INVISIBLE WORLD OF THE DEEP

[Music] expedition through stories of man's quest for the unknown through the steaming jungles across the burning desert to the depths of treacherous seas and to the highest mountains of the world expedition actual films of the great expeditions of our time recorded as they happen your host is the famous deep-sea diver author and Explorer Colonel John Dee Craig and here is Colonel Craig I've spent so much of my own life exploring the bottom of the sea that tonight's expedition is particularly fascinating to me and I know it will be to you first of all it takes us to an area seldom seen by anyone the bottom of the Pacific off the coast of Russia and China and secondly there we'll get to see an incredible variety of sea life form so strange they seem to belong to another planet and finally this expedition was made by a group of the foremost Russian underwater scientists and photographers we'll get underway in just one moment first this brief message I've seen a great many undersea pictures in my day and also made quite a few myself but I have to admit that tonight's Russian expedition film is really exceptional naturally I was curious to see what other countries are doing in underwater exploration what kind of equipment they use and most of all what kind of life there is in an area that's been unexplored by Americans and their equipment is every bit as up-to-date as ours their photography is breathtaking and among many other things they've come back with some of the most spectacular close-ups of sea life that I've ever seen the whole film left me on the edge of my seat and so this is one si story I want to tell myself the expedition starts here in the far western Pacific off the Asian continent the research ship from the Russian Pacific Institute is standing by to lure its observation chamber so that Nina yarosh Nina chief expedition photographer and her colleagues can film undersea life under the best possible conditions this chamber is very much like those I've used myself in deep-sea work the lid is closed tightly air is pumped in at atmospheric pressure and the whole contraption can be lowered or raised just as fast as the winches can work within the divers safe from the dreaded bands the only thing he has to worry about is getting claustrophobia the letters which looked like CCC P stand for USSR in Russia even at great depths there's no pressure on the diver and he can work in relative comfort a fairyland awaits the Explorer in the mysterious gloom of the underwater jungle you can't help being spellbound by the incredible diversity of life a magic world where plants look like animals and animals like plants take the sea squirts rooted like bright red plants to the rocks yet they're animals feeding on tiny organisms by filtering the seawater that enters through the opening at the top our cameraman has spotted something it's a big mean-looking bass very much like the calico bass of the Californian kelp mate it's a law of nature that the big ones feed on the smaller ones these fellows usually hunt alone and closely guard their favorite feeding ground against others of their species a real fight develops of some unwelcome guests in truths [Music] these dancing fellows are small squid peculiar creatures with tentacles growing from their heads some species reach a tremendous size 50 feet or more they're literally jet propelled ejecting a stream of water which propels them backwards at fantastic speed [Music] I've always been fascinated by the odd crustaceans known as the hermit crab you find them all over the world always living in somebody else's discarded house this one has outgrown his old house and is moving to a larger one it's quite unusual to see them actually do it until it has its soft abdomen safely inside the new shell the hermit crab is very vulnerable some of these crabs are not at all particular anything will do for a home even a sponge some are so welcome a flage they're practically impossible to spot a wise precaution in this world of eat or be eaten like our own oceans the sea off Asia abounds in many kinds of crabs most of them very tasty like ours these Asian crabs have a strangely contradictory nature they can be touchingly friendly with each other or they can be pugnacious and bellicose sometimes it's difficult to tell which is which but in this case there's not much doubt crabs can swim or crawl but you'd think these Japanese combs were forced by nature to lead a completely sedentary life not so they like the squid have developed their own form of jet propulsion many of the creatures we've just seen live on tiny marine organisms so small they're invisible to the naked eye an important phase of the expedition is to study this microscopic world the plankton that is lured to collect typical specimens when the net is raised the water filters through the catch remains behind in a container at the bottom of the net and thousands upon thousands of tiny creatures and plants fit easily into one glass jar [Music] this good-looking young lady from the Russian Pacific Institute is about to let us look into a microscopic world of astonishing beauty and diversity in a more fascinating world I've never seen life in a single drop of water the basis of all life tiny plants and animals translucent like their environment a tiny dweller of the ocean bed known as a Hydra polyp spreading its tentacles to catch creatures even smaller than itself a remarkable microscopic picture of a minut jellyfish and inside it an even smaller crayfish it has just swallow there was also a team of skin divers on this far-ranging expedition which covered much of the far eastern Pacific coast from China north to the Kamchatka Peninsula [Music] this is very interesting their camera is very similar to a French model I've used myself these Russians are using oxygen rebreather units with masks covering the entire head weird-looking but effective here we're in warm waters the ocean floor is covered with corals those strange minut creatures which take lime from seawater and build a skeleton on the outside of their bodies these are most unusual and beautiful close-ups of living corals in time these tiny coral polyps will build on each other and construct whole reefs battles and even islands [Music] not flowers but rapacious animals these are Sein enemies closely related to the coral polyps the slightest touch and the stinging tentacles paralyze a careless fish who quickly becomes a meal this type of outfit has advantages and disadvantages it's more difficult to see with devided goggles and with our single face plate but on the other hand this Russian mask covers the whole head and can't be accidentally knocked off a type of puffer fish [Music] another animal that looks like a vegetable is the needle skin creature known as the sea cucumber or Japan some species off the coast of China reach 3 feet in length the local people consider them a delicacy and diving for toppings is a thriving industry the sea cucumbers only one of the family of needle skinned animals that are known but a lot less useful is the starfish marine scientists are trying to control it because it destroys literally millions of dollars worth of edible shellfish every year [Music] we've been moving steadily north into colder waters the home of the large octopus and the Jumbo sized Kamchatka crab these crabs are usually sluggish by nature but to me this one looks more dead than alive full-grown these fellows reach three feet across we've had the deep-sea observation chamber and the skin divers now here's something very close to my own heart the good old hardhat diver I noticed they only patted him once on the helmet before he goes down our signal is twice otherwise it all looks very familiar the weights carry you down and suddenly you're in another world with the fish staring at you as though you were some kind of monster plunging into their domain [Music] apparently he's landed in a spot rich with specimens since he's rapidly filling his collecting bag [Music] [Applause] [Music] the kind of catfish his curiosity is greater than his caution now he's going to be part of the crews dinner [Music] [Applause] the Northern Pacific coast both east and west is full of octopuses they come in all sizes and this obviously is a big one but really none are as big as the stories told about them on a whole they are quite harmless an excellent close-up of how he breathes he inhales closes of Al blows the water out again through his tube which is also used for jet propulsion some of these scenes must have been shot from the deep sea observation chamber suspended not far away with our lady photographer aboard when she saw how big it was she must have become alarm thinking that perhaps the diver was in danger she signaled the captain and he in turn alerted the skin divers who were glad to have a little action this headlong dive shows one useful aspect of their peculiar head risk you could never dive like that with an ordinary faceplate because it would be knocked off by the impact the divers hold a quick conference in sign language frankly I don't think the diver was in too much danger but there's always a chance of an accident especially if both octopus and diver are frightened and the octopus gets a good grip on the man or his air hose [Music] [Applause] in any case this was a chance for the skin divers to show their skill with a speargun and for our lady photographer to come home with an exciting sequence [Music] it's not only the undersea world that we explore tonight the expedition will soon move north to terrific storms to a tiny island that is the home of a hundred thousand fur seals and will join them in just one moment [Music] the expedition now heads north toward the tiny sea islands of Sakhalin these are the northern whaling grounds and after having had a look at some of the smallest features of the sea we're now literally surrounded by the largest [Music] some of these fellows are over a hundred feet long there are many ships in these northern waters hunting the big whales even in bad weather [Music] sieze run in every direction here the wind blows one way the current goes another and almost always to see is choppy and unpleasant [Music] now we've reached the coast of sake in the distance the snow-covered cones of extinct volcanoes rise to a height of over 13,000 feet [Music] then the lookout spots our gold a tiny island surrounded by treacherous rocks even at the distance there's an almost deafening noise the combined racket of thousands of nervous seals mixing with the constant roar of the sea [Applause] getting ashore is tricky and sometimes wet and cool [Applause] there's obviously a hole in there and I can't see why these fellows don't learn [Music] on film it looks like a Keystone comedy but I bet these men didn't think it was funny at the time that water is cold despite the racket made by the landing the cameraman was lucky to sneak up unobserved on a very rare creature a sea otter whereas the Russians call it a cup Chat cup even playing happily in the surf [Music] [Applause] [Music] his fur is among the finest and most expensive in the world [Music] here he looks like a little beatnik in years past these valuable creatures were so mercilessly hunted that they almost became extinct now they're protected by law but our primary interest is the first sealed judging from the roar an enormous colony lives just on the other side of the island the landing is made here against the wind to avoid frightening the animals nina Arusha kena whom we saw earlier in the deep-sea observation chamber is in the lead with her heavy camera [Applause] [Laughter] [Applause] it was worth the climb to see this what a fantastic scene on a beach only 1,800 feet long there are at least 800,000 fur seals something like Coney Island on the fourth of July [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this is the animal that was hunted so ruthlessly in the last century that it almost disappeared from the face of the earth it looks absolutely chaotic but appearances are deceiving actually the colony has its own strict laws and woe to the individual that tries to break the rules fur seals are polygamous they live in family groups called harems with a single powerful male called a bull and many females call cows the bull maintain strict order in the harem intervening the moment he notices the slightest disturbance among the females [Applause] [Music] some harems are small with only a handful of cows others have as many as a hundred [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] very rarely do you see such a picture of pure family bliss mother father and little junior off to one side are the single males the bachelors who haven't yet managed to start their own families afraid of losing their females the married bulls won't let the bachelors approach the harems sometimes they even gang up on a bachelor to keep him out [Applause] but the more courageous PI over and over to break through that's when the real fighting begins the bulls attack the intruder fighting and pursuing him until he is chased from the edge of the hem [Music] [Applause] [Music] sometimes a bachelor tries to escape by breaking through other errands hoping that some of the females will follow him but that usually starts an incredible rumpus with thousands of seals joining in many rushing for the water [Applause] [Music] [Music] this is what they love best playing in the surf and catching fish they're so clumsy on the beach and so graceful in the water there's nothing that looks quite so contented as a steel scratchy each cow has only one pup but she can pick out from all the others but you'll see some cows actually watching over hole nurseries of babies but has always amazed me is that baby seals actually have to be taught to swim baby monkeys kittens puppies all kinds of warm-blooded four-footed animals know instinctively how to swim yet seals much better adapted for life in water have to get swimming lessons from their mothers but they do learn quick [Music] by the time they're six weeks old they're already fine swimmers [Music] the breeding season is over at the end of July by August most of the Bulls who fasted since their arrival in May get ready to leave for the open sea to feed again by November the females to lead with their babies it's been a good season for the Russian research group in its constant probe of the mysteries of the sea the Earth's last unknown frontier [Music] as an undersea Explorer I can appreciate what went into the making of tonight's film you just don't get shots like this on the first try or with second-rate equipment or with unskilled personnel but however they did it it certainly was a beautiful film next week we explore another remote region of the world it's an unusual film one I'm sure you won't want to miss until then this is John Craig saying thank you and good night [Music] [Music] 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