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00:00You
00:30You
00:52This is a man out of his element
00:55He is a Cuban diver who calls himself Pippin
01:03After years of trying he has gone as deep as 428 feet on a single lung full of air
01:15Through a combination of physical training more practice and meditation
01:20Pippin thinks he can go as deep as 500 feet on a breath
01:26But
01:29No matter how hard humans try we just don't make very good sea creatures
01:36There is oxygen in this water a lot of it, but you need gills to get at it not lungs
01:44So we visit for a bit then race for air and the safety of dry land
01:49Within
01:53The ocean are species yet to be discovered cures for deadly diseases and the keys to the weather
02:00There's a whole new world just offshore
02:04If only we could stay
02:06You
02:17It is dangerous and threatening at the same time that it is beautiful and appealing
02:24It's got everything
02:36It whispers sometimes it shouts
02:48There's really only one ocean one great body of salt water covering three-fourths of the earth's surface
02:57Water is life and life flourishes here may have started here
03:06It's a simple thing really a molecule of water is a combination of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen
03:14Water has been here ever since the earth has been here and oddly enough about the same amount of water in the same molecules
03:21Because the water just keeps cycling it goes into the ocean it evaporates it rains it comes back
03:27The water you drink the actual molecules you drink. That's it. That's the molecule that was there since the start
03:37When the earth first formed you can think it's just a big rock molten rock sitting in space
03:41There was a lot of water mixed in with that and it came out like in volcanic eruptions
03:46You know we think of volcanic eruptions in terms of lava
03:50But if you look at a volcano there's these big clouds of smoke and steam and a lot of that is water
03:54It's coming from the ground
03:57Ninety-seven percent of the earth's water has gathered in large salty oceans that move with the push of winds
04:03Surge at the pull of the moon and swirl with the spin of the earth
04:13Currents tides and waves are forces constantly at work keeping the earth's global system balanced
04:20If you look at the earth sort of large-scale
04:22The main thing that's going on in the surface is that the heat is coming in there's more heat at the equator
04:28Than at the poles and so the the the function of the atmosphere in the oceans is to move that heat
04:34Northward to kind of even things out otherwise it you know you'd have the ocean boiling at the equator and freezing at the pole
04:40The oceans ability to circulate heat around the planet moderates our climate
04:45Evaporation from the ocean becomes rain that nourishes our crops
04:52Together the ocean and air work as a gigantic machine
05:00A classic example of this complex global relationship between sea and air is a wave in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
05:08A classic example of this complex global relationship between sea and air is a weather phenomenon called El Nino
05:18It's a gentle warming of the water usually no more than a few degrees
05:22But on such a large scale that it generates weather that destroys homes and lives
05:30Scientists are watching the waters to understand when an El Nino will come again
05:34We are not quite conversant about what's going on in the interaction between our atmosphere and our oceans
05:42And what governs these interactions the El Nino events we we can study them
05:49We have some rough ideas predicting how they operate, but we really don't know what causes that initial pulse what kicks them off
05:57Peruvian fishermen named the warm water current El Nino after the Christ child because it usually coincided with Christmas
06:04But it did not bring Christmas cheer
06:07An El Nino can change the weather on a massive scale creating rains during normally dry seasons
06:13And drifting calms in places that usually have wind
06:19Worst part of the trip was definitely being in the calm consuming the water
06:25Consuming my supplies and not making very much forward progress
06:30Without the the wind and the currents that the winds generated without my parafoil kite up
06:36Pulling the boat along and helping the paddling. I could only make 20 to 30 miles a day, and I needed to average 60
06:46Ed Gillette is a kayaker a real kayaker
06:49He's one of those peculiar people you hear about from time to time who make long ocean voyages alone
06:55simply for the challenge of it
06:58In
06:591987 he set out on a 2200 mile kayak trip from Monterey to Maui using only a paddle and a kite as a sail
07:09But the trade winds lessened the currents weakened and his sail was useless a
07:1440-day trip turned into 63 days and nights at sea
07:19The magic number for me was 30 degrees north latitude 140 west longitude
07:25And that's the place where the trade winds are supposed to blow
07:28Unfortunately on that particular year because of the El Nino effect the wind just wasn't blowing
07:37In an El Nino year the trade winds that generally blow westbound weaken
07:42This allows a warm current to flow eastward until it hits the South American coast and diverts to the north and south an
07:50El Nino can trigger great calms throughout the Pacific
07:54stranding travelers like Ed Gillette I
08:00Was really looking at starvation in the in the face
08:04And then when I needed the trade winds to blow in the direction of the Hawaiian Islands the wind completely died
08:09so I had two weeks of
08:12dead-flat calm weather an
08:15Accurate prediction of El Nino's effect on the weather in the Pacific would have kept Gillette out of a life-threatening calm
08:21But it would also save the livelihoods of tens of thousands of fishermen
08:28The warm water causes fishing stocks that normally feed on cold current upwellings to disappear and
08:35nets to come up empty
08:38By
08:40Studying the seas level temperature and salinity scientists hope to make long-term predictions of climatic changes like El Nino
08:52Forecasts that would be useful to communities around the world
08:56Well my my first memory of water was that this was something terrible
09:02that I would never ever
09:07Learn to swim and that was at the age of five
09:12Thor Heyerdahl faced his fears by taking one of the most daring ocean voyages in history
09:18One that would not have been possible without ocean currents
09:25He was an adventurer with a purpose and a theory
09:28He believed that 1,500 years ago migrants somehow traveled from Peru to Polynesia by sea
09:36Most people said that was simply silly
09:39But he was right
09:41He believed that 1,500 years ago migrants somehow traveled from Peru to Polynesia by sea
09:48Most people said that was simply silly
09:51But not the five men who went along on the trip
09:55They rode currents and trade winds to create those ancient journeys. They traveled
10:004,300 miles aboard the Contiki a balsa wood raft
10:04The current as we sailed ourself across the surface of the ocean because the water we were
10:11Sailing on moved us ahead all the time
10:16With small sails in an archaic steering system the Contiki crew was at the mercy of the ocean's currents
10:25There were days of course in the mid-pacific where the water was real Pacific
10:30We could take our little rubber dinghy and
10:34row almost to the horizon and look at ourself as a speck and then come back again
10:42We did it only once because we the wind came up and we almost lost the other men on the raft
10:52I have no doubts that the ancient crafts the navigators
10:56They knew the winds and the waves and the current so well, they actually could navigate thousands of miles across
11:04What we would call trackless wastes, but to them the ocean was just alive
11:10It was alive with waves its creatures its clouds its winds
11:15There were people a thousand years ago that could read the water far better than anybody alive today
11:21We have a lot to learn from those old people and I think we better get out there and start drifting around
11:27We are most familiar with the currents at the surface
11:30They are concentrated wind-driven streams of water as much as 50 miles wide which flow through the ocean
11:39But there are currents at all levels in the ocean
11:42Some flow sluggishly along the seafloor
11:44The mid-depth currents can travel in complex patterns at about 3,000 feet down
11:50Surface currents move the fastest affecting only the first 100 feet.
11:55I think currents should be called the winds of the ocean
11:58It's the way that water moves across the ocean or in other times in small patterns that may themselves vary with time
12:06And it's how the ocean moves stuff around
12:08Currents circulate heat, water, nutrients, and anything else that happens to fall in
12:14Even little plastic ducks
12:17Jim Ingram and Curtis Ebsmeyer are oceanographers who are mapping surface currents by plotting the path of a lost cargo of bathtub toys
12:26There are garbologists who go into cities and study your trash to see what you are doing
12:33And they do a lot of research
12:35Your trash to see what you are doing
12:38And we can do the same with the ocean. I guess we're ocean-going garbologists
12:43These oceanographers have to get in the pool and swim with the trash
12:47They need to make careful observations on how things float
12:51These bathtub toys are part of a shipment that broke free from a ship in the mid-pacific and washed ashore in Alaska
13:01The accidental spill was an opportunity in the making
13:05The ducks are being used to map the ocean's surface currents
13:09Information that's crucial to understanding how and where objects move across the sea
13:14Being in a pool with your drifting objects with your eyes right at their level
13:19You really get to know how they float how they drift
13:23We've never had most of these things in the pool with us so we want to measure how high they're floating above the water
13:30It's not just rubber ducks, of course
13:33Researchers have also used spills of Nike shoes and hockey gloves to calculate the speed of ocean currents
13:39And the bottle would be next and then the duck
13:44All the duck's information is loaded into a computer model that takes into account wind speed drift and waves to simulate the duck's path
13:55As each duck washes ashore the intricate patterns of ocean currents begin to take form
14:00The flow of currents winds and weather systems are altered by the spin of the earth. This is called the Coriolis effect
14:11If you think of the ocean as a large tub of water when water moves in the northern hemisphere
14:15The earth spins the water to the right and in the southern hemisphere the earth spins the water to the left as it moves
14:22Basically the ocean has currents because you blow on the water storm blows on it
14:27The water will move and the earth rotates a bit
14:29So the water wants to move in one direction, but the earth spins it off a little bit to one side
14:33So the earth's rotation, uh deflects the wind currents
14:39Studying currents can be used to determine where an oil spill will wash ashore
14:44Or to backtrack to find where objects came from
14:46A jogger found a skeleton on a hawaiian shore. It's a mystery waiting to be solved
14:53It's a one-armed sailor who'd been missing. Nobody knows who he is or what ship went down
14:59But the point is
15:01We think that he'd been in the water for two years and that's why i've been trying to get jim
15:05To run his model backwards because we know where he washed up. We want to see where he came from
15:09The skeleton makes you ask the question where did he come from?
15:12And then the next question is if I have some nasty substance like oil or something else floating in the water
15:17Where did it come from?
15:20You get a big spill like the exxon valdez and
15:23You really have to know where that's going to go and the currents change so much from year to year that if you don't
15:30If you don't know what the currents are going to do
15:32You're not going to be able to figure out where it's going to come from
15:34The currents change so much from year to year that if you don't
15:38If you don't know what the currents are doing you can't figure out where to put the ships to collect the oil
15:44Scientists are just beginning to fill in the gaps on the map discovering how the ocean moves
15:51It is timely information considering our increasing presence on the sea
15:58This water will flow around the globe and circulate at every depth
16:04Even in remote near freezing arctic water the largest circulation pattern on earth begins at the poles where cold water sinks
16:14There's also something called the great conveyor belt which warm water moves north and then sinks in the atlantic
16:19And then returns back to the equator underneath and that's uh, that's another thing that we've discovered fairly recently that we now understand
16:28In fact the ocean moves most of the heat that hits at the equator
16:32Deep water currents circulate for the same reason that ice floats
16:37Sea water is most dense right before it freezes
16:40This allows cold water to sink and spread along the seafloor
16:48You wouldn't learn about these complex flows to look at a standard map on it the world's water is a bright blue blank
16:56To form a more complete map an underwater robot called alice is programmed to descend 3 000 feet and chart mid-depth currents
17:06Well, there's really no way that a human being can go down there and stay there long enough to to make any measurements
17:12So all of our measurements of deep ocean currents are really made indirectly by instruments
17:19We believe that the alice allows us to go to places where there aren't ships and make measurements in seasons where
17:25No sensible sailor would be there
17:28Alice is just a little heavier than the surface seawater
17:32So it sinks until it is balanced by denser water below
17:36at regular intervals an onboard microprocessor
17:40Tells alice to rise from the ocean depths and report its underwater movements
17:46Alice is kind of an elaborate drift bottle
17:48We all remember throwing bottles in the ocean with notes in them and some people have even seen their notes come back
17:56Alice is a kind of an elaborate version of that that floats at the at the surface
18:02sinks to depth
18:04Under its own control drifts along for a number of days
18:09Then rises itself up to the surface and talks to satellite
18:13The information that alice transmits is entered into a computer map of the world's oceans to predict more precisely
18:21Just where things will go
18:22When they go with the flow
18:25Of course they carry almost anything that ends up in the ocean, but some of the more
18:30important things
18:32are pollutants that we put in the ocean and so there's
18:36extensive study of for example how
18:39Radioactive waste being put into the atlantic is dispersing through the atlantic
18:47the question of how
18:48The nutrients that eventually support the fish and and other living things in the ocean how that circulates through the ocean
18:56Where the carbon dioxide goes, you know as we're producing more carbon dioxide by burning
19:03Uh, some of it is accumulating in the atmosphere
19:06But a lot of it is going into the ocean and the question of where that goes
19:10Eventually is intimately tied up with the currents that carry it there
19:18Are the ice caps melting is the planet getting hotter will sea level rise
19:25The answer to many global warming questions lie in the sea
19:28I
19:30Think one of one of the real worries about the future is a if is global warming really happening and if so be
19:38The effects of the ocean will be large. What can we do to live with those effects?
19:44Global warming is hard to detect because weather is usually unusual
19:49It is difficult to distinguish what is occurring naturally from the result of human activity
19:59We know that modern humans are producing huge amounts of co2 by burning fossil fuels
20:05We don't know how much of it is absorbed by the sea
20:11There are some things we know with certainty
20:14Currents circulate water around the world and whatever happens to be in them goes along for the ride
20:21If you are in the current with a lot of plankton
20:24and have smooth sea and
20:27completely blue sky full of stars and all the
20:30plankton glittering then you have a
20:34feeling you are sailing on the magic
20:37carpet
20:38That makes you really feel that
20:43There is a universe you forget it when you live in a big city and have the walls around you
20:48The ocean is moving all the time and it is beaming with life down below
20:55So when you get close contact with it, you have a feeling that you have an enormous friend forever
21:06Wind is air in motion as it hits the ocean surface. It bends water into waves pushes currents and
21:13Fills sails
21:18Winds are a lot like people wherever you go in the oceans, there'll be places that have their own personalities
21:25So if you're down in hawaii and you're on maui and you're looking back towards los angeles
21:30The trade winds
21:31Just keep blowing at you
21:34Day in day out. They'll be 20 miles an hour and they really push hard on you. Those are the kinds of things that
21:39Day in day out. There'll be 20 miles an hour and they really push hard on you. Those are pretty steady persistent winds
21:47Different parts of the ocean have different winds some places are gustier than others
21:53Here we are southern ocean tripping stuff, this is roaring 40s into the 50s
22:01Here we go again. Whoa 25 knots
22:06These boats are sailing in the whitbread and around the world race that covers a staggering 27,120
22:14Miles
22:18Icy gales constantly lash the waters near antarctica
22:23The southern ocean is a 5 000 mile stretch of open water between south america and new zealand
22:30The combination of the sea's immense span and consistent winds make mountains of water
22:43Winds are created by the sun's heat
22:46When one part of the world is warmer than another a difference in pressure is created
22:52As the hot air rises the cold air flows in across the earth's surface to replace it this movement is wind
23:01As the sun beats down it heats up the air which expands and rises like these bubbles
23:09As they heat up they move faster and faster
23:13Cooler air moves to fill in the gap left by the rising hot air
23:17This movement is a basic law underlying winds and currents
23:23Second law of thermodynamics says that heat will flow from hot to cold and you can't stop it from doing that and so
23:30This redistribution of heat which is one of the main function of the ocean in the earth's climate
23:35It's not something that you have to worry about it's gonna it's gonna happen
23:40Long after the wind has died the waves it created roll until they hit the shores
23:46A wave is a pattern in flowing water water molecules do not move forward with the wave
23:53The motion of the wave isn't the same as the motion of the water
23:56Because and you know this because if you're out there in the surf and a wave comes by you bob up and down
24:00You don't go the wave goes into the beach you go up and down
24:10Those who have had first-hand experience of the waves
24:13Those who have had first-hand encounters may have another explanation
24:19My definition of a wave it's
24:21a moving
24:23palette of ocean energy
24:25That invites us as humans to ride along and participate in that movement that flow of energy
24:37The waves are always changing riding a wave is
24:40It's dancing with with the ocean's pulse like it's it's mystery. It's like playing music with the ocean
24:58Surfers can ride the ocean because it's the waves near the shore
25:02The bottom of the wave drags on the sea floor and slows down compared with the surface water
25:07The top of the wave then topples over and breaks on the shore
25:11If you watch the a wave coming in when it's far out at sea
25:15I mean it has this kind of up and down motion if you could look and just sort of lock on to one little bit
25:19Of water and watch what it was doing
25:21It would be making this kind of a little elliptical thing as the wave gets close to the shore
25:26It like stubs its toe
25:27There's one way or it gets gets stuck on the bottom and eventually what that leads to is the breaking of the wave
25:38So
25:43Each day the tug of the moon and sun creates tides
25:48The ebb and flow of tides can be as small as a few feet or span more than 50
25:58The moon pulls on all the water on earth
26:02It tugs at the ocean as much as it does a shallow pond or the water in a glass
26:07The height of the tide varies depending on the size shape and the depth of the water basin
26:17When you have the situation of the moon
26:19Pulling on this side and then pulling the earth away from the ocean on the other side. It looks like you've got a bulge
26:26Where the ocean is sort of football shaped and the earth is baseball shaped inside
26:30And then that that moves around the earth and and uh follows the moon
26:35Twice a day tides rise and fall and waves constantly lap our shores
26:40The ocean's waters shape the coast and create our beaches
26:45It is the most common view of the sea and usually our first
26:54My favorite thing is just to pick up a handful of sand and just look at it
26:59Every sand grain is different, you know different color different shape
27:02You know, they all and the reason is of course
27:04This is stuff that's been brought in by rivers from the whole headlands or wherever that
27:08Whatever drains into that ocean is bringing little bits of rock and stuff down
27:13And so the sand is sort of a a portrait of the whole the whole back country
27:19Sand like water is in constant motion. It is a visible example of the ocean's energy at work
27:26So if you think of the beach being this way the the water's washing the sand grains up like this
27:32But then when the water runs down it runs straight down
27:34It doesn't go back the way it came
27:35So each little sand grain is sort of doing this kind of little sawtooth zigzag
27:39And if you go to a beach, you can actually see this you can watch the grain go up
27:43You can watch it come down
27:45If you just work that out and say how far could a grain move?
27:47I mean in a month it could be a mile down the beach
27:50And in fact one way of thinking about beaches is that it's a big country
27:53And in fact one way of thinking about beaches is that it's a big conveyor belt that's moving stuff down beach
28:03All along the beach are dynamic expressions of force the free rides never stop
28:23Humans are the only animals that willingly put their lives in jeopardy to break records
28:30Pepin ferraris holds the world record for the deepest breath hold dive
28:37On march 10th 1996 he went 428 feet in 2 minutes and 11 seconds
28:45A former spear fisherman from cuba he combined his natural ability with meditation techniques to push his physical limits
28:58If he kept going eventually you get to a point where you literally would be crushed
29:01I know at depth you can crush steel so you can certainly crush the human body
29:05Scientists have always believed that unprotected the lungs of the human body would implode at about 500 feet
29:15Pepin thinks he can reach that depth and live
29:25Come on, come on, he's coming
29:27He's coming, he's coming
29:29He's coming, he's coming
29:31He's coming, he's coming
29:33Come on, come on, he's coming
29:42To go deeper we need armor to protect us from the sea
29:46With the assistance of diving contraptions we have descended to the deepest point in the ocean
29:51on january 23rd
29:531960 the united states navy sent two men lieutenant don walsh and swiss engineer jacques picard
30:00On the seven mile trip to the bottom
30:05No one has ever been back
30:07There wasn't a whole lot of time to dwell
30:09I mean there's no soliloquies and observing a fish or the moon or the stars and wondering these great cosmic thoughts
30:17It was just head down, tail up, hard work
30:21The deepest part of the ocean is called the challenger deep
30:25It is located about 200 miles southwest of guam at the bottom of the marianas trench
30:34Probably the principal concern we got on the dive site two of them
30:39Where is the deepest place because we you know
30:41We didn't have any maps or charts to tell us where it was except in a very general way
30:45And secondly how much stuff had broken or fallen off on the tow out
30:50Once they reached the marianas trench the exact location of the challenger deep was found by utilizing a basic
30:58echolocation technique
31:00We used hand grenades
31:03And we I think cleaned out every hand grenade they had on guam
31:06I know we had to get resupplied a tugboat came out from guam and brought us more hand grenades
31:11And we would put these in the water and when they the hand grenade went off
31:16We could hear it on the underwater hydrophone and then we start a stopwatch
31:21And because the hand grenade puts a lot of energy into the water that explosive charge we could hear the return signal from the bottom
31:27and thus
31:28Seven seconds was deeper than five seconds
31:32The bathyscaphe trieste was designed by picard's father august picard
31:36He was a pioneering balloonist who used the basic design of the air balloon and applied it to the construction of the trieste
31:47Balloons float because they use a gas that is lighter than air to rise through the atmosphere
31:54The trieste had buoyant tanks that were filled with air and a substance that was lighter than water so that it would float
32:01That substance was gasoline
32:0432 000 gallons
32:06To descend the divers released the air from the tanks so the trieste would sink and at 9 00 a.m
32:12The trieste slipped beneath the surface
32:15But at 20 000 feet something went wrong
32:19We had a problem at 20 000 feet where a window cracked and that gave us kind of a start and made a hell of a bang
32:27At that depth this happened at 20 000 feet. So the pressure outside was five tons per square inch five tons per square inch
32:35If a primary fitting between the ocean and the interior of the cabin had failed we would have never heard the noise
32:42Because you know it would have we we would have been killed instantly
32:46Probably before we even heard anything
32:49Because you're talking about a lot of pressure out there
32:52All of our gauges told us that the dive was proceeding. Okay, we weren't getting suddenly heavy. We weren't getting suddenly light
33:00Nothing seemed to be wrong except we had a hell of a bang and then it really shook the whole machine
33:05So we proceeded on down
33:08The trieste continued and touched down at 108 p.m
33:14The first observation made was of a fish proving that life was found even at the deepest part of the ocean
33:22My point of course was getting back up would I would really achieve it but
33:27You know, that's a definition of ocean engineering. A lot of people have gone to the bottom of the ocean. It's getting back up that is
33:33defines engineering perhaps
33:38To ascend the trieste dropped 800 pounds of weight or ballast and made its way to the surface
33:45Going up the ladder it felt pretty good because I was returning to my world
33:54Not that I missed it, but you know i'm a
33:58Air-breathing creature like all of us and it was nice to go back to where I came from
34:07Some air-breathing mammals thrive in this ocean realm
34:11Millions of years ago the dolphin returned to the sea
34:15Underwater humans cannot compete with these perfectly evolved animals
34:20The atlantic bottlenose dolphin can hold its breath for up to eight minutes
34:27Domesticated dolphins allow us rare observations of aquatic mammals and their physiological capabilities
34:34The deepest trained dive was to 1,795 feet
34:39Science is still trying to understand exactly
34:42How they are capable of that they do have a collapsible rib cage that
34:45Enables them to go to that depth without getting crushed the way that that we would get crushed under that same pressure
34:51The deeper the water the less familiar we are with the animals that roam there
34:56the terrifying battle with the giant squid
35:09Sure sails were scared they were afraid of the giant squid
35:14But they were also afraid of the giant squid
35:17Sure
35:18Sailors were scared. They were very scared sailors
35:22Had to be frightened to the scared to death
35:25Because that was they were going into total and complete unknown and just over the edge
35:31Of course, that's where all these monsters live and they're just ready to reach out there and and suck you in and gobble you up
35:39Clyde roper has spent the last 35 years studying squids
35:43One of my favorites simply because it's one of the simplest is is
35:47A sautéed squid to sauté a squid in in olive oil garlic lots of garlic always garlic
35:56I don't have the slightest problem eating what I study
36:01But it's the giant squid that is roper's area of expertise
36:05These monsters of the deep aren't just ancient seafaring tales or figments of a movie maker's imagination
36:11Yes, virginia. There really is a giant squid
36:17It has a large head perhaps on the biggest ones about two to two and a half feet long with
36:24Really huge eyes. This is one feature that the
36:27That is sort of characteristic of giant squid
36:31Although specimens have been collected dead or dying at the sea's surface
36:36No one has ever seen a giant squid in its natural habitat
36:42Roper plans to be the first
36:44He and a group of scientists from the harbor branch oceanographic institution are embarking on an extensive search off the coast of new zealand
36:53Using a deep sea submersible. They will dive in waters up to 3 000 feet in pursuit of this elusive creature
37:00I really would welcome that opportunity to have the giant squid grab a hold of the submersible now
37:06I don't know how the the pilot and the harbor branch people think think about that what they think about that
37:11But it would be good because it would be again a wonderful opportunity to see how this animal works
37:16How the suction cups work how the gigantic beak works a big mouth?
37:20It's like a like a gigantic parrot's beak wrapped in a huge ball of muscle. So I think it would be pretty interesting
37:27When you think of the of the living space on earth all the space that can be occupied by organisms plants and animals
37:3699 percent of all living space on earth is in the oceans
37:41Now doesn't it make sense to study that and to learn as much as we can?
37:49The ocean realm contains animals that have developed their own way of coping with the ocean
37:53The ocean realm contains animals that have developed their own way of coping with some of our most deadly diseases
38:02Each of these test tubes holds a single kind of bacteria
38:06One marine animal can generate thousands of kinds
38:10A square foot of ocean floor contains millions and with every life form there is potential
38:16I
38:21Think we're close to having a compound
38:26Go into development
38:28as uh
38:29As a drug, um, and so that's pretty exciting. I mean it could be as close as maybe maybe three or four years from now
38:38When something that we collected from the deep sea using our submersible
38:44Yielded a compound that we discovered that now will be able to to be used to treat cancer. So that's pretty exciting
38:54One of the most promising chemical compounds they have isolated is disco dermalide a chemical found in deep sea sponges
39:03Sponges produce unique chemicals that allow them to survive extremes in temperature pressure and light
39:10substances that could also fight disease
39:14These are multiplying cancer cells
39:17Treated with doses of disco dermalide the cell structure breaks apart and growth stops
39:24If a cure is found in the sea the organism and its habitat become a precious commodity
39:32One way to manage the marine resource is by recreating the chemical through genetic engineering
39:38These cultures are clones made from fragments of dna from the natural marine chemicals collected
39:48Three-fourths of our planet is covered by the ocean
39:52Not far beneath the surface the waters dim and a mysterious world appears
40:00Gets darker and darker you get pitch black, but it's not pitch black
40:04But it's not pitch black
40:07There are
40:08organisms down there that are that are
40:10Bioluminescent and there's always sort of flashing going on and particularly if the sub moves through the water
40:17Slowly you can you shut the lights off and you're always getting
40:20Explosions of bioluminescence. It's like a fireworks display
40:34The underwater world is covered in this darkness. The best view is created by computers
40:44This is Perth Canyon located 10,000 feet beneath the indian ocean
40:49Most of the ocean floor has been mapped by machines
40:53But we have seen less than two percent
40:57Deep sea submersibles like the trieste are expensive and scientific research has shown that
41:03And scientific research is no stranger to downsizing
41:07So at this time human exploration deeper than 20,000 feet is impossible
41:12There is a huge area of ocean floor fully two percent
41:17Where we just can't go
41:19That two percent of the total ocean floor in the world is about equivalent to the area of the united states
41:26It's like telling mountain climbers that they cannot
41:29Climb the last two percent of any of the high mountains in the world that seem really silly wouldn't it?
41:34But that is exactly what we've done in the ocean since the late 1970s
41:52I always have loved the seas
41:54Uh, it runs in the family
41:57We spend every summer by the sea the sea always was a great great great thing for us
42:02So I love the seas
42:05Elizabeth mann-borgese has spent most of her life writing about the laws. We need to preserve and use our oceans
42:16Writing talent runs in her family. She is the youngest daughter of novelist thomas mann
42:21Lieber
42:23You see I was born in germany just after the first world war
42:28and
42:29grew up
42:31When nazism came to power and fascism was in power and we were exiles
42:37And then came world war ii and all of that
42:42And I was always looking for a kind of
42:45World order where we wouldn't have to be exiles where we wouldn't have fascism and nazism where we wouldn't have world war ii
42:51So world order was very high on my list of priorities
42:58I should say that there my love for the oceans and my passion for politics coincided
43:09In
43:101967 borgesi began her crusade for the ocean and became a leader in the campaign for the united nations convention on the law of the sea
43:18It's a document that provides a universal legal framework for the management of marine resources and their conservation for future generations
43:28The seas are a hard thing to domesticate
43:32It's a big beautiful wild place
43:37I mean the fish don't care where we draw the boundaries
43:41And the pollution doesn't care either
43:43And the pollution doesn't care either
43:46So these problems have to be tackled
43:49by the international community
43:52Cooperatively or you cannot solve them at all
43:58The law of the sea pact views the ocean as a common heritage of mankind
44:03A resource that can be managed but not owned
44:07And should be governed by all those who use it
44:11You can make
44:13a fishery sustainable by prohibiting
44:16fishing
44:17By throwing a lot of people out of work
44:19But if a lot of people are thrown out of work and there's no other employment for them
44:24Then that's not sustainable
44:27to be sustainable
44:28Must not be only environmentally sustainable. It must also be socially sustainable and culturally sustainable
44:36The problem is human beings have gotten very good at catching fish
44:43The Japanese fish market opens at 4 a.m. By 8 over 20,000 fish have been sold
44:53Worldwide 74 million tons are caught for consumption each year
44:57An amount the oceans cannot sustain
45:00The law of the sea document tries to balance our human demands against the ocean's resources
45:08The law of the sea is now an official policy of the UN with over a hundred ratifications
45:15Japan joined the list in June of 1996
45:18And at that time the largest country in the world was in the middle of the ocean
45:23It'll affect your life. All right, and I think that
45:27The slowness with which we proceed in implementing
45:32The kind of legislation that is needed is already affecting your life and my life
45:38And the life of my children
45:41And the life of my children
45:43And the life of my children
45:46Because there are so many newfangled strange diseases rampant all over the world
45:51Our resistance is breaking down under the impact of environmental degradation
46:02You can see it in Southern California
46:04Surfers and swimmers find the sea is making a very big impact
46:08And the sea is making a big impact
46:10You can see it in Southern California.
46:12Surfers and swimmers find the sea is making them sick.
46:16One factor is that the best surf days are after rains
46:20when the water is the most toxic.
46:23Had quite a number of infections,
46:26respiratory and sinus infections,
46:28because the best surf is when it rains.
46:30Winter swells, they're big, they're powerful.
46:33That's also when the most pollution hits the water
46:35from urban runoff, breaking sewer lines.
46:40And we advise swimmers and beachgoers and surfers
46:44after a rain to stay out of the water for at least 48 hours
46:48to allow the pollution to diffuse.
46:50It's now a hazard.
46:58I have a lot of friends who surf,
47:00and a lot of them get really sick.
47:10I think that if I were to go swimming at a beach,
47:12I would want to know if there was a chance I could get ill from it.
47:16See all these straws and trash, it's absolutely disgusting.
47:19So I really wanted to help educate people,
47:21as well as myself, on how to help protect the waters
47:24and help keep them clean, as well as the land.
47:28A number of grassroots environmental organizations
47:31have sprung up in response.
47:33One group calls itself Surf Riders.
47:37High school students Leslie Felton and Chris Labar
47:40do voluntary water quality monitoring,
47:44a program sponsored by Surf Riders.
47:49Each week, testers take to the beach
47:51looking for dangerous levels of coliform bacteria.
48:01If a test result comes back positive,
48:04the authorities are alerted.
48:06It could result in health hazard signs posted at the beach.
48:12I think they should be doing just what they're doing,
48:15namely to really pay attention individually
48:18and at a community level, at a grassroots level,
48:22to these problems.
48:25But I would also explain to them,
48:27if you think you can do it in isolation,
48:31it won't do you much good,
48:33because you can keep your backyard clean,
48:36but if just next to it there is a tremendous mess,
48:39you cannot keep your backyard clean.
48:45The basic problem is we just don't know
48:47how much ocean pollution is going on.
48:50Nor do we understand very well
48:52what happens to the stuff we dump in the seas.
48:56Researchers and concerned laypeople are working on it.
49:00Science plays a very crucial role
49:02because without science,
49:04today we cannot manage any of the uses of the oceans,
49:08and that includes fisheries and aquaculture,
49:12it includes shipping,
49:14it includes the interaction between ocean and atmosphere,
49:18which is crucial for climate change,
49:21or for the weather,
49:23or for the prediction of storm surges and so on.
49:27We need oceanographic sciences throughout.
49:32Without that we cannot see in the oceans,
49:35we are blind in the oceans.
49:41And what we can't see can hurt us.
49:49It's a curious thing to feel an intimate link
49:51with something the size of the ocean.
49:57But if we sense a kinship with the sea,
50:00maybe it's because we're 70% water ourselves.
50:09We begin our lives floating in water in the womb.
50:16We have salt in our tears.
50:20I think that the human being
50:23has, like any other living creature,
50:26always been intimately linked to the sea.
50:34And everything is given to us by this ocean.
50:54I was about four years old,
50:57and my father took me to the sea,
51:00and he had told us a lot about the sea,
51:03and so I was full of expectation.
51:06What fascinated me particularly, of course,
51:09was the horizon.
51:11You know, the idea that there was a horizon,
51:14and that you could never reach it,
51:17just fascinated me when I was that age.
51:23The receding horizon.
51:53¶¶ ¶¶