All language subtitles for Diving.Deep.The.Life.And.Times.Of.Mike.DeGruy.2019.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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All right,
Mike, can you give me
an audio check?

MIKE deGRUY:
Copy that.

Bellows are set.

Relatively comfortable
in there? Over.

Absolutely. Everything's go.

Oxygen's set.
Vacuum has been pulled.

I'm looking at a minus pound
of pressure in here.

If all goes well,
today I will break
the Pacific Abyss records,

it is the first time
that I will actually
go beyond the range

of even our deepest divers.

In the immortal words
of Buzz Lightyear:

To infinity and beyond!

Yeah, okay.
Confirm feed off.
And we're power up.

- Power up.
- Power up.

Okay, Mike.
Ready for deep dive?
We're gonna let out umbilical.

Okay, I'm going down.

Just passing 223 feet.

And I'm still heading down.

I'm now at 232 feet.

This is where you start
feeling like, "Mm,
I'm alone down here now."

No divers, nobody.
Just me and my space suit.

I'm now at 385 feet.

Still descending.

But it's dark out there!

Right now, Mike is deep enough

that, uh, we don't have
any divers on board

capable of any rescue
or interventions.

He's the master
of his own fate right now.

He's on his own.

Study
under the ocean these days,

means you've got
to be very good at doing
quite a lot of things.

And if you're going
to really study
deep water behavior,

you've got to be
able to go there.

That's a rather different
proposition than saying,

"Join me at
the laboratory bench."

Like, the best scientists,
the best explorers
that I've ever encountered,

they have never quite grown up.

Fortunately, Mike never did.

It became who he was.

Sorry.

Good luck, little guy.

See you later.

MIMI deGRUY: It just seemed
to me that he understood
we all love the ocean,

and that it appealed
to our better natures
and that it united us.

I think if you were to say

what was the one
defining characteristic
of Mike as a professional,

as a filmmaker,
as a person,
it was enthusiasm.

It used to remind me
of throwing potassium
into a glass of water.

You're nuts!
Because it's freezing cold.

- It's dark
and it's a long way home.
- Right.

Mike became
a celebrity host
on Shark Week.

I'm Mike DeGruy
and I've been lucky enough

to swim with and film
sharks like this for 30 years.

The problems
of getting those sort of shots
depended on people like Mike.

And, of course,
there weren't many
people like Mike.

When I think of Mike,
I think of panache.

He... he didn't
just tell the story.

He told it with,
with, you know, with style.

He always spoke
two languages simultaneously.

English and hands. You know?

All that hammerhead
has to do is slightly tilt up,

slightly tilt down,
and it becomes
extremely maneuverable.

FRANK deGRUY: He was
mostly an explorer

and a discoverer

because he liked
to come back with the stories.

He would say,

"Let me show you what I saw!

"Let me show you this!"

He would come back
all excited
and enthusiastic...

at something that nobody
had ever seen before.

He always looked at it
like he had found
this secret code

that unlocks
this whole other room,

and he just was shocked
that everybody

didn't wanna come into
the secret room with him

and see this whole other world.

As crazy as Mike sometimes was,

we all know he did
a lot of crazy stuff,

and some people may
have looked at him and said,

"That's irresponsible.
You're nuts."

This is classic
reef life good behavior
at night.

Mike, I knew I could depend on
if I was in a tough situation.

I knew I could depend on him.

Mike was a risk-taker,

but Mike
was a superb risk-taker.

He always landed on his feet,
on that featherbed.

There was a moment I felt

it's just not worth it,
the risk is not worth it.

It's not worth it
to the families
to get that phone call.

I couldn't even believe that
what you were about to tell me

was even, you know, possible.

It was late at night,
I was home alone

when I got the phone call
telling me that Mike had died.

And I remember going outside,

it was a really clear night,
and thinking,

"This doesn't make any sense.
I spoke to him this morning."

How can someone so full of life

be here one minute
and then gone?

I mean, this was my husband,

the father of my children,

my filmmaking partner.

He was everything.

When I finally made my way
back into our edit room,

I started watching footage.

It was almost like
Mike came alive.

And then,
I found this piece of footage
shot shortly before he died,

and I watched it over and over.

To the insane
amounts of money...

Because he was
so different from that
enthusiastic, joyful Mike.

And it seemed to me that
his whole life had led him
to that moment

and he really wanted
to share his outrage
with the world.

But then he couldn't.

So, I knew
I had to tell his story.

I don't remember
how this started.

KATHERINE deGRUY: He was
a different little boy.

He really was.

Mike was an animal lover.

He had two ducks
herding the puppies together

and taking 'em
down in the backyard.

He was like a child.

Everywhere he looked,
no matter what he saw,
what it was,

he wanted to go touch, feel,

examine, get up close.
"Ooh, it bit me. Oh, well."
You know?

I remember him
getting his thumb stuck

in the mouth of a Komodo dragon
in the Galapagos, you know.

That's not something
you want to be
reaching out to pet.

But that was Mike.

Another adaptation
that the silky sharks
have made for...

Shit!

Living in the pelagic
environment...

I was just bitten
by one, actually.

The, uh...

Actually, my hand hurts.

- So you think
you gotta come up?
- Yeah.

Mike had more enthusiasm
and interest and excitement,

and he usually would take things
farther than the rest of us.

But there was a lot of energy.
Four boys in five years.

It was a little bit like,

"Don't anybody
strike a match in this room."

He collected animals
a lot more
than the rest of us did.

Most of the time,
that went pretty well.

But sometimes, that went awry.

I think it was a garter snake.
It might have been
a green snake.

Some kind of snake got away
and we forgot about it.

He said, "Mama,
I can't find my snake.
It got away."

A lot of distress.
No snake to be found
for months.

And out of the TV,
the snake came up,

and I don't know
why it wasn't electrocuted

with those tubes
and everything there

because Mike
was a little bitty boy,
so TV had just come out.

And I could have killed him.
I could have killed him.

I said, "You get that thing
and get it out of this house!"

But it was those
early days of snakes
and frogs and lizards

in the Mobile delta
that probably got me started.

He loved the water
from his earliest childhood.

We lived on the water

and we had rivers and bayous,
sounds, lagoons

and the Gulf of Mexico.

We had a lot of different
kinds of water around

and we fooled around
in all of that water.

And Mike was more
interested in it
than any of us.

You know, he spent
his summers at the pool,
swimming pool, diving.

We were all
divers growing up,
springboard divers.

Their daddy,
at first, coached 'em.

GLENN deGRUY: My dad,
in order to make himself
coach better,

he went and got
an eight millimeter camera

and filmed us diving,

where we could play it back
and watch it.

That had a lot to do
with getting better.

And it got Mike
interested in filming,

and he made crazy home movies.

When Mike
started out as a diver,
he was scared.

He wouldn't try new dives.

He was just afraid to do 'em.

And then one day,

he decided that
he was gonna do 'em,
and he did.

Mike
got on the boards
and started trying stuff.

He was flipping and twisting.
He was landing flat.

He would get back up there
and try it again.

We couldn't believe our eyes.

My dad and I
looked at each other
like, "What happened?"

He quit being scared.
I don't know how

he exactly looked fear
in the eye, but he did.

That marked
an inflection point in his
psychological development.

He never went back.

He had more guts.
He had more courage.

He would push things
farther and harder

than anybody I knew
from then on.

My oldest brother
and Mike, my younger brother,

both beat guys
that won the Olympics.

It just so happened
their timin' wasn't right
to be in the Olympics.

Diving is all about
incredible timing

and incredible precision.

And so, I think he carried
a lot of that Olympic training
that he had

into how he even
approached his career.

This dive is so hard.

We saw one Russian
attempt it in Munich

and he landed flat on his back.

Now, let's see what Mike can do.

It's an awfully difficult dive.

Oh, terrific!

His lust for life,
his gusto, and in part,
the diving developed that.

That freedom that you get
when you're really good,

free-falling in the air,
line up right.

There's nothing
as exhilarating as that.

You're free of gravity.

You're free of the constraints
of normal human limitations.

His body was his wisdom
as much as his mind.

The wonderful
thing for me about diving
is that you can fly.

I just love the feeling
of weightlessness.

Scuba diving is incredible,
or free diving even better,

where you're completely
supported by this body
of water.

I feel nurtured by it.

And therefore, I started
working very hard to learn
as much as I could about it,

and at a certain point,
decided to make films
about it.

So I'm still with it a lot.

So I was working
at the Waikiki Aquarium.

That was three years,
and I just had a little bit
to go on a PhD.

A guy walked
into the aquarium one day

and he saw
the chambered nautilus
on display,

which a friend of mine
and I had collected.

And it happened to be
the animal that was
my study animal

as a grad student.

Anyway, this guy wanted me

to collect some for him

and send the nautilus
back to Florida

so he could have them
on display.

So he sent myself
and some friends out
to the South Pacific

to collect chambered nautilus
for him.

And we did.
We made a film
which was horrible, horrible.

No, it was not.
It was a good film.

- Said my wife.
- For you at least.

Yeah!

It was the most fun
I had ever had.

And finally,
there they were, nautilus.

It was a big moment for me
and my friend Bruce Carlson,

with whom I first
collected nautilus.

They've probably
been here for hundreds
of millions of years

in this kind of habitat.

And I thought,
"Well, wait a second.

"This was so much fun,

"and I can make movies
about the animals that
I've been learning about.

"Maybe I should
just be a filmmaker

"and teach to the millions
rather than the hundreds."

And so, I literally
came back from that trip,

quit school,
hung my filmmaking shingle,

never told anyone
I didn't know
what I was doing,

and just started making films.

But the point of it all
is that it was fun,

and I just kept doing it
and kept doing it

and got better
and better and better
and then got paid for it,

and it's the only job
I've ever had.

When I first met Mike,

it was when we were coming
to film in Samoa

with both of you,
all three of you,

and I'd been told that
he'd had a shark attack

and his arm was all messed up,

and I expected to meet
this kind of immobilized,
gimpy guy

and he walks in,
and here's this muscular

just, you know, very vi...

- Vitalious?
- I was gonna say virile.

That didn't really sound right.

- That's what
you were thinking.
- I know!

I really didn't know
what to make of Mike
those first few days

because he was so flirtatious.

So I just thought, "Uh, no."

But then something happened.

We had an underwater shoot,

and I had never seen
anyone like him.

He was almost amphibious.

And I just wish,
like anything I wish,

that I had 10% of Mike's skill
being at home underwater.

And he was so curious,

he effervesced with this joy
and he was funny.

He was incredibly funny.

And he seemed to me
to be in really deep
conversation with the ocean.

He became this kind of
emissary or shaman
from that world,

and suddenly, I was hooked.

And I fell totally in love.

I was living in Hawaii
when Mimi and I met.

Mimi was living in Atlanta.

And we had this
long-distance relationship
going

and you know how wonderful
those last.

Mike and I stayed
in touch after we met,

and he would write me
these beautiful, long,
descriptive letters

about a film he was making
with Paul and Gracie Atkins.

I was so fascinated
by his adventurous spirit

because it wasn't
a simple adrenaline rush,

he really had a higher purpose.

We're fairly
early in our careers,

and we want to do
a great natural history film
about Hawaii.

We made a list to the BBC
about all these sequences
that could be filmed,

and they said, "Great,
you're off and running."

I mean, it was barely
a proposal or a budget
or anything.

So here we are making this film,

and only one other
cameraman in the world

had ever shot
an image of lava
flowing into the ocean,

and it had been off Hawaii
years before.

We're not sure what
the film is really about,
you know?

And Madame Pele let us know.

We were a little bit
nervous about getting up close
to the lava.

So we're sitting there
on the boat

trying to figure out
exactly how we're gonna
conduct this dive,

and Mike,
while we're talking this out,
grabs his boogie board,

grabs his underwater housing,

and swims right up to the lava,
right where it's going
into the water.

So being his assistant,
I jump in,
I swim up behind him.

All of this is brand new.
Nobody's done this before.

And Mike is right there
in the heat of the moment,
in the eye of the storm.

We didn't
know this at this dive,

but over a few days,
the shelf builds up.

The slope gets steeper
and steeper until suddenly,
it lets go.

There were
flaming balls of methane gas

that were going off
in front of your face.

You'd feel this whoomp
against your chest
as they would go up.

Scientists were aware
that methane gas
was being created by the lava,

and it would blow trees
out of the ground on land,

but no one had seen
the effect of that methane
underwater.

It's like you're
driving down a freeway
in a car,

and as long as
you don't stick your
head out the window,

you don't realize
you're going
50 miles an hour.

Until you stick
your head out the window,
you know?

And that was like
we were in a car,

dropping down
with all of this rock.

So I had no idea
how deep we were going
or when we would stop,

and unfortunately,
I got tossed out to the side.

We all did, at various depths.

Everything was fine,
but that was the end
of our lava dive.

Eventually, Mike and I
realized we really wanted
to be together.

So I left my job
and went to work with him,

and we had a commission
to do a film on sharks.

Mike was so charismatic
that he talked me,

a girl from Pittsburgh,

into diving with sharks
two weeks
after I was certified.

We took three years
traveling all over the world,

finding the best
shark behavior stories.

Those were the days
when the budgets
would support that.

The days before reality TV
and that endless appetite
for cheap programming.

We often spent weeks
just observing

before shooting
even a single frame.

You know,
when he was in the ocean,

and trying to decide
whether to roll on something,
it was hard

because you only had
so many minutes of film,

you were all the way
down at the bottom,
all this heavy gear.

It was almost like
he knew exactly...

the moment
that he should start rolling.

I don't know
if that's intuition
or just skill.

His sense of what
was going to happen next
was very good.

His intuitions
misled him sometimes.

I think it's impossible
for me to tell you

how I feel emotionally
right now.

This is the first time
I've returned
to Enewetak Atoll

since the single
most extraordinary event
in my life took place

in the lagoon right out there.

I was scuba diving
with a friend of mine
at about 50 feet.

It's a beautiful day,
a beautiful dive,

everything was going
according to plan.

I was taking still pictures.

There was a variety
of sharks around,

and they were coming
particularly close.

And, as a matter of fact,
I remember thinking,

"Boy, this is a great roll.
I'm getting good close-ups
of this fish."

One of them in particular,
it was a five-foot female,

was going through
a very dramatic posture
where its nose was up,

its pectoral fins
were lowered,
its mouth slightly open.

And I looked at it,
and my immediate reaction was,

this was a warning
I was seeing,
that it is a threat posture.

The more I looked at it,
the more injured it appeared.

So I took its picture.

The moment the strobe fired,
so did the shark,

and it broke out of the posture.

Before the mirror in the camera

even returned
so that I could see

through the viewfinder again,

it had halved the distance
between us.

So, all I could do was just
push the camera out toward it.

At that point, it seemed like

things were happening
in slow motion.

I could see the shark
coming right at me.

And right as it got
to the camera,

it started opening its mouth

and pushed the camera
to the side,

which naturally presented
my elbow.

And again, in slow motion,

as though it had rehearsed it
a hundred times,

just grabbed my arm
in its mouth,

shook and took off
the top of my arm.

He was in the hospital six weeks

because they had to take parts
from all over his body

to get that arm
back where he could use it.

And it was amazing.

And they wanted to patch it up
to make it look better.

It looked like a quilt,
you know.

But he wouldn't do that.
He said, "I've had enough."

KEN deGRUY: Typical Mike,
good spirits.

We're talking about the shark
that they found dead
washed up on shore.

I said, "Really?" And he goes,

"Yeah. He died
of food poisoning."

But he healed
and he had a great scar

to tell everybody about
for the rest of his life,

which he did.

I think he was
particularly fond of the fact

that part of the grafted skin
came from his buttocks.

Anybody less full
of whim than Mike
wouldn't have survived that.

And yet,
not only did he survive,

he went back
and going on doing it.

Extraordinary.

JOE MaclNNIS:
Risk is something

that's so essential
to our lives.

You go out there because
it's a discovery
of the other world.

The ocean world,
the depths, the creatures.

But it's a self-discovery
as well.

And risk is the catalyst
that allows us...

It's a lens that allows us
to look inside ourselves

and see who we really are.

One of the things
that I don't buy about sharks

is that they're unpredictable.

And that is exactly why
I went back to Enewetak

and recreated my shark attack.

I knew that if I put that shark
and myself in a position,

that I could get that shark
to attack me.

And sure enough,
I covered myself,
protected myself,

and I was able to press
the shark and elicit an attack.

Now, is that unpredictable?

I was really moved
by Mike's reaction

because he could have
hated that shark
that nearly killed him.

But he understood
that he'd made a mistake

and the shark
was just behaving naturally.

It was a really beautiful
and brave response.

Mike loved to tell people
he had two birthdays.

The second was the day
he survived that attack

because he really felt
he'd been given
a second chance.

I think Mike took that scar,

not as a badge of courage
about what he had survived,

but I think he took it
as an impetus

for standing up and saying,

"If I can tell you
that sharks are not deadly,

"they're beautiful
and magnificent creatures,

"they need to be saved,

"and this arm is evidence
of my being in a different
situation with the shark,

"then you should give
my words some credit."

Some people always
have been susceptible

to wanting to watch programs
about sharks killing.

Eating people, killing things.

You know, that image
sticks in people's minds.

And it sells.

To me,
it's like animal pornography.

Look at the heat profile
of this shark...

Mike was always getting
into a battle with producers

over this sensationalism

versus trying to tell
a more honest story.

We've seen an incredible variety
of sharks in this program,

but is one of them
more perfectly designed
than another?

I don't think so.

Seems to me,
they're all perfectly designed
for their particular niche,

and the time that they lived in.

They're very
sophisticated animals.

I mean, anything that's had
400 million years to evolve,

you can imagine how good
they are at what they do,

and that's where sharks are.

They're extremely well adapted
to the environment.

And to be underwater
and look at these animals

is something that can take
your breath away.

They're beautiful!

Mike was like a missionary.

He was so driven to share
his admiration for sharks,

in part, I think,
because they're so diverse,

and for him,
it was a lesson in life

that diversity is what's going
to enable you to survive.

There were at least
nine shark-attack survivors
on Capitol Hill today

lobbying to protect
their toothy attackers.

They want the Senate to pass
the US Shark Conservation Act.

Joining us now is Mike DeGruy.

What I try to tell others about,

especially others in a position

to, you know, enact law,

is that they're...

They're are a lot more than,
you know, feeding machines

that run around
making baby sharks

and eating anything in sight.

More appropriate
to why I am here,

with the rest of the people
who have been attacked,

is that they're vanishing.

My experience with sharks
has left scars.

But more importantly,
it has given me knowledge

about these
beautifully designed creatures.

And I believe
knowledge dissipates fear.

I'm convinced that the more
we know about them,

the less we will fear them.

And we'll realize
that they are not our enemies.

My hope is
we can stop being theirs.

In those early days,

Mike was also working
on a David Attenborough series

called Trials of Life,

And he would be away
for long stretches of time.

Well, it's April Fool's Day.

How you doing, Mimi?

It's kind of strange
talking into this thing,

but it seemed like a good idea.

What you hear out there

is an incredible wind.

I'm sitting on the edge
of the beach

and I'm thinking of you

and missing you and wishing,
wishing, wishing, wishing,

wishing that I were with you,

there, here, anywhere!

It's terrible.

I first met Mike in 1990

when I went to look
at some mind-blowing footage

of killer whales taking
sea lion pups in Patagonia.

It was the first time
that anyone had ever seen that.

And, of course,
it was sensational.

At that time,
animal behavior
was very rarely filmed.

That was one
of the wonderful things
about working on that series.

Almost all the sequences
had never been done before.

But at the same time,

that was very worrying
because we didn't know

whether we were
going to succeed often.

So I spent a lot of time
with these baby sea lions.

I would put on my wetsuit,
roll around in sea lion dung,

put my camera on a boogie board

and slowly inch my way
up to the colony.

And after a while,
they pretty much ignored me.

And suddenly,
killer whale fins turned up,

and we thought,
"Oh, boy, here we go."

And the sequence
started unfolding

just as we had imagined
that it would.

We were shooting
all of it from the beach,

and it was time
to get in the water.

Juan Carlos Lopez,
the scientist in Patagonia

who had been studying
this population of orcas
for over 20 years,

had made it crystal clear to us

there is no way you can safely
get into the water
with the orca.

Just about everybody
in Argentina said,
"You would die,

"because these are killer whales
that hunt mammals,

"and you're a mammal."

For weeks and weeks
I watched this behavior.

These killer whales
moving back and forth,

and a sea lion pup
would go out into
what we call "The Kill Zone."

And over the weeks,
I saw a pattern develop.

There could be
a bunch of sea lions
crossing this channel.

And there could be adults,
males and females,

and hidden in there
in the surf and in the crazy,

will be one little pup.

And if there was
one pup in there,

killer whales
who were sitting out,
50 yards out or 40 yards out,

and unable to see,

but using echo-location
or passive hearing,

were able to detect
whether in the group
there was a pup or not

from 50 yards out.

And if there was a pup,
they would attack.

If it was the same
sort of group of sea lions
with just adults,

they would just sit there.

So, obviously,
their sensory system
was so fine-tuned

that Mike and I were convinced
that they were never
gonna mistake us,

with metal tanks,
big metal housings,

for a seal.

After seeing
probably 30 of these
die a violent death,

now it's my turn
to put on my little
sea lion outfit, wet suit,

and go into the water
and try to film this behavior
from the water.

So I didn't take this lightly.

And the fins
got closer and closer,

and I remember, at one point,

I, like, motioned to Mike
and said, you know,

"Look, behind us,"
and we turned around

and the seals...

The sea lions
were all over the beach,
like, looking at us.

I could just see it
in their eyes. They're like,

"Get out of the water!
Are you crazy?

"Do you see
what's coming?"

Being on snorkel,
being in the killing zone
with a camera in your hands

and there's a fin six feet tall
coming through the water,

and every primitive instinct
you have is screaming,

"Get out of the water!"

While all that's going on
in the back of my head,

I'm hearing
Mike and Paul saying,

"Roll! Roll! Roll! Roll!"

I noticed
one of the killer whale fins
turned straight at me.

Just started moving in.

And as I started to back up,
I realized

"There's no way I have time
to get out of the water."

I was now committed.

So, all I could do
was take a deep breath,

go underwater and start rolling.

Something started emerging
in the viewfinder.

It was a sort of
a milky white color

which
turned into a killer whale head.

And it came right at the camera,

moved past the camera,

and kept going past.
Kept going past.

Kept going past. It was like
a freight train going by me.

And then, I started hearing
this "Boom! Boom! Boom!" sound.

"What the heck is that?"
And I realized
it was my heart and lungs!

I hadn't been breathing!

So I had to leap out
of the water
and take a big breath.

I worried about
how it would be received.

People saw that this was
a straight, scientific,

dispassionate eye
trying to look at
how the world works.

And it caused a sensation
in the unit.

Everybody was talking about it.

The moment had been shown.

We wanted to expose
the audience to the truth
about, what we felt,

the truth about
what we were seeing.

The absolutely
extraordinary beauty
and terror of nature.

It is a complicated,
dangerous business

and Mike and Paul
had worked at it.

They set a high watermark

which nobody else came near
for a long time.

People making
natural history films

can be given some kind of credit

for opening up
all kinds of windows
on the natural world.

And scientists
who lead us most of the time,

just every now and again,

can learn a bit from what
the cameramen have discovered.

And so,
those pioneering sequences,

I think,
actually hold their place
in the history of discovery.

And they've raised
a lot of questions.

People think fish feel no pain.

But, Mike, he knew full well
that fish do feel,

they have families, they have
all kinds of connections

that we never really
give them credit for.

And he just had that ability
to get people to think
outside of themselves.

Now, this is a perspective
I've never seen.

Well, welcome
to our octopus gymnasium.

Each one of these tanks
was built specifically

to show off
one of the many talents
that the octopus has.

That tube it's trying
to pass through

is one-tenth
the size of its body.

He would use
every bit of gear
he could find.

Beyond scuba,
he would use rebreathers

because those would
let him go deeper

and allow him to stay down
for longer lengths of time.

He used full-face masks

because those
would let him talk...

Chased away the sharks.

Haven't been able
to get near them since.

Nonstop.

So, I'm gonna go get rid of it.

Anything that got him
into the ocean

where he could also share
those experiences

just thrilled him.

There we go.

I'm just gonna lay down
right next to him.

So, anyway, this is what we do.

We sneak up on otters.

The likes of which we can't see.

Peep holes, and look at that.

Who would know
that we're a floating iceberg?

While Mike
was thousands of miles away

filming beneath
the ice in Antarctica,

I was at home on bed rest,
pregnant with our first child.

I jumped into a seal hole,

pushing the ice away
as I entered,

and they handed me my camera.

Suddenly everything was quiet,

and I found myself looking at,

easily, one of the most
extraordinary scenes
I have ever, ever experienced.

This was
a filmmaker's conundrum.

It was
an incredible opportunity.

We needed the money,

but it was
a really delicate time for us.

Everything
above me on the land
was roaring with wind.

And down there,
there was absolutely no sound

except for the distant trills
of Weddell seals.

Max, give us a smile.

Ooh!

Hi.

There you go.

Zooming in.

Good morning.

If we couldn't be out
in the world with animals,

they seemed to find
their way inside with us.

Hi, Max.

Hi, Max. Hi.

God, this focus is terrible.

Hi, Max.

Max, you got a hummer.

You got a hummer on your tummy.

A hummer, Max!

You don't even know it!

Max, the hummingbird
is growing up.

Today, he's gonna fly away.

In about 18 years,
you'll do the same thing.

It wasn't too long
before we had a second child,

and we realized,

our life was fairly
indistinguishable from work.

And we would find ourselves
looking at our kids
like little animals.

Little mammals.

Max, why don't you stop
and talk to us for a second?

There you go, small circles...

You guys were there,

the kids were there,
we were there.

It was cool. It was just this
kind of unique atmosphere

where exciting work kind of
overarched everything.

"Where were we going?"
"Oh, we're off Australia.
We're going to Indonesia."

So you were either coming home

or getting ready to go
to some exotic locale.

The only thing hard about it
was just how long
you'd be gone for.

And sometimes,
that was the biggest bummer.

I don't remember him
missing things.

You know,
every big part of my life
that I remember growing up,

I don't know whether
it's because I kind of
insert him

or if it's because
he actually was there.

But it didn't really matter
because it felt like he was.

In the end, I think,
the stories that he would tell,

I gotta be honest, they're cool.

The cool knickknacks
he would bring back

from all the different places
he would have been.

Those kind of made up
for the times gone.

If you ever really
want to get away from it all

and see something
that you have never seen,

and have an excellent chance
of seeing something
no one has ever seen,

get in a sub.

The first time I went down
in a sub was actually in Hawaii.

I was in the Star boat,
you know?

- Oh, I do. I do. Yes, I do.
- Yeah, the Bocalii.

As you well know, you go down
in this acrylic sphere

and suddenly it goes away.

I know, you're in the water.

-You're in the water!
But you're dry!
-Not wet.

I love this!

Mike liked the deep
because it literally was
a final frontier opportunity

short of becoming an astronaut
and going into space.

He became a pilot
of a number of different subs.

And, you know, every time
he got ready to go down,

you could see
a twinkle in his eye.

He just absolutely adored that.

It changed me.
"Wow! Here's a place."

It's another planet.

They're alien animals,
only this is on Earth.

It's our planet,
it's not an alien place.

We're the aliens,
if anything is.

Exactly! There's a lot
more of them than us,
and they've been there longer.

What I'm seeing is...

ink blackness.

Why do people
like Mike and myself

want to get into little
experimental vehicles

and go down into the cold,
dark depths by ourselves?

But I'm not sure
what I'm gonna run into.

It's pretty simple.

It's the same thing
that has driven

human exploration
from the get-go.

'Cause we wanna see
what's there.

Mike was extremely precise

in life, and especially
in his filmmaking.

Once he had
made a decision,
that was the decision.

And lightning
could have hit you,

and you could have been
warning Mike
about the lightning

and he would have
proceeded along without you
and got the shot.

Some people would say stubborn.

The most stubborn person.
When he got his mind
on something,

it was...

Stubborn.

It was our major issue,

because he saw the world
one way,

and that's the way
the world was.

And it was really difficult
to convince him

there was another way
of seeing things.

He would say,
"No, it's black and white."

And I'd say, "No,
there are all kinds of
shades of gray,

"and that's what
makes it interesting."

He wouldn't
recognize that his take

was just one take
of many on the world.

He was in the world.

And so, how he saw it
is how it was.

He and I could disagree
about a production,

but if he wanted to do it,
there was no
convincing him otherwise.

He could drive me nuts.

One of the things
I think he got wrong,

and I said this to him,

he was too passionate
when he got cross.

You know, he wasn't
a politician, Mike.

This just isn't gonna work.
I can't see anything.

To win the war,
you don't have to win
every battle.

But Mike had to win
every battle.

Mike sometimes
struggled with broadcasters

because he really
wasn't willing to compromise
his standards or integrity.

I definitely remember
this one time,

he slammed the phone down,

threw it across the room,
and I said, "Well, you just
burned that bridge."

One of the problems
in doing deep dives in filming

is that these submersibles
that we're using

were built for research,
not filmmaking.

They've had our two best lights,

the HMIs,

way up on the top
next to a big xenon spotlight.

And that works
great for science.

Gives you nice, flat light,

lot of information in the frame.

But that's not
what we're interested in.

We wanna get shadows and detail
and darks, and lights.

I had these guys build big booms

that I could spread out
and put the light way away
from the camera.

I think
Mike was always actually
rather frustrated by his gear.

It was never good enough.

Apart from the fact
that he used to lose
quite a lot of it quite often.

When we were
filming the Abyss projects,

he was rechristened
as Mike Debris

because he had an ability
to break cameras
like nobody else.

He was
constantly complaining to me,

"I want the lights out here.
I want the camera out here."

And always fighting
with the guys
that ran the submersible

saying, "Well, if you do that,
we'd probably get stuck
on the bottom."

He says, "I don't care,
we need to get a better shot."

I don't think
he ever, ever said,
"I'm happy with my gear."

Not in my experience, ever.

You know, you were always aware

that he was thinking,
"Oh, how can we improve this
with what we've got?"

Which, for some people,
could be stubborn,

but I think
I always felt it was him
trying to be creative.

I think
Mike had a very clear vision
of what Mike wanted to do.

I think we all saw that.

But with that
came a wonderful
generosity of spirit,

a wonderful enabling of people.

It was funny, for a man
with enormous presence,
and enormous energy,

he actually had
rather a small ego.

The deep diving
definitely worried me,

but Mike was
so excited about it,

to ask him not to
would be like asking him
not to breathe.

MaclNNIS: When you've been
at sea for months at a time,

and you come off the ship
and you come back
into the terrestrial world

in the world of your family,

and those responsibilities,

it's a serious decompression.

Many nights
I've spent growing up

when he was away on those trips.

I was probably thinking
about what he was doing,
like, imagining

what kind of weird fish
he was looking at
2,000 feet under the ocean.

So I think
there was a lot of wonder.

MaclNNIS: It's like combat.

If you weren't there,
it's very hard to describe,

so a lot of folks
come off the ship,

and they don't say very much
about the hardships
and the exhaustion,

and the risks
and the close calls.

Because that stays on the ship.

I remember
Mike telling me, he said,

"I don't know that I'm feeling
like diving this deep

"or taking these kinds
of risks anymore."

You can press your luck
only so long before
something's gonna happen

because he had kids
and he had a family
to worry about.

I saw him as this very brave,

adventurous, kind of
invincible person that,
I think,

definitely didn't occur to me
that anything would go wrong.

Why or how have we
allowed it to go so long
and know so little about,

you know, depths beyond scuba?

And... why do I care?

Why does anybody care
what happens

way the hell down there
in the bottom of the ocean
in the mud?

To me,
it's one of the great mysteries
of the sea,

why we have
so neglected the ocean.

Imagine if you just knew
about the skin
of our own bodies.

We need to care
about the stuff that goes on
inside the ocean.

It's taken us a long time
just to even begin to ask
the right questions.

The deep ocean
in terms of volume for life
on our planet

is 90% of the actual space
in which animals live.

Five percent
of that has ever been explored.

There's so much
more to discover.

We'll never discover
a new species on Mars.

Every single dive you do
in a deep ocean submersible,

you have a very high chance
of seeing or discovering
a new species.

It's crazy.

And when
you look at the vast variety
of creatures that you see,

utterly unlike anything
you've seen before,

well, if that doesn't
blow your mind,

you have an unblowable mind.

Every time you find
a hydrothermal vent

in a different part
of the ocean,

you'll find a different
set of life.

So why is it that
we are spending
so much money

trying to find the meaning
of life on a rock

spinning around the universe

rather than actually looking
at what's in the ocean,

which is really the lifeblood
of this planet?

I think we're drawn up
towards space

because to dive deep
into that abyss is scary.

It's dark, it's mysterious,

and in many ways,
it's analogous
to our own inability

to be introspective.

We don't really like
to explore our own darkness.

I think you could say
that going into the deep ocean

is more of a spiritual
interior journey,

and going out into the universe
is more of a dualism

between the feminine
and masculine spirit.

You know, we go
and we conquer space.

You don't conquer the ocean.

You understand the ocean,
you become intimate
with the ocean,

you let it teach you.

The mid-ocean ridge
is a huge mountain range
40,000 miles long

snaking around the entire globe.

And they're big mountains,
thousands of feet tall,
some of which

are tens of thousands of feet
and bust through the surface

creating islands like Hawaii.

In fact,
this whole area is like
a Yellowstone National Park

with all of the trimmings.

And all along the sides
of these chimneys

is shimmering with heat
and loaded with life.

You've got shrimp,
fish, lobsters,

crab, clams
and swarms of amphipods.

This whole ecosystem
wasn't even known about
until 33 years ago.

And it completely
threw science on its head.

It made scientists rethink

where life on Earth
might have actually begun.

And before the discovery
of these vents,

all life on Earth,
the key to life on Earth

was believed to be the sun
and photosynthesis,

but down there,
there is no sun,
there is no photosynthesis.

It's chemosynthetic environment
down there driving it,

and it's also ephemeral.

For him, seeing those
volcanic processes firsthand

was to witness
one of our lifetime's
great scientific discoveries

and to see part
of Earth's very core.

And for me, looking back now
at his excitement,

that it was all ephemeral,
is even more poignant.

Tonight,
an offshore oil rig
is in flames

in the Gulf of Mexico,

and rescue teams
are desperately searching
for survivors.

When I heard on April 20th,

that an oil rig had exploded
in the Gulf of Mexico
and was on fire,

it got my attention.
I knew straightaway about this.

I was there.
I was listening to the news.

Then two days later, it sunk,

dragging a drill stem
down with it.

It is nearly a mile deep
and more than 20 miles long.

Deep sea life
is threatened by the oil

that scientists say
is not going away
any time soon.

I grew up near here.
I grew up in Mobile.

And I spent my, some might say,
misguided youth

running around these bayous
going into the Mobile delta,

spending a lot of time
in Mobile Bay

fishing, swimming,
learning to scuba dive
in the Gulf of Mexico.

This is home for me.

The spill is spreading,

and has grown considerably
over the past two days.

Mike was desperate
to get down to the Gulf.

He recognized
that the spill was growing

into one of our country's worst
environmental disasters,

and he really wanted
to tell the story.

But he couldn't find anybody
willing to fund it.

So finally, he just grabbed
his camera and went.

When we went down to the Gulf,

Mike, and Max and I

were basically scouting,

but capturing some footage
while we were there.

It was hard for me
'cause I wasn't ready
for such a shift

going from my dad
being a funny guy,

who was pretty easygoing
about most things, to going...

Come on, you need to wake up.
We're gonna do it, okay?

You know, full-on rigid mode.

"We gotta get this shot
by this time

"or else we're totally
off schedule."

Every time I talked to Mike,

he was so frustrated
because he was denied access

and was having
such a hard time
getting the story.

This was not an easy task.

You know, we had to use
everything we could think of

to get into these areas
we were not allowed.

One morning, we decided
to head into the PX store
owned by BP

'cause we need rubber boots.

So we drive in there
like we own the place,

and they thought
we were working for 'em,

and they just handed us
as many rubber boots
as we needed.

The reason
that I wanted to come here

is because I wanted to find out
from a scientific point of view,

what they're finding
in these waters,

in the estuaries,

in the bays,

and in the Gulf of Mexico.

From a scientific
point of view,
what is this oil doing?

What is this dispersant doing?

And what do you think
might happen
three or four years from now?

So we're about, what,
25 miles southeast of Mobile,

and we just started coming out
and kind of getting a little bit
of sheen on the surface.

Then the next thing
that happens is

we started seeing
what looked like possibly
were some bait fish,

something along those lines.

Then we smelled it.

We slowed down.
There was a sheen on the water.

Then we got out here,
and there's just
this massive slick

after slick after slick in rows.

What were the real consequences

for the people
who were affected?

It's changed their lives,

but the creatures
who cannot speak
for themselves,

they're the ones who have to
bear the brunt of the impact.

I've spent a lot of time
in the water with whale sharks,

and I see them often
on the surface,

mouths open, literally skimming,

and they were going
into areas of oil.

I mean. could they possibly
survive that?

If this stuff was ingested,

it would probably take
the matter of seconds
to coat the gills,

and they're gonna basically
succumb and sink to bottom.

The chemical dispersants
used early in the spill

were like carpet bombing
the Gulf with a toxic stew
of chemicals, oil, and gas.

The job of dispersants
is to break apart oil.

It breaks it apart
into little droplets.

It's a detergent, in a way.

A very powerful
kind of detergent

that you shake it up
and,
as waves would do,

you get the little
droplets of oil throughout
the whole water column.

Which is exactly what happened
in the Gulf of Mexico.

Our goal, our mission
is to document photographically

exactly what's happening
to the corals

about a mile below us right now,

and see if it's somehow related

to the Deepwater Horizon
disaster in the Macondo oil.

Finally, with the help
of Dr. Chuck Fisher
from Penn State University,

we were able to get a grant
from the National
Science Foundation

to follow the science
of that spill.

I have never seen
anything like this

in any other ecosystem.

We dove at 30 different sites
all over the Gulf.

We've never seen
a coral community
that was dying.

And when you have animals
that live as long as these do,

a whole field of dying corals
is an alarm bell.

That's just something
you don't see

unless something
is killing them.

This was
the thing that really
kind of got to my heart,

and made me really sad
was that these sea fans,

these guys are 500 years old.

The brittle stars
that normally are bright red
and proud,

and wrapped tightly
around these gorgonian corals
that we were seeing,

limp and pink,

and not doing well.

And these dead and dying corals
were covered

in some sort of brown material
that we couldn't
quite identify.

We have now identified it,
and it was indeed oil.

And we're trying
to fingerprint it

to find out
where that oil came from.

But I think we all know.

It was pretty darn clear
to everyone on that boat

that there was a serious impact

that this oil
and dispersant had had

on the Deepwater
coral communities
in the Gulf of Mexico.

We went back
to the Gulf as a family

and it had its moments.

Max, come in here and zoom in,

reframe it, then we're gonna
pick up on that.

You've worked for 45 minutes
and you've burned out.

- I know. Unbelievable.
- Yeah, you guys are lazy.

- You're right.
- Everything's rolling.

I'm done. I'm done.
- long time.
If you're in the back row,

- don't sigh,
and rolling your eyes.
- Go, Dad. Please, just go.

It's been almost two years

since the Deepwater Horizon
rig exploded

in the Gulf of Mexico
some 60 miles from here.

And in that time,

it may have left
the headlines of the news,
but we're still doing it.

We're still drilling
in Deepwater,
in the Gulf of Mexico

as well as many other places
in the world,

and issues are still coming up.

BP unleashed a huge experiment

on the public
and on the ecosystem

by dumping probably
what will amount

to over two million gallons
of dispersants in our ocean.

You know,
when people would ask me
about dispersants,

my answer was always
we just don't know enough
to be doing this

because we don't have
any background information

on the effects
of these dispersants.

The only tested it
on a zebra danio,

and a freshwater shrimp.

And that was the only life
they tested it on.

And they didn't test it
in conjunction with oil.

So let's see what happens

when we add Corexit 9500,
the dispersant of choice
in the Gulf spill,

into one of these beakers.

This is
a qualitative experiment.

Nevertheless, here we go.

That should be enough.

Wow.

That's not taking very long.

We'll just let that spin
for a while.

Wow.

This, to me, is just
a completely different
material now.

Seems to me that
by not dispersing the oil,

and allowing it to concentrate
on the surface,

you're dealing
with a layer of oil

that is at least accessible.

You can get to this,
you can scrape it,

you can skim it,
you can burn it,

you can do something with it
because there it is.

It's concentrated
on the surface.

You disperse it, you get this.

How in the hell
can you clean that up?

How is it possible
that BP was allowed

by the US government
to release two million gallons

of a known toxin to be dumped
into the Gulf of Mexico?

In this country,
I just go back to
"The spiller is in charge."

Basically, the industry
has looked for

what would be the cheapest way
to do a spill response.

According to the BP scientists,

just because the dispersants
pushed the oil
out of sight, out of mind,

they're declaring dispersants
are a success story,

and that this is not
an alternative method
of treatment now,

this is the method of treatment
for future oil spills.

This is a stream
of consciousness,

and I just can't stop
and start over.

This was the footage
I couldn't stop watching
in the edit room.

Because Mike had so obviously
become a different guy.

And I realized
his entire life and career
had led him here.

Tell me what's happened.

What was it like before?
What is it like now?

What will it be like
in three years?

Those were the questions
that I wanted answered.

And we weren't
getting those answers.

So I thought, "Well,
they don't want to answer

"or they're legally bound
not to answer."

And the more scientists
that we spoke with,

the more I started feeling,

well, maybe that's not
actually what's going on.

I started feeling,
what's going on

is these people
really don't know
what's going on.

When we got into the details

of the specific species
that were impacted,

we didn't even know their names.

We didn't have any previous data

on their life history,
on their associates,

on their interaction
with other fauna.

So we were in some ways
working in the dark.

People often ask me,

what are the broader effects
of this spill

on other animals
associated with the corals.

We don't know
what those animals are.

And you're just
looking at, you know,

the instant data set
that you have right now.

You have no idea
what it was a week ago,

a month ago, a year ago,
ten years ago.

And we know very well
that it takes around
two decades

to get enough background data
to see natural change.

We don't have anything close
to that in the Gulf of Mexico,

or most other places
in the ocean.

And it seems what is happening

is that
the scientific community
in the Gulf of Mexico

is seriously underfunded,

and I think "underfunded..."

How much money do you need?

And I get figures like,
"Well, we just got
a $100,000 grant,

"and we're
really happy about that.
Next summer we're going out."

I'm thinking $100,000,
okay, that's a lot of money.

But compared to the insane
amounts of money

that corporations
like oil companies

spend pulling oil
out of the environment,

trashing the environment
in the process.

A hundred thousand dollars?

They're spending billions
of dollars exploiting

and destroying the very habitats

that we don't even understand

because the scientists
don't have $100,000

to go out and study
the sargassum?

Why isn't there
more of a parity?

I think there should be.

And I think, until there
becomes more parity,

and we release more funding
to do more science,

and understand
what we're dealing with,

and give ourselves the tools

to better manage these places,

that we're doomed.

MaclNNIS: This injury
to the Gulf where he grew up,
he took personally.

I've never seen the depth
of feeling for the ocean

that I saw in Mike at that time,

and he wanted to do
something about it.

This was a problem
that needed solution.

He felt like people
just didn't care.

They don't care
about the environment.

They don't care about
underwater wildlife.

These big corps
care about making money
and that's it,

and that just went against
everything Mike believed in.

Maybe I just had never seen

what heartbroken
Mike deGruy looks like,

and heartbroken over
something that
is so avoidable.

I remember, he was mad
because that's what

we were in the Gulf for,
and that's why
we were filming.

It was something
that really mattered to him

and it was really important
and he was really angry.

For the first time,
maybe, in his career

he was faced with a situation

with a film that he couldn't
quite get his head around.

It really was eating him up.

I really didn't know what to do

because he didn't
wanna talk about it.

And I thought, "Wow,

"you've taken me into the ocean,

"so come with me
to explore this inner space."

But he just didn't
want to do it.

It was ironic
because here's this
deep ocean explorer

and I couldn't get him
to explore his sadness.

But he was
not particularly
psychological-minded,

not the same kind of...

exuberance at discovering
a psychological truth

as a physical truth
in the world.

He wasn't gonna
be able to keep going
like he'd been going.

He could throw in the towel
or rage at the world

or he could come
to a new accommodation.

But in order to do that,
he was gonna have to learn
some things about himself.

So here's a 60-year-old guy

really breaking into frontier
psychological territory
for the first time.

He didn't like it.
He didn't wanna talk about it,

but he knew
he was gonna have to do it.

He was scared to death.

For the first time
since he was a young
springboard diver,

he just couldn't push
through that fear.

I think he was scared
of the depth of his rage.

He couldn't believe
we were so disconnected
from the natural world

that we would let that spill
happen to the Gulf.

Director
James Cameron is on a mission

to dive to the deepest point
on the planet.

That voyage deep into the sea.

When Jim Cameron called

and asked Mike
to join his next expedition,
he jumped.

Mike saw it as a resurgence
in an interest in the deep,

and it thrilled him.

That one very talented guy
with a capable team

would be able to do
what no government
had done in 50 years.

It's 36,000 feet down.

That is seven miles
to the bottom.

Mount Everest could fit
in the trench with
7,000 feet to spare.

We'd worked with him before,
in 2005, at Titanic.

We knew that he was
the most capable guy out there.

He knew subs,
he knew underwater lighting.

He would put the right kind
of spin and pizazz on it.

And Andrew,
as the director of the project,

really wanted Mike at his side.

And of course,
he jumped right in
with his usual enthusiasm.

And said, "Okay, you know,
when, where, I'm there."

Mike was
just so excited...
Yeah.

You know?
He was like a kid
in a candy store.

Oh, absolutely.

MaclNNIS: And at that moment,
when it was clear

that the sub was gonna work,
and we were going to sea,

Mike was excited.

As excited
as I've ever seen him.

That expedition
was really energizing him,

and I could hear in his voice
his old enthusiasm

coupled now
with a determination,

and I was so excited to see
where it was gonna take him.

I had performed a test dive

that was resoundingly
successful.

And Mike was in the water.
He's videoing at night.

So he got to shoot
the mothership,

you know,
which is what it looked like.

So we came up
and we were just
high as kites.

I mean, it was just
so much fun
to get it all working.

And to know the next stop
was gonna be thousands
of feet deep.

Don, do you have
any tips for Jim

if at about 20,000 feet,
if he hears a crack?

If you can hear it,
you're still alive,

and might as well
keep on with the dive.

You never hear
the one that gets you.

There was a real
festive atmosphere
on the ship that night.

We got together
for a glass of wine afterwards,

Andrew, myself and Mike,
and we were all telling stories.

And they were all
the kind of "old-dog"
war stories.

"Yeah, I remember this thing,
and when I saw that,
and how I photographed it."

There were a lot of laughs
and went on till, you know,
2:00 in the morning

because we felt we'd really...

We just turned a corner.

- All right, we'll see you
at the bottom.
- All right.

We'd completed all our checks.

Ronnie was in the sub,
we'd bolted the hatch down.

And the sub was just
about to be launched

and Mike and Andrew
were coming out

to film it in the helicopter.

We were just about to lift him

when my deck supervisor,
David Wotherspoon,

came to me and said,
"There's been an accident.

"The helicopter is down."

And I said to David,
"All right,
let's not overreact,"

because I heard that
it crashed on take-off.

So most helicopter crashes
on take-off

are very, very low-speed
incidents,

and usually the helicopter's
just sitting there broken

and everybody's standing around.

MaclNNIS: And then Jim
went ashore to the crash site,

and then I got a call
to come ashore and meet Jim.

When he turned and looked at me,
I knew what had happened.

And we embraced.
There was a long...

profound embrace with tears.

And... we were shattered.

American filmmaker
Michael deGruy

and Australian filmmaker
Andrew Wight were killed

when their helicopter
crashed soon after take-off.

It was like he left me
mid-conversation.

I just found myself thinking
"Wait, you know,

"we had so much more to do,

"I had so many more things
I wanted to say to you."

Did I tell him
that I loved him enough?

Had I been afraid to love him
as fearlessly as he'd lived?

I think there was
a lot left unsaid.

I'm grateful that
our last conversation
was a really good one,

like, a really good one.

I'm super grateful that
that is my last memory
with him,

but really sad that, you know,

we didn't get to make
the most of that time left.

But how can you know?
And that's a good lesson.

Good lesson I learned.

I think that...

I don't know.
That's the thing I want to know.

I would want to know
what he would be doing,

and I want to ask him
what I should be doing.

Zest, wonder,
energy, laughter...

courage, companionship...

wonder.

Wonder.

Mike wasn't here just
to entertain us, which he did,

or educate us, which he did,

or inspire us, which he did,

or to love us,
which he also did,

but to get inside us
and change us,

to make us behave differently.

His enthusiasm, his excitement,

his beautiful silver hair
and that unfortunate haircut.

His sense of wonder.

Terry Ellis described Mike
as a human exclamation mark.

You know,
when his brother said that,

everybody in the space said,
"You know, actually,

"that's a really good way
of describing Mike."

There was a wonderful, I think,
Hawaiian-inspired ceremony,

of throwing flowers
into the ocean.

We were holding hands,
and we were all
very emotional, actually.

And it was a wonderful sunset,
and then suddenly, in the sky,

as clear as day,
was a cloud formation

that was an exclamation mark.

And it wasn't
sort of a "maybe."

It was absolutely clear,

and everybody who was there,
it suddenly went quiet.

We were all chatting,
we looked at it,
and people said, "Wow."

That was a phenomenon.

I don't think
I've ever seen a more powerful,

you know, testimony to
there's something,

you know, beyond
just organic life

than that exclamation point.

And I remember
thinking to myself,

that bugger, Mike deGruy,

he's never, ever
gonna miss a party.

There is no way
that we're not gonna know
he's there.

That noisy, energetic,
amazing guy, even...

even after death,

made sure that we still
knew he was around.

Mike's energy drew both
people and animals to him.

That was his magic.

It might send down
a tentacle, caress me
with its sucker discs.

It's just unbelievable
what this animal
is capable of,

and I loved them.

He wasn't this
earnest environmentalist.

He wasn't driven by duty
in that kind of sense.

Just within him,
there was just this great

warm, throbbing kind of,
you know, "Isn't life great?"

These jack number
hit the thousands!

In this last year,
he was retooling.

He was determined
to get the truth out.

We'll spend billions
and billions and billions
of dollars exploiting an area

that we haven't even spent
a little bit of money
understanding.

It doesn't make sense.

If everybody could take
a little bit of that juice,

the inspiration,
the fire that burned
so brightly in Mike deGruy,

if we could just
spread it around,

there'd be no problem.
Everybody'd be wanting
to get out there.

When I talked
with schools and kids,

"Well, gee, how do you become
an underwater filmmaker?
I wanna do that."

"Just do it.
Just start making movies.

"They'll be horrible at first,
it doesn't matter."

You know, you'll still
have fun doing it.

I fell so in love with Mike

and saw the ocean
through his eyes,

and it was clear to me
that he wanted us all
to love it like he did.

He would be shouting
from the rooftop

that the ocean is not for sale.

And it's up to us to have those
difficult conversations now
before it's too late.

And to take care of the ocean
like our life depends on it.

Because, honestly, it does.

I've been to a lot of lectures
where at the end of it,

inevitably, one of the first
questions that comes up is,

"But what can I do?"

My answer to that
is don't look at the big,

overwhelming issues
of the world.

Look in your own backyard.

Look into your heart, actually.

What do you really care about
that isn't right where you live,
and fix it.

So we've returned
to my hometown, Mobile, Alabama,

to talk to a lot of people
and get people involved,

and maybe, you know, we can...

We can make the world
a better place.

Cut.