(James) There are human footprints on the moon.
and Rover is exploring the surface of Mars.
We can Google a satellite picture
of any place on the Earth’s surface.
So we often think that our planet
has been completely explored.
But the depths of the oceans remain a mystery
and the extreme depths have barely been glimpsed.
Down there is the last great frontier of our world.
There are 12 trenches that are over 4 miles deep.
They’re thousands of miles long and have a combined area
greater than North America.
7'hat’s a dark continent down there, waiting to be explored.
Unseen by human eyes because the machines don’t exist to take us there.
It’s my dream to build such a machine,
and get inside it
and dive to the deepest places in the world,
to explore them with my own eyes.
I started preparing for these dives when l was a kid,
getting in a cardboard box.
Close the Iid, and imagine it was a submarine.
Boosh.
Drawing with a crayon, you know, some gauges.
Fue|and_.
depth.
Yeah, I was a real science geek, you know,
but for me it was all about trying to understand the world,
understand the limits of possibility.
Hey, little buddy.
I think it was from being a kid in the '60s
when we were doing so much exploration.
From going to the moon and Jacques Cousteau was exploring the oceans
and, you know, I just loved that stuff.
I couldn’t think of anything cooler than to be a deep ocean explorer.
I can remember the first time that the deep ocean captured my imagination.
It was, you know, when Trieste went to the bottom of the Challenger Deep.
(TV) The Bathyscaphe would pass its ultimate test in 1960,
its third model carrying Piccard’s son, Jacques, and Don Walsh
35, 000 feet down into the Mariana Trench.
(James)The Bathyscaphe Trieste was an amazing machine for its time.
A massive 150-ton steel balloon
filled with gasoline for flotation.
It had a 14-ton pressure sphere
for the crew slung underneath.
(Don) Oxygen, one thin bar.
Scrubber fans on.
[tapping] Damn it.
Tachometer’s taken a hit.
We go without it.
(James)Inside the sphere,U. 8. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh
and scientist Jacques Piccard
would pilot Trieste to the bottom of Challenger Deep.
It was a dive into history.
But no one has been back since.
Just like on Trieste, the heart of our new sub is a steel sphere,
forged in fire.
52 years later, there’s still no better solution.
The sphere is nature’s perfect shape for resisting pressure.
And it’s going to protect me from the crushing force down at the bottom.
Over 16,000 pounds per square inch.
That’s like having two Humvees stacked on your thumbnail.
it’s taken us three years to design and build this sphere.
We have to heat treat the steel...
to be strong enough to withstand the weight
of seven vertical miles of water.
We have to know that the sphere is safe.
If it buckles on a real dive,
it’II implode at hypersonic speed
and I get chummed into a meat cloud in about two microseconds.
The clinks I heard when we tested it the first time,
when we got rid of the stress cracking, that hasn’t happened.
It’s 16,000 psi. Looks like we’ve done it.
Yeah, you got to be happy with that. We're all the way to the top.
So, it’s as you predicted? It's as we predicted.
Well done. Good on you, Ron.
When you design technology to do something new,
it’s going to look strange.
The Deepsea Challenger is a vertical torpedo.
it’s designed to scream down through the water column at high speed.
The reason for that is we’d just rather spend the time at the bottom
working, exploring, than going through seven miles of water.
There are certain fish that actually will hover
over the reef in a vertical position.
So, nature provided an example
of the fact that it’s not crazy to think that a submersible
can move through the water in an upright position.
Deepsea Challenger is not a stunt vehicle
to just go down and set a depth record.
it’s designed from the ground up as a science platform.
There’s a hydraulic manipulator arm for taking samples.
A sample tray in the science door.
There are push cores for taking sediment.
A payload bay for instruments.
And two 3D cameras, one on the boom and one on the arm.
Every single thing on this vehicle has to be built from scratch
to withstand the crushing pressure.
it’s just this kind of ragtag group
working in this little tiny shop
next to a plumbing supply place on that side
and a plywood supply place on that side.
You know, nobody even knows what we’re doing in here.
And one of the most amazing things about this vehicle
is that it shrinks over two inches during the dive from pressure.
That’s enough to shear aircraft grade bolts.
Yeah, it’s still got to go in quite a way.
(James) So the sphere is actually held onto the sub by straps.
But we’re also fighting the pressure of time.
Our expedition ship just arrived
and we’re supposed to leave in less than three weeks, but we don’t have a sub.
it’s still in pieces all over the shop.
How big a problem is that?
I need to know when we’re going to see some action on that sub,
so we can start doing some integration.
If you're saying 3rd of January
we’re going to have it wired out,
we’re still weeks away from getting integration done.
(James) We have to have an integration schedule.
I want that schedule put up on the wall right over there, okay?
Who’s got to have their stuff plugged in, ready to test, when.
And everybody is going to be individually accountable for their stuff to that schedule.
We’ve got a ship sitting at that pier down there with nothing to do.
Right now it’s just on the clock like a taxi meter.
A taxi meter at $35,000 a day.
Jim’s management style is often to put people under pressure
and get results from that and...
that can work really well, but when you're in a R&D project,
sometimes things just aren’t going to work.
(Dave) And we’ve got some mechanical problems here
that we’ll solve over the next couple of weeks.
Hopefully before Christmas Eve, if we can do it.
If not, it will be Boxing Day.
(James) We’re not going to compromise.
You don’t compromise.
Not on the stuff that keeps you alive.
The most important thing is the weight system.
Basically you strap a bunch of weight on the sub at the surface
and then you let go and the thing sinks like a rock.
So, literally, if the weights don’t come off,
the sub doesn’t come up.
(James) So when you’ve got a system that’s survival critical,
the only way to be confident is to test it over and over and over and over.
When you dive to the bottom of the ocean you have to face the fact
that there are a hundred horrible ways to die.
In the unlikely event that there is a break in any of the seals,
in even the penetrator or the hatch... Closing hatch.
the water will bust through with the strength of which it could cut a man in half.
There’s the risk of fire.
It’s Jim’s personal nightmare.
Go! Drill. Fire, fire, fire!
Forward cabin.
Okay, I'm on mask comms.
Vision life support. Shut down the oxygen.
Copy that.
Now, vision one. Now, what about vision two?
Bail out rebreather. Isolate the oxygen.
Shut it off. Right.
Consider drop weights.
Right, drop weights. Weights coming off.
Weights are off.
And done. That’s 25 seconds.
Yeah, 25 seconds.
Okay, I give myself a 50I50 chance of survival on that.
(John) The biggest danger is probably C02,
the waste product from our breath.
And if that’s not cleaned and scrubbed,
the pilot will be struggling to breathe
and will eventually pass out and die.
[alarm beeping]
Jim. you okay?
(James)I think that there’s a certain kind of healthy paranoia
that goes into the engineering of a vehicle like this.
You funnel that anxiety into the engineering solutions that make it safe.
Done. Good.
What I don’t like personally focusing on
is what if somebody had to call Suzy and tell her?
I hear all the risks because he tells me.
And then he tells me all of the things
that he’s created so that it will be safe.
And dome. All right? Got it. Sure.
And Iet’s say the dome cue three times.
Action!
Dome, dome, dome.
(Suzy) I've watched him do it now for 16 years.
Whether it’s with our children or on a film set
or an expedition, he sets his bar so high
with safety, with creativity, with everything he does. Cut.
Wow. The whole upper section has all been on and come back off.
Remember I told you everything goes on and comes back off? Yeah. Yeah.
(James) You got to think a lot about what your priorities are.
You know, I mean, I'm a family man, got five kids.
A lot of people would set their priorities as...
those are the ultimate priority, and they are to me.
You ready to come out?
But I think a part of what you give your kids
is more than just your presence. it’s your example.
All right. Now we got our youngest deep ocean explorer.
She’s already taken her pink Uggs off.
You want to go for a dive? You want to go underwater?
If you live in fear and you never follow your dreams,
you’ve compromised in a much greater way.
l was in love with the ocean before we ever met.
It was watching all those great underwater explorers on TV in the '60s
that got me excited about this alien world
that was right here on Earth that was as rich and exotic
as anything that I could imagine myself.
For me, diving, that’s my calm place.
I feel privileged to get to bear witness
to the imaginative power of evolution that’s created
all these unbelievable forms of life.
Man, I just am-- I'm inspired by that.
Test, test, test. One, two, three, four.
First recorded dialogue underwater, on film,
for a theatrical motion picture in the history of the world.
Okay. And, action!
When I chose a career as an adult, it was filmmaking,
and of course the stories that I chose to tell
were science fiction stories.
I need you to be closer to the camera.
I need to have the shot cut right about here. It’s a close up, okay?
So I make a movie called The Abyss.
At the core of it is this idea of going deeper and seeing what’s down there.
And in it are all these, at the time, cutting edge new pieces of technology
like R0 Vs, like a robot that can fly underwater. What a great concept.
And so at that point, I think for the first time I stepped over a line
from science fiction into a reality that involved
these kind of science fictional concepts
of robotics and deep exploration and so on,
and that’s when I decided to do Titanic.
Because I knew that in the making of that film,
I would get to dive to the Titanic for real.
That was the first time I ever went really deep,
the kind of deep that I used to imagine as a kid.
Pitch black. Going to another world.
l was struck by how surreal it was to actually be there
at the wreck of this famous ship
that had seemed like a legend to me all my life.
And it wasn’t a legend anymore.
It was a real place where real people died,
where this great tragedy had taken place.
And something about looking out at that rusty deck,
knowing that that’s right where First Officer Murdock
loaded the lifeboats, or where the ship’s band played
just had this huge effect on me.
I really got bitten by the bug of deep ocean exploration.
It was adventure, it was curiosity, and it was an experience
that Hollywood couldn't give me. Whoa.
[crowd cheering]
So, after Titanic I said
you know, I'm just going to park my day job
as a Hollywood movie maker
and I'm going to go be a full time explorer.
(James on radio) Okay, Jake’s out. Trim is good.
Yeah, this is so much like flying a helicopter.
Feels like a pretty stable hover.
(James narrating) If I was going to go back to Titanic,
I wanted to explore the wreck like never before, on the inside.
So we built this little bot. Pretty cool.
that was designed to be just a little bit smaller than a B deck window.
(James) Okay, I'm going in. [man] Oh, don’t do it. Don’t do it.
If you I and your tether right across the glass...
(James) I'm in. That’s what I'm talking about.
Look at that. Unbelievable.
Those are the leaded windows.
Look at that.
Oh my God. Look at the preservation on that wood.
That second Titanic expedition brought together a core team that’s lasted over a decade.
Andrew Wight has run all our expeditions since 200 1.
And Ron Allum is the genius tech guru who has built the gear.
Our next target would take us even deeper.
The battleship Bismarck.
The infamous German battleship was sunk
in one of the most furious naval battles of World War ll.
Now it lies in 16,000 feet of water.
(James on radio) Yeah, copy. We are heading aft
over the starboard secondary turrets. Over.
(James narrating) The guns are silent now...
but seem ever on guard.
it’s a grim place.
The whole ship somehow preserved in the underworld
as a monument to the madness of war.
(James on radio) We are right over the swastika. Over.
Okay, Elwood’s out. I'm on the move.
Okay, that could be a way in.
You see that shell hole right there?
I'm going to try to go in this hole, okay?
This is going to be tight.
Okay. Just inside this door should be the adjutant’s office.
(James narrating) We were able to identify a few specific rooms
but mostly we just found total destruction.
The armor piercing shells just tore the interior apart.
Geez.
This is devastating.
Okay, there’s the starboard propeller.
So, the hit from the torpedo should be right above us.
That is for sure a hole right above the rudder.
Okay. So, that’s our torpedo hole.
(James narrating) Our forensic work got the attention
of the deep exploration community
and we started to gain some credibility,
you know, all these institutional guys in academia
that have this very sophisticated oceanographic equipment
are kind of looking over at our stuff saying,
"They have that? We don’t even have that."
The question is am I a filmmaker
who does exploration on the side
or am I an explorer who does filming on the side?
(Suzy) When he decided ultimately to do Avatar,
he was really debating back and forth,
was he going to quit directing as a Hollywood director
and just go do expeditions,
which was something he-- he loves it
He lives it. He breathes it. I mean, he loves making films, too.
But there’s something about--
about Jim and the sea.
Look at this thing. It’s incredible.
My problem is I'm curious.
I'm a curious monkey and I need to go see for myself, you know.
I've seen some pretty astonishing things in the depths,
things that fill your soul with wonder.
What always gets me is how life adapts.
It can adapt to the crushing pressure.
It can adapt to the absolute darkness.
It can feed off jets of water
that are hot enough to melt lead.
But the question is, can life adapt to the ultimate pressure
36,000 feet down? Maybe.
The only way to know is to go down there and take a look.
(Walt) We first met Jim on The Abyss 25 years ago.
He was maniacally focused and driven
and now I think he actually enjoys inspiring the group.
He’s trying to reach the state of perfection
and achievement and he wants everyone to kind of rise to that level.
(James) Pushing people is not about yelling at them.
it’s about creating goals that are achievable,
whether they think the y’re achievable or not.
Yeah, the only reason we’re filling it is so we can pressure test the things
because we need to start this pressure qualification process.
We’ve never controlled a J-box from the pack, but the J-box-- Why not?
Because we haven’t got to that stage in the integration yet.
Every single time you’ve gone up a tier in the architecture
you’ve had to pull everything apart and solder resisters.
What makes you think it’s going to be any different now?
I designed the J-boxes.
Ooh.
You just stuck your neck out so far.
This isn’t an option for him. He has to do it.
it’s such an internal drive for him
that once he’s started that train, it’s not going to stop.
We’re coming to that funnel where... Everything needs to be done at once.
(Dave) We got five people want in this sphere at one time.
But only one person can work in it.
Five people want the lower pod at one time,
but there’s only one person can work in it.
We’re not project planning no more.
What we’re doing is we’re firefighting. Yeah.
They're all tired. The y’re all working 16-hour days.
To say that our team is not ready yet to go out to sea is an understatement.
We’re so far from ready it’s not even funny.
Our biggest enemy at the moment is time.
(James)Well, we obviously underestimated the systems integration.
So the new deadline is February 6th.
Come hell or high water, that’s when we 're sailing.
Nobody outside the project has seen Deepsea Challenger
and the first to do so is Don Walsh,
the only living person who’s been to the world’s deepest spot.
And by crazy coincidence, he’s arriving
on the anniversary of his famous dive.
This is Kawasaki racing green.
These are racing colors, baby.
You had seen conceptual drawings.
You had an idea and you knew that it was underway.
What is your reaction to this?
Oh, I'm very excited. I mean, what took you so long? 52 years, I mean...
To the day. Where have you been?
To the day.
So, Don, do you have any tips for Jim
at about 20,000 feet if he hears a crack?
If you can hear it, you're still alive,
you might as well keep on with the dive.
You never hear the one that gets you.
(Don) Jacques Piccard and myself made a dive
to the deepest place in the world oceans.
The motivation was to test out a platform and not to do science.
That would come later.
And what better test than the ultimate depth in the ocean?
Passing 3,800 fathoms.
Coming up on 5,000 fathoms.
[bang]
What the hell was that?
(Jacques) We are still descending.
Turn everything off.
(Don) At 30,000 feet, there was this huge bang
and we didn’t know what it was.
I looked through the window in the entrance hatch.
You better come take a look at this.
And I could see this crack across that large acrylic window.
In my opinion, this is not a serious problem.
There is no reason to ascend.
Agreed.
Uh-huh? Uh-huh.
(Don) So, if in fact there ’d been a pressure boundary failure,
we would have been dead before we knew it.
There were no indications of problems,
so we decided to continue on down.
Okay. I can see the bottom now.
Coming up slowly.
There it is. Looks like we found it, Jacques.
After we landed, we stirred up a big cloud of sediment
and it was just like somebody had painted the front of the window white.
It was like looking into a bowl of milk.
C’est la vie.
And after about 20 minutes, we realized it wasn’t going to go away very soon.
So we had 5 hours 15 minutes down, 20 minutes on the bottom,
and about 3 hours coming back up.
And the purpose of this is to signal the fact
that we’re transitioning from building a sub to operating a sub.
So, Andrew Wight came up with a crazy, potentially brilliant idea
that since we’re heading to Guam
to dive the Challenger Deep,
we’re going to be going right through Papua New Guinea.
There happens to be a spot. They call it Jacquinot Bay.
This is a perfect place to sea trial the sub.
The thing that you’ve all got to start to realize now
is that you're going to have no support
other than the people that are around you.
You’ve just got to now get into a different mindset.
So, whoever you're bunking with, be good friends,
because you're going to be with them for a while.
If you snore, well, too bad.
Everybody here is here because you're good.
Because you're good at what you do.
And you’ve proven yourselves to the project.
And we’re going to go out and do something truly extraordinary.
There’s always a ramp up right before the expedition leaves.
There’s an acceleration of energy
and a lot of last minute problems
as everything’s coming together.
We’re running a race and you just have that burst of energy
comes from some where and you just push hard.
I think we got everybody.
There are a lot of very worthy goals on this project,
but one of them is just the fun of the challenge.
it’s the fun of being able to say
look what a little group of people
with no adult supervision can do if they put their minds to it.
Who wants to dive a sub today?
Ar. Ar. Exactly.
All right. See you in the sunshine. God speed below.
(John) And hold. Final checks.
(James) Lower away.
Looking good.
Starboard.
(James) When the hatch gets bolted shut,
there 's a moment where you're suddenly
in a very quiet, very finite world.
it’s like being in a space capsule.
(Dave on radio) Okay, Challenger, stand by to get wet.
Yeah, roger that. Ready.
Boosh.
Hatch is secure. No leaks.
Please make a note that the camera pan tilt, the pan is wired backwards.
COPY-
I'm not getting a reading on the altimeter at all.
Should I be? Yeah, you should be. We’re looking into it.
Okay, the camera boom is also wired backwards.
(Da ve) Your sonar head is upside down,
therefore it will relay that information back to front.
Okay. All right. That explains that.
So pretty much everything that can be wired backwards is wired backwards.
Now, be advised temperature is 100 degrees. 100 degrees.
We 're not having a good time here.
Okay, I think it’s time to descend one meter. Over.
Woohoo!
S.O., do you copy? Over.
[radio static]
We can go ahead and terminate this test dive
because the A comms, while submerged, are not acceptable. Over.
That’s the big dive. One meter. [laughing]
Okay, so the test in Sydney Harbour
showed us exactly how ready we 're not.
Well, the compass worked.
But we’ve got to get out of the harbor
and test the sub in deeper water.
[chatter]
This dive will also provide Mike
with our first opportunity to film Deepsea Challenger underwater.
Have fun. Yeah, thanks.
I mean, it’ll be fun if everything works
or even if 50 percent of it works. Exactly.
All right. We’ll see you on the bottom.
(Dave) Okay, trial dive ready to release.
Standby to initiate descent.
Release, release, release.
[man] See you later, buddy.
Surface, surface. Deepsea Challenger.
Do you copy? Over?
Copy that, Deepsea Challenger.
A comms signal is coming through strong and clear.
Yeah, copy, surface. I am approaching the bottom, dropping shot to slow descent.
200 units and down thrust in. Just easing down.
And touchdown.
Surface, I am on the bottom.
Depth 62 feet. Over.
Super, super successful dive. Everything worked.
Yeah, you guys have pulled off a pretty amazing feat.
You know, to have a second dive in the open ocean
and for pretty much everything to work,
in the history of manned submersible operations,
is pretty much unheard of.
Well done.
(James) I'm proud of the team.
They really came through.
We 're ready to sail.
Hollywood director James Cameron has paid tribute
to an Australian filmmaker and his American colleague
who were killed in a helicopter crash south of Sydney.
Andrew was flying his own helicopter
with American filmmaker Mike de Gruy
when it crashed just after take off
on this tiny airstrip at Jaspers Brush.
(John) I found out about Andre w’s accident,
you know, I was busy organizing things.
I remember Jim walking straight across the deck to me
and he looked at me and he said, "Dive’s aborted. "
I'll never forget the look on his face. He--
He went white as a sheet and then he said,
"We’ve lost Mike and Andre w. "
Immediately after the accident, I was just so sick at heart
in general, that I just-- it just felt wrong
to even be trying to continue.
(Suzy) There was just such a devastation in his voice
and I had never seen him...
ever in that way.
(James) Andrew and Mike were like family to me.
They were my deep sea brothers
and true explorers.
It just went chomp. I was literally inside the jaws of the shark.
Can’t get any closer. It was incredible.
There was just this big rip across the fabric of reality
for these families and you think, ’'Is this worth it?"
Maybe just risks shouldn’t be taken.
Maybe the consequences to our families are too great.
I think the one thing I've learned from all of this
is don’t leave things to deal with later, you know?
If you love people and you want to spend time with them, then do it.
Don’t put it off till later because it's--
It just goes. It just goes in a heartbeat.
(James) Over the next, I want to say 24 to 48 hours,
there just seemed to be this sense
that the way to give the situation meaning
was not to walk away and have it have been for nothing.
Just how do we do it?
How do we muster up the strength?
How do we put the pieces back together?
We set up a war room and we got real serious.
And the funny thing was that everybody stepped up.
I hate it when people say, ''It’s what they would have wanted. "
But, frankly, they’d both kick my ass if we wimped out now.
it’s the right thing to do, to give purpose and meaning
to what Andrew and Mike stood for as explorers.
So we’re on our way to Papua New Guinea,
to the New Britain Trench,
where we’re going to do our test dives,
going progressively deeper and deeper.
This place is everything Andrew promised,
calm deep water right offshore,
sheltered by the island.
These are perfect diving conditions.
The shadow of the accident is still hanging over us.
There’s this sense of dread and a feeling that we’re just not ready.
Let's dive.
And that’s exactly when you’ve got to push through it.
Right now these guys need a win.
We need to get a deep dive under our beIts
and then maybe we can face going all the way to Challenger Deep.
See you in the sunshine.
Coming UP-
Okay, it’s on you, Steve. Nice and slow.
Sometimes you have to push and you have to make that dive,
even if you think you're not ready.
[chatter]
That gives people a sense of accomplishment.
They'll come back and say, "We did it guys, "you know?
"Look What We did. "
Okay, standby for the transition, guys.
(James) Whether we achieve our ultimate goal or not,
I think we’ve all learned an incredible amount
about each other and how you work together as a team.
And here we go.
(Dave) Keep it coming, Donny. Keep it coming.
Deepsea Challenger, standby to rotate to dive position.
Yeah, copy that.
One minute to target area.
COP)’-
Deepsea Challenger, you're on target now.
On target now.
(James) Wait, one, I just got to do final checks.
Okay, final checks.
Vision one. 18 percent O2.
CO2 is 0.3 percent.
Scrubber fan is running.
To ward B bus, the lowest bus at 87 percent. Looking good.
Depth gauge is working. Compass is working.
Now, wait, one.
Okay, ready for descent. Are you ready?
Yeah, Deepsea Challenger, whenever you're ready
we ’II initiate launch.
(James) Okay, here we go.
And release, release, release.
Deepsea Challenger, you are now released.
Safe travels. (James) See you.
I think my heart rate’s up a little bit at the moment
that I tell them to release the sub and I start to drop.
But right away there’s so many things to do,
establishing communications and all that.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger, do you copy? Over.
Deepsea Challenger, A comms Mermaid, how do you copy? Over.
Copy you, John, loud and clear. You have a good comms voice.
Copy that. The skipper says it’s like I'm talking to my grandma.
Do you want a biscuit?
Surface Deepsea Challenger,
I'm at 2,873 feet, vertical speed 1.4 knots.
Okay, I'm going to drop some shot.
.6 knots. Okay, definitely slowing down.
Should be seeing something pretty soon.
Ah ha.
That's it.
Definitely have bottom.
Cool terrain coming up here.
Slowing.
Contact.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger, I am on the bottom.
Depth 3,074 feet. Over.
Deepsea Challenger, copy that. You are on the bottom.
The lander is 250 meters.
(James) Yeah, hang on. I'm just learning
how to fly this thing over the bottom.
I have good control of the vehicle
and I seem to be in a stable hover.
Coming back around south.
Oh, great.
Big holothurian.
Wow, he’s gorgeous.
Nice.
Whoa! He’s attacking me!
Boosh. Oh, he’s not digging that.
Sorry about the thruster, buddy.
That is a big sea cucumber.
He has no idea how beautiful he is.
What the heck are you?
Oh yeah, polychaete.
Basically I get so carried away shooting the critters
that I forget I’ve got work to do.
I need to get good with the manipulator arm.
We’re not just out here doing test dives.
We’re doing science, too, as we’re going along.
So I've got to get some rock samples.
Otherwise the science team aren’t going to be happy campers.
Gotcha.
All right.
My first sample.
I'm proud of it.
I am at the lander. Over.
And we also built a lander.
it’s this unmanned science vehicle
that basically just free falls to the bottom.
it’s got lights and high resolution cameras
and it can take water samples and so on.
it’s even got this arm that drops down
with a baited trap so it can attract
all the bottom foragers from miles around.
Lander is released. On ascent. Over.
I think of human knowledge as being our headlights
and the y’re shining out into the darkness,
and right beyond those lights is something else.
And all we have to do is move forward a little bit more
and that truth will be revealed,
or that new disco very will be revealed.
Deepsea Challenger, confirm request to ascend.
COPY-
Weights are coming off.
There you go.
Vehicle is very stable at 5.6 knots.
[cheering]
Deepsea Challenger, surface contact.
Copy you, S.O. We’re here.
(Dave) All right. it’s always good to see you back.
We ’ll get you-- we ’II come and get you underway and get you onboard.
( James ) Copy that.
(Da ve) Okay. Steady!
Goldy, take the line in!
(James) 3, 300 feet.
That’s like one-tenth of where we’re going.
But you know what? Right now, it’s the victory this team really needed.
The curse of fear has officially been lifted.
We’re going to dive the New Britain trench again, but...
I want to see this town of Rabaul that’s only a few miles away.
Or see what’s left of it.
In 1994, this town of 17,000 people
was utterly destroyed by a volcanic eruption.
An eruption caused by the same forces that formed the trench itself.
This is where my house used to be,
and a couple of houses here are all-- This is all like a neighborhood?
Were there a lot of houses here? Yeah. Quite a lot of houses here.
What it did was just like, kind of like black smoke kind of thing.
And when it did that, it was all black.
We couldn’t see. I had to touch you to know that you're there.
(James)Amazing. (Francis) Yeah.
We were diving just on the south side of New Britain Island,
and we go out about 30 miles offshore,
and we can go down five miles in the trench, in the New Britain Trench.
See, these deep trenches are formed when one plate of the Earth’s crust
is dragged underneath another plate, right? Yeah.
They call it subduction and it’s because the continents
are all moving around like these big rafts.
The rock of the sea floor is grinding down underneath, right,
under these billions of tons of rock overhead, and it melts.
And the pressure just builds and builds
until all this magma is pushed up ward and boom!
So we came here and we saw, wow, look at what these forces
that are happening way down so many miles down in the Earth,
look what they’re doing here and look at the consequence to human beings.
We belong here, so best thing to do is just to play
and get on with life, I suppose.
The same subduction forces that caused the Rabaul eruptions
also unleash undersea earthquakes.
When that fault slips in one of these deep trenches,
it displaces an enormous pulse of water.
it’s a release of energy more than 3,000 times the Hiroshima bomb,
creating a tsunami.
[reporter speaking Japanese]
We could save a lot of lives if we could predict these events,
but we need to know a lot more about what’s happening
down in these deep trenches.
So we need the machines that can go down there.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger. I am on the bottom.
Depth is 12, 164 feet. Over.
I'm two-and-a-haIf miles down, same depth as Titanic,
which I've been to plenty of times,
but always in subs that were built by big government programs.
No privately built sub has ever gone this deep.
And then I've got to remind myself,
this is only a third of the way to where I'm going.
Oh, got us a critter.
We got us a real critter here.
Yesiree, Bob. Time to zoom in on this one.
It looks like an octopus.
Yeah, love those deep octopus.
Wonder what the hell he’s thinking.
[snapping] Uh oh, that’s not good.
That’s not good.
Loud snapping sounds not good.
(James) Well, Don Walsh always says, if you hear a loud bang
and you’ve got time to think about it, you're going to be okay.
Something just imploded.
He’s chasing me. [laughs]
You're a mighty warrior, aren’t you?
Each one of these chance encounters
is a gift from the ocean, and I'm grateful.
This is my church, down here, alone.
I feel the power of nature’s imagination,
which is so much greater than our own.
Here we are with our high tech equipment,
diving in one of the wildest places on the planet.
The rainforests of Papua New Guinea
were the inspiration for the landscapes in Avatar,
so there’s no way I'm not going to go ashore and explore.
[singing]
We’ve been invited by the Baining people
to witness their sacred fire dance.
The ceremony suggests to me the spirits of this land, shaped by fire...
by the powerful and dangerous forces deep in the Earth.
But the spirit world doesn’t cause the Earth to erupt..
or cause the sea to rise up in a tsunami.
The only true path to understanding nature is science.
That’s why we’re out here.
That’s why we’re diving.
[man] In clear feet, clear four.
Today’s dive is 27,000 feet, over five miles down.
So this is the big test before we can go on to Challenger Deep.
And we’re going to start to squeeze all the submersible systems
with this extreme pressure.
We’re also going to go to the limits of our communications
and tracking.
Pull in that line! Oh, no.
Guys, getting pretty close to the ship here.
That's not good.
She's getting close.
Hold it there!
GUYS, guys, guys, come on.
Guys, I'm looking right into the starboard props here.
Keep it coming.
Keep it tight.
I'll bet they didn’t intend that.
And release, release, release.
(James narrating) When the dive begins, it’s exciting.
You know, the divers become little tiny stick figures
and everything just kind of disappears.
And then you just go into darkness.
You can see the plankton going by and...
and you just fall for a long, long time.
Everybody says I can’t stretch my arms out in here.
I can stretch to there and to there.
I’II be at 18,000 feet here in a second.
It’s the depth Bud Brigman went to in The Abyss.
I'm doing it for real.
It’s cool.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger, do you copy? Over.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger, do you copy? Over?
[man] A comms, we’re still receiving Deepsea Challenger
but he is not acknowledging our transmission. Over.
Yeah. Copy.
I've got no voice comms.
Okay, that’s not too promising.
He’s not hearing us or responding to us.
Depth gauge is not changing.
[th rusters stop] Whoa.
Just lost my thrusters.
Oh, see, look, this is not good. This is not good.
My thrusters are running away and they won’t respond.
Then they drive by themselves.
I think we got a problem.
Got a lot of failures here and I'm coming up to my depth.
Without thrusters I can’t even stop. This is not good.
As I'm going along, things are starting to fail and glitch one by one.
Everything’s getting haywire and I'm getting deeper and deeper.
My cIock’s stopped, my depth gauge has stopped, everything’s stopped.
Speed’s 1.9 knots. I still can’t stop from that. I'll hit the bottom too fast.
I've got just a couple of minutes to sort this out.
We need to really know, Tim, if there’s an emergency.
This is going to be a mess. Yeah, A comms Mermaid, A comms Rib,
we have received telemetry but no vitals.
I'm going to have to drop some shot. I'm going too fast.
I'm going 2 knots.
And dropping shot, here we go.
270 feet. He’s getting really close.
oh, [bleep].
S’[0P'
Surface, Deepsea Challenger. Descent is aborted.
Hey, about time. Finally.
I mean, down at 27, 000 feet and one system goes,
and then another system goes, and then another system goes.
And pretty soon you realize you're in this kind of dead metal coffin,
and if the weights don’t come off, you're toast.
okaY-
Moment of truth.
[cheering]
The good news is it’s now officially the deepest diving submersible in the world.
Bad news is, never saw the bottom,
had about five major systems failures
that prevented me from going on.
Now, what we’ve got to do is go through the tape,
and see exactly what the nature of the failure was.
We did take water ingress in a couple of battery modules.
So these are going to have to be taken off the sub
and repaired or replaced before the next dive.
This is a prototype and even though we might have 100 percent spares on items,
we’re working through those items as we have problems on the dive.
We could come to a point where I could say, "I can’t repair this."
(James) When you do this kind of project,
you hit so many hurdles.
Well, I have to say, guys, I picked you guys because you're smart
and you can do this.
And we’re going to hit hurdles like this where we think
we’re stopped, that we’re dead in the water.
And we’re going to think our way through it.
Touchdown.
Surface, I am on the bottom.
Depth, 26, 970 feet.
Lights are working.
Cameras working.
Thrusters working.
We did it, guys.
A lot of very happy Pe0p|e up here.
(James) So I'm five miles down in the New Britain Trench,
a place that’s never been explored before.
Oh, what's that?
And, bang, right off the bat I find what could be a new species of jellyfish.
[radio chatter]
(James) Copy you loud and clear.
I'm at the trench wall.
I am working a steep rock cliff. Over.
Alps covered with snow. [Radio] Copy that. Over.
That's cool.
Tiny little anemones
growing out of the rocks.
Look at that, huh?
A beautiful little garden
just hanging out here at 27, 000 feet.
So we’ve discovered this diverse ecosystem
living five miles down in the New Britain Trench.
But the biggest surprise comes from the lander
when we see what was attracted to our bait.
Holy cow.
Amazing.
Wow. This is really amazing.
This whole trip we’ve only caught a trickle of small tiny amphipods,
maybe an isopod here or there. Now we've many dozens of giant amphipods.
(James) On one dive, the lander brings back four species
which might be new to science.
That really paid off. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. I just can’t believe it.
(James) On the lander camera, it’s a feeding frenzy.
The y’re like deep sea piranha devouring that chicken.
Oh. Look at that.
Yeah, that is clean to the bone.
This was a full chicken. But look at this.
Look how neatly they've picked every-- It's perfectly clean.
morsel of flesh off that skeleton.
Look at that. Absolutely perfect.
I mean, that's nice work.
The five mile dive was our last test.
We’re as ready as we’re going to be.
it’s time to go to the deep end of the pool.
The Challenger Deep is in the heart of the Mariana Trench.
It’s 1,300 miles farther north.
it’s a pit in the trench 40 miles long and two miles wide
that’s so deep, you could put Mount Everest on the bottom,
with four Empire State buildings stacked on top
and not even break the surface.
Okay, so we’re coming up on the dive site,
and we’ve got a problem.
We were supposed to be out here a month ago
and now the trade winds are blowing every day
and the sea state has gotten pretty ugly.
I’ve been dreaming about this place since I was a little kid.
You know it’s interesting. It just looks like any other piece of ocean anywhere.
But it’s knowing that seven miles straight down below our feet
is the deepest place in the world’s oceans.
But conditions are pretty marginal.
Probably about the absolute limit
that we can launch in right here.
This is going to test everybody to the limit.
(Dave) Okay, let's stabilize her.
(James) So we’re doing an unmanned launch
to see if we can actually get the sub back on the ship.
Okay, just get lines nice and tight. Steady.
(James) Ifit gets away on us...
it’s a 12-ton wrecking ball.
(Da ve) Let her stabilize. Let her stabilize.
Goldy! Line out!
Steady now. Get her steady.
Take in all the slack. All the slack.
Come on, Harman, get it in.
Tighten her, Gavin. Gavin, tight.
All stop. Take her back to the sea, Steve, back in the sea.
Goldy, let your line out!
(James) The only way to stop it swinging
is to drop it back in the water.
Keep it coming!
Goldy, let it out. Let it out, please.
Everyone, let your lines out. All lines out.
Get it out!
Okay, steady!
Hold it there.
(James) We’re over the limit.
If the sea state doesn’t come do wn,
there’s no way I can dive.
It’s just this weather window.
It’s like a gift from the sea right there.
Gives us a shot. It’s already well down, mid afternoon down, holding.
Past midnight and then zero six the following morning.
That’s when it starts to rocket back up. So that’s our hard out.
So now it’s finally the big dive
and we’re going to launch at night
in a heavy sea which we never trained for.
Knowing that somebody’s life is at stake is very, very stressful.
And then you compound that
with an incredibly aggressive schedule.
There are calculated risks.
(John) Complacency is a killer.
The ocean can turn on you in a heartbeat.
So it’s very important that everybody is on their main game.
(Dave) Tie the tagIines. Tighten up. Tighten up.
Gavin, tighten up.
Okay, just get lines nice and tight. Steady.
All lines stop. All stop.
(James) If we don’t dive now, then we’ve wasted our time.
(Dave) Okay, steady there. Steady there.
All stop, all stop.
(James) Because we’re out of time.
This ship’s got to go back.
(Dave) Steady.
(James) We’ve got to dive, even if it means
we’ve got to dive at night which we ’d said we wouldn’t do,
even if it means we’ve got to dive
in a two-and-a-haIf meter sea,
which we said was beyond our capability.
Now is where we really have to pit ourselves against the elements.
And verticals down.
Well, we’re supposed to be trying to dive by 0400, which is in 20 minutes.
I predict we’ll be about...
I'll be descending by about 4:30.
A little bit late, but not much.
We’re on target right now.
Should be the deepest place on the planet.
There’s of course an element of fear in it,
because it’s a risk, and...
but if you don’t go out and do something in life, nothing happens.
I'm only minutes away from diving the Challenger Deep
and the guy who inspired that dream
is right here on board with us.
Don Walsh is back at the site of his own dive
52 years later.
Thanks,babe.
Have fun. It will be fun.
I love you. Love you, too, babe.
All right, Jim. All right, buddy. See you in the sunshine.
Okay. See you when you come out. All the best.All right. Thanks a lot.
Have a good one. God speed below. All right. Thanks a lot.
And pan tilt.
Yup. Got it.
And hold. Final checks.
Leads clear.
Okay, lower away.
(Da ve) Okay, standby.
Okay, Steve, when you're ready, mate. If you just take up.
Coming UP- Coming UP-
Okay, Donny.
Nice and tight, Donny.
That’s a good angle, Donny. That’s great. Good. Well done, guys.
Take her off. That's good.
Okay, standby for that transition, guys. Standby for transition.
You need to be taking up, Gavin.
[chatter] Keep going, guys.
Goldy, a bit more out, please.
Careful, Donny. Out more, Donny.
Here we go.
(Tim) Deepsea Challenger, you are 100 meters
due north of your intended drop point. Over.
(James) Yeah, copy that, Tim. Thanks.
Hatch is not leaking.
Hatch looks good so far.
(Tim) Yeah, Jim, we’re going to, if you're comfortable,
we'll pump both bags together once you're ready--
(James) Say again, please.
Deepsea Challenger, five minutes from drop zone.
Copy, five minutes from drop zone.
Deepsea Challenger, surface check.
Yeah, copy that. Vision 1 is 20-19-19.
Carbon dioxide is 0.5 percent.
Looking good, guys.
Oh, man.
We got a hatch deploy on the soft ballast.
The soft ballast bag has deployed. The hatch popped.
(Dave) Yeah roger, I’ve got that. I can see that.
(James) The soft ballast is a key safety system.
If it blows, we’re supposed to pull the sub out and fix it.
But if we do that, we miss our dive window.
All right, tell the divers to cut it away.
We’re going without it. Over.
(Dave) Yeah, roger. Standby.
Take everything. The hatch, too. Over.
Deepsea Challenger, position update is two minutes to drop point.
All right, Deepsea Challenger, ready when you are.
Yeah, ready for a descent.
Okay, just confirmed the divers are in position
and then we’re going to launch.
Okay, ready to initiate descent.
And release, release, release.
Had a bit of a rocky start.
4.6 knots. We’re going like a bat out of hell here.
Just the way we like it.
Surface, surface, Deepsea Challenger.
Depth two tick zero, zero feet.
Speed 4.2 knots. Over.
Deepsea Challenger, copy. Understood.
Depth 11,580 feet.
Speed 3.2 knots.
I used to think Titanic was the deepest place I could imagine.
Now I'm sailing past that depth like it’s the foot of my drive way.
16, 000 feet.
That’s the depth of Bismarck,
the deepest I'd been before this expedition.
But it’s less than halfway to where I'm going.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger.
Depth, 18,000.
External temperature, 34. 4 degrees.
It's getting cold.
You're doing all these things as you're going do wn, it’s all on the checklist.
You do this at this depth and you do that at another depth,
and you know, you're setting up the cameras
and booting up the sonar, checking battery status,
testing the thrusters, comms, navigation.
Everything that needs to be ready before you Iand.
And it’s all by the numbers.
And then for the first time, on any dive, I'm through my checklist.
27, 000 feet.
That’s deeper than any other sub in the world can reach.
Beyond any hope of rescue.
And there’s still 9,000 feet to go.
There’s nothing to do but sit and think
about the pressure building up on the hull.
It just gets really quiet.
It’s peaceful. It's lonely.
And you feel yourself just getting farther and farther and farther
from the world that you came from.
Vertical rate is 1.3 knots.
Time to shed some shot.
Get some speed off here.
35,200 feet.
488 feet to go.
Get everything on.
On. Good.
And number three. That’s all lights facing down.
Let’s get this spotlight aimed do wn.
Altitude 110 feet.
100 feet.
78.
Should be seeing something pretty soon.
All the way down.
There we go.
We have bottom.
Okay. Coming down.
Easy, easy, 935)!-
More braking.
Touchdown.
Surface, this is Deepsea Challenger.
I am on the bottom.
Depth is 35,756 feet.
And life support’s good.
Everything looks good.
Oh, my God.
Whatever I thought I was going to say at that moment...
wasn’t going to be that.
This is how the NASA team must have felt
when the Eagle landed. This is just great.
(Suzy) Deepsea Challenger. Deepsea Challenger.
God speed to you, baby. I love you.
Love you too, baby. All the way from the heart of the ocean.
Oh!
Surface be advised, I'm starting my transect to the north. Over.
Going deeper into the ocean is going deeper into the subconscious.
So we have this fantasy that the deeper we are, the bigger the monsters.
Man.
It is just flat and featureless.
Don't even see any animal tracks.
In reality, the deeper we go,
the smaller the life forms.
No critters, no signs of critters. No tracks on the ground.
Unbelievable. Like the moon.
I know there are new species of bacteria in that sediment,
but I have this powerful feeling that I've dived deeper
than the limits of life itself.
All right, Iet’s get ourselves a sediment sample.
Be advised, I'm taking my contingency sample. Over.
I see a lot of hydraulic oil coming out.
Looks like we got ourselves a big leak.
All right.
I better get my sample while I can.
I think we might have a sample there.
Okay, now...
Let’s get a look at this watch.
Is it still ticking?
Oh yeah. 16,000 pounds per square inch?
No problem.
Uh oh. This is not good.
This thing is just dying.
Yeah. The hydraulics are completely dead.
Most of our lives, we huddle together
in the warmth of human company.
Down here, alone, there’s a purity.
We sense the vastness of all that we don’t know.
Oh, I think my horizon just came up.
IbeHeve we have found a slope.
Deepsea Challenger, surface, comms check.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger.
I am at the north slope. Over.
That's cool. Copy that.
Letloose a little avalanche there.
(James) Somebody has to go.
A robot can’t tell you how it feels.
I did not come all this way
to not see it with my own eyes.
Oh yeah.
(James narrating) it’s important to physically be here,
to bear witness
to the things that have never been seen.
To that little kid dreaming of going to the bottom of the ocean,
all things seemed possible.
I wonder what other kids will do.
Where they'll go, what they'll see.
What new worlds await them.
Oh, yeah.
I hope there's some kid out there right now
who's already dreaming of exploring worlds we can 't even imagine.
Something feels wrong with my thrusters.
Oh, see, look, I got three dead horizontals.
All I can do is turn. Turn in a circle.
Yeah, it just spins me around.
It's time to go back to my own world.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger, preparing to ascend. Over.
I hate this feeling, when you've got to leave
and you know there's still so much to see out there.
Weights are coming off.
Boosh. There they go.
Surface, Deepsea Challenger.
Weights are off. On ascent. Over.
(James narrating) Well, I'm just going to have to come back.
Exploration is never done.
(Dave) You know, when you look around and you see the faces
of the guys who are just so proud
they've been part of this one man's dream and this adventure,
it's pretty unique.
You know, he's driven us hard,
but we care about him immensely.
14, standby for recovery on the starboard side.
[cheering]
Deepsea Challenger, Deepsea Challenger, S. O.
(James) S. O. Deepsea Challenger. Go ahead.
Good to have you back, Jim.
Copy that. Good to be back.
(John) Deepsea Challenger, we’re coming to get you.
You guys are my heroes in real life.
(Dave) Tighten the taglines. Tighten the taglines.
Stop there. Stop there.
(James) This sub is notjust a machine.
It's the hopes and dreams and will
of all the members of the team made manifest.
They are the soul of the machine
and it is them.
Only the people that are on this expedition
will ever understand what it took to accomplish the goal
and that will bond us together for the rest of our lives.
[cheering]
We did it, man. We did it.
We all did it.
I was just the unlucky son of a bitch
that had to get crammed in here to go take the ride.
Hey, baby. Hi.
[man] Steady, man.
That's a good kiss.
Did you see my shot?
Did you find my shot piles down there?
I think every explorer has the same thing inside.
They know that the risk is worth it
because the y're widening the pool of knowledge.
It's important for us as a species to not lose that drive,
whether it's in the oceans, whether it's out in space,
going to Mars, going to the outer planets, to the icy moons.
Whatever it is, we need to keep that part of us alive.