thank you to Masterworks for sponsoring natural world facts [Music] in the depths of the ocean life moves to a slower tune [Music] this place is a world within our world a place of Silence emptiness and darkness where wonders are found drifting in a formless void [Music] with every new discovery that is made in this fascinating World We Come a Little Closer to understanding the processes at play and the more complex it starts to appear in 1843 naturalist Edward Forbes proposed the abyssus theory
in which he postulated that the abundance and variety of marine life decreases with depth and altogether ceases below 550 meters of course this theory is long superseded and we know now that the depths are home to remarkable biodiversity existing across an array of interconnected worlds in the deep sea life is concentrated at chemosynthetic oases and communities that form where primary production is made possible via chemosynthesis with bacteria converting hydrocarbons into food at Cold seams a
nd hydrothermal vents [Music] and although these oacs are hot spots for life Treasures can still be found elsewhere in the deep sea but adapted to an entirely different set of challenges the non-chemosynthetic regions of the deep are divided into two very different worlds is the mid-water an ecosystem that encompasses the water column where pelagic Wanderers tread migratory roots that span the entire oceans [Music] The planktonic Drifters and their predators take part in bioluminescent light sho
ws glimpsing in the dark suspended drifting moving in tune with the currents while conserving vital energy and Below lies the deep dark benthos the world of the deep sea floor like the surface of an alien planet a kingdom of mud and ooze where Cecile creatures cling to any solid outcrop they can find reaching hungrily into a shower of scraps and debris seafloor is at first glance a place of Filth and Decay destitute perhaps and full of Horrors but if we look a little closer we uncover a place of
beauty a realm where corals craft Mighty kingdoms on the seamount crests where the delicate structures of sponges provide refuge for others and where scavengers attend Bountiful feasts that last for decades [Music] the Two Worlds of the deep could not be more different and yet their stories are fundamentally intertwined not just with each other but with the rest of our planet [Music] let's dive in and explore the wonders of the first of these worlds the mid-water [Music] [Music] the deep sea is
defined as anywhere below a depth of 200 meters and with the average depth of the ocean being 3688 meters that's an awful lot of deep sea almost all of it falls within the mid-water a region that encompasses more than a billion cubic kilometers of living space the largest ecosystem on the planet and one of the most poorly understood [Music] despite being an endless void it is not a uniform world we can divide it vertically into a series of zones based on depth and light levels with each Zone ex
hibiting its own challenges and hosting unique creatures that take on an array of unusual adaptations to survive [Music] [Music] [Music] this is RV falcore II one of the most advanced research vessels in the world on a mission to discover our vast ocean ecosystem since 2009 the non-profit oceanographic Research Foundation Schmidt ocean Institute have been exploring the worlds of the deep across more than 80 research Expeditions they have helped shed a light on the Wonders lurking in the ocean's
depths quickly operated vehicle Sebastian has opened a window into this realm for rule to see outfitted with a suite of senses and a 4k camera Sebastian is well equipped to explore the depths [Music] Sebastian is capable of diving to 4 500 meters down in the sunless depths of the midnight zone but in order to understand the unique conditions and challenges of life in deep sea midwaters we have to begin at the surface [Music] here the epipelagic or sunlight zone spans the upper limit of the water
color down to a depth of 200 meters it's a vibrant World more than 90 percent of all marine life dwells here and much of that belongs to the bustling cities of coral in the tropics where food shelter and reproductive partners are not in short supply even out in the high seas the sunlit waters host an astounding array of life I am [Music] [Music] by developing a gas-filled float called a pneumatophore the Portuguese man of war drifts at the surface and uses wind to move while downward facing tent
acles are used to feed they are members of the newston a community of floating animals that reside at the interface of air and water primary production is made possible near the surface by the rays of sunlight that filter through the waves microscopic plant-like animals called phytoplankton take on the role of producers converting water and carbon dioxide into oxygen and glucose via photosynthesis [Music] the biomass produced by this process supports all non-chemosynthetic life in the oceans and
without it the depths below would starve dip below the epipelagic and we enter a world of Gloom this is the Twilight Zone or the mesopelagic [Music] from now on we are in the deep sea and already at just below 200 meters survival is more of a challenge there is not enough light for photosynthesis and the great Blooms of phytoplankton are absent oh the only fool y food source is a steady shower of fecal pellets and dead material organic particles called Marine snow gently sinking from the bustli
ng world of sunlight up above the presence of this Marine snow gives rise to a unique Niche that animals can exploit and the great expanse of Gloom brings forth the weird and wonderful many of these Treasures a gelatinous zooplankton foreign swept by deep currents and unable to move against them [Music] delicate nomads drifting through the expanse the gossamer worm or tamopterus is a segmented worm belonging to a group called polychedes meaning many bristles and unlike its cousin the earthworm i
t moves not through sediment but through the open ocean it undulates its bristles like the paddles of a canoe in order to swim and after it's fed the gut within its transparent body reveals the color of its last meal but this can blow their cover since many of the animals it eats are bioluminescent creating light through a series of chemical reactions there are others that have found creative ways to overcome this challenge the bloody belly cone jelly undulates its hair like cilia to attract pre
y reflecting light to cast a rainbow Shimmer it takes on a deep red color to blend in since the wavelengths of red light do not reach the deep sea so astonishingly adopting a red coloration conceals the stomach and filters out any light being emitted by the prey within while they're digested [Music] foreign [Music] there are relatives of snails here too like cardiopoda placenta a rare pelagic gastropod and another species Karen Aria Japonica with its large swimming fin seems to prefer swimming u
pside down in search of prey foreign [Music] related to jellyfish are not one organism but many they are drifting colonies of tiny animals called zooids that work together and partition biological functions between different structures nectophores act as swimming Bells assisting in propulsion in much the same way as the umbrella of a jellyfish pneumatophores help with buoyancy and at the far end gastrozoids dangle tentacles lined with stinging cells into the water but it's their job to capture p
rey the colonial way of life mirrors that of multicellular organisms with the Zoid structures seeming homologous to organs but it gives the siphonophores a unique advantage in most animals damage to one organ or physical structure can be fatal but if individual zoids become damaged it's less likely to affect the entire colony they repeatedly clone themselves and can become effectively immortal [Music] this siphonophore belonging to the genus apollemia is thought by scientists to be the longest a
nimal that has ever been observed rough calculations based on the position of the ROV suggests that it reached 50 meters in length longer even than a blue whale many tunicates are also Colonial like pyrosomes and floating necklace like salps all of these Plankton examples can be classified as holoplankton meaning they are permanent members of the Plankton throughout the entirety of their life cycles miroplankton on the other hand are only planktonic temporarily and are typically the larval stage
s of fish or species that spend the adult stages of their life cycles in the benthos Far Below like mollusks crustaceans and echinoderms who will one day settle on the sea floor [Music] for some animals the reverse is true and it's the larval stage that Cesar the life cycle of many jellyfish begins with a polyp form on the seabed planula larvae settle and develop into a skiff histoma before a sexually reproducing to create a stack of developing juvenile medusi called a strobilla [Music] these ju
veniles Bud off one by one and develop into pelagic adult forms of jellyfish [Music] and the midwaters are full of them but since the sea floor is so far away many jellyfish here lack a polyp stage altogether and complete their entire life cycles in the water column foreign [Music] within their Bell as they develop [Music] the dinner plate jelly swims with its tentacles extended forward a technique that allows them to stealthily sneak up on larger prey without startling them with large water mov
ements remember in all the footage we're seeing the lights of an ROV are Illuminating the animals and the surrounding Waters so it's hard to imagine just how difficult it would be for prey to avoid slow-moving Predators like this one in the Gloom [Music] [Music] there are also active swimmers necton rather than plankton and a great number of them are cephalopods the squid octopus and cuttlefish the largest and most intelligent of the ocean's invertebrates they are mollusks related to snails and
bivalves but their basic body structures are modified and specialized to make the most of life in the open ocean the mantle has become streamlined and a modified foot serves as a set of eight or more arms [Music] at 650 meters down we find an octopus that is almost entirely see-through this is a glass octopus and it's around 40 centimeters long the eyes are one of only a few structures visible within its glass like mantle foreign [Music] squid with its bulging eyes has also developed a body that
is transparent most of the time when it suits them they change the color of their skin and fill their mantle with ink to turn deep red their ink also contains ammonia which is lighter than sea water and allows the squid to remain buoyant see-through animals are more abundant in the deep ocean than anywhere else in the depths there are no harmful UV rays to necessitate cell pigmentation as a way to protect them from solar radiation [Music] inking is also used for defense when spooked squids flee
quickly and leave behind a shroud of ink in the form of a cloud rope or other shape resembling ghostly apparitions in the Gloom foreign masses are thought to be animal look-alikes dubbed pseudomorphs and they serve as a decoy [Music] some look like comb jellies or jellyfish others resemble siphonophores in some cases it may be advantageous for the squid itself to look like another animal juveniles of the sword tail squid were observed mimicking saphonophores of the genus pneumonomia when young
they possess ornate tales that double the length of their bodies and seem to copy the shape and colors of their gelatinous neighbors [Music] they even position their tentacles in such a way that makes the deception more convincing siphonophores are not a dense source of food they are mainly water and this coupled with the stinging cells that line their bodies means they are not on the menu for many animals and so the juvenile swordtail squid appear unpalatable to Predators who mistake them for t
he siphonophores [Music] in their adult form Kyra tooth its squids become impressive Hunters [Music] [Music] the two feeding tentacles are expelled rapidly tipped with clubs at the end lined with suckers for grabbing prey [Music] for nearly all creatures of the Twilight Zone there is one thing that gives them away to predators [Music] when they are seen from below their dark Silhouettes stand out against the low levels of downwelling light but this challenge has given rise to some rather creativ
e methods of camouflage some use counter shading expressing darker pigments on their upper body and lighter colors below in order to blend in from all angles [Music] others achieve this effect to a greater degree by emitting their own light bioluminescence produced from glandular organs called photophores that line their bodies with a pattern of glowing dots like those of the Firefly Squid as they ascend they increase the intensity of their lights to match the levels of sunlight radiating from a
bove this principle even gave rise to a naval tactic called diffused light camouflage where counter-illumination was used to make ships blend in against the backdrop of the night sky counter-illumination is one of three dominant methods of camouflage that mid-water species employ to resemble their environment [Music] the second is transparency like we saw in The planktonic Drifters and glass squid third is silvering lacking scales and instead covered with highly reflective skin consisting of mic
roscopic guanine crystals the needle-like Cutlass fish resembles polished steel this effectively imitates transparency since although it stands out in the likes of an ROV the vertically oriented mirror makes these fish invisible from the side in the Dusky water [Music] [Music] it's so effective that almost all operation fish including sardines and Herring use silvering to blend in [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] the hatchet fish has a laterally flattened body just a few millimeters thick makin
g it almost invisible from head on and below [Music] and on its skin the guanine crystals are perfectly spaced to scatter any light [Music] you also manipulate this light and funnel it downwards towards a set of photophores on its belly where it contributes to their counter illumination [Music] this serves a dual purpose for towards the deeper extent of their range the downward scattering of light via their photo Force May throw off the searchlights of midnight predators foreign silvering is fou
nd in cephalopods too using not guanine but proteins called reflectins to create a mirror-like effect [Music] one squid species has undergone the deep sea equivalent of extreme body modifications this is the cockeyed squid one of its eyes is very big and the other rather small it positions itself in the water column so that the small line Looks downwards spying for flashes of bioluminescence in the Blackness below meanwhile the large eye looks up a bulbous tubular shape takes in as much downwell
ing light as possible and a yellow lens may allow it to see through the counter-illumination of prey there's a reason why so many adaptations here Converge on looking upwards and taking in more light by living at an intermediate depth creatures of the Twilight Zone have an advantage the light levels are low enough that the Gloom provides a level of protection but just enough light remains that animals can use their remarkable light sensitivity to identify the coming of the night a time when pred
ators of the surface waters become less active and in response every night the denizens of the deep pay a visit to the shallows to feed on the Abundant phytoplankton it's a phenomenon called the dyel vertical migration [Music] thank you foreign [Music] vast numbers of animals rise from the depths of the mesopelagic under a blanket of Darkness deep sea jellyfish siphonophores squid and many others gather near the surface to feed [Music] in their wake the entire food web of the mesopelagic follows
earned up from the depths come the innumerable sharks fish squid and all manner of deep sea predators [Music] migrations unite planktonic organisms and their predators in a constant cycle of movement together they form the largest synchronous migration on planet Earth [Music] it's been postulated that animals May migrate at night to remain in their preferred light climate or isolume using this ability an estimated 5 billion metric tons of organisms migrate up towards the surface every night and
migrate back down come the dawn a mass movement so dense that it was first discovered when Echo Sounders on board World War II U.S Navy vessels detected the Gathering of animals as a mysterious second floor in the ocean a far shallower than the ocean bottom was thought to be as a gathering of creatures from vastly different groups the migration is a vertical Feast that fuels the ocean's food web take the lantern fish for example they are the most widely distributed in abundant vertebrates on th
e planet with an estimated Global biomass of up to 16 gigatons and accounting for 65 of all fish biomass in the deep ocean because of this they are a crucial food supply for many animals and a fundamental Link in marine food webs their most notable predators are the Red Devil squid which Gather in Shoals of up to 1 200 individuals near the surface every night [Music] foreign [Music] bodies flash red and white to signal to other members of the show though the reason is unknown it may be an invita
tion to reproduce or perhaps it's to warn others not to get too close for when the supply of lantern fish runs out they turn on each other cannibalism is Rife among Red Devils as studies of their stomach contents revealed the remains of fellow squid in a quarter of specimens this could explain how they're able to grow so large so quickly reaching well over a meter long in less than a year [Music] the 24-hour cycle of the vertical migration is one of the great forces that shapes the diversity and
productivity of entire oceans [Music] thank you it shows off the ability of life to make use of cycles and cues that allow them to exploit resources in different habitats Life In The Deep Sea would be nowhere near as diverse without the migration it fulfills an important role in the biological pump since the phenomenon sees mid-water organisms feeding at the surface and bringing the acquired biomass along with an enormous amount of carbon down to depth here a few different processes see the car
bon make its way to the sea floor it enters deep food webs via predation and sinks through the water column in the form of marine snow and fecal pellets [Music] it provides not only a means of sequestering carbon away from the atmosphere but also a vital ecosystem service to deeper dwelling communities by providing a more direct pathway for food to reach the midnight zone below where the total absence of sunlight makes vertical migrations far more challenging and So Below around a thousand meter
s there is a sharp decline in biodiversity you could travel through this zone for hours and see very little and yet it is not a dead zone far from it although a challenging world it is also a stable one where the direct influences of the Sun the waves and the tides are not felt creating a habitat that has barely changed at all in millions of years in the next episode we'll explore the elusive wonders of the midnight zone [Music] a place of giants [Music] and deceivers [Music] huge thank you to M
asterworks for sponsoring natural world facts and helping to support my filmmaking Masterworks are a leading firm for buying and trading shares in multi-million dollar Blue Chip artworks making it possible for anyone to invest in these works at a fraction of the cost their pioneering approach has consistently delivered impressive returns of 15 25 and even 35 percent to investors and has handed back a profit with each exit rewarding everyone who participated even during the turbulent times of the
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