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SYLVIA EARLE: When I was a kid, we thought

the ocean was too big to fail.

Now we know better.

Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX

MAX KENNEDY: National parks protect

America's natural treasures on the land.

The same must be done for the ocean.

It is a frontier in peril.

♪ ♪

On the 100th anniversary of our National Park Service,

a pioneering expedition travels from sea to shining sea

to help inspire one man...

BARACK OBAMA: A great honor to meet you.

MAX: ...to create blue parks across an unseen wilderness.

BRIAN SKERRY: If we're not careful it'll slip through our fingers.

SYLVIA: We need all of it for us to survive.

We have a chance that will never come again.

♪ ♪

MAX: Factory-scale taking of wild fish

is an example of what's at stake.

Schooling in the trillions,

menhaden filter the Atlantic and Gulf.

They are so crucial to the diet of bigger fish,

they're known as the most important fish in the sea.

Yet they are targeted by the menhaden reduction industry,

not to be eaten by humans,

but rendered into fertilizer and chicken feed.

DONNIE SMITH: Just like the Bible says.

It says in greedin' times you will destroy your own Earth.

And that's what's happening.

It's in front your eyes.

All you got to do is open your eyes and see it.

DAVE PALMER: It's heartbreaking.

Heartbreaking.

This is in our blood.

All the fishing, shrimping, oystering, we do it all.

It's just coming to an end like that.

MAX: The local small boat fishermen have a powerful ally.

She's spent thousands of hours underwater.

Scientist, explorer, and conservationist,

Dr. Sylvia Earle.

SYLVIA: Change is happening fast.

We're losing coral reefs, we're losing fish in the ocean,

and whole ecosystems are coming apart, unraveling.

The chemistry of the planet is being affected

by what we're putting into the ocean,

what we are taking out of the ocean.

It's a different world.

DAVE PALMER: Pogie boats, they go out there,

and take in the whole school.

SYLVIA: That's right.

DAVE: They don't always catch pogie.

But there should be limits on all that.

SYLVIA: There should be, and there should be some places,

it seems to me, that we should just leave alone.

Like national parks.

You don't cut the trees,

you don't shoot the squirrels, you don't...

DAVE: They don't have that now?

MAX: No, we don't.

Offshore America is larger than the 50 states,

but nearly all of it is open to the taking of ocean wildlife.

SYLVIA: Now we know what we could not know when I was a kid,

that the ocean governs climate,

absorbs much of the heat, regulates temperature.

97% of Earth's water is out there in the ocean.

And we have a chance that will never come again.

A luxury for the sharks that are taken...

MAX: Why do sharks bite people so much?

SYLVIA: They don't!

(laughter)

MAX: I'm Max Kennedy.

My love of the sea comes through my family.

I'm thrilled to be joining Sylvia on a voyage

to forge an undersea version of America's best idea--

the national parks.

More than a century ago, we killed every great auk,

every passenger pigeon, every eastern elk,

and nearly the last buffalo.

The turning point was photography,

and images that galvanized a nation.

Then in 1871,

28-year-old Civil War veteran William Henry Jackson

became official photographer of the Hayden Wyoming expedition

and made history.

Jackson's stunning images

inspired President Ulysses S. Grant

to create the world's first national park, Yellowstone.

Protecting our natural systems

is an increasing presidential priority.

RONALD REAGAN: Preservation of our environment

is not a liberal or conservative challenge.

It's common sense.

MAX: In 1983, President Ronald Reagan laid claim

to a blue America 200 miles off our shores,

as little explored as the West in Jackson's day

and as full of natural wonders.

One such vital resource is Cashes Ledge,

an undersea mountain range brimming with life.

A magnet for tuna, sharks, minke whales,

endangered right whales, and humpbacks like these.

If protected, Cashes Ledge would become

New England's first national monument

and a refuge for life vanishing elsewhere.

Opposing the refuge-- an industrial fishing industry

that has emptied the Gulf of Maine.

ALLISON LORENC: About two years ago, there was a stock assessment

that showed that Gulf of Maine cod populations

were about 3% to 4%

their target biomass.

MAX: I'm sorry?

ALLISON: Yeah, their-- their populations have plummeted.

MAX: 96% below where they should be?

FIONA BELTRAM: There's a sustainable point

at which you can take a certain amount of fish.

If you overshoot that limit,

then slowly you're just going to watch the population decline,

because they can't produce enough individuals

to replace the ones that we've taken.

MAX: Our goal-- support the scientific case for protection

with photography.

And no one does that better than Brian Skerry,

one of the world's best underwater photographers.

BRIAN: I grew up in this small town,

a working class sort of blue collar town.

The notion of being a National Geographic photographer,

or being an ocean explorer

were probably as far away from anyone's radar

as you could imagine.

♪ ♪

Pleasure to meet you finally.

MAX: So great to see you!

I've seen a bunch of your stuff.

I'm so excited.

BRIAN: When I began diving in New England,

I can remember walking off beaches and seeing big shoals of fish.

And I don't see those things anymore.

MAX: Cashes Ledge harbors an unexpected treasure--

an underwater forest 80 miles off the coast of Maine.

BRIAN: There's nothing like this.

I mean, you come down,

and you see this-- this undulating bottom of kelp.

And in the distance you see schools of pollock,

and you see cod-- and some of the cod are red in color,

because they're blending in with this red kelp.

You get this sense that this can't be New England.

This must be some tropical paradise

that I need to journey days on an aircraft to get to.

But it's not. It's right here.

♪ ♪

When I am in a place like that,

I'm trying to make pictures that they can see that it is special.

I want them to connect with the codfish.

♪ ♪

SYLVIA: It was an experience of a lifetime

to dive in and to see for myself

what some scientists have been raving about for years.

There's a fish looking right at me!

(laughs)

I felt like a dancer, these golden scarves surrounding me.

♪ ♪

This place rocks.

This place is special.

It's a source of renewal,

a source of recovery.

♪ ♪

-MAN: Neutral. -MAN: Neutral.

MAX: One of the most beautiful dives I have ever had in my life.

BRIAN: Yeah. Hypnotic.

You know, I mean, you're sort of just in this trance

in this cathedral setting.

MAX: It's like walking through a temple.

JON WITMAN: I think Cashes Ledge is kind of a Noah's Ark

for the offshore Gulf of Maine.

I mean, think of it,

it's got practically one of every species,

and one of every type of offshore habitat,

all in a really concentrated area.

MAX: Yeah, well, let's hope it has two of each.

(laughter)

♪ ♪

SYLVIA: There's an opportunity here to look at Cashes Ledge...

as the Yellowstone of the North Atlantic Ocean.

♪ ♪

BRIAN: This is like an oasis.

It's what remains of what used to be everywhere.

If we're not careful, it'll slip through our fingers.

It'll go forever.

And it can happen without anyone knowing it.

That's why we need to show them,

because once they see it, they care.

♪ ♪

MAX: We head 200 miles southeast of Cashes Ledge

to another fragile oasis--

the deep canyons and seamounts along the continental shelf.

Most of life on Earth is in the deep ocean.

Too deep for divers, but not for an unmanned NOAA rover.

You would think the very depths would safeguard the seamounts.

But there's a new threat, deep sea mining,

with machines that can chew up ocean habitats

before we even know what we've lost.

Life that deserves protection.

At my mother's home, we join Brian and his new apprentice,

my nephew Finn.

FINN: Because you're kind of like a modern-day Jackson.

BRIAN: Well, I don't know about that.

We have a almost more difficult task than Jackson had,

because we're starting from scratch.

We have to show that these places, A) exist,

that they're vital to the health of the planet.

So we got a lot of work to do.

FINN: We have to plan carefully.

BRIAN: We have to plan very carefully.

The last thing we need is something to go wrong

on this project.

MAX: You remember my mom?

SYLVIA: I do, really. What a pleasure!

ETHEL: No, it's so nice for me.

Thank you!

SYLVIA: I'm still a little bit salty.

We were diving.

(laughs)

It's an extension of Acadia National Park.

It comes close enough to the surface

that sunlight strikes this mound out in the ocean,

and there's a forest of kelp.

ETHEL: Who would dare go anywhere near the water with you?

(laughing)

SYLVIA: All of your-- all of your family!

We need to show people, look, there's still reason for hope.

We're the agent of change,

and so we can be the agent of positive change.

That's the key,

to get that news and do something about it.

MAX: Sylvia recruits an indispensable crew--

the inheritors of the Earth.

SYLVIA: Enlisting teenagers to be ambassadors for the ocean,

to go explore the ocean and be witnesses

and tell their parents, tell their teachers,

tell their mayors, their senators, their presidents.

Get them out there.

No child left dry.

MAX: Rounding out the team are two activists

from Washington's Benning Terrace

public housing community, Rob Edwards and Ashley Dawkins.

ROB EDWARDS: So excited.

I never ever experienced the ocean.

MAX: Our expedition to create a blue necklace of protected treasures

reaches the troubled waters of the Caribbean.

Amid an over-fished and warming sea lies a lonely refuge.

The world's first blue national monument...

created by my uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

JOHN F. KENNEDY: And it is an interesting biological fact

that all of us have in our veins

the exact same percentage of salt in our blood

that exists in the ocean.

We are tied to the ocean, and when we go back to the sea,

we are going back from whence we came.

JOEL TUTEIN: I was 11.

There was a dedication to the new park,

so my father brought me out,

along with a lot of government officials.

Kennedy was one of them.

It was a beautiful day.

As a Crucian, I am very proud to be the superintendent

for this park that was protected and designated some 64 years ago

by the president of the United States.

This monument was expanded in 2001 by President Clinton.

It became the first marine protected area,

which means no fishing at all, no take in the monument.

MAX: But some of the fish swim out of the protected area,

and when they do, they can be caught.

FISHERMAN: These are nice frying fish, local parrotfish.

SYLVIA: It was really exciting

to be down in the Virgin Islands with them.

Rob and Ashley had never seen the ocean.

So for me to be a witness of their first view

was a way for me to see the ocean

as if I were seeing it for the first time.

♪ ♪

MAN: Aw, wait a minute. (laughs)

ROB: What you doing?

(laughing)

SYLVIA: This is what real divers do.

Just a bit of saliva, otherwise known as spit,

and you rub it into your mask.

Then it is less likely to fog.

ASHLEY DAWKINS: Nah, I'm not going to spit in it.

ROB: I was very afraid getting in the ocean for the first time,

but I had to test my fears.

♪ ♪

ASHLEY: I jumped, 'cause I thought there was

going to be, like, the bottom.

But there wasn't.

I'm like wait, am I drowning, am I drowning?

♪ ♪

MAX: I've never seen someone learn how to snorkel

that quickly...

who really is not a swimmer at all.

ASHLEY: Sylvia is a real life mermaid.

I feel like she would live there if she could.

What does she say, like, no child should be left... dry?

That's what she says, yeah!

MAGGIE NIXON: What was, like, the most memorable part?

ASHLEY: Just seeing it, like, for myself

and not through, like, a TV.

I never thought... no, no, I don't know, just no.

MAGGIE: Why not?

ASHLEY: Umm...

Because of, like, where I come from.

It was a good feeling just being out in the open water.

I felt, like, free kind of.

MAX: But something was missing-- grouper.

By the 1980s,

we had eaten almost all of St. Croix's grouper.

FISHERMAN: Grouper, we really don't catch grouper.

Grouper is more like-- I think, what do you call it?

Endangered species?

You barely can see those.

My father use to catch, two, three

bring them home, you know.

Big size.

But now, it's like. You don't see them most.

MAX: So fishermen turned to parrotfish.

The beautiful keepers of the reef.

FISHERMAN: These are nice frying fish.

That's why we call them local parrotfish.

All the restaurants in St. Croix buy those.

Chicken shop buy them too.

He takes 100 pounds every week.

I really don't know much.

I just catch them

and make a little dollar to survive, you know?

MAX: We are just beginning to understand

that loss of grouper and parrotfish

has a domino effect and kills the reef.

It's happening so fast,

and it doesn't take an old-timer to remember the good old days.

BOBBY: In just my short lifetime of 19 years,

I've been able to see immense change

in at least the one habitat that I have been able to dive on

since I was four with my dad.

The way I remember it is this absolutely magical place.

These immaculate reefs.

Such vibrant color no matter where you went.

A treasure trove of fish.

An incredible ecosystem.

But now going back the last three years,

it looks like a pile of rubble

after a building was demolished in New York City.

It's all gray and white and crumbled.

And the fish are gone.

And that's only in-- that's in 12 years, yeah.

♪ ♪

MAX: The waters around Buck Island are an oasis

in a fast expanding wasteland,

fueled by climate change and overfishing.

SYLVIA: I would love to have seen what you saw here as a boy.

JOEL: The fish population were very diverse,

very large, very colorful.

But, you know, even my benchmark was nothing

in comparison to my father's benchmark.

He went, "Ah! You should have seen it when I was a boy!"

You know, these are small fish

compared to when he was growing up.

SYLVIA: The corals need the fish;

the fish need the corals.

You take the fish away, the corals are stressed.

MAX: Expanding the refuge to embrace the devastated reefs

outside of the monument

will give the natural systems a chance to recover.

SYLVIA: People say I came from a different planet--

I did. The planet was so different when I arrived.

90% of the big fish are already gone.

But the great news is we can turn the corner.

We can restore it.

MAX: Brian's photography is such a powerful tool,

and now he is unleashing the children.

BRIAN: Trying to tell a story with pictures is your message--

what you're trying to communicate, your vision.

I proposed a story on something called the Global Fish Crisis.

It's a thresher shark that was dead in a gill net.

And as I framed it up in my camera's viewfinder,

it sort of struck me as a crucifixion,

and I thought it might give some empathy.

There's a difference between just making a pretty picture

and being a photojournalist.

As an underwater photographer, we don't have

the luxury of using telephoto lenses

and wait in some blind for an elusive animal to wander by,

you know, a week down the road.

It's really a testament to the animals

that allow us into their world.

They inevitably do.

You know, if you're patient, you don't chase them,

they will come to you.

♪ ♪

♪ Yeah, I run right back from Carolina ♪

♪ And I run right back from New Orleans ♪

♪ 'Cause I can't forget the times I held you ♪

♪ And all those songs you sang to me ♪

♪ Yeah, I run right back from Carolina ♪

♪ And I run right back from New Orleans ♪

BRIAN: We live in a world today where communication

and sharing of images is so much easier than it ever was.

Get those images out there

and tell the story that you want to tell.

By doing that we can collectively reach

a much broader audience than we would

if I was just doing a magazine story.

Just get out and do it.

♪ ♪

♪ Run right back from Carolina ♪

♪ And I run right back to Tennessee ♪

♪ 'Cause I can't forget the times I held you ♪

♪ And all those songs you sang with me ♪

BRIAN: I started my turtle photography here

about three nights ago,

so I'm doing these very long exposures under the moonlight,

and it ends up looking almost like daytime.

I mean, it's still kind of spooky and primal-looking,

and you've got this dinosaur-like creature.

♪ ♪

(laughter)

WOMAN: No attacking turtles!

They get to be about 900 pounds whenever they're adults.

ASHLEY: 900 pounds?

All of them don't survive.

To me, it just like brought me back

to, like, where I come from.

Because my neighborhood is that way.

Like, you find, not comfort, but you become okay

that not everyone will make it.

It just hit home for me.

Sylvia helped me see a bigger picture.

Unless we keep the ocean from dying, none of us will make it.

♪ ♪

MAX: The Gulf of Mexico faces the same threat

as the Caribbean-- overfishing and climate change.

SYLVIA: The Gulf of Mexico is resilient.

But it's like World War II and Europe.

If you didn't know there had been a war,

you might not even know that there had been one,

unless you'd been there before

unless you lived through it.

MAX: And Dave Palmer has lived through it.

SYLVIA: What are the places that you would choose for protection?

And they nail it. They know-- real fishermen

and whose livelihoods, whose life really depends

on respect for the ocean.

They know what it takes to make fish.

Breeding areas, feeding areas, not taking too much.

DAVID: That's a buster.

-SYLVIA: Dave. -DAVID: Hey!

-SYLVIA: How are you? -DAVID: How are you doing?

-SYLVIA: Good to see you. -DAVID: Yeah, been a long time.

SYLVIA: Like you, I spent my early years on the Gulf.

So important to the whole country,

you know, we just take it for granted.

Treating it like an endless source.

DAVID: You got everybody fishing wherever they want.

They don't really have no sanctuary where it's not fished.

It's not gonna last.

It's going to eventually run out sooner or later.

My hope is they put these spots all around the coast

where you can't fish, period.

Put a triangle here, put a circle over here,

put a rectangle over there.

SYLVIA: You want to save the nursery areas...

you want to save the feeding areas, breeding areas.

If you want to have tuna, the last thing you want to do

-is kill them while they're spawning. -DAVE: Yeah.

That's the only thing that is going to help.

Common sense.

SYLVIA: This is where the bluefin tuna spawn,

that drive this amazingly intact system.

MAX: Bluefin and other tuna spawn in the Gulf of Mexico

in special places, like Ewing Bank.

Sylvia dreams of seeing protected areas large enough to restore the Gulf.

Hope spots, she calls them.

SYLVIA: Look at this.

It's an ocean full of whale sharks.

I can't even count the number of fins.

As soon as I think I have number, six more pop up.

MAX: A whale shark's spot pattern is unique,

like our fingerprints.

Photographs will go straight into an international database.

ROB: These fish is like 20 times big as me.

But when I seen that they was not worried about me,

my fears went out the window.

ERIC HOFFMAYER: So we just pulled a plankton net to see

what the whale sharks were feeding on.

And like we suspected, it's full of eggs.

MAX: Tunny, a species of tuna, spawn in the depths below.

The eggs are naturally buoyant and float to the surface.

It's a crucial, age-old feeding site

for the largest fish in the sea.

SYLVIA: Ewing Bank is so special

because you have combination of breeding and feeding.

You got the breeding of the tunny,

but you get the feeding of the whale sharks.

ERIC: Six years ago, we were out at this exact spot,

and we had our largest documented encounter

of whale sharks in US waters with over 100 animals.

We've put out some satellite tags to look at the connectivity

from here and other places in the Caribbean

and elsewhere in the world.

MAX: Of the world's 14 known congregation sites,

Ewing Bank is the only one in American waters--

an obvious candidate for protection.

BRYCEN BALL: Words is hard to explain,

once you get in the water, get right next to 'em.

It's like you can almost feel their heartbeat.

♪ ♪

It's a very, very sacred place.

These fish are telling us they need help.

MAX: So does life in another sacred realm--

the waters around Ni'ihau,

the westernmost inhabited Hawaiian island.

(singing in Hawaiian)

SYLVIA: The people who first came to Hawaii,

their descendants cared deeply about, not just the land,

but also the ocean.

They are essentially people of the ocean.

KAI'MI: My family hails from the island of Ni'ihau.

The Ni'ihau people believe

that once somebody in our lineage passes,

their soul take on the form of a shark

and plays as a guardian for our people.

And there is a lot of sharks that swim around Ni'ihau,

and they protect the island from outsiders, from harm.

BRIAN: First we frame, look,

and then we can make adjustments as we go.

-BOBBY: Fantastic! -BRIAN: All right!

SYLVIA: Here in Hawaiian waters,

the oldest living animals have been discovered.

Corals that are more than 5,000 years old.

BRIAN: Two, one, go.

SYLVIA: So we're diving into history

when we dive into the ocean here.

BRIAN: We're in a place called Hale O'Hono,

which means house of the turtle.

There are a number of places in the ocean

where animals go to be cleaned.

They get parasites and algae and things on their body,

and other animals eat that off of them.

But it's this symbiotic relationship.

♪ ♪

FINN: I saw a massive moray eel down there.

BOBBY: Yeah. We went to this other little cave that we found,

and we both poked our heads in,

and then out comes this gigantic moray eel flaring its teeth.

♪ ♪

WOMAN: There's a seal! There's a seal!

(man singing in Hawaiian)

SYLVIA: Monk seals in the Hawaiian Islands,

they're right on the edge.

(man singing)

I got to see one in her lair.

She and her little whiskered face.

Just lounging around holding her breath.

♪ ♪

You protect the monk seals, the turtles, the coral reefs.

It's all the little things.

By saving them, you save big chunks of the ocean,

and you save humankind as well.

♪ ♪

MAX: Ni'ihau is the gateway to Eden--

a protected area called Papahanaumokuakea.

Created as a national monument by President George W. Bush,

it was then the world's largest protected habitat.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I want to thank Sylvia Earle.

She sat me down and gave me a pretty good lecture about life.

(laughter)

OWEN PYLE: In 2006 when Papahanaumokuakea

was first established, it was the biggest,

and now it's number ten,

so that kind of really inspired other countries

to up their game, so maybe we can do the same thing again.

MAX: That's the goal-- expanding the monument

to the 200-mile limit of American waters,

the biggest sanctuary on land or sea.

WOMAN: I am in strong support

of increasing the size of the monument.

There's nothing else like this in the world.

We need to protect it.

MAN: Taking steps that would be a model

for other places that we don't control.

WILLIAM AILA, JR.: It's this bold decision

that we're counting on President Obama to make.

MAN: And providing the best possible seafood for all of us.

And I can tell you right now...

MAX: Opposing it-- the longline fishing industry.

MAN: ...if we do continue to restrict our...

MAN: I am strongly opposed

to the proposed expansion of the monument.

There is no scientific evidence

to support any additional conservation benefits

to be gained by expanding the no-fishing zone

beyond its current limit.

RICHARD PYLE: The reason for the protection

is protecting it from future threats.

Because human population is growing,

human exploitation of the environment is growing,

and there will be increasing pressure

in the years and the decades and even the centuries to come

to expand out into exploiting areas

that haven't previously been exploited.

And the problem is that so much of the bottom of the sea

is out of sight of most people.

They don't realize how much biodiversity is

and how important that biodiversity is not just to us

but the whole future of humanity.

And a lot of those organisms on the bottom of the sea

haven't even been discovered yet.

MAX: The ocean is so little known

that scientists discover thousands of new species every year.

Richard and his fellow explorers use helium-mixed gas

to venture into the cold twilight world

between 200 and 500 feet deep,

finding an average of 12 to 15 new species

per hour of exploration.

MAN (high-pitched voice): This is submarine territory!

MAN 2 (high-pitched voice): It's ice water!

IT'S ICE WATER DOWN HERE!

♪ ♪

SYLVIA: I've been privileged to be with kids,

to see the world through their eyes.

ROB: I'm going deep down into the waters.

Yeah, I'm nervous. Don't get me wrong, I am nervous.

I'm going to be with Sylvia, so I know I'm good.

Bottom of the ocean.

See y'all later.

♪ ♪

(radio chatter)

JOHN SMITH: Pisces V, KOK, do you copy?

TERRY KERBY: Roger, hatch is shut,

ready to dive, dive, dive, over.

MAN: Roger, hatch it shut, ready to dive, dive, dive.

MAX: Sylvia last dived here nearly four decades ago,

using a special diving suit called JIM.

MAN: There is a new tool in the sea.

It moves with the ponderous rhythms of a mechanical monster.

Her question-- can scientists use the JIM suit

for dives beyond 1,000 feet?

If successful, she will be the first woman

to walk the sea floor beyond 1,000 feet.

SYLVIA (over radio): I see it. Oh, it's the bottom!

MAX: Sylvia is looking for signs of change.

ROB: When you're up near the surface,

it's kind of light blue.

But as you go down, you see the pretty shades of blue,

and the blue gets darker and darker.

Then it gets pitch black.

TERRY: It's really black.

There is no ambient light.

♪ ♪

FINN: It's like a different world.

SYLVIA: Actually, our world is a different world.

This is normal.

♪ ♪

MAX: New life comes to light-- an unknown coral.

RICHARD: Chris doesn't even know what species this thing is.

TERRY: This is the only place I've really seen it this color.

I've seen some in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

RICHARD: Just scattered everywhere.

SYLVIA: It's like a magic carpet.

Oh, my goodness. Beautiful.

Except it's better than any old carpet, it's alive.

TERRY: It's a live flying carpet.

FINN: Sylvia never stopped looking out the window.

She was just excited to see

things that she hadn't seen in so long.

♪ ♪

SYLVIA: Swimming right over the ray.

FINN: The ray just ate something.

He just trapped one of those little fish under his...

TERRY: That's unbelievable, he did!

He got one of those Polymixia.

MAN ON RADIO: Pisces V, Pisces IV, do you copy?

TERRY: We just watched these two rays eat Polymixia.

SYLVIA: Here comes the ray!

MAN ON RADIO: Okay, that's the first observation I've heard

of anybody seeing that. That's really interesting.

SYLVIA: It took a kid with fresh eyes to notice something

that has been happening all along,

because after Finn pointed it out,

we looked and we saw it happening all around us.

TERRY: That little eel just swam under.

Oh! Did you see that?

FINN: Yeah, I got it on film.

TERRY: Oh ho ho!

MAX: For Sylvia, one question looms above all--

what is the state of this special place?

SYLVIA: I had witnessed the forests of bamboo coral in 1979.

The good news for me was they're still there.

Since I began exploring the oceans in the 1950s,

about the half the coral reefs are gone.

But the deep coral reefs still provide reasons for hope.

MAX: On her first dive here,

Sylvia saw corals 1,200 feet deep

thriving in utter darkness.

This coral emits living light when touched-- bioluminescence,

a marvel of nature never filmed without lights.

To see it as nature intended

takes a revolutionary low-light camera...

shooting at 4 million ISO.

TERRY: Wow, look at that.

MAX: The first color video of coral bioluminescence.

TERRY: Wow, look at that.

TERRY (on radio): That's a beauty.

♪ ♪

We'd like to report success with the low-light camera.

We've just, uh...

♪ ♪

That looks like Avatar.

(laughter)

SYLVIA: Not everyone has seen the Grand Canyon,

but the Grand Canyon and other beautiful places

are valued as treasures by the people of the country.

As people come to understand the cliffs, the canyons,

the wildlife that are in the deep sea,

that will be valued, too.

RICHARD: Gosh, this coral is so slimy.

SYLVIA: That's the critter itself.

MAX: Sylvia's mysterious specimen.

SYLVIA: We don't know how old these are.

We don't know what species this is, or...

Who are you? Where did you come from?

Who's your mom? Who's your dad?

I apologize for bringing you out of the ocean.

RICHARD: Yeah.

SYLVIA: We are all sea creatures.

Just like the creatures who live in the sea,

all life, including humankind, needs the ocean.

The ocean now needs us.

There is a blue country out there,

and nowhere is that more obvious than in the Hawaiian Islands.

BONNIE: I think the hope is that President Obama

will expand the monument,

and with that I think we are making a huge contribution

to the globe.

RICHARD: I implore you all,

please understand the real science.

Don't just wave your arms.

Understand what's really going on.

And I-- I assure you if you look at it rationally and objectively,

you will agree the science supports the expansion.

-Mahalo. -(applause)

MAX: For a lifetime, Sylvia has dreamed and fought

to see protection of the ocean become a reality.

And now, an epic announcement.

(applause)

OBAMA: We've designated national monuments

from Maine to Ohio to California.

And just last week,

I created the world's largest marine preserve.

Quadrupling the size of our monument,

this is an area twice the size of Texas

that's gonna be protected and allows us to save and study

the fragile ecosystem threatened by climate change.

(laughing)

Tomorrow I'm going to travel to the Midway Atoll

to see it for myself.

MAX: Before it was a national wildlife refuge,

Midway Atoll was a US naval base,

and the site of one of the most decisive battles in American history.

SYLVIA: Where we're standing right now, Midway,

this was considered a turning point in World War II.

♪ ♪

They're basically kids flying the airplanes.

Kids fighting the war, putting their lives on the line.

♪ ♪

RICHARD: We're in a different kind of war today.

It's not one country against another.

It's humanity against the rest of biodiversity.

SYLVIA: The biggest problems we're facing right now

has to do with the changing climate.

(thunder)

We have a chance that will never come again

to stabilize things,

protecting the natural systems that are still in good shape

and restoring what we can.

-OWEN: We are the natural world. -SYLVIA: Yeah, we are, thank you.

OWEN: We've socialized ourselves to think we're not even animals, but we are.

Four billion years of development

is what allows us to survive,

and if we think we can change that in 100 years,

we are sorely mistaken.

RICHARD: So I quote you at the end of the presentations that I give.

What we do in the next 10 years will impact what happens

in the next 10,000 years.

We are at a pivotal moment in history.

Now is the time we must act.

OBAMA: Doctor, how are you?

I am in awe of anybody

who's done so much for ocean conservation.

SYLVIA: It's a good start.

OBAMA: Oh, listen, it's better than a good start.

You've done amazing work.

SYLVIA: I see one of your constituents has come up here.

OBAMA: I noticed.

Doesn't seem that excited about meeting the president,

which is how it should be.

Why it's so important for us to preserve these for the future.

You know, you got a monk seal in the background,

one of the most endangered marine species in the world.

You've got 7,000 different marine species here,

many of whom are unique to this ecosystem.

And all of this could be impacted by climate change.

This isn't just a matter of quote-unquote "tree huggers"...

SYLVIA: Fish huggers.

OBAMA: Yeah, or fish huggers or coral huggers.

All of us depend on these ecosystems and...

SYLVIA: Yes!

-OBAMA: They're incredibly... -SYLVIA: Yes, yes!

OBAMA: In some ways they're incredibly resilient

if we do the right thing,

but they're also really fragile when we do the wrong thing.

SYLVIA: People have to know.

OBAMA: It's not enough to just talk about policy in the abstract.

People have to see it and feel it and be able to understand

what it is that we're fighting for

and why this is so important.

♪ ♪

MAX: We dive in to celebrate

while Brian captures the first underwater photograph

of an American president.

♪ ♪

Just two weeks later,

President Obama takes another giant step,

creating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts

National Marine Monument-- the first in the Atlantic Ocean.

♪ ♪

The mission to secure the future is gaining recruits.

ROB: So the goggles won't fog up when you go underwater,

you got to spit in them.

-BRIAN: Defog it. -WOMAN: Okay.

ROB: I say we clean up this river!

Do you think that we can clean up the world?

SYLVIA: Oh, it's not if or could we-- we must.

JOHN F. KENNEDY: We have no more urgent task.

Our problems are man-made.

Therefore they can be solved by man.

We all inhabit this small planet.

We all breathe the same air.

We all cherish our children's futures.

And we are all mortal.

♪ ♪

MAX: These historic conservation victories are a great start,

but much remains to be done

for Cashes Ledge, for St. Croix, for Ewing Bank,

and for most of the ocean.

SYLVIA: You didn't cause the problems.

You've inherited them.

But suddenly this is thrust upon you.

It's your job now to try to restore

some of what has been lost.

Heal the world and our relationship with it.

Captioned by Point.360