The Deeper You Go in the Ocean, the Stranger It Gets - Video

In 1960, two men sat inside a steel sphere about two meters wide and sank into the Mariana Trench. Around nine thousand meters down, a window cracked. They kept going.

We follow them, and our diver Gil, from the surface to the Challenger Deep in ten stops, with the real depth, pressure and temperature at each one, and the real animals and discoveries found there.

On the way down
- 0 m: blue dragons and by-the-wind sailors on the skin of the sea
- 200 m: the WWII sonar "false seafloor" that turned out to be alive
- 600 m: the barreleye's see-through head and a 40+ meter siphonophore
- 1,000 m: bioluminescence, anglerfish lures and fused mates
- 2,000 m: the Greenland shark, possibly centuries old
- 2,500 m: hydrothermal vents and life without sunlight
- 3,000 m: record-breaking whale dives and bone-eating worms
- 4,000 m: sea pigs, tripod fish and the metal nodules of the abyss
- 8,000 m: the deepest fish ever filmed
- 10,935 m: the Challenger Deep, from Trieste to today

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Dive log
0:00 The window that cracked
1:26 0 m: The blue fleet on the surface
5:09 200 m: The false seafloor
8:24 600 m: The fish with a see-through head
12:15 1,000 m: The midnight zone
16:04 2,000 m: The oldest animal in the dark
19:34 2,500 m: Chimneys of fire
23:08 3,000 m: The whale that feeds the deep
26:50 4,000 m: The abyssal plain
30:40 8,000 m: The deepest fish
34:24 10,935 m: The Challenger Deep

Sources for every depth
- Robison, B.H. and Reisenbichler, K.R. (2008). Macropinna microstoma and the paradox of its tubular eyes. Copeia 2008(4). https://www.mbari.org/news/researchers-solve-mystery-of-deep-sea-fish-with-tubular-eyes-and-transparent-head/
- Martini, S. and Haddock, S.H.D. (2017). Quantification of bioluminescence from the surface to the deep sea demonstrates its predominance as an ecological trait. Scientific Reports 7, 45750. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45750
- Irigoien, X. et al. (2014). Large mesopelagic fishes biomass and trophic efficiency in the open ocean. Nature Communications 5, 3271. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4271
- Swann, J.B. et al. (2020). The immunogenetics of sexual parasitism. Science 369(6511). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaz9445
- Nielsen, J. et al. (2016). Eye lens radiocarbon reveals centuries of longevity in the Greenland shark. Science 353(6300). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaf1703
- Corliss, J.B. et al. (1979). Submarine thermal springs on the Galápagos Rift. Science 203(4385). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.203.4385.1073
- Schorr, G.S. et al. (2014). First long-term behavioral records from Cuvier's beaked whales reveal record-breaking dives. PLOS ONE 9(3): e92633. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092633
- Rouse, G.W., Goffredi, S.K. and Vrijenhoek, R.C. (2004). Osedax: bone-eating marine worms with dwarf males. Science 305(5684). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1098650
- Smith, C.R. and Baco, A.R. (2003). Ecology of whale falls at the deep-sea floor. Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Review 41.
- Rabone, M. et al. (2023). How many metazoan species live in the world's largest mineral exploration region? Current Biology 33(12). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.052
- Sweetman, A.K. et al. (2024). Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor. Nature Geoscience 17. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01480-8
- Yancey, P.H. et al. (2014). Marine fish may be biochemically constrained from inhabiting the deepest ocean depths. PNAS 111(12). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1322003111
- Gerringer, M.E. et al. (2017). Pseudoliparis swirei sp. nov.: A newly-discovered hadal snailfish from the Mariana Trench. Zootaxa 4358(1).
- The Guardian (3 April 2023). Scientists find deepest fish ever recorded at 8,300 metres underwater near Japan (Jamieson et al., Izu-Ogasawara and Japan Trenches). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/03/scientists-find-deepest-fish-ever-recorded-at-8300-metres-underwater-near-japan
- Manganese nodule (Wikipedia): discovered 1868 in the Kara Sea; found in most oceans by HMS Challenger, 1872-1876. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule
- Trieste (bathyscaphe) (Wikipedia): 23 January 1960 dive, window crack after 9,000 m, 4 h 47 min descent, 20 minutes on the bottom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_(bathyscaphe)
- Challenger Deep (Wikipedia): 10,935 +/- 6 m (2021 survey); 27 people had descended as of July 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep

Made by people, with help from AI: we plan each dive and check the facts against the sources above. The illustrations and narration voice are AI-generated.

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