Original subtitles

No-one, and I mean no-one has ever been

near the bottom of this trench.

We don't know what's down there.

[Alan] I've never seen anything like that.

[Rob] The sea temperature's extremely warm.

One of the first symptoms

of heatstroke is people acting irrationally.

Hey, I'm going as fast as I [bleep] can.

He can't make it.

[Victor] Nothing on the sonar. [bleep]

[Alan] Watch yourself, watch yourself.

[bleep] Pull up, pull up, pull up!

[Demetri] Humankind has explored

every continent on Earth.

We've climbed its tallest mountains.

And even journeyed into space.

[man] "Thank you, Mr. President."

[Demetri] But there's a vast swathe

of our own planet

that has remained a mystery.

The deep ocean.

Stretching down over 35,000 feet

into crushing pressures,

it's been near impossible to reach.

Until now.

New engineering breakthroughs are driving an audacious

global mission to dive to the deepest points

of all the five oceans

for the first time in history.

These pioneers will push technology

to the limit.

- What the hell was that? - We have leaking hatch.

[Demetri] To open up this final frontier

as never before.

[woman] Trying to mentally put yourself at the bottom

is just mind-blowing.

[Demetri] Mapping hidden landscapes,

discovering unknown lifeforms.

[Alan] What on earth is that?

[Demetri] And unlocking the secrets

of how life in the extreme deep ocean

affects our entire planet.

[dramatic music playing]

[Demetri] Millionaire explorer Victor Vescovo

has spent the last four years preparing and planning

to make exploration history.

I've been doing somewhat risky things all my life.

Coming up with a mission that's never been done before

is extremely exciting and difficult

and seeing it through to its conclusion.

[Demetri] Victor has set himself the goal of being

the first person to head

to all five of the earth's oceans,

find their deepest points,

and explore their hidden secrets.

So far, he has completed two of the five.

Overcoming storms in the Atlantic

to find new species...

- At bottom. - Yeah!

[Demetri] ...and braving freezing waters

to triumph in the Southern Ocean.

- [man] Great job. - [Patrick] All right, Victor!

[Demetri] Their third deep dive is in the Indian Ocean.

This is the youngest of the oceans.

It's also the warmest,

with an average surface temperature of 90 degrees

Fahrenheit.

Beneath the waves, the sea floor

is one of the most geologically

volatile areas in the world.

A landscape of unpredictable faults,

fractures and earthquakes

that over the last few decades has generated

five of history's deadliest tsunamis.

[man] Get in! Get in! Get in!

[Demetri] The ocean's deepest point

lies at the epicenter

of a tsunami trigger zone.

The Java Trench.

Where two giant plates in the earth's crust collide.

A crucial part of Victor's mission

will be to search for evidence on the sea floor

of what is causing the tsunamis.

[Victor] The more data we have from the deep oceans

the better our models could be

to predict these things.

No-one, and I mean no-one has ever been

near the bottom of this trench,

or even explored it.

We don't know what's down there.

[Demetri] At over 23,000 feet deep,

the pressure will be immense.

Any ordinary sub would simply implode.

So Victor has commissioned a pioneering new design.

- Go ahead and jack it up. - [man] Roger.

[Demetri] Its secret strength lies at its core.

The cockpit is a ball of 3.5-inch thick titanium.

If this wasn't a perfect sphere,

it could crumple like a tin can.

Inside, a rack of oxygen tanks

provides up to 96 hours of emergency life support.

[Victor] If someone needs to go down

to the bottom of the ocean,

there's submarine jet.

It's now the deepest-diving submersible in the world.

In fact, it's actually the deepest-diving

vehicle, period.

[Rob] You know, I think the submersible

is the most significant

vehicle since Apollo 11.

This is a vehicle that will allow us

to explore the last frontier on Earth.

[Demetri] But if something serious goes wrong

at full ocean depth,

there's no hope of rescue.

[Victor] It's the only thing in the world

right now that can go

below 7,000 meters. Not even a remotely-piloted vehicle

can do that.

We're getting the tow line off.

[Demetri] And the sub is still very much a prototype.

Let it go.

[Demetri] In the first two ocean dives,

the sub team faced a massive learning curve.

[Patrick] Surface systems all up.

We have leaking hatch.

[Kelvin] There's a reason why nobody has done this before.

It's not easy.

It's going to an extreme environment.

There's no rescue plan. This has to come back.

It has to work.

Up on the main, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

[bleep]

It's sort of testing by breaking.

Back on the tag line.

[bleep] Why are we doing this?

[Victor] And there's always a lot of heartache

in that process,

because for every two steps you take forward...

[bleep]

[Victor] ...you've got to come back

and relearn one of them.

[man] What am I supposed to do?

[bleep]

It can take up to 30 or even 40 dives

with a brand-new submersible,

especially one designed with these extreme features,

to get it to where things are working well.

[Patrick] Okay, you guys ready?

Roger, go ahead.

[Demetri] Even if the sub is fully operational,

the team face a major hazard of the Indian Ocean.

It's tropical cyclone season.

[Rob] The sea temperature at the moment is about

30, 31 degrees Celsius, which is extremely warm.

And warm water is the fuel of cyclones.

The pressure is on to complete the mission

before a cyclone forces them to seek shelter.

First, the team need to use

their high-resolution sonar scanner

to map the uncharted depths of the Java Trench

and pinpoint the precise location

of the deepest point

of the Indian Ocean.

[Victor] It's one of the most advanced sonars in the world.

It's actually military grade. And it has the capability

to acoustically survey the bottom of the ocean

all the way to full ocean depth and map it.

[Demetri] The early scans are already revealing

crucial new evidence to help a key mission

of this expedition.

The search for the causes of the deadly

Indian Ocean tsunamis.

[man] In that northern wall, we've found at least 14

slope failures.

Some of those are four or five kilometers wide,

where big chunks essentially come loose during earthquakes

and slump to the sea floor.

And they can be responsible for tsunamis.

[Demetri] Monster landslides like these

displace vast amounts of water that on the surface

turn into devastating tsunamis.

The scans have also revealed

a near-vertical cliff that may be the site

of the next catastrophic collapse.

What we need to do

is actually go down and get some eyes on that

and try and find out whether these areas

are about to fall, or if we've got areas

that fell a long time ago and the whole area

is actually quite stable.

[Demetri] The team decide to add to their mission

a research dive down to this cliff.

[Patrick] The sonar has identified

a key geological feature

which otherwise would not have been found.

And you have the tool to go and dive on it.

- So this is great. - This is what we're here for,

to find things like this.

[Demetri] It's a one-off opportunity to explore

the dark secrets of the Indian Ocean.

But it will be the first time the sub has had to navigate

so close to a potentially hazardous rock face.

[Victor] It's kinda hard to get a sense

of angle when you're down there

because your field of view is only about 10 or 15 meters.

[Demetri] Victor decides to put at the sub's helm

the most experienced sub pilot on board

and the builder of the sub itself,

Patrick Lahey.

[Victor] You'll go down, and you'll try

and find the wall first.

We should have a plan and stick to that plan.

The priority is get a lovely video of that slope.

[Demetri] Chief scientist Alan Jamieson

will join Patrick to guide the search.

[Kelvin] All right, see you, guys.

Hatch secured.

Okay, LF, swimmer's clear, you're clear to dive.

Roger that. I got a green board.

[Alan] We're away.

[Demetri] Two and half hours after leaving the surface,

and over 22,000 feet down,

finally their target comes into view.

Whoa. There's the wall.

[Alan] We've got some rocks.

A lot of boulders.

We're gonna take it easy here now.

[Demetri] The cliff towers over 600 feet above them.

Patrick will need to be extremely careful.

A sudden rockfall could put the sub in serious danger.

And down here,

there's no other submersible in the world

that can come to the rescue.

Wow, it's steep. I have to give it

a little vertical up there, buddy.

Oh, there's a... Excuse me, look at that.

Big boulders to my right there.

[Alan] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we need to back off.

This is a massive overhang.

Back off. Watch yourself, watch yourself.

Pull up, pull up, pull up! [bleep]

[Demetri] Scientist Alan and sub builder Patrick

are diving into an active geological faultline

where no-one has been before.

[Alan] Watch yourself. Watch yourself.

[Patrick] I'm backing away, man.

[Demetri] They are seizing a unique opportunity

to investigate the origins

of deadly Indian Ocean tsunamis

triggered by massive underwater landslides.

Could this precarious wall be the next disaster

waiting to happen?

Those are big chunks of...

looks like volcanic rock, right?

Yeah.

[Heather] We see these black rocks,

and these are rocks

that were once molten, and they've cooled down

and they're black because

they've cooled down really quickly

so they've been erupted onto the sea floor.

[Patrick] Just creep up the wall here.

It's gonna bring us in closer.

Look how precarious this rock is.

This is a great big tower, this.

[Alan] You can see from that,

it's not gonna take much of a rumble for that to collapse.

[Demetri] A landslide here

and the sub could be buried under a cascade of rocks

and sediment.

- [thud] - [Patrick] Whoa.

What the hell was that?

[man] LF, could you send me a status update?

[static]

[man] LF, could you repeat your last?

I'm backing off.

Whoa.

Wow! Look at the colors of the rocks.

[Alan] Stunning.

[Heather] Something that I wasn't expecting

are these multi-colored areas

of what look to be bacterial mats.

Bright whites, oranges.

There's even some blues in there.

Really spectacular colors. These are bacteria

living off the fluid that is coming out of the sea floor.

[Demetri] It is an extraordinary form of life,

feeding on the seabed itself.

And it's the first time anyone has seen it

at such enormous depths in the Indian Ocean.

Yeah, certainly flat now.

[Demetri] The mission has given the expedition

a remarkable insight into

one of the most volatile geological hotspots

in the world.

[Heather] Actually getting eyes on the seabed

and looking at some of these mass movements

and the block failures, we can start to

piece together with a bit more certainty

the different processes going on

in the Java Trench.

Some of these are related to potential tsunamis

in the future or indeed in the past.

We've done our job, right? We found the wall.

[Patrick] Surface, LF. Present depth,

at the top of the wall.

[cheering]

Whoo! Excellent.

I'm so happy for them.

[Hob] Surface, LF. Requesting permission

- to leave bottom. - Roger that.

Releasing surfacing weight now. Here we go.

[Demetri] Despite a few scratches

to the sub's outer housing,

the dive has been a huge success.

- [man] Coming down. - [man] Coming down. Okay.

[Demetri] But as well as studying

the geology of the trench,

Chief Scientist Alan Jamieson is also eager to explore,

for the very first time, what lifeforms have adapted

to live in its crushing depths.

[Alan] The Indian Ocean's kind of renowned

for having never been properly

studied, and that's the same for the shallow water,

never mind the very, very deep water.

[Demetri] A set of underwater probes known as landers

packed with technology

will use baited cameras to film life on the seabed.

The target is in an area near the bottom

of the Java Trench.

But first, the probes must

pass through ever deeper layers

of the Indian Ocean, where remarkable creatures

find their home.

From the Sunlight Zone, where sunfish

the size of pick-up trucks bask on the surface...

...and dugong, distant relations of the elephant,

graze on seagrass...

...to the Twilight Zone,

where monster six-gill sharks,

unchanged from the time of the dinosaurs,

lurk during the day, surfacing to hunt by night.

And where leatherback turtles,

the deepest-diving reptiles

on the planet,

come hunting for jellyfish.

Their flexible shells and collapsible lungs

make them perfectly adapted to survive

the crushing pressures.

Deeper still,

into the Midnight Zone,

where vampire squid use their cape-like folds

lined with tiny spines

to protect themselves against attack

by deep-diving predatory fish.

And slender snipe eels

use microscopic hooked teeth on their beak-like jaws

to snare shrimp.

Finally, the scientific probes

reach the very deepest zone of the Indian Ocean,

the Hadal Zone.

Now their cameras are the very first in history

to film in this inhospitable landscape.

And they capture rare footage

of an elusive deep-ocean hunter.

[Alan] Nobody really knows anything about them.

Their common name is assfish.

- Not a great name. - Not a great name.

If you look, it's got this double nostril here.

It's got massive nostrils.

It doesn't care about the bait.

All it knows is, where it can smell bait

there's going to be an accumulation of amphipods,

so it turns up and just picks them off.

[Demetri] Once a crowd of the shrimp-like

scavengers arrive, it's dinnertime.

Then, from one of the darkest,

most remote parts of the planet,

comes the rarest of creatures.

A Dumbo octopus.

Remarkably, it's the deepest octopus

ever filmed by almost 6,000 feet.

Its tentacles are joined together

by a web of skin to form an umbrella-like body.

And the huge, ear-like fins

that give the Dumbo its name

help to make it an extremely agile swimmer.

It's waiting for the bait to lure its favorite meal.

An unsuspecting deep-sea crustacean

is moving across the seabed.

In such a pitch-black home,

the Dumbo's eyes are virtually sightless.

Instead, it uses sensors in its tentacles

to pinpoint its prey.

[Alan] Quite often, octopus do

they will sit on top of a crustacean

and then they'll bore a hole through it

at the back of its shell

and then will inject it with saliva.

And it dissolves the shrimp, for example,

from the inside and then sucks it out.

- That's disgusting. - Right.

[Demetri] The probes have brought back

remarkable images from the deep.

And now the scanning team have dramatic news

for the expedition of Victor's ultimate target.

This tiny sinkhole is the deepest point

in the Indian Ocean.

[Demetri] It will be the most challenging

of the deeps yet attempted.

[Victor] We are going to drop right into it

almost like trying to drop a marble

into a bucket 50 meters down.

My highest priority

is getting you safely back on board.

[Demetri] The scanning team have finished mapping

the previously uncharted reaches of the Java Trench.

It is a critical moment in the mission

because the trench might not hold

the deepest point in the Indian ocean after all.

The team now need to compare the data

with a rival candidate scanned on their way.

A fracture zone off the coast of Australia

called Diamantina.

[Cassie] This yellow dot right here

is the deepest point

within this big basin of Diamantina Fracture Zone.

At 7,019 meters.

[Demetri] If the Java Trench turns out to be shallower,

then the expedition is 1,000 miles off course.

[Victor] We continue to learn new things.

I think Cassie and her team understated what they've done,

but we have solved the mystery that has always been around,

which is what is the deepest point

in the Indian Ocean.

Until this week,

no-one could definitively answer that question.

In fact, there was a big debate

whether it was the Diamantina or the Java Trench.

Well, it is the Java Trench.

It's not just the Java Trench,

it's in a place no-one thought it was.

It's in the center of it, not the east or the west.

[Demetri] But to reach this deepest point

will be a massive navigational challenge.

In the middle of the Java Trench

is this tiny sinkhole that we determined

to be the deepest point in the Indian Ocean.

And Victor is finding that.

[dramatic music playing]

[Victor] We're gonna drop right into it.

Almost like trying to drop

a marble into a bucket 50 meters down.

This one you could actually miss.

[Demetri] If the team get their calculations wrong,

Victor will be navigating a dangerously rocky landscape

with the risk of a damaging collision.

[man] Coming up easy.

[Demetri] To help Victor find his way,

the team drop one of their robotic probes

directly above the deepest point.

It has an on board modem to communicate

with the ship and the sub.

Victor will then have to find the probe

to reach the deepest point.

Normally, two other probes are also launched

to other sites on the seabed

to help calculate Victor's exact position.

On this dive,

the team are gambling that Victor

can navigate alone.

We don't have a vast, open plane down there.

We thought we'd put the lander

directly over on top of the target,

and you directly on the target.

Without the landers to triangulate

we won't be able to guide him to the actual position.

So it is a little bit riskier.

If he sees the lander, then he's at the deepest point.

[Demetri] With the probe now signaling from the seabed,

the team need to launch Victor

as quickly as they can.

The tropical cyclone seen brewing on the horizon

is now gathering strength and threatening to end

the multi-million-dollar expedition

before Victor has had a chance

to complete his dive.

[Rob] So it's a large storm system,

it's about 300 miles across.

It's generating this huge vortex, the cyclone.

Running at about 65 knots, maybe 75 knots.

And waves of six to eight meters.

And we are just up in this area.

There's an element of chance in all of this,

because it depends on where the cyclone

is drawing its fuel from as to where it'll hit.

We can't dally too long here.

It could make life a little bit difficult for us.

[Rob] Here in the tropics,

we can usually find somewhere to hide.

But of course that will rob us of any chance to do a dive.

The nightmare scenario for me is the weather

picks up very quickly, very late,

and then we have trouble recovering it.

[Demetri] If Victor is going to become the first person

to touch down at the deepest point

in the Indian Ocean,

the team need to get him launched

as quickly as possible.

[Kelvin] Roger that.

[Patrick] Okay, Victor, ready for you.

[Kelvin] Okay, grab that, grab that.

[Victor] This is the LF, life support is on and good.

I have a green board. I am good to launch.

[Patrick] Roger that.

Swimmer is clear. You are clear to dive.

[Victor] Swimmer is clear. Enabling thrusters.

- [Tim] And he's gone. - [man] Whoo! Nice.

[Victor] All right, we are descending.

This seems a little slower than it did

in the Southern Ocean.

16 meters per minute.

That's pretty slow.

This could take a while to get down.

[Victor] Present depth, eight-four-niner meters.

[Patrick] That's awfully slow, isn't it?

[Tim] It's 0.7, so 0.7 meters a second

is 42 meters a minute.

He went 400 meters in...

15 minutes. That does seem slow.

[Victor] Seven-seven.

[Patrick] [bleep] Wow.

Roger. One-zero-seven-seven.

- [bleep] - [Victor] Roger.

He's going real [bleep] slow.

Something's not right. [bleep]

[Demetri] With a mission-critical cyclone

building over the horizon,

Victor's attempt to be the first person in history

to visit the deepest point of the Indian Ocean

is in serious danger of unraveling.

He's going real [bleep] slow.

Something's wrong.

[Demetri] The sub is dragged down

through the water by a set of steel weights

held in place by two electromagnets.

The weights need to be heavy enough

to override the specialist buoyant foam blocks

that will ultimately pull the sub back to the surface.

[Patrick] I can only assume that something's dropped off.

That's the only thing it can be.

I suspect that one of the magnets has failed.

Which was the one that had

the little bit of corrosion on it?

It was the aft one.

I cleaned that all up this morning.

[Patrick] So, you know, we are just burning daylight.

We are half-way there in two hours.

[bleep] this is going to take four hours.

[Demetri] Patrick, as mission control chief,

now has a difficult call to make.

To risk a lengthy dive, or pull the plug,

get the sub back on the surface,

and hope there's time for a second attempt

before the cyclone hits.

[Victor] I am still in descent,

could make bottom, could make bottom.

Roger that.

Uh, Victor, I'm recommending an abort.

I do not believe you can reach the bottom.

Understand, you suggest abort.

Pretty disappointed.

[Stuart] Control bridge.

[Patrick] Okay Stu be advised he has been given clearance

to surface, ETA is just a couple of minutes.

Yeah bridge copy.

[Rob] Roger that. Let's roll.

- [Victor] Hey. - [Tim] Hello.

[Victor] Hey how you doing?

[Tim] Good to see you back in one piece.

[Victor] Good to be back.

[Demetri] The pressure is on to get the sub fixed quick,

and make a second dive.

[Tim] Pissing out oil from that clamp,

it's all twisted.

Can I get some little cutters? Dites.

[Victor] It's a complex system.

There are many, many elements,

whether it's the ballast system.

One, two, three.

[Victor] Or whether it's the communication system.

[Patrick] Okay, are you guys ready?

[Frank] I don't know what the [bleep]

Is going on here.

There are so many things that have to work just right

for this ballet to come off without a hitch.

[Demetri] But in boiling temperatures

pushing 84 degrees Fahrenheit,

the sub engineering team are nearing breaking point.

[Frank] Okay. I'm going as fast as I [bleep] can.

[Victor] There is a lot of stress on people

to get everything right.

[Tim] Frank, turn it off.

Had enough, man.

Ready to go home.

[Patrick] Hang on just a second.

We've got a hose trapped in there.

[Victor] I think people are learning, you know,

kind of what they have to do

and how much attention to detail they have

to have to make it all work right.

[Demetri] While the engineering crew

work overnight to fix the sub,

the scanning team have found stunning new data

in the trench, revealing a second explanation

for the devastating Indian Ocean tsunamis.

- That's one there, right? - Yeah.

I think it's a faulted seamount.

[Demetri] A series of massive hills on the trench floor,

extinct volcanoes known as "seamounts",

that act like ticking time bombs.

We've identified a number of seamounts

that are in the process of being consumed

in the trench axis of the Java Trench.

[Demetri] The trench lies along a volatile seam

in the earth's crust

where two giant plates collide.

Monumental forces are grinding one plate down

under the other,

and the seamounts are in the way.

But that area there does look like

that's created by the seamount

being subducted under the plate.

You can see how that is pushing there

and energy is crushing the seamount itself.

The areas around the seamount,

it's subducting very, very slowly

and it's stopped because the seamount

has actually physically stopped

the subduction process.

[Victor] A massive underwater volcano

- became a doorstop. - [Alan] Yeah.

They can cause a sticking point

and then ultimately there may be major earthquake

or slip related to that sticking point

and the pressure that is built up over time

suddenly being released.

[Demetri] A violent earthquake

caused by one of these seamounts

could in turn trigger a devastating tsunami,

affecting the millions of people

who live along the ocean's coastline.

If Victor can reach the bottom of the trench,

he could gather further crucial data

to help predict earthquakes and tsunamis of the future.

The topography of this area of the java trench

has surprised us a bit, because we're seeing

what I would call sharp features,

things that seem to come out of nowhere,

with some pretty steep drops

or some pretty strong rises,

so it seems to be a pretty active area seismologically.

[Demetri] But after working overnight

to solve the weight release issue,

the engineering team have been hit

by another mission-critical fault.

[Kelvin] There was a little pump that wasn't running

and that's the, uh, for going

for when you come back to the surface

pumping that water out,

give you some buoyancy

and for when you leave,

it will helps you go down.

[Frank] Constantly trying to keep a running tab

of everything so that nothing gets missed.

Cause I'm very tired.

We're all very tired.

[Kelvin] Come up, just wait, just wait. Come up.

[Demetri] Can they fix the new problem

before the cyclone ends the expedition?

[Frank] We got a red light now we didn't have earlier.

We get this done we can [bleep]

get out of this [bleep] forsaken place!

[Demetri] The engineering team are under pressure

to turn the sub around for a second attempt

on the deepest point of the Indian Ocean.

[Kelvin] Yeah. It's fixed.

Yup, problem solved.

[Demetri] At last the sub gets the "all clear".

The biggest trick was trying to figure out what went wrong,

but we worked it out,

and we are throwing her back together.

Good timing.

[Kelvin] Roll her in.

[Frank] Brand spanking new.

Yeah.

[Demetri] The team release a first underwater probe

codenamed "Skaff" to drop to the deepest point

of a narrow sinkhole,

and act as Victor's target.

[Alan D.] Okay, it's good to go.

[Demetri] They also drop a second probe a mile away

outside the sinkhole to gather additional data.

[Patrick] Okay, Victor. Ready for you.

[Tim] Shall see you on the other side.

[Victor] See you on the other side, Tim.

Thanks, man.

[Patrick] All start, here we go.

We are getting the tow line off first.

[radio voice] Excellent detachment, gentlemen.

Okay. Here we go!

[Demetri] With the threat of a tropical cyclone

hanging over the expedition,

this could be Victor's best chance

to complete his mission,

and gather fresh evidence from the ocean's

deadly tsunami trigger zone.

So we've got a nice descent rate going.

These are places that since the dawn of time,

no one's been there

and I'm going to see for the first time.

[Demetri] It's now been nearly three hours

since Victor left the surface.

If we've dropped him in the right spot,

you know, he should be pretty close

to right over the target site.

All stations, be advised coming up

to the quarter hour comms check.

We do expect Victor is approaching the bottom.

[Victor] I can see the bottom on my display.

20 meters to go.

Seafloor is starting to come into view.

Coming very clearly into view now.

Brown and speckled. It looks like a desert floor.

Wow!

Surface, surface, LF.

At bottom. At bottom.

Roger LF.

Understand, on the bottom.

That was a lot of hard work.

[Demetri] Victor may be on the sea floor,

but to reach the deepest point of the Indian Ocean,

he must find "Skaff", the underwater probe

the team have dropped as his target.

[Victor] Okay, Skaffy, where are you?

[Demetri] Even at this extreme depth,

in the pitch dark and crushing pressures,

there is life at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Amid a network of animal tracks,

a sea pig, which can inflate its body

with water to float from the seafloor

like a balloon.

A purple sea cucumber, munching its way

through the sediment in search of nutrients.

And one of its swimming cousins,

drifting through the sub's lights.

Victor can communicate with the probe

to find out how far away it is,

but not its direction.

[Victor] Okay, when I went south,

I got a little closer,

west a little further.

[Demetri] Without the two other probes

to help triangulate his position,

Victor's task will be far from easy.

There's a current down here.

I'm being pushed about a meter.

Okay, come on, what is that all about?

Come on, LF.

It's like trying to find the Aegina

docking component of the Gemini mission.

I swear it feels just like that.

Okay. Nothing on sonar.

[bleep]

It's gone further away.

Surface, bearing please to Skaff.

[radio chatter]

[Patrick] He just transmitted.

He was saying something.

[radio chatter]

What the [bleep] is that sound?

[Demetri] If Victor doesn't locate the target probe,

he will fail to complete his record attempt

to reach the deepest point of the Indian Ocean.

Where are you SKAFF?

[Demetri] And after a near three-hour descent,

and over two hours already spent searching,

time is running out.

[Demetri] Victor Vescovo is over 23,000 feet

underwater in a small sinkhole,

searching for the deepest point

of the entire Indian Ocean.

To keep his global deep-ocean mission on track,

he must hunt for a target probe

dropped in advance of his dive.

But now he has lost communication

with the expedition ship above,

there's no one to guide him home.

[Victor] Surface, surface,

present depth 7345.

[radio noise]

[Patrick] Say again, say again.

'Cause we may be on this shelf here.

[Demetri] It seems the steep walls

of the sinkhole are blocking Victor's signal.

[Patrick] I'd like to relocate pressure drop

to establish comms, back over the Op area.

Okay, cap'n, we want to get the modem up

and repositioned right away.

[Stuart] Yeah. Bridge copy.

[Frank] Modem's in the water.

[Victor] Surface, LF,

present depth 733 niner meters.

[Rob] You can breathe out now.

[Patrick] Roger LF, we have you loud and clear.

[Victor] Should be dead ahead.

I see you buddy.

Oh, this is awesome.

Going to sit down right next to you Skaff,

how about that?

Touchdown.

Ha!

Bottom of the Indian Ocean,

bottom of the Java Trench,

first time in history, pretty cool.

Surface LF,

present depth,

7342 meters.

At Skaff.

Repeat, at Skaff.

[Patrick] Understand, you've found a spot,

deeper than before, congratulations!

[Demetri] The underwater probe is teeming with life.

Thousands of tiny crustaceans called Amphipods

are feasting on the bait.

These are the supreme scavengers of the seabed.

And arriving to join the feeding frenzy

is an overblown cousin, known as a "Supergiant".

Its body has evolved to be large enough

to discourage voracious predators.

Then an unidentified luminous jelly-like creature

comes tantalizingly close.

Casting an ominous shadow.

But the second probe,

positioned a mile from the deep sinkhole

and 2,000 feet higher up

is filming an even more mysterious

creature of the deep

one that has never been seen by human eyes before.

With a bulbous, gelatinous head,

and trailing a long strand with what looks like

a weight on the end,

this is an entirely unknown species

of a creature known as a "Sea Squirt".

Only further study and sightings could reveal

the secrets of its bizarre body.

[Victor] Request permission to ascend.

[Demetri] Victor has now completed the third dive

of his epic five-deeps mission.

Helping to unravel the mysteries of tsunamis

that have devastated the Indian Ocean,

and to achieve new insights into life

on the extreme edge of our planet.

[Stuart] We have a visual.

Welcome back sir, we have you loud and clear.

[Victor] Thank you.

[Tim] Welcome back.

[Victor] Seeing those creatures,

seeing the dumbo at that depth

and seeing this creature.

[Alan] I've never seen anything like that.

That's the weirdest thing I have ever filmed.

[Victor] We're going to show people

that there is a lot down here

that we know nothing about.