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The depths,

the oceanic frontier to which our craft is now heading.

It's mission to explore strange new worlds,

to discover new forms of life, other ecosystems

and regardless of the risks to descend into the unknown.

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This feels like a voyage into space.

Four aquanauts embark on a unique expedition

into the twilight world,

120 meters beneath the Mediterranean.

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These four men are members

of Gombessa expeditions Laho, Thibaut, Yanick and Antonin

are about to set off for 28 days on an exotic voyage

right on their doorstep along the French Riviera.

It's the most visited coast on the planet with years of

unbridled, urban development,

overflowing summer resorts and harmful industrial waste.

All these pressures have increased over the last century

and outside of nature reserves the first 50 meters

below the surface have suffered.

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But beyond that, will it possible to find untouched worlds?

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The bell descends

to the foot of the Grande Congloue near Marseille.

The Calanques National Park is where Jacques Cousteau

came in the 50's to make the silent world a film

that would change the lives of a generation,

a historic backdrop for a modern adventure.

It was chosen by biologist

and photographer Laurent Ballesta.

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We're finally here,

no longer scuba divers jumping off a boat,

but aquanauts leaving their bathyal station.

Bathyal, the oceanic zone where light dies,

which is not yet the abyssal zone

I've studied the deep Mediterranean for 20 years.

It is often thrilling, but the dives are too short.

That's why I photograph it as well,

so I can continue enjoying it after dives

that last only minutes,

minutes that are about to become ours.

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That's why I dreamt of this voyage.

We advance gradually no longer in a hurry,

observing everything.

I rediscover sites I thought I knew.

These gardens I like to call the coral reefs

of the Mediterranean.

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These formations look like the corals

of warm water reefs but they're not.

The correct term is coralligenous reefs

and they only exist in the Mediterranean.

These unique ecosystems occur far below the surface

between 70 and 120 meters

out of sight of the tourists on the beach.

The origin of these oases of life is life itself.

The foundations are laid by bio builders

like this violet stone algae

then reinforced by animals,

marine worms, corals, mollusk, a multitude of workers,

busily building on top of each other.

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There are builders, but also demolishers

like these date shells capable of boring into rocks

or these sponges,

which secrete acid to dissolve the limestone.

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These craggy surfaces allow a third group

to move in the squatters, animals, looking for shelter.

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This constant power struggle between builders

and demolishers is actually the key to the complexity

and diversity of these deep reefs.

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= [Narrator] Today, more than 1600 species make up,

these coralligenous reefs,

which are unique to the deep Mediterranean.

Down here the temperature never varies.

It's 13 degrees Celsius all year round.

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We have just spent three hours at 70 meters.

The diving bell is not far away.

It's reassuring for a first outing

and we got our first reward, the Mediterranean vein squid.

I'd only seen them once before 10 years ago,

elusive creatures glimpsed for an instant.

Today it's different, they mate, right in front of us.

The male passes under the female

and their tentacles intertwine.

The male then extends his lower arm,

turns it over and slips it under the female's mantle.

This modified arm carries his sperm

towards the eggs still inside the female.

In the seconds that follow, the female swims

into a small cave and hangs long clusters

or fertilized eggs from the ceiling.

These squid reproduce only once

in their lives at the age of one or three years old,

a short life and just one chance to make new life

just before losing their own.

Once in their lifetime and we are there.

First day, first incredible picture.

I hope it's a good omen.

We have 28 days.

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Inside the diving bell,

they breathe a gas mixture

which is not air from the surface.

It's only 3% oxygen and 97% helium.

This affects their vocal chords and alters their voices.

This precise cocktail of gases prevents narcosis and

epileptic convulsions,

which are the main dangers of breathing air at great depths.

But after several hours the divers bodies

are saturated with helium,

meaning any rapid ascent to the surface air

could have fatal consequences.

When they do resurface, our four divers must live inside

an airtight chamber kept at the same pressure as the seabed.

For the aquanauts' bodies, it's the same long dive

for 28 days.

They won't be desaturated until the end of the mission.

It will take four days.

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Theo Mavrostomos is the captain

of the Bathyal station,

a former deep sea diver who became a living legend

after a successful experiment, carried out by COMEX,

a French company that pioneered underwater work.

The aim was to find out

how much pressure the human body could withstand.

His maximum of 701 meters set a world record

that has never been equaled.

After visiting the Grande Congoule,

the bathyal station sets off on its long voyage,

300 kilometers of the French Riviera

along which Laurent Ballesta has noted 20 interesting sites

that he's never been able to really explore before.

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The four rebreather sets,

too bulky to take inside the bell

are unloaded by the surface team

so they can be checked and refilled.

Each diver has a partner on the outside

that he has absolute trust in.

It's like using a parachute you haven't packed yourself.

Thibaut who is helping Laurente under the water,

couldn't trust anybody more than Justine, his wife.

She's also a diving instructor.

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Yanick, the cameraman didn't have to look far either.

His older brother's Cedric is looking after his gear.

They're inseparable whenever Yanick

is filming in extreme conditions.

Antonin, as well as helping Yanick with lighting

handles the science on the dives.

He needs two partners,

Florian for the logistics and scientific tasks

and Thomas, Antonin's friend and colleague

on all his research projects around the world.

Laurente called up Jordy from Spain,

an excellent underwater photographer

and a scuba diver himself.

He will also look after Laurente's five cameras.

John Mark is the supervisor.

He's an expert on decompression, gas mixtures

and anything to do with rebreathers.

He supervises each partner and checks the parameters

for each machine.

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Theo and Homa adjust the pitch

to understand the diver's voices

which are deformed by the helium.

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Like a floating factory,

the barge was built in the 1970's.

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It was the heyday of saturation diving.

Mainly for exploiting oil under the sea.

Men were required to work at great depths,

connected to an umbilical cord,

which supplied breathable gas,

warm water to heat their suits

and the possibility to communicate with the surface.

These captive workers were called deep sea divers.

Renamed the bathyal station by the Gombessa team,

the barge belongs

to the National Institute of Professional Diving

and allows their students to train

for saturation diving.

After two years of planning,

the INPP and the Gombessa team have found a way

to cut the umbilical cord that connects the divers

to the bell,

allowing them total freedom of movement.

It's a first not for extraction but for exploration.

The electricity must be kept running day and night

to keep the capsule pressurized

and to power instruments in the control room.

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The divers' isolation means meals

must be pressurized in an airlock hatch.

In just a few seconds,

the food is pressurized by helium

before being collected by the divers.

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The bathyal station is not alone.

Orbiting nearby is Les Embre, a catamaran

belonging to Andromed Oceanology

which specializes in marine ecology.

On board, Julie Detair, head of the scientific program

for this Gombessa expedition,

supervises sample collection

for the Water Agency and the Scientific Center of Monaco.

Procedures include collecting environmental DNA,

bioacoustics, photogrammetry,

and measuring a reef's metabolism

from it's respiration and photosynthesis.

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Attached beneath Antonin's scooter,

the DNA pump will cover the entire ecosystem

they wish to investigate.

The method is similar to forensic scientists

who collect traces of DNA that living beings

have left at a crime scene.

Hundreds of liters of water are filtered

to collect microscopic fragments

left suspended in the water in the past few hours.

This allows scientists to compile a list

of the most discrete species,

even those that divers did not see

While some remain invisible,

others are totally unmissable.

I think early naturalists

must have been hypnotized by this animal

when they discovered it.

Bewildered, no doubt and at a loss for words,

they turned to Greek mythology and named it,

Gorgonocephalus after the Gorgon

who had hair of coiled serpents

and the power to petrify all those who looked at her.

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In fact, the creature is harmless.

It's related to the starfish

but it's five arms split into separate branches

over and over again.

When coiled up, it's barely 10 centimeters in diameter

but spread out the Gorganocephalus is over a meter wide.

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Like starfish, they reproduce at a distance

without touching, discharging their gametes

into the current.

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However, we have often seen them intertwine their long arms

in delicate caresses that remain a mystery to this day.

The divers have spent two hours at 90 meters.

Using the sounds under the sea,

they test a new method for measuring the health

of coralligenous reefs.

They deployed 12 ultra-sensitive microphones

in order to locate exactly where

each recorded sound comes from.

Each sound characterizes an animal

and what it is doing.

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A change in an ecosystem sound signature

would indicate the first signs of a disruption

either by a chemical pollution,

a change in water temperature

or an increase in maritime traffic.

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To connect the sounds to the organisms that produce them,

acoustic data must be combined with a precise picture

of the seabed.

To achieve this Antonin conducts a photogrammetric study

of the area.

Thousands of photos are used to create a 3D model

of coralligenous massif,

accurate to the very last centimeter.

The model now displays all the sounds recorded

and located by the microphones.

It provides a formal link between the recorded sounds

and the exact location they came from.

This sound map will be the model

of a healthy coralligenous reef.

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Sparkling pink swallowtail perches

are present in abundance.

This abundance often prevents us seeing rarer specimens,

the extraordinary among the ordinary.

Here is one such example.

I've waited years to see this.

The parrot sea perch,

a cousin of the swallowtail photographed alive

for the first time.

The differences are subtle yet obvious,

a more slender body, a larger eye,

two distinct colors on the skin and a distinctive tail.

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Outside, there's a heat wave,

41 degrees Celsius.

The water at the surface is 28 degrees Celsius.

After six days, the bathyal station is staying the distance.

It normally only goes out for a few hours a month

near Marseille.

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Every day, the aquanauts check

their physical condition.

They look for possible signs of reduced cognitive ability

and potential muscle wasting.

Since the first experiments in the 60's,

saturation diving has become well understood

and the risks are low.

It's a precaution

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In general, oceans are major carbon sinks,

especially thanks to photoplankton.

But do these coralligenous reefs also help trap CO2.

The divers position a tank

so a volume of water remains trapped,

but still in direct contact with the reef.

After seven hours the results are surprising.

Despite the weak light at this great depth,

the coralligenous reef photosynthesizes, it traps CO2.

But there is also some production of methane.

One possible cause could be the rise in water temperature.

It shows that these reefs are ecosystems sensitive

to small changes and that their metabolism

can shift from that of a plant to that of an animal,

from trapping greenhouse gas to actually producing it.

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These white trees like a forest covered in snow

is black coral.

It's skeleton which has made into jewelry is black

but it's skin and the polyps covering it are white.

Whoever named it chose to refer to its color when dead,

instead of its radiance when alive.

And so black coral forms white forest, that's how it is.

The dense weave of polyps paralyzes sea wasps.

These fearsome little jellyfish have met their match.

The sea perch yawns and in this twilight world,

I make the most of a light that

seems to come from all around.

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A bouquet of pink scales in a white forest,

a sea wasp caught in the trap,

an Iris wrasse that slips through,

gliding above a cuckoo wrasse and a torpedo ray.

To one side, the buzz of Norwell shrimps gathering together.

There are thousands of them all connected.

Their antennae touch those next to them.

So information passes in real time,

right across their social network.

In this way, they all receive the alarm

when a predator approaches.

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Only three white forests have been found

off the French coast.

They're all 80 to a hundred meters below the surface.

Some experts think these forests are made up of thousands

of clones forming a single giant individual

To test this hypothesis,

Antonin gathered samples from all over the forest.

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The samples reveal that certain branches

have a sex, female for the most part.

This means that different individuals can appear.

The forest is therefore not the giant clones

some thought it was.

It's reassuring because the sexual reproduction

could bring a genetic diversity.

The black coral present here will be less vulnerable

to climate imbalance.

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On day 10 bad weather

forces the station to leave Saint-Tropez

and head far away shelter among billionaires' yachts

at Gulf Beaune.

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The French Riviera is densely populated

and its population increases tenfold in summer.

The treatment plants are severely put to the test,

but the effluent is 90% purified.

Recent developments focus on the removal

of invisible pollutants

such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals.

Once treated wastewater is carried through pipelines

as far from the coast as possible

By analyzing mud samples,

we can detect dangerous substances from an official list.

That includes 18 pesticides, 16 hydrocarbons,

17 metals and 41 carcinogenic PCBs.

In addition to purification humans also count

on the diluting power of seawater.

Polluted or not the water harbors life.

Here, like anywhere else, animals find ways to survive.

Clever strategies on the back of this sole,

the yellow rim circles are a ploy.

They imitate the markings of a torpedo ray,

which can discharge 220 volts of electricity.

Any predator who's experienced that will think twice

when it sees this sole, even though it's harmless.

If there's water, there's life even if it's effluent.

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In this desolate land, there is hope in these expressions.

The location is repulsive, but the inhabitants intrigue me.

I see the fighting spirit of survivors in them.

I see the bravery of sentinels.

Their presence seems to be saying so far so good.

That is why I want to take their picture.

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Yanick and Antonin give up

due to poor visibility,

but Laurente and Thibeaux continue with the dive.

They look for the mouth of the pipe,

100 meters below the sea.

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The results from this site are not alarming.

Monitoring the impact of this discharge is imperative

but treatment has its limits.

It is not the solution sooner or later,

we need to stop using non-biodegradable products.

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Just off the Villefranche,

the bathyl station hovers over a steep drop.

The aquanauts will not go deeper than this.

The negative altitude is 145 meters.

Here is where the Alps extend under the Mediterranean.

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These craggy cliffs

in the still depths are an ancient coastline.

These rocks were above sea level 20,000 years ago.

Descending to these depths is like going back in time.

At 145 meters only 1% of the sun's light

penetrates the gloom.

This is the mesophotic zone

But at these great depths, there's a paradox.

As the light diminishes visibility increases,

and it becomes possible to photograph the vast spaces.

Suddenly afforded views like a mountaineer,

I see that under the sea there exists another Earth.

Living beings are rare down here,

precious gems that have to be extracted.

The animals of the deep are like orchids on high mountains,

attractive yet inaccessible.

Purple porcelain on a Gorgonian branch,

a snipe fish with its sea horse nose.

The long pincered lobster,

the spiny spider crab and the same lobster

eating the spiny spider crab.

The electric colors of the royal flagfin

or the warm colors of the black belly rose fish.

There are creatures you have to flush out

and others that come to you.

The strange sunfish surveys the depths

looking for cleaner fish.

It's fragile scaless skin is attacked by parasites.

These tiny aquatic dermatologists tend to the sunfish

and bring back it's smile.

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Monaco and it's shrine to oceanology.

In his day, Captain Cousteau and the Calypso

paid homage to it.

Now it's the bathyal station's turn

to salute the rock of Monte-Carlo

before heading back to Marseille.

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To the stars and beyond

to meet extraterrestrials.

Planet Mediterranean is home to many aliens

but they mean us no harm.

The angler, enormous, yet almost invisible

under its camouflage of plants.

The scorpion spider crab and it's body covered in sponges.

The inimitable color of the Ferrari crab,

the outrageously long arms of the Parthenon,

the fly shrimp,

the mating dance of hermaphrodites sea slugs

fertilizing each other.

The solemnity of the John Dory.

After three weeks on this planet,

the aquanauts are tougher.

The daily encounters take their minds off the cold.

With each new dive, the scenery changes.

This is not a field of plants.

The white flowers are worms called sabellas.

The visible part, the crown of feathers are gills

which also catch plankton

and the current ensure a doorstep delivery.

At the slightest danger, the worm recoils into it's tube.

Not all marine worms inherited such beauty.

The lanice, my personal favorite makes up for it

with hard work.

The lanice turns to masonry.

This little architectural genius

constructs a fortress-like chimney

from recycled materials, shell fragments, urchin spines.

It constructs it's own plankton trap

with a bewildering amalgam of grains of sand.

Not as graceful as the Sabella but so much more ingenious.

The lantice is from a different world of gardens

made from tiny intertwined invertebrates,

a successful marriage of disorder and harmony.

Fragile compositions, so delicate and brittle

that they have almost all disappeared.

Wherever trawlers bulldoze the seabed,

these lacy creatures are wiped out.

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The bathyl station is back

in the waters off Marseille,

where several wrecks lie on the seabed.

The Gambessa team is made up of biologists and naturalists,

not archeologists but who can resist the wreck

of the Natal?

The Natal is a dream for many scuba divers

but very few have been there

and none could stay for more than 10 minutes.

Captain Cousteau discovered it in 1975.

the 130 meter long cargo ship sank in 1917

during the first World War.

120 meters deep, Cousteau visited in his diving saucer.

Today four aquanauts and flippers

will explore it for six hours.

People say divers are drawn to wrecks

by rumors of treasure for gold inlets.

But a wreck's real treasure is it's history,

it's tragic fate and for us it's rebirth.

One century after it sank,

what I see here is no longer a wrecked ship

but a reef with an ecosystem.

All the coralligenous creatures are here

and in surprising numbers.

I cannot help it, even when dealing with history,

I returned to the mysteries of marine life.

Using saturation diving for other disciplines

seems a logical next step.

Many archeologists would love to spend six hours

among these amphorae 100 meters below the sea.

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Desaturation started 48 hours ago.

The divers are pressurized to a level of 55 meters

and must wait another 12 hours.

The plan is to make one last dive by night.

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It seems Europe was hit

by a heat wave this summer,

a Frenchman nearly won the tour de France

and Thomas Pesquet is going back into space.

We weren't there.

My buddies and I were visiting a parallel universe.

So near, so far and so exotic.

28 days, 21 incredible encounters.

The elegant spider, the magrene, the garden eels,

the gluttony of the Cardinal fish

but also the mating dance of moray eels and giants

we no longer see near the surface.

So many things.

We went to find a different Mediterranean.

We found it and we are still misty-eyed.

I know we are not objective.

We are like people in love who only want to see beauty.

The reality is much sadder.

The helium might have made us cold

but the sea is getting warmer and warmer.

Three degrees warmer than normal this summer.

Coralligenous reefs are like oases in a desert,

essential but few and far between.

And just as in a desert, we must be aware of mirages.

This could all disappear.

These ancient creatures are the fortunate survivors

and these spared habitats, their last chance.

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One bathyal station, 30 devoted colleagues

and for 28 days, a door opened to a new world of freedom.

Laurente, Thibeaux, Yanick and Antonin

spent a total of 400 hours

at an average depth of 100 meters.

They saw that even on this overpopulated coast,

an untouched world exist.

What will happen to it?

In this almost landlocked sea everything is amplified,

the good and the bad.

The Mediterranean was once the cradle of our civilization.

It's become the trashcan of our society

but it's never ceased to be home to an abundance of life.

The Mediterranean is still alive.

The aquanauts took the time to observe it

and even to listen to it.

It's heart is still beating.

(beautiful music)