Original subtitles

Wade: Can a revolutionary new scientific

technique identify the loch ness monster?

There's a whole range of animals now

that we're finding out are not extinct.

Wade: How did a man survive for over two days,

trapped in a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean?

The longer he survived, the closer he was to death.

Wade: And what explains a succession of gruesome discoveries

washing up on the shores of british columbia?

These feet could be coming from almost anywhere.

Wade: The underwater realm

is another dimension.

It's a physically hostile place where dreams of promise

can sink into darkness.

I'm jeremy wade.

I'm searching the world to bring you

the most iconic and baffling underwater mysteries

known to science.

Shipwrecks can't just disappear...Or can they?

Wade: It's a dangerous, unexplored frontier that

swallows evidence.

We know more about the face of mars than we do

our deepest oceans.

Wade: Where unknown is normal and understanding is rare.

♪♪

♪♪

I've investigated monster myths all over the world,

but one, the loch ness monster

remains the ultimate unsolved underwater mystery.

What creature of the deep is behind the endless stream of

rumors and reports, the hysteria and the headlines.

Now, new sightings and state-of-the-art science

promise to finally unmask

the most famous monster of them all.

April 2019.

Local businessman, 36-year-old rory cameron is

on his way home from a friend's house.

He's driving alongside loch ness,

as he's done countless times before,

when he sees something extraordinary

moving in the water.

He grabs his phone and films a huge, mysterious object,

traveling at speed across the lake's surface.

Experts are baffled.

It's the 18th unexplained sighting

in just 12 months.

The legend of scotland's loch ness monster

has gripped the imagination of people all over the world.

I mean, we've all seen the picture of the --

the arm coming out of the water

like that that looks like the head of

the loch ness monster.

Wade: Since the first report nearly 1,500 years ago,

there have been more than 1,000 sightings.

Every few years,

it would seem, some new picture would come to light.

It would be almost clear enough to make the mystery

a reality.

Wade: Now, a team of scientists led by neil gemmell

think they might finally have what it takes

to unmask the beast,

a groundbreaking technology known as environmental dna.

Environmental dna is a revolutionary technology

this is a scientific approach to understanding

what's in loch ness.

It's extremely powerful.

Wade: As an animal moves through its environment,

it naturally sheds cells and excretes waste,

leaving a trail of its own dna.

Gemmell: Loch ness is filled with cells,

dna -- it's a giant cauldron of organic soup.

Wade: By sequencing the dna,

gemmell should be able to figure out what it belongs to.

The results could astonish scientists

and monster hunters alike.

Gemmell: We're looking for something unusual.

We're looking for things that

don't fit with their current expectations.

Wade: There are countless theories about what

the creature might be.

Gemmell: There's this notion of the water horse,

which is part of celtic ancient mythology.

And then there's another idea that

perhaps nessie is a time-traveling creature.

There's a wormhole in space and time somewhere in the loch.

Wade: These stories seem far-fetched,

but loch ness is 750 feet deep.

Could dna reveal that

it's concealing a creature new to science?

There's a whole range of animals now that we thought

were extinct that we're finding out actually are

not extinct and that they do exist.

Is it possible that something is out there?

You know, I would like to think that

it's probable that something is out there.

Wade: The loch ness monster hits the headlines in 1933

when a couple witness a strange,

legless creature drag itself across a road

adjacent to the loch.

After that, sightings come thick and fast,

adding to the monster mania.

Man #1: I have seen the monster.

Man #2: The head rose right out of the water.

Man #3: The creature appeared to be 20 feet long.

Wade: An image of the beast is taking shape.

But what is it?

Without dna evidence, it's hard to pin down.

Campbell: Most sightings describe a creature with

a large body and long neck,

which fits with what we know of dinosaurs,

aquatic dinosaurs.

Wade: Many people believe that the loch ness monster

is a reptile called a plesiosaur.

Plesiosaurs obviously went extinct a long time ago,

so we haven't got any contemporary

plesiosaur dna to compare it to,

but we can make a pretty good assumption about what that dna

might look like.

Plesiosaurs and many of the other dinosaurs were

closely related to the modern birds and crocodiles,

so it sits somewhere between those in the tree of life.

Wade: This will be the first time ever that environmental dna

has bean used in the search for the loch ness monster.

But there have been many attempts over the years

to track it down

using the cutting edge technology of the day.

The loch ness monster -- it really is one of

the best investigated monster stories out there.

Gemmell: People come to loch ness,

they have brought the latest science

and the latest technology to try to investigate.

Wade: In the 1970s,

underwater cameras are deployed throughout the lake,

but it's like searching for a needle in a haystack.

It's a difficult environment to work in and to survey.

Wade: The loch contains more water than all

the lakes of England and wales combined.

And what's more, below 30 feet,

there's no light at all.

There's what they call colloid particles in the water,

and these effectively act like a pair of sunglasses,

layers and layers of sunglasses,

if you like, that are blocking the light.

Goodman: Even if you have really high-quality cameras,

you're going to get backscatter.

You're going to have issues with actually

getting a good image.

Wade: But in the 1980s,

breakthroughs in sonar technology bring new hope,

and the biggest, most audacious search ever begins.

In 1987, project deepscan took 24 boats,

and they spread out across the surface of loch ness

and went from one end to the other.

Wade: Deepscan investigators hope that sonar

will produce answers where cameras have failed.

They send out sound, the sound bounces on an object,

and they can measure the time that it takes for that

sound to bounce back to figure out what's there.

Wade: As they pass urquhart castle on

the northwestern shore of the loch,

the sonar picks up three huge shapes

nearly 600 feet beneath the surface.

Gemmell: They found three soundings that they didn't quite explain,

bigger than a shark, but smaller than a whale

was roughly how they described it.

Wade: But when the team returns the next day to take

a closer look, they're gone.

The images are tantalizing, but frustratingly inconclusive.

Sonar in that time period was very limited,

and so the imagery that was produced is not nearly

as sophisticated as the equipment we have today.

Wade: The monster remains at large,

but with environmental dna, we can go when no science has

ever gone before.

It doesn't need sonic or visual evidence.

And the recent spate of sightings is exactly

what lead scientist neil gemmell has been waiting for,

but he doesn't have much time.

Dna degrades relatively quickly.

There are two sightings just off of urquhart castle.

So we sampled there within the first of arrival.

Wade: Across 22 square miles of loch ness,

gemmell takes 250 water samples.

He sends them for double blind testing

to independent labs across europe.

There are something like 3,000 unique dna sequences

that we have found in loch ness,

ascribed to known biological lifeforms.

Wade: The results also reveal something

completely unexpected.

When we've looked at our samples,

there's this large signal of one species.

It was like, what the heck is that?

Have we found dna

that will finally identify the loch ness monster?

Over 1,500 years

since it first surfaced, the loch ness monster

remains on enigma of the deep.

Now, a new scientific technique,

the analysis off environmental dna, could finally

expose the real identity of the infamous monster.

It's now the 21st century,

and we're still asking that same question --

is there a loch ness monster?

Wade: According to popular belief,

the beast is a fantastical creature unlike anything

ever seen before.

But is it possible that instead, loch ness

could be harboring a real flesh and blood giant?

In the right conditions,

some fish have the capacity to grow

exceptionally large.

The giant catfish might be present in loch ness.

We know that in europe

there are giant catfish called wels catfish.

There's some suggestion that they were released into

loch ness by the victorians in the 1800s.

Wade: The biggest wels catfish I've ever caught

was seven feet long,

but they wouldn't grow to this size in scotland's icy waters.

So what other giant creatures could be patrolling the loch?

Gemmell: So loch ness is connected to the north sea

via the moray firth,

which creates the possibility that some of the sightings

people have had have actually

been of marine creatures that have managed to make their way

into the loch.

Wade: Creatures like sturgeon.

I've brought in a sturgeon nine feet long,

and some species

can grow to twice this length.

They're not resident in the loch.

They might be coming in and out of it

as part of their migration.

Wade: But I'm not convinced that

a sturgeon inspired the ancient legend.

No species near the british isles grows large enough.

So what else could it be?

Wade: Can environmental dna put an end to centuries

of speculation?

Kind of blows your mind,

thinking that you can just leave a little bit of dna

somewhere, and a scientist could figure out what was going on.

Wade: By extracting environmental dna from water samples,

researchers can find out exactly what is hiding

beneath the surface.

We had five labs around the world

that were analyzing the dna sequence data.

Wade: Early results start eliminating the usual suspects

one by one.

So as for a plesiosaur in loch ness...

Not that we can detect.

Is there a giant catfish?

Not that we can detect.

Wade: But as the data racks up,

the sheer quantity of dna from just one creature

shocks researchers.

So what we find in our data

is actually quite a large number of hits

against eel dna.

Wade: Could the loch ness monster be a giant eel?

It's a surprising result that researchers did not expect.

But there's no doubt that

some intriguing loch ness monster sightings

are distinctly eel-shaped.

In 2008, lab technician gordon holmes detects

an unexplained entity moving beneath the hull of his boat.

Just one year earlier, he caused a sensation

when he released this footage of a long,

thin creature around 45 feet in length,

gliding across the water.

There are 800 species of eel

found worldwide, and some can grow huge,

but the european eel grows to little more than

four feet long.

So how could they possibly account for sightings of

a monster?

Scientists believe that the answer might lie

in their biology.

The life cycle of the european eel

has been shrouded in mystery for centuries,

but we now know that once they reach sexual maturity,

they leave their freshwater homes and embark on a 3,000-mile

migration to the sargasso sea.

Normally, eels would migrate to the sea to spawn,

and then they die.

Wade: But it's possible that in rare instances,

some eels may not develop sexually.

Instead of migrating, they stay put,

potentially living longer and growing

into monsters.

Could dna results have exposed

mutant eels hiding in plain sight?

There are mutations that result in very large body size.

I think it's possible there may be a very large eel

in loch ness.

Wade: Supersized eels are within the realms of possibility,

but for me, 45 feet long is too much of a stretch.

So for now, at least, the search for

the true identity of the loch ness monster continues.

I've spent a lot of time underwater,

but I'm totally reliant on my scuba gear to keep me alive.

Without it, I wouldn't last for more than a few minutes.

So how did one man survive on the ocean floor

for three days without any diving

equipment whatsoever?

New scientific analysis of his unbelievable underwater

ordeal challenges everything I thought I knew.

May 26, 2013.

20 miles off the coast of nigeria,

a tugboat called the jascon 4 is caught in a fierce storm.

A big wave hit the side of the tug,

which broke the tow wire and turned the tug upside down.

Wade: By the time the rescue team arrives at the scene,

the vessel and all 12 crewman

have disappeared.

Tuttle: The tugboat sank in about 100 feet of water,

so they needed a specialist dive crew to go down there

and do the recovery.

Wade: It takes hours to assemble the divers

and transport them to the site of the disaster,

by which time they believe there's little

to no hope of finding any survivors.

They were working at depth in low visibility

in this upturned vessel.

Wade: The divers recover the bodies of four crewmen

who went down with the ship.

They're continuing the grizzly task

of locating the other eight

when the impossible happens.

There's somebody down there!

Man: He's alive, he's alive.

Okay, keep him there, keep him there.

Imagine a hand grabbing you underwater when you expect

that nobody is alive in this shipwreck.

Incredibly, the ship's cook, 29-year-old harrison okene,

has survived underwater for nearly three days.

Man: All right, just keep him there

and keep him calm, okay?

It's a once-in-a-lifetime miracle.

It's -- it's beyond belief.

Tuttle: How'd this guy survive for

60 hours under underwater?

Can science unravel the mystery

of this unparalleled underwater survival story?

60 hours after the sinking of a tugboat

off the coast of nigeria,

a team of divers are searching for bodies inside the stricken

vessel on the sea floor when they come face to face

with a living, breathing survivor

there's somebody down there!

Man: He's alive. He's alive.

Wade: It's the ship's cook, 29-year-old harrison okene.

How okene is still alive

is one of the most intriguing

and mind-boggling ocean mysteries of modern times.

A man survived for multiple days

while trapped in a sunken ship.

How is this even possible?

Wade: In an effort to get

to the bottom of this unbelievable survival story,

scientists examine okene's three-day ordeal

piece by piece,

starting with the moment when his ship suddenly capsizes.

It's gotta be the most terrifying thing in the world.

All of a sudden, your world turns upside down,

and water starts rushing in.

You must think that you're dead.

Wade: Scrabbling around in the dark, upturned vessel,

okene makes an incredible discovery.

A pocket of trapped air.

It is incredibly improbable.

That an air pocket could form on a wreck like this

is against all odds.

That tugboat must have gone down near enough straight.

If it starts to tip either way, the air can seep out.

Wade: But as the doomed ship descends to the seabed,

the air bubble, okene's only hope of survival,

begins to shrink.

For every 33 feet you go down,

your pressure doubles, and air is condensed.

The pressure of the water is

making that air bubble smaller and smaller.

The water is rising, and you're

essentially counting the minutes until you're dead.

Wade: Luckily, the tug hits the bottom

before the bubble compresses too much.

If the ship had gone any deeper,

then the water pressure would have condensed that area more.

But the air bubble is now a mere four feet high.

Okene's chances of survival are slim to none.

For him to survive 60 hours on the sea floor in

pitch black, breathing just a small air pocket --

it really is a mystery how he was able to survive.

Wade: After trying to escape via a passageway,

he resigns himself to staying in his tiny dark bubble.

Why

okene chose to stay in the bubble that he was in

is beyond me.

Clarke: Either he's accepting he's going to die,

or he has complete and utter faith that he's going

to be rescued.

Wade: Perhaps he knows that attempting to

get out now will spell certain death.

Even if he had managed to navigate the pitch black

of the wreck,

find an opening, and escape up to the surface,

he still would not have survived, because the nitrogen

in his bloodstream will expand, and air bubbles will pop.

Wade: But staying in the air bubble is also fraught with danger,

and the biggest threat to okene right now

is his own breath.

Over the course of time,

he's obviously breathing in oxygen and exhaling

carbon dioxide, and the levels of

carbon dioxide in that bubble are rising.

Tuttle: Once carbon dioxide gets about four

or five percent, it starts to become toxic.

The longer he survived, the closer he was to death.

Wade: By the time rescuers arrive, okene

should have succumbed to deep sea carbon dioxide toxicity.

It's a little weird that he wasn't suffering any

symptoms of carbon dioxide toxicity after so much

time underwater.

Wade: Experts believe the icy temperatures may have been

his savior.

Lower body temperature would slow your respiration,

which may, you know, increase your longevity.

Wade: As well as slowing down okene's metabolism,

the frigid water surrounding the air bubble might have

played a second important role in his survival.

Gas is more soluble in cold water.

If the concentration of co2 is increasing in the airspace,

and we have cold water, that co2

can go into the water.

Perhaps that made the air breathable

for a longer amount of time.

Wade: There are many theories, but science still

can't fully explain how okene pulled through.

How did he survive the, you know, carbon dioxide,

the hypothermia, the, you know, the mental stress.

I mean, multiple reasons that guy should be dead,

and he's alive.

Wade: But okene is not home and dry yet.

After three days underwater,

his blood is super saturated with nitrogen.

The slightest mistake now will kill him.

29-year-old harrison okene has endured

an unbelievable 60 hours alone in a sunken ship.

His survival on the sea floor

seems to defy the rules of science.

But as all divers know,

the greatest challenge can be the very last stage --

the journey out of the darkness and back up to the light.

Man: Yeah, tighten those a bit more. Is that okay?

All right.

The nitrogen that's in the air actually also squeezes

from the pressure,

and it gets smaller, and those air bubbles

can enter into your blood system.

He has to undergo a complex process of depressurizing him.

Wade: The rescuers need to get okene safely

to their diving bell

before they him gradually bring him to the surface.

Man: Hello, my friend. Can you hear me?

Okay. Listen to me, all right?

Now you mustn't panic, eh?

We're gonna bring you home, okay?

♪♪

♪♪

[ speaking indistinctly ]

man: Okay, we're bringing you home.

Take your mask and steady, okay?

♪♪

all right, he's in the bell.

Good job, my friend. Well done.

You're a survivor!

This case right here shows us that there's

a lot still to learn about human physiology

under the ocean.

Wade: Incredibly, okene's story has a happy ending.

But what if he's not the only person

who survived for days underwater?

What if it's happened before,

and we just didn't know it?

Looking back at all the ships which have sunk over the years,

we've often thought that those people must have died

pretty much near instantaneously.

This, of course, gives us a whole new concept,

and it makes it very haunting when you start to think,

well, if this one person survived,

how many others might have?

♪♪

♪♪

in my travels around the globe,

I've seen all sorts of discarded garments washed up

on shorelines, from jackets and shirts,

to gloves and sandals.

But what would it be like to be walking along a lonely beach

and to come across an item of clothing with the body parts

still inside?

September 2018.

British columbia, canada.

A sneaker is found washed up on a beach.

Its owner's foot

is still in it.

I can't imagine walking along the beach looking for seashells

and other things and finding a human foot sitting there.

Wade: This is not an isolated incident.

The gruesome find is the 15th foot

to be discovered on beaches in this region

in 12 years.

When you hear of human feet lining a beach,

you think of a serial killer.

Rondeau: The police and a lot of people in the public

thought that somebody had been murdered, part of a mafia

situation where they had dumped the body somewhere.

Wade: Investigators face some difficult

and perplexing unanswered questions.

Nobody knew who these feet belonged to

or where they had come from.

Wade: Now, new advances in the specialist field of

marine forensics

are allowing us to shine some light on this dark mystery.

Experts carefully examine each bone looking for tool marks

and other signs of violence that would indicate foul play.

But there are none.

It's not some strange serial killer

who just likes to cut off feet

and throw 'em in the ocean and create this mystery.

Wade: Instead, the findings tell a very different tale.

They reveal how the dead are dismantled by underwater forces.

When a human body decomposes,

two of the parts of the body that release first

at the joints are the hands and the feet.

Wade: It's known as disarticulation.

Over time, the foot separates from the leg

at the ankle joint,

releasing the foot to become a castaway in the ocean.

But why are most of these feet wearing sneakers?

Modern trainers are made of foam plastics.

Some soles of running shoes, for example,

even have an air pocket in them.

They're floating and keeping these feet

on the surface -- that allows them

to then be moved by currents and winds into the beach.

Wade: Disarticulation, coupled with buoyant footwear,

might explain the presence of floating feet.

But the big question is, where are they coming from?

Are there any areas of, you know,

high suicide in british columbia?

Do they use that place -- is it somewhere along

the currents that would wash body parts to the shore?

Can revolutionary scientific techniques get us

any closer to unraveling this macabre mystery of the deep?

Human feet washing ashore along the coast of

british columbia

have terrified locals and baffled investigators

for a dozen years.

Where are they coming from?

And why are they ending up here?

Wade: 15 human feet have bean found

washed up on the british columbia shore.

In search of clues about who these feet belong to,

forensic experts attempt to extract

dna from the decomposing tissue.

And the footwear itself can provide vital information.

In some cases, they were actually

able to determine who the people were

based on the trainers.

I believe there were a few of them that were distinct.

Wade: Of the 15 feet found,

13 have now been traced back to people who have

gone missing from british columbia and washington state.

It turns out most of them were either accidental deaths

or, in some cases,

they were suspected suicides.

Police are still trying to match the final two

with a body.

It's a monumental task.

Some of these shoes have been lost at sea

for decades.

So these shoes are not all necessarily from victims

from the same year but spread over many years.

Wade: In one case,

the dna matches up with a man who has been missing

for a quarter of a century

tuttle: In colder waters,

there's greater preservation, but to have genetic material

lasting 25 years in itself is pretty phenomenal.

Wade: But one part of this mystery remains impenetrable.

Why do so many feet end up

on this one particular part of british columbia?

You would think that if it were a world epidemic,

you'd find them all over.

So what is it specifically about this part

of the world that attracts feet in running shoes?

Wade: Nobody knows for sure,

but experts agree that it must have

something to do with the ocean currents.

The thing that's interesting about vancouver island

in relation to the mainland

is you have a series of circulating currents,

sort of one on top of the other.

Wade: Trapped in these churning waters,

floating feet could circle around for days on end

before being spat out on the coast.

But this doesn't fully explain why some beaches get

more than their fair share of this grisly flotsam.

Figueroa: Although we have ocean currents that we can predict,

there's many things we can't predict in terms of

ocean circulation.

Wade: But what if ocean currents are just part of the answer?

British columbia is home to around five million people.

It's a grim fact, but the more densely populated a place is,

the more likely it is that bodies will end up

in the water.

And as the population rises,

I'm left in no doubt that the latest gruesome find

will not be the last.

I've reeled in some mighty monsters,

some of them big enough and toothy enough

to devour a person.

Despite this, I've always found the biblical story of

jonah being eaten by a whale hard to swallow.

But a recent bizarre real-life incident has made me wonder

for the first time,

whether an extraordinary truth could lie behind

that famous tale.

March 2019.

25 miles off port elizabeth, south africa,

photographer rainer schimpf is filming a school of sardines

being attacked by a feeding frenzy of predators

when out of nowhere, his world plunges into darkness.

All of a sudden,

this whale comes up behind and sort of

scoops him up into his mouth.

Basically half in and half outside a whale's mouth,

being -- looks like he's being eaten.

Wade: Strange stories of man-eating whales

have existed for centuries,

including the famous biblical tale of jonah,

who is said to have spent three whole days in a whale's stomach

before it let him go.

But there have been no confirmed cases of

anything like this actually happening in real life...

Until now.

Experts are eager to find out

what could have triggered this unprecedented behavior.

How can this possibly happen?

A very large sea creature seems to be

taking a man from the sea.

That's huge -- I mean, that's -- that's fiction.

Will rainer schimpf suffer

the same unimaginable fate

as jonah?

It's March 2019 off the coast of south africa.

Photographer rainer schimpf appears to be in danger

of becoming a modern-day jonah.

A case of divine retribution,

or has the whale bitten off more than it can chew?

Mckay: Humans typically aren't on the menu for whale,

so why -- why would this whale scoop up a snorkeler?

Wade: When scientists identify the species,

the mystery deepens even further.

It's a bryde's whale.

The bryde's whale is a very,

very large marine mammal with a very large mouth.

But bryde's are baleen whales,

which means that instead of teeth,

they use bristle-like filters to trap their food.

It's evolved to strain water and get

these little fish out, or the krill

or -- or, you know,

mackerel or herring or sardines.

They're not constructed to, you know,

eat large pieces of meat.

So purely biologically speaking,

the whale's not able to physically swallow the man.

If the whale isn't trying to eat schimpf,

what is its motive?

Was this a rogue whale behaving badly,

or was this a complete accident?

Wade: Perhaps there are clues to be found just beneath the surface.

Mckay: At the time that rainer was filming these sardines,

they were all schooled up into this,

uh, tight ball of fish.

Footage taken by rainer schimpf just before the incident

shows the sardines huddling together for safety.

You probably would not be able to see a human being

on another side of a ball of fish.

Wade: And the position of the whale's eyes

would make it difficult,

if not impossible, for it to spot

schimpf floating amongst its food.

Whales have their eyes on the side of their heads.

They usually have a little bit of a blind spot out front.

Wade: But recent research suggests that schimpf's whale

may not have been relying on its eyes at all.

Scientists believe they may have found evidence of baleen

whales using echo location to help them find food.

Mckay: The echo signature may have just

looked like one big ball of fish.

I think it would be difficult for

the whale to know the difference between

the two separate things.

Wade: It's feasible that the whale grabbed schimpf accidentally,

but there's one vital clue that has been overlooked --

the presence of sharks.

This opens up a whole new possible theory.

The possibility exists that this whale,

seeing the human in the water, seeing the sharks around,

went up and scooped him up, to protect him.

Wade: This might seem far-fetched,

but scientists have recently documented hundreds

of instances

of wales intervening to protect other creatures

from harm.

There's been a lot of cases where people seem to see

the empathy of whales,

where they'll be a shark nearby or something like that,

and the whale was sort of push

a snorkeler to the other side of their body,

in almost defense of animals to keep them in a safe area.

Wade: The sardine run notoriously lures in all sorts of sharks,

including the world's most feared --

the great white.

But even they are no match for a fully grown,

30-ton bryde's whale

if it was acting as his bodyguard,

rainer schimpf owes his whale a huge debt of gratitude.

But could there be something more menacing at play here?

Animals are not robots.

Their behavior is not always predictable.

And, you know, just like humans, they could potentially have

a -- a brain tumor or some other affliction that would cause

them to act in an unusual way.

Wade: Diseases such as rabies can hijack the brain,

making animals abnormally aggressive.

Perhaps this was the act of a creature

not in its right mind.

Whatever triggered the whale to grab schimpf,

one thing is for certain.

Locked within its vice-like grip,

the photographer is in grave danger.

They have incredible mass and very strong jaws,

so you have to be concerned about

broken bones or being crushed to death

when in the mouth of one of these beasts.

Wade: And that's not all he has to worry about.

Tuttle: Whales have been known to dive literally hundreds,

if not thousands of meters deep.

What's more, bryde's whales can hold

their breath for up to 20 minutes --

the average human, less than one minute.

You've got no reserve air except for what you've got

in your lungs, and he would not have lasted that long.

If the whale had decided to dive, for example,

even to 30 meters, that in itself could have killed him.

Wade: But before it dives into the depths,

the while releases schimpf, unharmed.

Schimpf had an incredibly lucky escape.

Whether the whale grabbed him by accident, to save him

from a shark, or in a fit of psychotic rage,

we'll never know.

Like so many mysteries of the deep, the secret

is now submerged beneath the surface

and swimming away 1,000 feet

under the waves.