Aliens of the Deep

At the centre of our existence

is a powerful dynamo.

The sun.

It gives us heat and light,

and drives the great engine of life.

It's the food chain,

and we're all a part of it.

No matter who you are,

even if you're a hardcore meat-eater,

your dinner started with plants

somewhere turning sunlight into food.

So we are, all of us,

solar powered.

Maybe the ancient Egyptians

were right to worship the sun.

For four billion years,

the sun has given life to everything,

on land, and in the sea.

Rover One, this is Rover Two,

We are at the edge of the wall

and are beginning our descent, Over,

My name's Dijanna Figueroa, and I'm

a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara.

- This is cool,

- Copy that. Starting descent. Over.

I think I have

one of the coolest jobs in the world.

Check out those

corkscrew coral down there,

I'm a marine biologist.

I get to go to the bottom of the ocean

and study the amazing organisms

that live there.

There's nothing I'd rather be doing.

Rover One, Rover One,

do you copy?

This wall's pretty amazing,

We're barely on the edge

of photosynthesis right here,

Ambient light's really going now,

You're totally reliant on

the technology that's in your little bubble

to dive to that depth

where it's just a mystery down there.

You never know what you're gonna see.

- Look at all that krill,

- Oh, my gosh!

Looks like we're in

krill heaven over here, Rover One,

Yeah, roger that. Pretty incredible.

Not seeing much of anything alive here,

Dijanna, What about you?

Not much life at all, I think

we're pretty much out of the photic zone,

It's like being on the moon, huh?

Copy that,

Hey, look, we got a crinoid right down here,

Hey, Dijanna, we got a crinoid here.

We finally found a citizen.

Copy that,

Yeah, it looks like we're getting deeper,

and most of the animals down here

look like they're suspension feeders,

or particle feeders,

With no light from the surface,

not much can survive down here.

But there are places in the ocean

where sunlight has never reached,

not since the world began,

and yet amazing life forms thrive there.

So when I was invited to join the new

expedition to explore these places,

I had to say yes.

"Keldysh," "Keldysh,"

"Ares" bridge.

Yeah, Dave, we're about to begin dive reef right now,

We got MIR One

going into the water at...

Like this, so that we've got a central area

to work, Rover One is gonna stay...

I'm Jim Cameron,

and here's the deal.

I love this stuff.

Exploration. Real honest-to-God

deep ocean exploration.

This is way more exciting than

any made-up Hollywood special effects.

These deep ocean expeditions

always seem like space missions to me.

So, why not combine

outer space and inner space?

Sure, we'll take marine biologists.

But why not take astrobiologists

and space researchers?

So that's how a bunch

of space scientists wound up out here,

a thousand miles from the nearest land,

where, right under our feet,

down in the darkness,

are the most insane alien life forms

that have ever been discovered.

Two ships,

four manned submersibles,

forty dives at ten sites

in both the Atlantic and Pacific.

I like big operations,

but this one was off the hook.

So we'll come down together, like this, and

we'll try to stay a couple of meters apart,

because we don't want to drift off,

If the communications are compromised

with the multiple subs in the water,

all working on the same frequency,

some in Russian, some in English,

I want to make sure

we stay on visual...

The plan was to coordinate a four-sub dive,

using both ships, so two MIRs and two

Rovers could rendezvous at the bottom.

This would be a world first.

- Hi,

- Dr, Sagalevitch,

Anatoly Sagalevitch heads

the Manned Submersibles Laboratory

for the Russian

Academy of Sciences.

We've been working together

for almost a decade.

There we are,

The adventurers,

It's all his fault that we're doing this,

because we did Titanic twice,

in '95 and '01,

and we did Bismarck.

Sometime around the middle

of Bismarck, Anatoly says:

"You know, these wrecks are good,

they're interesting,

but you have to do something real,"

"We have to do some science,

Something real,"

Genya Chernaiev

is one of the Russian MIR pilots.

He's been flying submersibles

for over 20 years now.

The most important thing about this boat,

of course, is the view,

This view makes the Rovers unique,

but because of the acrylic sphere,

they can't go as deep as the MIRs.

So they'd only be joining us

for the Atlantic leg of the journey.

We also had Jake,

the little remotely operated 'bot

we'd used to explore

the Titanic and Bismarck wrecks.

Jake had been modified

to test a variety of sampling tools.

My brother Mike is Jake's inventor

and our pilot on this expedition.

His challenge was to steer Jake safely

around the volcanically active vent sites,

and not fry our little 'bot.

This would hopefully allow us

to get up close and personal

with the creatures we'd come to see.

We've checked the decks twice,

all the rigging looks squared away,

My other brother was with us too.

JD was the safety and communications

officer on board the "Ares."

Or, as he called it,

"crap job number 27."

Our launch procedure is as per the book,

Everything's straightforward,

She's first, she's second, Recovery

is determined by Jim from the bottom,

Now, recovery can go either way,

We chose the "Ares"

for the giant A-frame at her stern.

Its massive hydraulic cylinders

can lift the sub off the deck

and out over the water with ease.

It's one of the safest ways

to launch a large payload off of any ship,

and we constantly tested our procedures

until we had everything dialed in

for the upcoming four-sub dive.

All right, let's do this,

All stations, let's do this,

I'm gonna need everybody

to keep their ears open, be observant,

Keep your eyes open

for the lights of the other submersibles,

And, you know, it's gonna be challenging,

But I think we can pull it off,

All right, here we go,

Jacks up!

Finally, everything was in motion.

And in the middle of the North Atlantic,

a thousand miles from the nearest land,

our little expedition

was about to make history.

We're in motion,

We're in motion,

Nice and slow, blue winch,

Nice and slow,

- Now we're gunnin' runnin', huh?

- Yeah,

At least, that was the plan.

All stop, all stop, All stop,

I copy you, Lima Charlie.

The only problem we have right now

is the A-frame. Over.

I'll let you know

as soon as the crew gets it sorted.

About an hour and 15 minutes

ago, we had a safety stop,

Uh, what we know

is the A-frame went south,

It's a complete breakdown of the cylinder,

It ultimately amounts to a cold stop,

These bolts all shot,

And all this paint that's been here forever

busts loose because of that situation,

And it happened on that one as well,

Yeah, right, I mean, we're in the

middle of the ocean with a broken A-frame,

That's what it sounds like to me,

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