WILL: When I was a kid,
my grandmother used to say all the best things in life
lived on the other side of fear.
I sure hope Gigi was right.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
DIVA: Will, welcome aboard.
-Diva! How are you? How are you? -I'm good!
You're just in time.
-That is fantastic. -Yeah, this is the Nadir.
And she's gonna be our vessel into the depths.
-"The Nadir"? -Nadir.
What do you think?
That's straight off a movie set. That's science fiction.
We're going down to the bottom of the ocean in this thing.
I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little nervous,
'cause that submersible is just a...
it's just a little... it's a little ass... it's a little ass thing,
and there's gonna be three people in there.
This is tricky...
because in the real world, I'm frightened of water.
Watch your head.
-You have another wall. Watch your head. -Absolutely.
So, this is a biggie.
Three thousand feet down in a plastic bubble.
-MAN: Up the steps. -Up the steps.
Face the front of the sub, sit here.
-Yeah. -You're aimin' for the center console.
It's near the lamp. And pop your feet in.
Right here, Will. Slide on in. Yeah!
-And then I'll get you to stand on there. -WILL: Yeah.
That's it.
-And then you're gonna sit on that one. -WILL: Ooh.
-MAN: There you go. -(GRUNTS)
-MAN: Squeeze on in. -(GRUNTS)
-Wow. -There's a water bottle.
-The water bottle. -And some more snacks.
-I'll put your snacks down. -This is, uh, snug.
MAN: Diva's next.
I'm coming.
-So, she's like a gazelle. -(MAN LAUGHING)
WILL: Or should it be a sardine, just squeezing into the can.
-She knows what's she's doing. -DIVA: Done this a bit.
All right, I'm gonna give you a quick safety brief.
Both of you have a built-in breathing system.
If you need to, it's just a standard scuba rig.
-If I let... Yeah, if I tell you to... -So, we go like that? Boom.
...just pop it in your mouth, then breathe normally.
Okay. Mm-hmm.
And if something happens to me, there's a button under here.
-Okay. -All right?
-Yellow. -Yellow button.
-The yellow button. -Right there.
-Press the tool, and... -Oh, Jesus.
-(LAUGHS) -I've broken it already. Mayday, sorry.
Press the tool, and let them know,
-"X-ray, X-ray, X-ray." -Okay.
MAN: Okay, any questions?
Have you ever crashed one of these things into something?
-Oh, yeah. All the time. Oh, yeah. -All the time. Yeah, great.
-Are you actually nervous? -Huh?
-DIVA: Are you actually nervous? -Just a little bit. It'll be fine, though.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER OVER RADIO)
MAN: Echo, Nadir, we are ready for the water.
Ready for water.
(INHALES DEEPLY)
(SUBMERSIBLE ENGINE WHIRRING)
See y'all later... I hope.
Little bit of tingle.
MAN: Here you go.
TOBY: Echo, bridge, you are clear to launch. Clear to launch.
Roger, clear to launch. Break. All positions are lifting now.
And lift off.
-Hey. -Boom. Hey.
DIVA: Here we go.
WILL: I definitely just got nervous.
(CHUCKLES) Whoa.
MAN: If your feet get wet, please tell me.
-That would be terrible! Man. -(BOTH LAUGHING)
And we are detached.
Not emotionally. Emotionally, I'm still very attached.
TOBY: Control, control, Nadir. Vent secure, life support running. Over.
Nadir, control. Roger. Surpassing five-zero meters. Descending.
DIVA: Some of my earliest memories actually revolve around the ocean.
We'd be out on the boat, and I would desperately,
absolutely desperately want to know what was down there.
But I'm not sure Will feels that way.
The circle of light above us is shrinking.
MAN: Yeah, absolutely.
WILL: One thousand meters, 3,300 feet.
A place so deep, not even light gets down there.
But what exists in total darkness?
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
WILL: Back on the surface, other members of our team
are asking the same question.
MELISSA: There are a lot of people who are afraid of the dark.
And I'm one of them.
I got bitten and dragged by an American crocodile in the dark,
and it's kinda made me a little bit wary.
WILL: But not wary enough to stop her canoeing at night
in a glass-bottom boat.
MELISSA: Part of being an explorer is overcoming your fears,
and when you do that...
that's when you get to see the magic.
(SHRIEKS)
We have life.
This water is full of tiny creatures.
Disturb them, and they burst into sudden light.
You row through them, and you create a light storm.
(LAUGHS)
We think it might be a defense.
Like turning on a security light to reveal intruders.
Oh, look at that.
Wow.
Any movement in the water picks up a glow, even these fish.
Here, sharky, sharky.
Oh, yeah! That is a nurse shark.
That's gorgeous. Look at his tailbeats.
This world is far from dark.
Its constellations, its stars swirling underneath your fingers
and underneath your paddles.
It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
A magical world that you'd never experience
if you stuck to the safety of the day.
(GIGGLES)
WILL: So, we're losing light as we go down.
And with that, the colors.
DIVA: Exactly, so, white light is made of lots of colors.
And as it hits the water, different colors
get absorbed before others.
ROYGBIV.
That's how my grandmother taught me the rainbow. ROYGBIV.
-(LAUGHS) -WILL: So, you know, red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo, violet. Got it. So, red goes, orange goes,
-yellow goes... -Exactly.
So, it's like blue is the last to go, and that's why everything looks blue
in the ocean. Check your shirt out.
-Wow! -(LAUGHS)
That's crazy.
We were picking wardrobe, and they kept demanding the red shirt.
-They kept demanding... -What did you think it was for?
I... I didn't know, I was like, "I wanna be an explorer, man."
(ALL LAUGH)
DIVA: We're gonna just be in a blue world soon.
-And then, uh... -Wow.
And then...
-A dark world. -Dark world.
We've only just started, and already the light from the surface
is fading.
But before the dark, there's twilight.
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
WILL: A world we think of as having very little color.
CORY: As night falls, the world as we know it totally disappears.
It disintegrates around you.
Our eyes struggle to make out our surroundings.
I can hear it.
I can hear it getting louder. Yeah.
-Garuga... -Garuga is coming.
(WATER RUSHING)
CORY: Sometimes, during a full moon, when the skies are clear...
a ghostly arc of light appears in the mist.
It's a moonbow.
It's nearly impossible to see. It's like this thin, grey line in the air
that's stretching out over the entire gorge.
But with the right camera and the right lens,
you can see the line for what it really is.
It's a rainbow, but it's created by the moonlight.
LIDIO: It's beautiful here, isn't it?
CORY: This is perfect.
The white light is bouncing off water droplets in the air,
just like it does after a rainstorm.
But here's the thing. Moonlight isn't actually strong enough
to activate our color vision.
So, the moonbow remains hidden in plain sight.
It's a world of color that is just completely hidden in darkness.
WILL: The ocean has twilight, too.
Go down below 200 meters,
and you're getting beyond the reach of sunlight.
And the twilight zone is full of things no one has ever seen before.
MAN: Control, control, Nadir. Depth, 700 meters, descending. Over.
-(SUBMERSIBLE CLUNKING) -MAN: Did you hear that clunk then?
-WILL: Yes, I did. -MAN: That's the sphere telling us
-we're getting deep. -WILL: Yeah.
(DIVA GASPS)
-Okay, shall we do some exploring? -WILL: All right.
I guess.
WILL: This feels just like Star Wars.
I keep expecting to see the Death Star.
-(DIVA LAUGHING) -(MAN LAUGHING)
-WILL: Do you ever get used to this? -DIVA: Not really.
Can you believe that more people have been into space
than the bottom of the ocean?
I've only been down a handful of times because these trips are just so rare.
Less than one percent of the deep ocean has been explored.
And even though you're traveling deeper into the darkness,
you actually start to see more.
Whoa.
-DIVA: What? -WILL: Wow.
Well, that just came out of nowhere.
That is a whole cliff.
-That's amazing. -DIVA: Isn't it?
WILL: Maybe it is the Death Star.
-DIVA: We have no idea how tall this is. -Right.
-DIVA: How far this goes, right? -WILL: Yes, yes. Absolutely.
DIVA: And before now, no one has been here.
WILL: Incredible.
So, I could literally be one of the first people to ever see this?
DIVA: You could.
WILL: Wait, aren't the explorer rules that I get to name it?
-DIVA: Yeah. -WILL: The Fresh Peak.
(ALL LAUGH)
WILL: What is that?
Enypniastes, enypniastes, enypniastes. Go back, go back, go back.
WILL: It's weird as hell.
Okay, this is a type of sea cucumber. Formal name, Enypniastes eximia.
-But it has a bunch of nicknames. -Mm-hmm.
DIVA: My personal favorite is the headless chicken monster.
The headless chicken. Wow! Look at that.
It really does look like a roast chicken...
-that ate a giant Philly pretzel. -(DIVA LAUGHING)
They're just one of my favorite things to see.
That is beautiful.
You can see that it's red, probably the most common color
of animals in the deep sea.
-WILL: Wow! -DIVA: Why do you think that is?
WILL: That's a good question. I don't know... Oh!
It would probably be for concealment, right?
-Yeah. They can hide. Yes, yes. -Exactly!
-'Cause there's no red light. -WILL: There's no red... They...
-DIVA: You can't see them. -WILL: You can't see 'em.
DIVA: So, it's like they're wearing an invisibility cloak.
WILL: Oh, they act like my T-shirt, right? That's my invisibility cloak.
DIVA: Exactly.
Most of the creatures down here can't even see red.
WILL: Yeah, I guess, they don't need to in a blue world.
So, is everything down here red?
-MAN: There's a jellyfish right here. -Yeah?
-Right in front of us. -MAN: There.
Whoo!
DIVA: You'll see it's moving. They'll all... Where the rainbow is.
-Yes! Wow! -DIVA: Yeah!
(DIVA LAUGHING)
That's amazing. Use your phone?
It's like a five-color light bulb in the middle of it.
-DIVA: That jelly actually has no color. -WILL: What do you mean?
DIVA: It only looks colorful because we are shining a light on it.
WILL: What do you... what's that mean?
That rainbow is never seen down here.
-Because we have brought that white light. -Right. Right. Right.
DIVA: And so, that is actually not a real thing.
-Like, no animal down here sees that. -WILL: Right. No animal sees it like that.
Exactly.
WILL: Even though I can see this rainbow, the creatures down here can't.
And I can only see it because we brought the right sort of light.
That approach can work in all sorts of surprising ways.
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
WILL: And it turns out, you don't have to go that far
to find hidden colors in the dark...
just as long as you have the right sort of light.
(BIRD SCREECHING IN DISTANCE)
I heard something.
They're right down here.
I think they know we're here.
-Why don't we go dark? -GEORGE: Okay.
Can you try the magic light?
Oh, oh. Yeah, there's movement right there.
-That's it. -(CHUCKLES)
-It's like it's disco paint. -It is. It's amazing, isn't it?
GEORGE: Only a handful of people in the world have ever seen this.
JONATHAN: It's amazing, how a little trick like this with UV light
can just reveal a whole new world. Who knew?
GEORGE: (LAUGHING) Yeah.
WILL: And that's the thing. No one knew. This is brand-new science.
As we speak, scientists are wandering randomly around
with UV flashlights trying to see what other animals
might have this hidden power.
When you first saw this, you must've thought you were, like,
hallucinating or something.
-My sanity was questioned, yes. -GEORGE: (LAUGHING) Not the first time.
WILL: Who knew that animals were putting on a secret light show
-in our own backyards... -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
...using colors that we can't see?
-(SQUIRRELS SQUEAKING) -WILL: Amazing.
What we're looking for doesn't need special lights.
But what is left to see when all light is gone?
DIVA: This is where we're probably beginning to go into the midnight zone.
No light.
WILL: To get to the midnight zone, you need to go deep.
Really deep.
Close to the limits of what this sub can handle.
(SUBMERSIBLE CLUNKING)
(SUBMARINE CREAKING)
DIVA: So, as the sub is going deeper,
the most unnerving thing is the noises it makes. This, like, horrible creaking.
And that's the battle between the sub and the ocean.
And it's completely terrifying if you stop for a second
and think about the fact that the only thing protecting you
is about six inches of plastic.
MAN: Toby, I'm gonna start slowing down now.
-TOBY: Nadir, control, roger. -MAN: Here we go.
WILL: Oh. We're at the bottom.
MAN: That's about three inches from the seabed.
WILL: Coming in to land, Houston. (IMITATING RADIO STATIC) Contact light.
(DIVA LAUGHING)
WILL: I always wanted to say that. I just never really had a reason.
(DIVA LAUGHING)
I love this part, when you see the seafloor
just loom out of the depths at you.
It's so surreal when you think about it.
We're here, a kilometer below the ocean surface.
WILL: Personally, for you, what is your life's goal,
your hope for what you're doing?
DIVA: 'Cause I'm from a developing country...
-WILL: Yeah. -...we, as a nation,
can't afford to explore the majority of our area.
-WILL: Wow, wow, wow, wow. -Like, 90-something-percent
of Trinidad's area is deep ocean.
And we have no idea what's... what's there because we don't have the expertise.
I'm the only one.
So, a big part of my work is trying to change that.
I've been on, like, 16 expeditions now, and there is hardly ever anyone
that looks like me, whether it's a woman, a person of color,
or a person from a developing country.
-And I want that to change. -WILL: Absolutely.
DIVA: So, that's a big part of why I do what I do.
WILL: Got it. That's cool.
Inside the sub at 3,300 feet.
-We down here. -(DIVA LAUGHING)
We down here, y'all. We down here.
Let's just say, I got really, really inspired,
and I just wanted to take a walk.
-MAN: Probably last about half a second. -(BOTH LAUGHING)
-DIVA: And we would die in the process. -WILL: Yeah.
I probably won't do that then.
-(DIVA LAUGHING) -(MAN LAUGHING)
DIVA: I always think, "What a great way to go.
"What a great story."
WILL: A great story is one that you get to tell.
-Somebody else... -MAN: Right, yeah.
If somebody else has to tell it, "Yeah, man, I was there that day,"
it's like a less great story.
(ALL LAUGHING)
WILL: If the pressure is that extreme,
you've gotta wonder, "What kinda creature could live down here?"
Because even back on the surface, explorers are finding
some crazy, strange lifeforms hiding in the dark.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
(WATER DRIPPING)
ALEXANDER: What is an astronaut doing in a cave...
300 meters below the earth's surface in utter darkness?
Going into a cave is very, very similar to actually going to space.
You lose colors, and then you lose the concept of colors.
If you look around, most creatures that live down here
are white or transparent.
They have adapted to living in a cave,
so they got rid of colors, they got rid of eyes, even, totally.
These creatures, they don't even see.
WILL: An olm looks like the kind of creature
an astronaut might find.
That weird, fleshy skin.
They call olms the human fish.
An alien that only needs to eat every ten years.
Which is just as well
because they move too slowly to catch much.
A species that has been hidden away in the dark
for over 20 million years.
(GULPS)
WILL: If they found that thing in a cave just a few hundred feet down,
what the hell are we gonna find at 3,000 feet below the sea?
-(SUBMERSIBLE ENGINE WHIRRING) -(SUBMERSIBLE CLUNKING)
MAN: Control. Control. Nadir. Depth, 1,000 meters. Over.
What was that?
DIVA: There's only one way to find out.
MAN: Yes. And there's a trick we play.
(LIGHT SWITCHES FLICKING)
WILL: Okay.
Uh, what now?
DIVA: Now, we'll see what's out there.
MAN: So, shut your eyes. Okay. One, two, three.
(LIGHT SWITCH FLICKING)
MAN: Eyes open.
WILL: Like, nothin'.
MAN: Try it again. Let's turn on the flash. Okay, eyes shut.
-One, two, three. Lights on. -(LIGHT SWITCH FLICKING)
MAN: Lights off. Eyes open.
-DIVA: Wow! Wow! -WILL: Woah!
DIVA: Oh, my God! (LAUGHS)
-WILL: Oh! -DIVA: Wow!
-WILL: Wow! Whoa! -DIVA: Oh, my God. (LAUGHING)
WILL: You have got to be kidding me. Look at that.
(MAN LAUGHING)
WILL: It's like Close Encounters. (HUMMING)
-You know? (LAUGHS) -(BOTH LAUGH)
WILL: So, Diva, what is it?
DIVA: Well, this is what we're here to see.
A hidden world you can only see in total darkness.
WILL: No, no, I know. But, like, act... actually, scientifically, what is it?
DIVA: It's bioluminescence, Will.
It's a chemical reaction using oxygen in the water to create light.
But just look at it.
WILL: So, they're making their own light.
DIVA: Exactly. And they use that light to communicate.
-They are communicating with us, right? -WILL: Mm-hmm.
-Like, "Mother! Mother!" -DIVA: It's like Avatar. Yeah.
(ALL LAUGHING)
WILL: Or, "Yo, man, get them damn lights out my face."
(ALL LAUGHING)
DIVA: Or they're like, "Do I wanna mate with you?"
-I know, yeah. (LAUGHS) -(BOTH LAUGH)
WILL: There's like this whole language I never even knew existed.
Of all the space on the planet in which animals can live...
over 99 percent of it is in the oceans.
And within that huge space, nearly 80 percent of animals
-use bioluminescence in some way. -Wow!
And so, actually, bioluminescence may be one of the most common forms
of communication on the planet.
-WILL: That is mind-blowing. -(DIVA LAUGHING)
WILL: How did I not know that this was in the world?
MAN: Back to the surface.
Control. Control. Nadir.
Passing 400 meters, ascending. Over.
Wow!
-(DIVA CHEERS) -WILL: That's crazy.
(MAN LAUGHING)
-WILL: Love that. -(MAN LAUGHING)
-This is right out of a romantic comedy. -(BOTH LAUGH)
I'm so putting this in a movie. I am so putting this in a movie.
MAN: I was just wondering who you'd put in as me.
-(WILL LAUGHING) -(LAUGHS)
-Oh, you'll be, like, Matt Damon. -MAN: Oh, yeah. Matt Damon.
-You know, somebody like that. -MAN: Yeah.
All right.
MAN: Back to the sunshine.
WILL: We set out to find a hidden world in the depths.
And I discovered that there's more light in the darkness than I ever imagined.
From the deep, dark ocean...
all the way to the sunlit surface...
we live in a world of color.
MAN: Hold on!
Yes, I like this part!
-Yeah! (LAUGHING) -(CHEERS)
-DIVA: Will, you did it. -Yay!
Wow.
-The sun just bursts back into your life. -That was great.
-WILL: Yeah! (LAUGHING) -(LAUGHS)
-That was definitely great. -(INDISTINCT CHATTER OVER RADIO)
WILL: My grandmother used to say,
"God places the best things in life on the other side of fear."
Well, He also puts the brightest things in life on the other side of darkness.
So much so, that I only really began to see...
when I descended...
into the dark.
Another hidden world awaits us.
I fulfill a childhood dream,
to witness one of the greatest migrations on Earth,
and discover that in the world of swarms,
even unintelligent animals can become super smart.
Wow!
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
(THEME MUSIC CONCLUDES)