(mysterious music)
The tropical waters of Southeast Asia
are home to some of the richest coral reefs on the planet.
But hundreds of meters beneath the surface
lies a world where time had stood still.
(mysterious music)
Here, creatures from the far distant past still survive.
Now a team with scientists and film makers
have joint forces to explore this largely unknown world.
(indistinct radio talking)
With the state-of-the-art submersible,
they descend deep below the surface.
This is truly a living fossil here.
And discover prehistoric creatures
that have survived virtually unchanged
for over 400 million years.
(mysterious music)
It's a lost world hidden in the depths of the sea
where primeval creatures have lived
since the earliest times.
(mysterious music)
Following the reports from local fishermen,
the team set off in search of a strange fish
that is said to lurk in these waters.
Have you ever seen that fish before?
I caught one.
(majestic music)
It's a journey full of surprises
and extraordinarily encounters.
And finally, after a year of exploration.
Oh shit, this is what, this could be it.
This is it mate.
Yeah? Voiceover: Yeah.
We got them.
(laughter)
They discover a bizarre fish
that few people had ever seen,
and encounter some of the ocean's
most elusive inhabitants.
(indistinct talking)
This is gonna be awesome.
(exclaiming)
It's the journey of a lifetime.
(dramatic music)
(drums rolling)
(chanting in foreign language)
The island of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean,
it's a wild paradise that still remains
largely untouched by modern civilization.
A scientific research vessel is here
to explore the uncharted depths of these waters.
The Alucia is equipped with the latest technology
including a deep sea submersible
that can dive to depths of 1,000 meters.
The crew are carrying out final safety checks
to the submersible Nadir.
No one before has attempted to dive
in these waters with a sub.
The expedition is led by marine biologist, Mark Ardmann.
Ardmann is an expert in the ecology of coral reefs
and has been studying them for over 20 years.
He's worked in these waters for over a decade
and knows them well.
Their first stop is the Raja Ampat Islands
of the west end of New Guinea.
(calm music)
Okay sir, ready?
Let's go.
The warm waters are teaming
with colorful fish.
Nowhere in all of seas of the world
is there a greater diversity of life.
(calm music)
Over 500 species of corals live here,
they in turn support a myriad of fish
that depend on them for food and shelter.
Tropical waters are surprisingly poor in nutrients,
but the corals produce enough food
to sustain a vast community of marine creatures.
Ardmann has identified over 1,500 species of fish
in the shallow waters here,
confirming that this is one of the greatest
biodiversity hot spots in the world.
But Ardmann has long been wanting
to explore the deeper ocean.
It all started with an extraordinary discovery
that he made over 15 years ago.
He was traveling around the island of Sulawesi,
in Indonesia.
So, it was on my honeymoon in 1997.
We were in Manado when we are doing some diving there,
and I always like to go to the fish market
just to see what the people are catching there.
So we went quite early in the morning.
My wife saw it first.
Very intrigued by what this was.
It was something she'd never seen before.
So she called me over and asked me what this was.
Ardmann immediaterly recognized
the bizarre looking fish.
And I said, oh my goodness, it's a coelacanth.
The coelacanth is a very rare fish
that was once thought to be the ancestor
of all land-living backbone animals.
It has armor-like scales and large bulging eyes,
and fleshy fins that resemble limbs.
Very surprised to see,
it's something I'd known as a child
but obviously never seen a real one,
so it was fantastic and a really big surprise to see.
Until the live specimen was caught
off the coast of South Africa in 1938,
the coelacanth was thought to be extinct.
It had only been known from fossils
over 80 million years old.
And the discovery of a living specimen
was a scientific sensation.
It was over a meter and a half long
and weighed nearly 60 kilos.
News of the strange primeval fish
soon spread around the world.
50 years later, Ardmann himself,
found another coelacanth in Asian waters
far from Africa.
It was a different species and once again
the strange fish captured our imagination.
(mysterious music)
Since then, a few more specimens
had been recovered in Indonesian waters
but only in a handful of places.
Ardmann believes that their range
maybe much wider than we think.
He's long had the dream of conducting
a full scale exploration of the deep Pacific Ocean.
Other prehistoric creatures such as deep-sea sharks
and nautilus, have already been discovered here
and he hopes one day to find the coelacanths too.
(majestic music)
There's an important question about
why we have so many of those here?
What about the deep tropical sea?
And perhaps really try to unlock some
of the mysteries of the deep tropical ancient seas here.
The expedition that Ardmann
and his colleagues are planning
will require much preparation
and take over a year.
From inside this submersible,
the team will have an unobstructed view,
nearly 360 degrees all around them.
The sub is also equipped with a high resolution camera
that can capture even softer shades of color underwater.
With final preparations complete,
the sub is ready for its descent.
I think that there's an extremely good chance
that coelacanths are found right here.
We're in the right place
and I'm extremely excited about this
and yeah, I'm just ready to go.
Ardmann is excited and nervous.
Guys happy?
Very Happy.
Ready to go.
(questing music)
The sub weighs nearly eight tons.
It will be lowered into the sea by a huge crane.
(questing music)
(engine roaring)
(questing music)
It's Ardmann's first dive into the deep
below the coral reef.
(indistinct talking)
Nearer to the surface, the swimmer clear,
am I clear to vent?
Oh, yeah, you're clear to vent.
Hey guys.
Here we go
All right.
Fingers crossed.
The sub slowly descends into the deep.
The lower they go, the darker it gets.
Very little light penetrates these gloomy depths.
[Man on the radio] Surface, surface Nadir,
depth now 34 meters on the wall, over.
Nadir, surface,
steady 34 meters on the wall, loud and clear.
Got a whole phalanx of little tiny squid.
directly in front of the lights.
[Man on the radio] Surface, surface, Nadir,
depth 170 meters.
The lights were okay.
Are we on the bottom?
Yeah.
The seafloor is very different
to the coral reef above.
Bare and barren, there is little sign of life here.
At last they spot something,
the strange heart-shape creature at the end of the stalk.
It's a rare comb jelly that was first discovered in 1941
by the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito,
who was also a passionate marine biologist.
This jelly-like creature lives attached to a rock
at the bottom of the sea
and feeds in the most extraordinary way.
It throws out long sticky filaments
which catch tiny prey drifting by in the water.
(mysterious music)
[Man on the radio] Surface, surface, Nadir, depth, 22--
The surface is now descended
to below 200 meters and is entering
what is known as the twilight zone.
Very little light penetrates as deeply as this.
That sea urchin is beautiful.
Oh that's--
The red one right there?
Yeah.
The sea urchin looks quite different
to most modern day urchins, having fewer spines.
In fact, it more close to resembles fossils
from 200 million years ago
and belongs to a primitive group known as the pencil urchins
because of the thickness of their spines.
The team notice another unusual creature on the seafloor.
This is truly a living fossil here,
if we can get up on that video
and I think this is one of the things that we rarely see.
So these are sea lilies which are now on stalks.
This is basically exactly what they look like
in a fossil record hundreds of millions of years ago.
Here we go.
There, and one up there.
(mumbles) over there.
The sea lily looks just like those
found as fossils dating back 400 million years.
It has ranged very little over millennia.
Perhaps sensing the sub's presence as it approaches,
the sea lily begins to wave its arms.
(mysterious music)
It may look like a plant but it is in fact an animal
and if in danger, it will resort to a remarkable strategy.
It detaches itself and uses its feathery arms
to crawl over the sea floor in search of a safe spot.
(mysterious music)
The sea lily may have retained its primitive form
for millions of years,
but it's also hardly enough to have survived
into the modern age.
Discovering these living fossils
has been quite overwhelming for Ardmann.
If we had a week of this--
Oh my God.
Stalked sea lilies like these were once
far more abundant than they are today
and then found mostly in shallow waters.
(bubbly music)
400 million years ago,
thick carpets of these strange creatures
covered the sea floor
forming spectacular underwater meadows.
The warm shallow waters were rich in plankton
and there were few large predators.
The nautilus, an ancient relative of the squid, octopus,
haunted small marine invertebrates such as trilobites.
Overtime, more former developed predators began to appear,
primitive sharks,
and huge armored fish.
With powerful jaws and the ability to swim swiftly,
these formidable hunters rule the shallow seas.
While many prehistoric creatures became extinct,
the sea lilies and some other species
survived as living fossils in the twilight zone.
The key to their success was their ability to adapt.
(calm music)
During the age of the dinosaurs,
even bigger and more ferocious predators appeared
in the shallow seas.
Large swimming reptiles like the plesiosaur.
(calm music)
Now, slow moving animals without weapons of their own,
made easy prey.
Those that lived in deep waters
were largely unaffected by this struggle to survival.
They are descendants of the living fossils
that we know today, the coelacanths and the sea lilies.
Here in the deep there were few competetors
and it was too dark from most predators to find them.
(calm music)
The sub has returned to the surface.
The first dive completed.
Thank you sir.
You're welcome.
It's a fantastic trip.
I would say it was other worldly,
it was truly a lost world that we encountered.
I think that if we had some more time here,
that we would definitely find coelacanths.
The team start planning
for their next phase of the expedition.
(lively music)
We gotta take a look here.
Ardmann decides to focus his search
on finding prehistoric fish including the coelacanth.
But where should he start to look?
Coelacanth are thought to be nocturnal,
hiding away in caves and rock crevices
around 200 meters below the surface.
There are hardly any maps of the seafloor
around New Guinea.
From the little information he has,
Ardmann decides to focus on a small island
called Wuvulu of the northern coast.
I think that Wuvulu looks to me
from the maps to be probably the steepest
and a few divers that I've spoken to talked about
very large caves there so that
could also be quite interesting.
So that's the general habitat that we're going to look for.
General topography is something
like quite steep and the caves.
If coelacanths do live in these waters,
Wuvulu could have the right kind of habitat.
(questing music)
They set course for this remote and little visit diver.
If we can confirm the existence of coelacanths here
in Northern PNG, it will be actually
a very significant scientific finding,
it will open the possibility that coelacanths
are found of course throughout this western pacific rim.
So we're very excited about this possibility.
30 hours later,
the ship has reached its destination
just north of New Guinea.
Wuvulu is about five kilometers long.
The team head towards the shore.
On the way, they encounter a fisherman in his small canoe.
He's just caught an oilfish nearly two meters long.
It's a deep sea fish usually found
at depths of around 500 meters.
(fisherman laughs)
Where did you catch this?
(foreign language)
This is the place for them.
It's definitely a good sign of good coelacanth habitat
which we already know from what we've seen in the sample.
It sounds like coelacanths and oilfish
maybe found in the same kind of habitat.
Ardmann and his team head towards the local village
to see if they can find out more.
The island has a population of some 900 people,
most of them making a living from fishing.
Everyone thinks they're a fish expert.
Have you caught any of this fishes before?
Yeah. Ardmann: Yeah?
Including this one?
Yes, but this one normally,
we use to catch this fish at night.
Right.
But what about the coelacanth?
This one is very rare.
Very rare, okay.
Ardmann then gets to meet a veteran fisherman
who gives him a crucial piece of information.
Let me ask you some questions.
Have you ever seen that fish before?
I caught one.
You caught one?
A small one.
A small one, yeah?
Did you catch that during the day or at night?
At night. -: At night, yeah?
And was it also in the same kind
of depths as this fish or, yeah?
About 200 to 300 meter deep.
Yeah?
Quite deep, yeah?
Okay.
Was that a long time ago or?
No, no.
Just recently?
This year.
This year, yeah?
Okay.
Ardmann asks the fisherman
to take them to the spot where he caught the coelacanth.
The Wuvulus have a traditional way
of catching fish from the deep.
They tie a strip of leaf to a stone
and use it as a weight to lower the line down
to 200 meters or more.
(calm music)
After that, it's simply a waiting game.
(thunder rolling)
Next morning, a tropical storm is brewing.
(dramatic music)
Despite the difficult conditions,
the crew continues to prepare the sub for another dive.
They want to get as close as possible to the shore.
Then the plan is to follow the coral reef wall
down into the deep.
(dramatic music)
Once underwater, they're sheltered from the storm above.
And they discover that the reef drops straight down.
Surface Nadir, passing through 60 meters.
Conditions are good, visibility is good.
We're on the face of the wall.
They head for the location
pointed out by the fisherman.
Let's go down here.
A large fish is lurking inside a crevice,
could it be the coelacanth?
No, it's not.
It's a kind of grouper fish.
The team seem a bit disappointed.
(exclaims)
But then, a massive grouper swims
right up to the sub's window.
(foreboding music)
It's a giant, maybe a meter long.
(foreboding rolls)
As groupers mature,
they are known to move into deeper water.
It peers into the sub, fascinated by the alien visitors.
This is a novelty even for Ardmann.
(foreboding rolls)
(calm music)
Surface Nadir, depths, 200 meters.
All systems good.
It's the fisherman's anchor, you see that?
Oh, yes.
It's the weight from a deep sea line.
This maybe the place
where the fisherman caught the coelacanth.
(mysterious music)
Might be a stuck sea lily right there.
(mysterious music)
It's another sea lily
confirming that they're now entering the twilight zone,
the threshold into the lost world.
Creatures like this are few and far between.
These waters are barren, sustaining very little life.
(mysterious music)
But something is floating towards the sub.
(mysterious music)
(indistinct talking)
They's like that for sure.
(mysterious music)
It's a nautilus, another living fossil
once common in the shallow seas
but now, largely confined to the deep.
Surface Nadir, we have a nautilus.
Its large shell contains
gas-filled flotation chambers
with much it controls its buoyancy and depths.
And it moves by squirting water out through a siphon,
a form of jet propulsion.
The team have already had superb views
of two primeval creatures,
it's a promising beginning.
(mysterious music)
They're now at a depth of 200 meters.
Ardmann notices that the surrounding seascape
is gradually changing.
(majestic music)
Still looks like the twin here,
(mumbles) of caves.
It's (mumbles), is it?
The rocks are riddled with holes.
These caves are formed thousands of years ago
by wind and waves eroding the limestone cliffs
of a small island that is now sunk beneath the sea.
(mysterious music)
There could be a coelacanth hiding in one of these crevices.
The team decides to embark
on the systematic search of the caves.
Day after day, they dive for eight hours at a time.
But it's not easy to find a fish hiding in the dark.
Getting the sub close to holes and crevices
in strong currents is a challenge.
It seems an endless task as they check hundreds of caves.
Nothing seen.
Have coelacanths already been fished
to extinction in these waters,
or are they too shy to reveal themselves?
(gentle music)
It's frustrating and they have nothing to show
for their efforts but sheer exhaustion.
The team faced a difficult decision.
Should they stay or move to another site?
After much consideration, Ardmann decides
to take his chances on the new location.
They head east towards the Kaniet Islands 200 miles away.
(gentle music)
Far out in the Pacific, the Kaniet islands
are still uninhabited.
(gentle music)
Untouched by man, the coral reefs are healthy
and well preserved.
(gentle music)
And the water is rich in marine life.
(gentle music)
Ardmann hopes that here in these pristine waters,
they may find the creature they're looking for.
(gentle music)
The sub descends into the crystal blue water.
The team have their hopes set high.
Even at 200 meters, the light still penetrates.
The water is exceptionally clear.
Wow.
Oh, they're all around us, holy shit.
They're everywhere.
The team are astounded
by the sheer numbers of fish at these depths.
It's unlike anything they've seen before.
(gentle music)
Suddenly, they come across a whole complex of caves.
Catacombs in there.
Jesus.
(gentle music)
Openings large and small
lie in the surface of the rock.
(gentle music)
Some are so large that the submersible
could easily fit inside.
(gentle music)
A large grouper disappears into a hole.
This place definitely has potential.
(gentle music)
Great point was rich with interesting caves
but strong current.
To find their quarry,
Ardmann has brought along a new gimmick.
It's a compact camera called the drop cam
that can be taken down into the deep.
The back of bait is tied to the front of the camera.
Oh, but it goes straight there.
And within minutes,
it's attracted attention.
Oh, no, no (laughs).
(exclaiming)
That's the end of our--
A huge grouper has ripped the bait bag
right off together with the arm of the rig.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Surface Nadir, we were just attacked
by a very large grouper and he tore the whole bait arm
of the front of the frame.
(upbeat music)
Back on their mother ship,
the technicians hurried to build a second system.
(upbeat music)
They managed to assemble all the parts
and even replaced the frame with a sturdier one.
(upbeat music)
Is that okay?
Okay.
The camera is rigged again
and the contraption will be left for the next 24 hours.
The drop cam uses red light
the deep-sea creatures can't detect.
This should allow us to see the animals behaving naturally.
A nautilus has been lured in by the bait.
And it's soon joined by another.
(cartoony music)
The new comer seems to be watching the first with interest.
(cartoony music)
Now, it's trying to pull the first one off the bait.
(cartoony music)
With a strong arm tactics and jet propulsion,
it wrenches its rival off the food.
(cartoony music)
It's a surprisingly vigorous battle
between these two living fossils.
(cartoony music)
Down in the deep, food is so scarce
that every morsel is heavily contested.
(cartoony music)
The large bag of bait continues to attract others
and is soon the center of a feeding frenzy.
(cartoony music)
(suspenseful music)
It's the last day of the expedition.
Aboard the Alucia, preparations are underway
for the final dive.
The dome is given a good clean
and the crew also decides to change the lights on the sub.
One light is replaced with a red one
since it works so well with the trap cam.
He'd made decrease visibility a little
but it will ensure that they don't scare off the animals.
Still optimistic.
We don't get the mare, looking forward to this last dive
and crossing fingers we get to it on the last dive.
It's happened before.
(questing music)
Surface Nadir, depth 210 life spawn okay,
heading south.
They have entered the twilight zone.
It's time to switch off the bright lights
leaving only the red.
(questing music)
It's working.
The fish seem unperturbed by the large sub above them.
And then.
(mumbles) has gotta go from,
he really is (mumbles)
This is gonna be awesome.
(exclaiming)
A massive grouper attacked the fish.
A ferocious predator like this would like to scare off
any coelacanth in the area.
(questing music)
Ardmann decides to take the sub down even further.
(questing music)
Surface Nadir, depth 275 meters,
last border cave.
(questing music)
This deep, it's virtually pitch-black
and there's almost no sign of life.
(questing music)
It seems unlikely they'll find anything here.
Just as the crew are debating whether to turn back.
There's a fish there having bright eyes.
Wide eyes.
You like the wide eyes.
You know what fish has wide eyes.
Very suspicious.
Then you go straight to that.
It's a big tube, whatever it is.
Oh, there's a couple of them.
Oh, shit, is this what, this could be it.
This is coelacanth.
This is it, mate.
Yeah.
We've got him (laughs).
High five!
Good boys.
We nailed him.
Where?
Right?
At least I think that, well, oh, let's make sure,
let's make sure, let's make sure.
My God!
Oh, they got something.
Yeah, it's them--
Are you sure, 'cause there's something else?
There's something, they've got a weird something on it.
What is this?
Well, that's a cast--
That's not a coela, that's something else.
But maybe right behind it, I--
Bizarre animal though, look at it.
Oh shit.
But there's a second above which--
You gotta film this.
(laughs) You gotta film this.
It's a creature Ardmann has never seen before.
It swims slowly along the seafloor.
It has a large head like a coelacanth but a spotted body.
And beneath its belly,
there are strange appendages or feelers.
Ardmann has no idea what this fish could be.
Is it possibly a new species?
Ah, I thought we had a--
What do we gotta call this fish?
An unknown species?
Talking of weird fish.
Man, look at these things.
Surface Nadir,
we have two coelacanths-looking fish.
Variety, unknown.
There is astonishment in the control room.
It sounds like, they have just found a new fish,
so it looks very much like a coelacanth.
(machine operating)
That dorsal fin is exactly
carbon copy of a coelacanth.
The strange fish shows little sign of fear
even when the sub moves in closer.
A second one is lurking further back in the shadows.
(mysterious music)
Ardmann is fascinated and decides to follow
the mysterious creature.
(mysterious music)
But then to their surprise,
the fish starts to swim towards them.
It appears to be interested in the sub.
It's a close encounter of their third kind.
(indistinct talking)
Wow, that is close.
He thinks we're shelter.
So it's about 1.2 meter of fish.
And the other?
1.2, 1.--
It's a weird fish.
As it passes overhead,
it clearly extends its curious appendages.
(gentle music)
Could it be using these to feel the surface of the dome?
(gentle music)
And then, it even swims upside down.
(gentle music)
It clearly has three antennae-like structures
on both sides of the body.
(gentle music)
It's, wow!
They look like that tripod.
Feelers on the bottom here at the animal.
(gentle music)
The fish appears to stroke the rock
with its antennae as if exploring the surface.
(gentle music)
The longest antennae extend just beyond the fins
and the animal is able to move them at will.
(gentle music)
The tips of the strange feelers flatten out to a point
and seem to be soft and tactile.
(gentle music)
Should we, do you wanna do some red light filming?
Yes. -: Yeah?
Ardmann switches to the red light
to see if the animal will behave any differently.
(gentle music)
It heads off slowly towards the back of the cave.
(gentle music)
It seems to have lost interest in the sub
and continues with its normal life.
(gentle music)
It swims into a narrow crevice.
(gentle music)
Though they wait, it doesn't appear to be coming out again.
This must be its home.
(gentle music)
Slowly circling around, it appears to be checking out
its surroundings gently propping the walls with its feelers.
For creatures that live in the dark,
other senses such as touch become more important.
(gentle music)
Ardmann is intrigued, what is this strange creature?
(gentle music)
The crew on the surface try to identify the fish
from the information they've received from the sub.
They come to the conclusion that it might be a new species
that was only recently described.
He says there's something there
but a not as pronounced as the coelacanth.
In fact, it turns out
that the fish was first discovered in Japan in 2008.
The specimen is preserved
in the Museum of Natural History in Kanagawa.
Dr. Hiroshi Senou who first described it,
explains that it's a very rare kind of deep-sea fish.
It has a skeleton made mostly of cartilage
and a strange soft gelatinous nose.
There are only four recorded specimens
of this jellynose in the world.
This is one of them.
(calm music)
Dr. Senou points out its strange pelvic fins
which are typical of the species.
They have evolved into three long, narrow fin rays
which look like antennae.
(calm music)
It's almost certainly the same fish that Ardmann
and his team encountered in the deep.
(calm music)
I think this video that we are able to capture
of the jellynose is probably in many ways more valuable
than any video of coelacanths,
given that this group is so poorly known
and there's really no existing footage
of anywhere near that quality.
In fact most of the photos and video that we have
are just simply dead specimens,
so this is really spectacular footage
and I think that there's a lot that's gonna be able
to be learned about this special group of fishes.
(questing music)
The jellynose hides in narrow caves
deep within the ocean
which is perhaps why it was not caught
until the 21st century.
Even today, we know virtually nothing about it
and how it lives in the deep.
The expedition's footage provides the first clues
as to how this curious fish
may have managed to survive at such depths.
A tiny fish swims up to the jellynose
and briefly comes into contact with its sensitive feelers.
Surprisingly, the jellynose doesn't react.
(questing music)
Even though food is scarce in this environment,
the jellynose showed no sign of feeding
the entire four hours that the team followed it.
Like many deep-sea fish, it seems to conserve energy
by swimming very slowly in the cold water
and can therefore survive on very little food.
(gentle music)
But how did the jellynose come to live
in one of the most inhospitable places on earth?
Genetic analysis suggests that its ancestors evolved
in shallow seas, some, a hundred million years ago.
At first they prospered, but were then driven
into deeper water by the arrival of powerful predators.
In this impoverished environment,
they evolved to withstand periods of starvation.
And this may be how the jellynose survived the extinctions
that befell many other species on earth.
(gentle music)
66 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled the land
and plesiosaurs dominated the seas.
(powerful music)
A gigantic meteorite, 10 kilometers in diameter
collided with our planet with catastrophic consequences.
(explosion)
The intense heat burnt over half the earth's forests.
(explosion)
(waves splashing)
Giant tsunami swept across the continent.
(waves rushing)
(dramatic music)
It may well be this that wiped out the dinosaurs.
(dramatic music)
(heavy raindrops falling)
The shock waves of the impact released underground sulfur
into the atmosphere which turned into deadly acid rain.
The sulfuric rain killed off the plankton
in the shallow seas
and many marine animals including the plesiosaurs
are thought to have died of starvation.
(dramatic music)
The acid rain, however, never reached the deep.
It was neutralized by seawater on the way down.
(dramatic music)
So many creatures that lived in the deep seas
were able to survive.
Already adapted to living in the sparse environment,
these animals now had an advantage.
(powerful music)
Moving slowly to conserve energy
and able to endure periods of starvation
helped the ancestors of the jellynose
to survive in the deep.
That certainly is Ardmann's theory.
It's clearly something from the lost world.
It would appear that these animals actually have a,
an ecology or behavior which is very similar
to the coelacanths, so it's dwelling inside of caves.
It's well camouflaged against the back of the cave
hovering there, but then if it's disturbed it will come out.
From our limited observations from the submarine,
it appeared that these fishes really are probably
quite dependent on the caves where they're living.
So I would say that the caves are probably
a very important part of their habitat.
(calm music)
The yearlong research has come to an end.
Ardmann and his team have discovered a lost world
of pre-historic creatures still living in the deep waters
of the tropical seas.
(calm music)
A nautilus, virtually unchanged for 400 million years
slowly bobbing through the dark water.
(calm music)
And sea lilies standing tall on the ocean floor.
(calm music)
It's a world where time stood still
and living fossils survive.
(dramatic music)
This barren environment where most marine creatures
could not survive has cradled these ancient animals
in a virtual time capsule.
(gentle music)
Exploring these tropical seas
just 200 meters below the surface,
we found a very unique and special place
unlike anything that I've ever experienced before.
The deep sea of course is a very vast area.
Interestingly, very little explorations ever been done
in this region and it's largely still a mystery.
But by using cutting-edge technology
like the Triton submersible,
we've been able to really shed some light
on this very unique place
and understand much better this lost world.
(dramatic music)
The astounding encounter
with the bizarre fish, the jellynose
that leads a austere life in the dark waters
was the highlight of the expedition.
(delightful music)
It was revealed that the deep sea still remain
a mysterious and unexplored world.
(delightful music)
Over 90% of our oceans are so deep
but they're normally far beyond our reach
and they remain the least known part of our planet.
(delightful music)