the same as having a jumbo jet or a few of them kind of on top of the sub right now. I find one enough. One is enough sometimes. I'm guessing it actually wouldn't be possible to open that at all. No, there's no way you could push that hatch open. Not a chance. I'm not going to do it, but I could actually undog it. Nothing would happen. You don't need to do that. I'm going to trust the science. Yeah, exactly. Tell me about this incredible machine. How can it survive those massive pressures? Well, we're in a perfect sphere. So this is an acrylic sphere and it is built to handle that pressure. So if it was square, the sides would push in. But because it's a perfect sphere, it doesn't crush. It pushes in on itself and actually gets quite strong. Amazing bit of tech. These Triton submersibles are fantastic. It's home for you. It's your office. It is. It is my office. Yeah, what an office. I have the best office. You really do. And the part that I like about it the best is that we can come down and spend two or three hours down here. Go straight back to the surface. Get out and have a nice cool drink. Whereas our technical divers, who are also part of the Nickton mission, those guys are actually amazing global underwater explorers. They are diving for five, six hours a day. And their decompression, their deco can be, they can be hanging at like less than 10 meters below the surface for an hour and a half, two hours. Giving us a call. Sure. Go ahead, Nemo. This is Nomad. Okay, they've seen a shark sighting. What? There's a shark somewhere around here. I just saw something. Ah, it's a little group of fish up there. But no shark up here. No shark. None of a gun. Bummer. Oh, a moray eel. Oh, moray eel. Green moray. Check that out. Look, a green moray eel this far down. That's amazing. Wow. You've probably heard that we've only mapped 5% of the ocean floor. That's actually not right. We have actually mapped 100% of the ocean's floor, but to a resolution of five kilometers. So you're not going to see much detail at all. It's like a really grainy image. But actually, thanks to missions like the Nickton mission and some clever bits of trickery where satellites can look down at the ocean and using maths can work out the local shifts in gravity, we've actually mapped about 10% to 15% of the ocean floor to a resolution of about 100 meters. However, saying all that, we have only ever taken samples of 0.0001% of the whole of the ocean floor. So it is very much still one of the most unexplored areas of our planet. And that is exactly why the Nickton mission is here. That is exactly why we are doing the ExoCatman deep ocean survey. And that is why we are down at 250 meters underneath that surface of the ocean, looking out across this alien looking landscape. All right, we're going up. So Nemo's just taking a look at a couple of crevices in this wall here that we're on the side of. We're right on the side of this seamount that just drops right, right off. We're just coming up to the top of the seamount, the top of this underwater mountain that we've been on the side of for the last two, two and a half hours. Topside, topside, this is Nomad. Cleared the top of the wall at 250 feet. Continuing our ascent. Topside, topside, this is Nomad. My depth is five, zero feet, 50 feet, looking for final clearance to the surface. Roger that, here I come. This is incredible. It's just got brighter and brighter and brighter and I can see the surface just glistening above us like this blanket almost above us. And we're about to break through. Here we go. Here we go, here we go, here we go. Oh, that was absolutely phenomenal. Can I just say, Kelvin, thank you so, so much. Thanks for coming. That was just, I will never forget that. My pleasure. Absolutely amazing. It's my job.