The World on the Ocean Floor | Sea of Hope: America's Underwater Treasures

[music playing]

MAN (OVER RADIO): [inaudible] 200 meters. Pisces V, K OK, do you copy? Roger, hatch is shut, ready to dive, dive, dive, over.

MAN (OVER RADIO): Roger, hatch is shut, ready to dive, dive, dive.

NARRATOR: Sylvia last dived here nearly four decades ago, using a special diving suit called JIM.

REPORTER: There is a new tool in the sea. It moves with the ponderous rhythms of a mechanical monster. Her question, can scientists use the JIM suit for dives beyond 1,000 feet? If successful, she will be the first woman to walk the sea floor beyond 1,000 feet.

SYLVIA EARLE: I see it. Oh, it's the bottom!

NARRATOR: Sylvia is looking for signs of change. When you're up near the surface, it's kind of light blue. But as you go down, you see the pretty shades of blue. And the blue gets darker and darker. Then it gets pitch black. It's like a different world. Yeah.

SYLVIA EARLE: Actually, our world is a different world. This is normal.

NARRATOR: New life comes to light. An unknown coral. Chris doesn't even know what species this thing is.

CHRIS: Is the only place I've really seen it this color. I've seen some in northwestern Hawaiian islands. Oh yeah, just scattered. It's everywhere. This is like a magic carpet. Oh, my goodness. Beautiful. Except it's better than any old carpet. It's alive. It's a live flying carpet. Sylvia never stopped looking out the window. She's just excited to see things that hadn't seen in so long.

SYLVIA EARLE: Swimming right under the ray.

FINN KENNEDY: The ray just ate something. He just trapped some of those little fish under his. That's unbelievable, he did. He got one of those polymixia.

MAN (OVER RADIO): Pisces V, Pisces IV, do you copy? We just watched these two rays eat polymixia.

SYLVIA EARLE: Here comes the ray.

MAN (OVER RADIO): OK, that's the first observation I've heard anybody say that. That's really interesting.

SYLVIA EARLE: Took a kid with fresh eyes to notice something that has been happening all along. Because after Finn pointed it out, we looked and we saw it happening all around us. That little eel just swam under. Oh, did you see?

FINN KENNEDY: Yeah, I got it on film. Oh.