Planet Ocean Page #4

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Around 100 meters below are ctenophores.

These gelatinous creatures

have luminous organs

to deter their enemies.

Deeper, at 1000 meters below the

surface, in the twilight of the ocean,

we find the siphonophores.

They are the largest species of plankton.

Some are up to 50 meters.

Their bodies are not distributed,

but grouped.

On one side is their stomach

and on the other the swim bladders

they use to float.

In between there is a net that they inflate

to catch any food falling from the surface.

Descend into the depths is like

traveling in a biological time machine.

There are perhaps 2000 species

of live fish in the depth.

A terrifying bestiary.

The Viperfish can eat things

greater than itself.

Or Saccopharynx - deep sea eels

who swallow everything that comes along.

Survival is difficult at 1500 meters depth.

Around 3000 meters there is no light.

It is the realm of the squid,

a prehistoric cousin of the octopus.

This octopus has blue blood

loaded with copper.

The huge eyes detect the slightest variation

in contrast above him, towards the surface.

His vision is fully adjusted

to the shadows.

If debris lands on the bottom,

crabs, eels and carnivorous sponges

gorge themselves.

Invisible in the mud, billions

of bacteria break down the remains.

The species here live slower,

and gets older -

sometimes up to 150 years old -

because of the extreme pressure

at 4000 m depth,

at the bottom of the ocean.

There is little oxygen.

And yet here we are.

In this world we barely know.

We are here because we are afraid

to run out of a substance.

We are looking to feed

our addiction to oil.

The ocean seems to be made of water.

But in reality it is an alliance

between life, chemistry and geology.

All waste, the corpses,

particles of seaweed

which originate from the surface,

every tiny cell of the ocean

ends his life here in the "marine snow".

Over millions of years

carbon, in the form of plankton,

has built up on the bottom of the seas.

It accumulates in thick layers

and forms rocks which we call limestone

and that peaks up stabbing

each lower level of the sea.

Sometimes it happens that such piles of

corpses does not form a rock,

but gradually merges into one organic

substance, sticky and black.

Oil!

It occurs almost everywhere

on the seabed and on land,

where the ocean

once covered the planet.

We began pumping pockets in

shallow places.

But these supplies are running out

and we look farther and deeper.

Now we are exploring deposits at

up to 7000 meters depth.

The last oil reserves for tomorrow

are found in the most

inaccessible areas of the sea.

This fire is burning plankton,

burning life.

We have 20,000 oil platforms

in the seas of the world.

Every year we burn the equivalent

of one million years plankton.

Our industrial revolution has taken

the planet 100 million years to make.

We transport each year two billion tons

of oil aboard our supertankers,

which are the largest moving

constructions that exist.

Oil is the main source of energy

for our civilization.

This energy propels me forward

to all boundaries.

Who else dwell

that in this gigantic ship's holds

a part of the biogeological history

of the ocean is transported?

This revolution has changed our lives.

But also that of the planet.

We need our transport so badly

we have divided America into two

to connect the seas.

We created the Panama Canal,

a cut of 80 kilometers

through the jungle.

It allows each year 13,000 ships

to go faster, farther.

Every 45 minutes

a ship crosses the mountain.

To feed the locks of my channel

we created a huge lake,

Lake Gatun, which stores rainwater.

If there is little rain, it can entail

technical problems.

Raw materials, gasoline,

factory ships,

car transport, cruise ships,

an infinite variety

of vessels.

We carry three quarters

of our merchandise over the ocean.

The flagship of all our boats is

the container ship,

on which thousands of

identical metal boxes are transported.

The riches of the world

from our power plants,

gives me wealth

and means

to turn our villages

into huge cities.

Here in Panama there was only jungle.

Today the money is flowing with the tide.

Rotterdam, Durban,

San Francisco, Singapore,

our ships weaving a web

between the continents.

The ocean brings our cities

together into a single world.

All sea routes come together in Asia.

Of the top 50 ports in the world

there are 11 in China.

And the most important is Shanghai.

The city lies at the end

of a 34 km long bridge,

on an island in the open sea, which was

razed to build a deep water port.

At the kilometer long wharf

giant cranes are each year unloading

30 million containers

which are to be changed,

re-used, or stored.

Who knows where our containers go

and what's inside?

Container transport is just a game.

Empty boxes to be filled,

full boxes to be emptied.

We have 600 million containers

on the ocean circulation.

They are the link

in the world we have created.

The ocean gave us globalization.

The demand is so great

that our container fleet

has tripled in less than 10 years.

There are at this moment

three thousand cargo ships being built

in Korea, China and Japan

which provide 90% of world production.

Everything here is oversized.

Gigantic shipyards

with more than 10,000 employees

renew and expand the existing units.

We build ships

that are more than 400 meters long,

the size of four football fields.

This relentless growth

of the shipping industry

is a reaction

to another industrial need.

The world factories have moved here.

The ocean also made globalization

of our industries possible.

A single ship can bring a whole forest

to the factories,

which turn it into paper, boards,

furniture, finished products.

China is the world's largest importer

of timber.

Thanks to the oceans, no forest is safe.

More than 500 tonnes of raw materials

comes every year by sea to Shanghai.

Stocks of iron ore, coal, wood, copper,

rare minerals

we tear from the planet.

Near the harbor,

other factories

produce steel and chemicals

to make materials

that others build, compose

and package

for export all over the world.

The lives of seven billion people

is connected to this part of the world.

What can fishermen still catch

from the waste from the factory

at the heart of this degenerate world?

Our tentacle-like cities

grow like mushrooms.

Shanghai is a symbol

of our impetuous rush.

Twenty-three million people live

in this megalopolis.

More than 6.000 skyscrapers

shoot into the air.

and 20.000 new projects

are in development,

a frenzy of construction

reaching into the heavens.

Every country in the world dreams

the rate of growth of Shanghai and China.

The city sprawls across the country,

but its fortune is thanks

to the fact that it meets the ocean.

The ocean planet is my planet.

But if we're ever wrong?

The ocean whence we came,

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