The deep ocean is no barren mud pit—it’s a hidden world packed with glowing sea cucumbers, glass sponges, and entire ecosystems built around fallen whales. Dive into the abyss to see what scientists are discovering, why it took so long to explore, and what could put this strange underwater world at risk. #Ocean #Science #Wildlife
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0:09 - Why the Deep Ocean Matters
1:39 - From Underwater Desert to Biodiversity
3:31 - Abyssal Animals and Their Adaptations
5:08 - Whale Falls Create Deep-Sea Ecosystems
6:54 - Nodules and Hidden Abyssal Communities
8:37 - Stability Shapes Abyssal Life
9:18 - Exploration, Funding, and Seabed Resources
11:46 - Protecting the Deep-Sea World
Subscribe for more fascinating discoveries!
Tell us in the comments what you liked most about the video!
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@kramola_online
0:09 - Why the Deep Ocean Matters
1:39 - From Underwater Desert to Biodiversity
3:31 - Abyssal Animals and Their Adaptations
5:08 - Whale Falls Create Deep-Sea Ecosystems
6:54 - Nodules and Hidden Abyssal Communities
8:37 - Stability Shapes Abyssal Life
9:18 - Exploration, Funding, and Seabed Resources
11:46 - Protecting the Deep-Sea World
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:09Scientists have discovered the longest sea creature, the blackest animal in the world,
00:15a new species of giant woodlouse relative.
00:19When you look at news like this, you understand why the ocean depths draw researchers like a magnet.
00:26After all, this region of Earth gives modern zoologists perhaps the last hope of feeling like pioneers
00:32and making truly major discoveries. Humans are prone to surface chauvinism.
00:37This is where we live, reproduce, build society, and get most of our food,
00:42and whatever we do harvest from the sea comes from coastal and surface waters.
00:48It's no wonder that the field of biology didn't give much thought to the deep ocean floor right away
00:52and only began studying it in earnest at the end of the 19th century.
00:58Meanwhile, the ocean floor is a vast area, more than twice the size of all landmass combined,
01:03so the ecological conditions down here are just as diverse as those on the surface.
01:09Comparing the ocean floor to the surface of another planet is justified for many reasons,
01:13and not just because of its area.
01:15Not only are living conditions down here completely different from those on the surface,
01:19but we often have only the vaguest idea of how these ecosystems actually function.
01:25Almost every one of us has heard about coastal coral reefs
01:28and the hydrothermal vents teeming with life at depths of over 2 kilometers.
01:33The discovery of the latter was one of the greatest breakthroughs in 20th century biology.
01:38But it's so much more interesting than that.
01:40And viewing the ocean floor as a barren landscape just isn't true.
01:44After all, for quite a long time, scientists thought that, by and large, it was an underwater desert.
01:51There are several reasons to think so, and all of them seemed completely logical.
01:55The absence of light leads to no local production of organic matter or oxygen.
02:00The water's oxygen levels depending almost entirely on its initial concentration.
02:05And since the water here is extremely calm,
02:08its layers can be completely depleted of oxygen, even with moderate consumption.
02:13It's also very cold here, and virtually the only possible source of food
02:18is the snowfall slowly drifting down from above, made up of organic particles.
02:24These are the remains of dead surface plankton,
02:27animal waste and runoff of organic matter from continents,
02:31or rather, whatever other marine creatures living closer to the surface didn't manage to eat.
02:36This marine snow is extremely sparse,
02:39and not only does it provide little potential food,
02:41but it also creates an additional problem.
02:44Over thousands of years, despite their low density,
02:47these particles still form deposits several hundred meters, or even a kilometer, thick.
02:52In other words, the surface here is soft,
02:54and colonial animals essentially have nothing to hold on to.
02:57Thus, the recently popular image of the abyssal plain
03:01was an endless, flat expanse of thick mud,
03:05cold and oxygen-poor,
03:07where nothing should be able to live.
03:09However, starting in the second half of the 20th century,
03:12when technological advances led to orders of magnitude increases
03:15in the number of observations and sites studied,
03:18zoologists began to notice discrepancies with this theoretical picture.
03:22It turned out that the abyss,
03:25although looking rather barren at first glance,
03:27exhibits surprisingly high biodiversity.
03:31Since the primary food source is the marine snow
03:34that has fallen to the seafloor,
03:35the most prominent herbivorous inhabitants of the abyss
03:38are sea cucumbers,
03:39which consume it in vast quantities.
03:41These are ideal species.
03:44They are indicators of the abyss's ecological health,
03:47and to some extent, ecosystem engineers.
03:49Almost all members of the order can not only crawl,
03:53but also swim to move to a new feeding ground,
03:55or escape a predator.
03:56And this one has evolved even further.
03:59Thanks to its fins,
04:01it can rise a kilometer above the seafloor,
04:04and its gut even glows right through its body.
04:07In short, in some areas of the ocean floor,
04:10you can find more than 200 species of large
04:13and medium-sized animals alone
04:15in just a few square kilometers,
04:17which is a pretty decent number for marine fauna.
04:19What's even more interesting,
04:22more than 80% of the organisms,
04:24and in some places more than 90% retrieved
04:27from abyssal ecosystems,
04:28turn out to be new to science.
04:30So what supports such diversity down there?
04:34Fish represent the top of the local food chain,
04:37but even they prefer to conserve energy.
04:39The tripod fish can look like a statue,
04:42standing completely motionless on its slender fins,
04:45waiting for prey.
04:46The adult couldn't be more different from its fry,
04:49which resembles a butterfly,
04:50and actively moves around in search of food.
04:53Tripod fish have been observed by submersibles
04:56at depths exceeding 5 kilometers,
04:58even though they look much more like familiar fish
05:00than many other abyssal species.
05:02Meanwhile,
05:03the terrifying anglerfish are mostly found closer to the surface.
05:08As it turns out,
05:09the monotonous surface isn't all that monotonous.
05:12After all,
05:13plenty of things fall from above,
05:14even down to the deepest seafloor.
05:17Logs,
05:17coconut shells,
05:18ships,
05:19plastic trash.
05:20These objects break the monotony of the abyssal plain,
05:23creating a slightly different microclimate,
05:25shelter from predators,
05:26and suddenly,
05:27a fallen tablespoon becomes a bustling shared home for sea creatures.
05:31The most extreme and important example of this
05:34is a whale fall.
05:36Suppose somewhere out in the open ocean,
05:38a whale dies.
05:40A whale's body itself is slightly denser than water,
05:43so as soon as the air and methane leave it,
05:46the carcass sinks rapidly down to abyssal depths,
05:49so fast that it arrives almost completely intact.
05:52An ecosystem instantly forms on it,
05:54exceptionally rich in biomass and bio-biversity.
05:57As the carcass decomposes,
05:59this ecosystem goes through four stages,
06:02led respectively by scavengers for up to a year and a half,
06:05then bone colonizers for up to four and a half years,
06:08sulfophilic bacteria for up to a hundred years,
06:11and the final stage,
06:13where the mineral remains of the whale's bones
06:15become a sort of reef,
06:16attracting sessile organisms.
06:19Many species found on whale carcasses are highly specialized.
06:23They are found nowhere else in the ocean,
06:25and it still remains a mystery how they find fresh corpses.
06:30The carcass doesn't have to be a whale.
06:32It could be a shark or even an alligator,
06:34but much poorer communities develop on them.
06:38Whales can be compared to gardeners creating gardens of Eden
06:41on the ocean floor with their own bodies,
06:43connecting the surface and the abyss.
06:44Yet these gardens are so different
06:47from the usual abyssal environment
06:49that they could rather be considered
06:50semi-autonomous ecosystems within an ecosystem.
06:54When it became technically possible
06:55to scan the abyss with echo sounders and radar,
06:58it was discovered that the surface itself
07:00isn't entirely uniform.
07:01It is far from being just silt everywhere.
07:04Vast, albeit fairly localized,
07:06areas of the abyss turned out to be
07:08unexpectedly covered with metals.
07:10Not solid ore, of course,
07:12but large, closely spaced chunks.
07:15Ferromanganese nodules that contain
07:16not only manganese and iron,
07:18but also cobalt, nickel, and many other metals.
07:20To this day, scientists do not know for sure
07:23either the mechanisms of their formation
07:25or their growth rate.
07:26But what is known for certain
07:28is how many opportunities they provide
07:30for sessile and colonial organisms,
07:32like sponges and polyps.
07:34After all, this is exactly the kind of solid surface
07:37they can attach to.
07:38It turns out that on nodules,
07:40rock-out crops,
07:41and at the foot of seamounts,
07:43the main biomass is formed by sessile filter feeders
07:45and sessile predators as well,
07:47while on the silty abyssal plains
07:49the tone is set by actively moving predators
07:51and detritivores.
07:52In the 21st century,
07:54zoologists discovered the complete fallacy
07:56of early notions depicting the abyss
07:58as an endless monotony.
08:01Here, for example,
08:02is one of the most beautiful organisms
08:05of the abyss.
08:06Glass sponges growing on nodules
08:08and rocky outcrops,
08:09named so for their skeletons
08:11that look as though they are made of glass
08:12of phenomenally intricate design.
08:14Glass sponges are favorites
08:16among bionics experts
08:18and medical researchers
08:19who see great potential
08:20for practical inventions
08:22in studying them.
08:23And this is a sea anemone,
08:25photographed at a depth of 4.1 kilometers.
08:28As predators possessing tentacles
08:30three meters long,
08:31this specimen attached itself to a sponge,
08:34which in turn grows
08:35on a ferromanganese nodule.
08:37Finally, abyssal animal life
08:39can flourish not even despite,
08:41but thanks to their climate,
08:42it is a realm of stability and permanence,
08:45devoid of seasons,
08:46pressure fluctuations,
08:47and temperature fluctuations.
08:49In short,
08:50it is the ideal place
08:51to live at an extremely slow pace
08:53and gradually become more specialized
08:54within a narrow niche.
08:56After all, there are no crises,
08:57but there is an unconditional basic income.
09:01Paradoxically,
09:02an analogy with the richest tropical rainforests
09:05is appropriate here.
09:06In equatorial forests,
09:08the climate is also characterized
09:09by stability,
09:10and seasonal changes are heavily muted,
09:13which,
09:13according to the same view on speciation,
09:15allows adaptive evolution
09:16to come to the fore.
09:18Why did the abyssal zone
09:19let us deceive ourselves for so long?
09:22It's all about the technology.
09:24Even military submarines
09:26throughout the 20th century
09:27couldn't dive deeper
09:28than 700 to 750 meters,
09:31and specialized manned submersibles
09:33were a rare luxury.
09:35And only with the development
09:36of unmanned underwater vehicles,
09:38capable of using manipulator arms
09:40to collect seafloor sediment samples
09:41and biological specimens
09:43at depths of up to 6 kilometers,
09:45did the abyssal zone
09:46finally begin to truly reveal itself
09:48to researchers.
09:50Yet the countries genuinely interested
09:52in biological research
09:53at such extreme depths
09:54and possessing the capabilities
09:56to conduct it
09:56can be counted on one hand.
09:59First and foremost,
10:01these are the US,
10:02the UK,
10:02and Japan.
10:04There is also a small number
10:05of intergovernmental organizations
10:07that occasionally fund
10:09deep-sea exploration,
10:11such as the Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance
10:13and the International Seabed Authority.
10:16The latter recently funded
10:18one of the most comprehensive surveys
10:19of a Pacific seabed area,
10:21the Abyssaline Project.
10:23However,
10:25such large organizations
10:26are often primarily interested
10:28in the economic returns
10:29of scientific research.
10:30Moreover,
10:31alliances and regulators
10:32don't own research vessels themselves,
10:34but rather charter them
10:35from governments
10:36for specific projects.
10:37Paradoxically,
10:38despite the demands
10:39of our time and science,
10:41the situation
10:42with national research fleets
10:43is only getting worse.
10:45Ships are aging
10:46and being decommissioned,
10:47and the research fleet
10:48is shrinking.
10:49Against this backdrop,
10:51billionaires have become
10:52prominent players
10:53in the field
10:53of deep-sea exploration.
10:55In recent years,
10:56the foundations
10:57of Alfred Sloan,
10:58Wendy and Eric Schmidt,
10:59and several other billionaires
11:01have been involved
11:02in organizing
11:02and funding
11:03some of the largest
11:04zoological projects,
11:05establishing new research institutes,
11:07and building
11:08state-of-the-art
11:08scientific vessels.
11:09Here is footage
11:10of the launch
11:11of the world's
11:12largest research vessel,
11:13built with private funds.
11:15But of course,
11:16the fat cats
11:17never shell out money
11:18just for the sake of it.
11:19The scientists' crusade
11:21into unidentified abyssal,
11:22ecosystems,
11:23is being carried out
11:24simultaneously
11:25with geological surveys
11:26by major corporations.
11:28Remember the
11:29ferro-manganese nodules?
11:30In them alone,
11:32manganese reserves
11:32amount to at least
11:33300 billion tons.
11:35And then there's
11:36oil and gas,
11:37schools of commercially
11:38important fish,
11:39and all of this
11:40is right near
11:40the seabed surface.
11:42And all of this
11:42needs to be studied,
11:44preferably under the guise
11:45of scientific research.
11:46Well,
11:47let's hope that humanity
11:49has enough sense
11:50not to destroy
11:51this gigantic,
11:52but actually quite fragile,
11:53deep-sea planet,
11:54which seems as if
11:55it's located
11:56in another part
11:57of the galaxy,
11:58rather than
11:58right under our noses.
12:00And that's all for today.
12:02Thank you friends
12:02for taking the time
12:03to watch this episode,
12:05and leave a like
12:05and let us know
12:06in the comments
12:07whether you enjoyed
12:07the episode.
12:08Thank you for caring,
12:10and see you next time
12:11on our channel.