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Now, a nightmarish creature emerges from the deep. It looks like something out of Independence Day or a face hugger from Alien. What is it? Experts have no idea what it is or what it wants. It doesn't make any sense at all. I've never seen anything like it. The Gulf of Mexico, an oil platform 200 miles off the coast of Houston on one of the world's deepest drilling sites. November 11th, 2007, a deep sea dive team readies their remotely operated vehicle or ROV for a safety check of the rig's stabilizing crane wire cables secured to the seabed 8,000 ft below the waves. Above the surface, Superintendent Matt Dragna
remotely controls the vehicle. The depths that we're going to are way too great for a diver to access. You know, after 15,600 ft, a diver is just not a whole lot of use. And uh an ROV doesn't get tired. The ROV passes through 600 ft. This is as far as sunlight penetrates. The further down they go, the further they enter unchartered territory. At 7,900 ft, the depth of six Empire State Buildings, the ROV stops. The crew think they spot something wrong with the anchoring crane wire cables. We were looking for the crane wire and I said, "Well, there it is." And uh then I said there's another one and another one. There was multiple crane wires.
Dragna zooms in the onboard camera. It's not crane wires he's looking at. These are giant tentacles. This strange creature. It's kind of crazy looking. It's nothing like you would see on the surface. A multi-armed organism. It was go out of this world. The monster from the deep stares unnervingly at them for 30 seconds, then disappears back into the inky darkness of the ocean. Back on dry land, Dragna asks for help to identify this alien beast. All of a sudden comes this object that looks like the head of an axe with no handle with marionette strings hanging under it.
It looks like something out of Independence Day or a face hugger from Alien. What is it? Even after watching many hours of video footage down at extreme depths, I've never seen anything like this before. Biologists must now consider if the deep sea camera has found an alien species. Deep sea engineers servicing oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico film a bizarre tentacled beast 8,000 ft below the surface. Marine biologist Brendan Talwar studies the footage. There are things about this creature that he's never seen in any other living thing.
What's really strange about this animal is first the fins on the side of the head are really large. You notice this kind of elbow joint on the arms and tentacles that I've never seen before. Its distinctive features set it apart from any species known to science. This creature is really unique. It doesn't look like anything else I've ever seen. more like an alien than any creature from a textbook. But aliens don't need spaceships to travel. Asteroids are potential carriers for alien life forms. This might even explain life on Earth, a theory known as penseria.
Panspermia is this idea that life on Earth originated from some kind of seeding of organisms from other planets that seated the earth with life. Evidence suggests that life began on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. At around this time, millions of asteroids and comets smashed into the planet during the period known as the Great Bombardment. Meteorite fragments discovered in 1969 contain traces of amino acids. This leads scientists to believe that space rocks are carrying organic material across the galaxy.
Did space rocks carry the DNA of this alien creature to Earth from some far-flung planet to make a home 8,000 ft under the sea? Scientist John Pharaoh speculates that deep sea conditions might mirror those of an alien's original home. Actually, alien isn't a terrible word for it because the deep ocean is almost like a different planet. So if you look at temperature, pressure, light, it'll be different in the deep ocean than it is on land. So when you look at these very strange creatures, they're basically adapted to a different planet. Marine biologist Teresa Gley from the University of South Florida examines the film.
She looks at the proportions of the creature's body. This particular creature, we see a large headlike structure and some elongated arms that seem extraordinarily long for the size of his head. We most closely can relate that to a group of organisms, the sephopods, which includes the octopi and the squid. If we look even closer at the image and count the number of extensions from the body, we count 10. And that's unique to squid. Whatever its origin, the alien looking beast has some things in common with a group of sephopods known as Magnapina. Could this be the first ever sighting of an adult?
Researchers have found juveniles of this species before, but we've never caught an adult. So, that would be my best guess. The deep ocean is relatively unexplored and in our first foray into it, we're discovering very weird alien looking squid. So imagine what we can find if we look deeper. Now golf course cameras capture a maneater in a landlock lake near the 15th hole. It was one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen.
Experts are baffled. This is a shark. How did this shark get here? That puts a whole new meaning to the term water hazard, doesn't it? Carbrook Golf Course, 20 miles from the coastal city of Brisbane, Australia. Scott Wagstaff is general manager. My job really is just to make sure the place runs well in line with the members expectations. For years, Wag Staff hears rumors of something strange in the water hazard next to the 15th green. There was a bit of a myth around the club. It was almost like we had a Loch Ness monster in the lake.
Wagstaff knows there is no way for a shark to get into this landlocked lake. He staked out the water hazard to investigate what witnesses might be seeing in there when his camera captures something remarkable. They're in front of me. I couldn't believe my eyes. You see this fish swimming around the lake and then you see a fin. And it's obvious this isn't just any fish. This is a shark. This shark is just circled. Big fin. Probably a 6 to 7ft shark. swimming around in front of me. If I had the courage, I could have got down and touched the nose of the shark, but um I thought that might not have been a smart idea.
Wagstaff posts his Jaws clip online, baffling the experts. What is a shark doing in a lake on a golf course? Wild weather expert George Karunis hears about the remarkable footage. He wonders if this could be evidence of a real life shark NATO. The idea of a shark NATO has been made popular by Hollywood. But here's the thing. There is a nugget, a grain, if you will, of truth behind that idea. Karunis has researched many cases of animals inexplicably picked up and transported somewhere outside of their natural habitat. Throughout history, there are all kinds of stories of
creatures raining down from the sky, frogs, and even fish. In the past, witnesses thought this was the work of mischievous gods or spirits. But today, scientists believe that freak weather patterns are responsible. Sharks are big. They're heavy. But there are some weather phenomena like water spouts or tornadoes that could pick up something as big and as heavy as a shark. Wind speeds in tornadoes have been measured at up to 300 mph. The strongest storms can rip whole houses from their foundations and snatch 20 ton trucks into the air. Overwater, tornadoes become water spouts, which could easily carry off a 300 lb shark.
Well, if one of these happens over top of a school of fish or a group of frogs, it's totally conceivable that those could be lofted up into the storm and then dropped maybe miles away. Is it possible for it to rain sharks? A deadly shark lurks in a landlocked lake on a golf course, baffling investigators. Wild weather expert George Karunis believes it could be evidence of a shark picked up and dropped by a powerful storm, a shark NATO. Weather phenomena like water spouts or tornadoes in particular are well known for ripping apart the landscape and lofting all
kinds of debris up in the air. Marine biologist Brendan Talwis studies marine predators. He believes the way sharks behave in a storm undermines the shark NATO theory. Typically, if a big storm comes through, what we generally think happens with big fish like that is they go to deeper water. Talwir analyzes the alignment of the shark's fins and it leads him to suspect this is one of the most dangerous fish in the world.
It certainly looks like a bull shark. You can see that the first dorsal fin starts right above the pectoral fins. Then you see the black tips on the fins which is characteristic of young bull sharks as well. What's interesting is that they have this really unique ability where they can actually tolerate fresh water. Oceanographer Terresa Gley of the University of South Florida is an expert in marine predators. She's alarmed to discover the golf course is home to one of nature's most lethal killing machines. Bull sharks are not a selective feeder.
They'll eat just about anything that they encounter. and they are one of the more aggressive sharks. Bull sharks attack and kill intruders because of their aggressive nature. They pack a powerful bite, enough to crack a human skull in a single chomp. These golfers are within putting distance of a grizzly death. The question is, how did the bull shark get into the water hazard on the golf course? Gley knows that people keep all kinds of exotic and dangerous animals, including sharks.
She suspects the golf course shark may be an unwanted pet. This could be the case in this water hazard that somebody's released a shark into the water. Bull sharks survive in aquariums, but they're hard to keep. They grow from 2 feet at birth to a massive 8 ft in maturity and quickly overwhelm even the biggest domestic tanks. Unless the pet owner is a James Bond villain, they will eventually have to get rid of their bull shark. This is actually not atypical. We find a lot of uh non-native species. People release them into the natural setting and they tend to adapt and sometimes
thrive. But zoologologist Roland Kay's thinks this is unlikely. This is Brisbane, Australia. It's right on the coast. So, you have to think, wouldn't they take him and dump him in the ocean instead of in a golf course lake? Course manager Scott Wagstaff comes up with a theory of his own. After researching the history of the lake, he uncovers evidence of a natural disaster that may hold the key to this fishy mystery. In the 1990s, we had about three floods over about 4 years with two river systems right next to our property. They burst their banks, flowed across the golf course, and all those waters went into the lake.
The golf course shark may have swam in during those floods over 20 years ago. I think it's very likely that the bull shark came to be in the water hazard because of a flooding event from the river. It's a plausible theory, but Wag Staff still doesn't have a definitive answer about where the shark came from. It's a bit of a scary situation really for the club. It was really only until each golfer possibly saw it for themselves that they really believed that we had something special in our lake. We don't want anyone going in there because if they do, it's a matter of life or death. They may not come out. For now, the question of how the shark got into the water hazard remains a
mystery that's lost none of its bite. Now, if you're afraid of jaws, how scared should you be of the beast that eats jaws? This is a shark having its face eaten by a monster. The shark is supposed to be at the top of the ocean food chain, but here it is being attacked by some strangely shaped unknown beast. This footage is so rare. I've never seen anything like it. What in the world would be eating a shark? The shimmering waters off the west coast of Florida. It could be the setting for another Jaws movie.
These waters are teeming with over 50 different species of shark, including deadly bull sharks and hammerheads. Even the great white shark, star of the Jaws movie, has been spotted patrolling the waters here. Each year, sharks attack about 80 people, killing six. April 2015, marine biologist and shark expert Brendan Talwar is releasing two captive sharks back into the wild. The underwater shark cage opens to let the predators out. There were two sharks in the cage. They were both in really good condition, so I would expect them to swim out of the cage when the door opens. But instead of the sharks swimming out, something else swims in to join them.
Something that marine biologists have never seen before. We see the shark swimming around. And then all of a sudden, this creature attaches itself to the shark. And the shark starts thrashing around, but we can't tell what exactly it is. Scientists realize they're witnessing a type of aggression that's never been seen before. You can see this creature latch on to the shark, to the face of the shark. It is not another shark. It looks like a prehistoric creature with a giant mouth and it's biting off the shark's head. What is this thing that is taking on a shark head on?
Danny Washington began her career in marine biology at the University of Miami. She knows these waters well. Now she's on the trail of this mysterious shark munching monster. Closely examining this footage, I can see that the predator has some type of exoskeleton, right? A compressed almost like shell. And that leads me to think that this could be a part of phylm arropota or the arthropods. Creatures with exoskeletons with their skeletons on the outside date back over 500 million years in Earth's history. We have lots of fossils of them because they're hard exoskeletons, that armor that can turn to fossils really easily.
But there's a problem. Arthropods are small creatures like cockroaches and scorpions. The only large ones we know of died out hundreds of millions of years ago, way before even the dinosaurs. There are arthropods called uriperids or sea scorpions that got between 8 to 10 ft long, and they had huge claws. They were the top predators in the oceans about 500 million years ago. As a result of this incredible footage, scientists are beginning to think the unthinkable. Makes me wonder if ancient arthropods still exist in the deep ocean. And is it the thing that's attacking the shark? At Toledo Zoo, curator Jay Hem studies the footage carefully.
For Heendel, the creature's hard-l lookinging spherical body shape makes him wonder if there might be some distant genetic link to creatures known as isopods. He has such a creature in one of his tanks. To my eye, this is the same animal that was in the video. But isopod crustaceans tend to be small and they definitely don't attack sharks. In fact, they don't attack anything. They're scavengers. They wait for food, like a fish from above to die or pieces of a fish to fall to the bottom and then they move to that and consume it. We see isopods in captivity that go months without food. And to have something be so reactive to a food item like that in the wild was just amazing to see. To marine biologist Danny Washington,
this sounds like some sort of bem movie mutant monster. She wonders if something in the water is transforming tiny docile crustaceans into mammoth angry shark munchers. In April 2010, the Deep Water Horizon oil platform collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico after a catastrophic explosion. An estimated 5 million barrels of crude oil spilled into the waters, creating an oil slick the size of West Virginia. It was bad enough that over 5 million barrels of crude oil escaped into the Gulf of Mexico. But what's worse were the chemical dispersants used to clear the oil afterward. 2 million gallons of chemical dispersant were used to clean up the spill.
Dispersants break up the surface oil into smaller droplets that mix with the water so that the oil sinks deeper into the sea. Local fishermen report devastating side effects on the fish population, Frankenstein mutations include shrimp born with no eyes, crabs with extra claws, and fish with visible tumors. Even deep sea creatures like isopods may not have escaped the chemical fallout. The bodies of those animals will sink to the bottom and scavengers like the isopod will feed off of the carcasses. But what that means is the isopod will
also ingest those chemicals and the oil accumulating the toxins. Did a mutation turn the isopod into an underwater exbeast monster? Is it possible that a passive scavenger like the isopod could mutate its behavior due to exposure to the chemicals and transform into an active predator? The fight to the death continues outside the cage with the shark appearing to be finished. The hunters are now the hunted.
Yeah, it's a bit frightening. I mean, these things, they resemble stormtroopers. They're really pretty incredible animals. Pretty terrifying. Experts can't be sure if the behavior of this giant isopod is a one-time event or if sharks face a genuine challenge to their underwater supremacy. Now, three friends out on a lake witness something sinister rising from the depths. Oh my god, that's a sea monster. This thing is huge.
This is a beast. This is the size of it. And it's headed in between these two boats. Could a predator right out of Jurassic World have resurfaced today? February 2013. Lock foil, Northern Ireland. Over 100,000 people live along the banks of this giant sea lake, which connects to the Atlantic Ocean. Locals rely on the lock for their livelihood. But many are also fearful of what might lie in its gloomy depths. Connell Malarkey and two of his friends set out on the lock for a day of fishing and fun. It was fairly nice day. We took the boats out from Lahali docks and sailed out for about 15 20 minutes. At first, everything is smooth sailing
until my friend Matthew shouts over at the top of his lungs, "Look over there, guys. It's a sea monster. Look over there. Something terrifying breaks the surface. We quickly turn around and we see this mysterious thing skimming through the water at a very high speed. Panic grips the friends as the hulking form closes in on their flimsy boats. It doesn't look like anything I've seen. The reality of the danger they're in becomes all too real.
The sound of it. It very easily could have flipped us over like a pancake and dragged us down to the depth of the sea with it. Reports of the sighting spreads. Stories of a monster in L foil strikes fear into the hearts of local residents. Experts are baffled by what the boys captured on their camera. It's big. It's lumpy. It's dark. I'm having images of Moby Dick. If a creature like that decided to attack or come after the boat, there could be some major consequences. Is it a sea serpent? A sea monster? What could it possibly be? Many fear a local legend is true.
The murky waters of L foil are reputed to hold monsters. Locals tell tales of another realm that lies beneath the surface. L foil is the gateway to the underworld. It's a land of the dead and it's guarded by a very fierce god. Maninan Mleier, the airy sea god. Manon and Mleier can take many forms. He could appear in the form of a monster. He's a god. He can do what he wants. Others believe that there must be a more rational explanation. Retired Army Colonel Daniel Davis believes it could be an extremely dangerous man-made object.
It actually has characteristics more of what I would expect actually what I've seen from submarines as they submerge. There are no submarine bases anywhere in Northern Ireland. But local historian Billy Kelly has a terrifying theory about where a submarine could have come from. There were real monsters in this lock very recently. Monsters which were responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. The German Nazi yubot. The yubot was one of the most terrifying weapons on the seas. Each hubot carried 22 torpedoes. It only took one to rip a ship apart.
There were literally thousands of Allied ships that were sunk. Something close to 66,000 men and women were killed in the attacks throughout the war. At the end of World War II, captured Ubot were brought through lock foil to the Londereerry Port. Those in good condition were kept as trophies. The rest are towed out of the lock. Some of them sink in the lock. It's estimated that of the 116 Ubot taken to be scuttled, almost 60 sank before they left the lock. It's possible that something ruptured and only now, 70 years later, is finally coming to the surface. The rusting hulks of these crippled Ubot will lie forever on the seabed. Their torpedo still a clear and present danger.
Majority of these things are still live munitions and could pose a threat to anyone who finds them, whether in the water or on the land. Live Nazi munitions washed up on the Irish coast have had deadly consequences in the past. Some years ago, a group of young children were killed by a German mine which exploded when they found it on the beach. A rogue Yubot torpedo could cause a tragedy on a similar scale. If this was a torpedo, this would have been a very, very dangerous situation for the guys on the boat. But Kelly believes the torpedo theory isn't possible. After all this time, the mechanics of
the torpedo would be completely destroyed and corroded. And under no circumstances could that propel itself through the water. Folklorist Reontath examines the footage. She believes that legends of aquatic monsters may have a basis in historical fact. This may be something from prehistoric times. Remains of prehistoric aquatic reptiles have been found all along the northern Irish coast. Not far from here, there was a discovery of a 200 million-year-old ichthyossaur skull.
Ichthyosaurs are a group of predatory dolphin-like reptiles that averaged between 6 and 13 ft in length. Analysis of the footage reveals that the small part of the creature visible at the surface is almost half the length of the 10-ft boat. If this is the top of its head, it must be a much larger species than either an ichthyossaur or even a plesiosaur. This a Jurassic Park aquatic monster that has just surfaced from the murky depths of the lock. Could this be the legendary prehistoric predator Mosasaurus?
Fast, speedy, and a big set of teeth. Truly the king of the ocean. Friends on a fishing trip witness something sinister rising from the deep. Its shape reminds some of a mosasaur, a predatory aquatic reptile. You think big sharks, forget about it. They weren't even on the radar yet. It was all about these giant aquatic marine reptiles. They ruled. The Mosasaurus is one of the largest aquatic predators to have ever existed. Fossil records show it could reach 56 feet in length and could weigh over 30,000 lb, over twice as large as the great white shark?
Beasts of this size would have a ferocious appetite. It ate plesiosaurus for breakfast and made mincemeat of sharks. Could one now have come to the surface in search of other prey? If a creature like that decided to attack or come after the boat crunch, you are supper. But Eric Hovlin knows that even if these prehistoric monsters survived to the present day, they couldn't be living here. The mosasaur was a beast of warm open oceans along those coastal environments. We've got the coastline up in this part of the North Atlantic, but it is cold.
Too cold for a mosasaur. Studying the video evidence, marine biologist Danny Washington considers whether the mysterious creature could be any of the aquatic species known to inhabit this area. They've seen killer whale pods passing through the lock. And there's a really high chance that this could be a killer whale. Orcas, also known as killer whales, are the top predator in today's oceans. It's right there in the name killer whale. They are avid hunters of larger whales, killers of whales. They kind of act like a pack of wolves, cooperating
together to bring down a bigger beast. Although there have been no recorded fatal attacks in the wild, orcas in captivity have killed several people. Research has revealed that being held in confined conditions can drive these predators insane. One killer whale called Telecom has been involved in three separate fatalities in the US. In 2010, trainer Dawn Brancho was snatched by Telecom in front of a horrified crowd and dragged into the tank where she was scalped and drowned. Could the confined environment of the lock trigger similar psychotic behavior?
Havlin re-examines the footage and notices something that casts doubt on the killer whale theory. The most distinctive things about an orca or a killer whale is that big dorsal fin. Where are you dorsal fin? I'm not seeing it. Scientists struggle to find a definitive explanation for this footage. But locals are convinced the lock contains a creature unknown to science. From what I've seen, this is a sea creature of an unknown origin. This footage raises questions of what actually is loving an Aerlock, how little we know about the sea, and what's under the sea. Next, a deep sea diving craft captures images of a Macob underwater graveyard.
I'd never seen anything like that before. A deadly ambush awaits on the ocean floor. This is where sea life goes to die. The eeriest underwater kingdom in the darkest depths. The Gulf of Mexico. May 8th, 2014. Biologist Eric Cordez and his team of researchers pilot their submersible 3,000 ft down into the abyss. My favorite thing about my job is being able to go places that no one's ever been. Cordez's mission to capture images of rarelyseen deep sea creatures.
The team hopes to find new species in the darkest depths of the ocean. It's like a big fishbowl except you're in the inside and you can see out. You can see, you know, right past your feet to the seafloor. You can see the surface when you're coming down. All the bioluminescence all around you. Cordez pilots the sub down towards the ocean floor. They reach 4,000 ft. Yeah, Sean, we're going to start driving towards target two and three. The sun's light can't reach this far down. The submersible's lights are the only thing piercing the darkness.
Out of nowhere, Cordez spots something alarming. Dead animals. I'd never seen anything like that before. Cordez has stumbled upon what biologists call a dead zone. You see dead crabs. You see this sort of blue gray color. These larger organisms really don't like to be in this fluid. Maybe they just come here to die. There are quite a few dead animals. We can see, you know, crabs lying on their back. We can see shrimplike animals that have obviously expired. The series of unexplained deaths appears to be random, but closer inspection of the footage reveals a possible clue. The dead creatures are contained in one area.
You have this strange vertical container, this tub sitting down there. And then inside the tub is a murky water, sort of a very dilute milk looking substance. It's a deadly lake, bizarrely deep beneath the sea. It sits on the seabed. It doesn't float up and kind of mix with the ocean above. It sits there like a lake uh on the ocean floor. You see this blue lake and then you realize, wait a second, we're already underwater. How is there a lake underwater? Marine biologist Eric Cortez discovers a lake of death deep beneath the waves in the Gulf of Mexico.
His findings hits the headlines. Other research teams send submersibles to the ocean floor in search of answers. It is suggested that man-made activity in the Gulf of Mexico may be to blame for this marine death zone. This is the Gulf of Mexico, an area famous for its oil production. And maybe this is connected with this poisonous lake we're seeing down here. For example, there was a Deep Water Horizon disaster where millions of barrels of oil spilled out of a bore hole and polluted the ocean. Deep Water Horizon is the biggest accidental oil spillage in history. The oil rig explosion kills 11 people.
More than 200 million gallons of oil discharge into the sea. The spill devastates marine life, impacting an area the size of Oklahoma. And a lot of that oil is still there, and it's still moving around, and it's still causing impacts years after the event. We were looking to see if there was evidence that an oil spill impacted the sites and we did find different places in the deep sea where the oil was present. So, it's not inconceivable that could have been a cause. Yet, Cordez highlights a problem with the oil spill theory. Oil usually poisons, killing slowly. Toxins take time to enter a body and do serious harm. But anything entering this lake faces instant oblivion.
You can see animals get disoriented and then die very quickly. I've watched eelike fish swim into the lake and they kind of go into death throws almost instantly. Very rarely do they escape its grasp. Biologist Roland Kay's focuses on the liquid in the lake. He notices it looks strangely different from the surrounding water. You have to wonder what's creating this liquid. Could it be an organism? Could it be the byproduct of an organism? Some of the weirdest, most terrifying creatures lurk at the bottom of the ocean.
They're perfectly adapted to thrive in perhaps the most hostile environment on Earth. Marine biologist John CppPley of Southampton University, England, is a deep sea specialist. He knows of one incredible creature that could be creating a mucus-like liquid. The hagfish. The hagfish is a great deep sea scavenger and it's a descendant of a very ancient and primitive kind of fish. Doesn't have proper jaws and it's also able to produce huge amounts of slime. When they find a big fish carcass, they'll scrape a hole in it and then go inside and eat it from the inside out. And they secrete this mucus that covers
their body. I've seen one of these hagfish fill a 5gallon bucket full of slime in about 15 minutes on the deck of a ship. This lake is much larger than a 5gallon bucket. Climate scientist Joel Lacowsky believes if the liquid is slime, the amount in the video rules out a hagfish. It would be surprising if a fish or even a school of fish were causing this. It's too much volume for that. Roland Keys returns to the footage. He's puzzled by the strange contrast between the lake's edge and the lake interior.
He wonders if this anomaly could yield vital clues. On one side, you have this amazing, beautiful biodiversity under the ocean with all these different animals and all these different colors. And then inside, it's just death and destruction. There's almost like a wall made out of muscles. And amongst the muscles, there's a lot of other animals as well. There are shrimps. There are some little uh squat lobsters, crablike animals. Joe Lowsky suspects this abundance of life so close to the death zone hints at geological processes beneath the ocean floor. So you have cracks in the ocean bottom and you have leakage of hydrocarbons primarily methane. Methane is a food for
bacteria. So bacteria scavenge methane and the muscles will then eat the bacteria. The escaping methane isn't killing the sea creatures, but some other geological activity might be. The team needs to venture into the death zone. Cordez takes the sub down to the lake surface for a closer look. We just sat down. But there's a problem. The submarine can't actually penetrate through it. So, you land and you're floating on this water at the bottom of the ocean and it doesn't really make any sense. A deadly lake on the ocean floor is baffling scientists.
The fact that we've got these two water bodies means there must be something different about them. One must be heavier, denser than the other, such that we've had this separation. Geologist Rebecca Bell thinks there could be clues in the lake water's composition. So, one possibility that can make water heavier than normal water is if it's got lots of salt dissolved into it, if it's become brine. Physicist Simon Foster constructs an experiment to test the brine theory. On the right hand side, dye blue, we've got a body of water that's really salty. And on the left hand side, we've got clear body of water, and that's got a really
low salt concentration. Foster's setup reveals what happens when the extra salty and regular seawater combine. So you've got the less salty, less dense water sitting on top and you've got the denser, salty water stuck to the bottom. And the reason is very, very salty water is a lot denser. You've got these two separate bodies. They're not mixing. Rebecca Bell develops a theory for how this sinister underwater lake could have formed in the Gulf of Mexico in the mid Jurassic. That was 165 million years ago where there were dinosaurs wandering around. This area of the world was a shallow basin. Every now and again it got filled with salty water. That water evaporated due to the heat of the sun
and we started to build up this layer of salt. The salt layer builds up to 5,000 ft thick. Over millions of years, sediment piles on top of the salt. Then the oceans reflood the area. So deep beneath the seafloor, there's actually a layer of rock salt where we are here in the Gulf of Mexico. That rock salt is lighter than all the sediments that are above it, the ocean mud. So it's always pushing its way up towards the surface of the seafloor. And in some places, it makes it to the surface. When the salt bursts through the sediment, it dissolves to form a brine lake on the ocean floor. So we end up with hypers saline water which is much denser than typical salty sea water.
Eventually we might get some minerals starting to crystallize out the brine which in this case seems to have produced these rims to the brine pool. John CPPley believes this hypers salinity explains the mystery of the dead zone. As gases bubble up through the salt crust they're stripped of oxygen. There are a lot of dead animals in that brine lake because the brine itself doesn't have oxygen in it. When you eliminate oxygen from a habitat, you're going to exclude almost every kind of animal that we know of. If they blunder into that brine, they instantly asphixiate and then they die and sink to the bottom of it.
Marine creatures are literally drowning in these creepy deep sea lakes of death. Now an ominous signal rises from the ocean depths. I haven't heard anything like this before. It's hard to imagine a living being making that kind of sound. Analysts consider if a war is breaking out beneath the waves. We're on the verge of starting an underwater military arms race. Others fear a monster is rising from the deep. There is weird sounds made by really big things in the deep ocean. Could this be a Godzillaike creature?
October 14th, 2014. the western Pacific Ocean. A research vessel navigates this vast expanse of water. On board, a team of scientists from Oregon State University. The crew lowers a deep water drone into the water. Its destination 35,000 ft 7 m down. Their mission to explore the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench. It's bigger than the Grand Canyon. It's a lot deeper than the Grand Canyon. And in fact, from the surface, if you took Mount Everest and you turned it upside down and dangled it into the trench, the top of Mount Everest wouldn't reach the bottom of the trench.
The drone begins its descent. It takes around 3 hours to reach the deepest point on the ocean bed, a forbidding black abyss named Challenger Deep. More people have walked on the moon than have experienced these depths. Here, the water pressure is a bone crushing 8 tons per square in. They call it Hel, meaning Hades. It's It's like hell. Two hours into the mission, the drone's onboard sensors pick up an unnerving sound. I haven't heard anything like this before. It was very unusual. Sounds like a movie special effect, you know, like a laser gun or something like that.
The research team posts the unidentified signal online. Experts can offer no explanation. This is one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. It's very, very strange because theoretically there should be nothing down there to make a noise. What could be down there that's creating this sound? A sinister signal from the bottom of the ocean. Marine biologists investigating it make a remarkable discovery. It was very common for people to say that the deep sea was like a desert. You almost devoid of life. Well, it turns
out that the deep sea is actually quite diverse. There's a huge variety of animals. Footage from unmanned subs mapping the trench reveals species that don't exist anywhere else on the planet. Crustaceians over a foot long patrol the ocean bed. The ghost fish with colorless eyes and translucent scaleless skin. It survives pressure a thousand times greater than at the surface. But these strange marine creatures are too small to account for the loud, disturbing sound caught by the deep sea sub. I would think the sound energy generated by a small crustaceian living in the mud uh would not carry very far.
Scientists re-examine the recording searching for clues to its origin. Paleogeeologist Darren N believes the location of the sound may yield clues. The Mariana Trench forms part of a vast, highly unstable zone called the Pacific Ring of Fire. Could it be a sound that's something to do with geological events? This is a really active part of the world. 75% of the active volcanoes lie in this zone and 90% of all earthquakes that happen on Earth are from this area.
Records show that the most violent earthquakes on the planet strike in this zone. When rocks slip and we have an earthquake, they produce vibrations. We call them seismic waves. We detect these seismic waves using instruments called seismometers. Experts check seismometer data, looking for a match with the signal from the deep, but they draw a blank. Earthquakes produce low frequency acoustic waves which are very low in pitch. This sound had a range of frequencies so it couldn't have been produced by an earthquake. Analysts examine each part of the signal separately. It's got a series of different complex parts. It sweeps through the frequencies and it's got this weird metallic twang at the end.
The sound, particularly that metallic twang it has at the end, sounds very robotic. Maybe this could be a sound which man has produced. Experts consider what kind of man-made objects could be sending out signals deep beneath the ocean. A clue lies in the proximity of a large US naval base on the nearby island of Guam. Guam is a strategically vital scrap of land for the United States. It represents a stepping stone between the United States and towards Asia, right in the middle of the Pacific.
Intelligence reports suggest a military technology arms race is playing out in the ocean depths. The US military is pumping millions into developing unmanned underwater systems. And the US isn't the only military superpower operating near the Mariana Trench. What we do know is that the Chinese are now using highly sophisticated, remotely operated drones underwater to try and control some of these stretches of water. With both the US and China engaged in underwater drone testing, the tension in these waters is mounting. We're on the verge of starting an underwater military arms race. There's nothing to stop these drones from being weaponized.
Analysts consider if the mysterious metallic signal could indicate an escalation of hostilities. Experts are investigating the source of an ominous signal from the black abyss of the Pacific's 7m deep Mariana Trench. Some fear it could be a new type of sonar developed by the military to weaponize undersea drones. The latest military developments use sonar pings to enable the drones to lock onto their targets. But marine biologist Joe Lacas believes the erratic nature of the signal rules out this theory. It has a metallic ring to it. So it sounds a little bit man-made, but if it was some pinging sound, you'd expect it to be more regular. This wasn't quite regular either. So uh so it's very unusual.
Scientists turn their attention to a biological source for the strange signal. Paleogeeologist Darren N cross-checks the metallic sounding part of the recording with known marine species throughout the Pacific and gets a partial match. There are already some similar complex sweeping metallic sounds that are confirmed as having been made by certain whale species. Um, there's the so-called Star Wars sound that's been attributed to dwarf minky whales in some oceans of the world. Different whales have slightly different calls um, in different parts of the world. It's almost like they in some cases it's like they have their own kind of dialect or accent. So, it might not exactly match recordings from dwarf
minky whales elsewhere. Um, but it has a lot of the characteristics. If the signal is biological, oceanographer John Hildebrand believes the sound's location means another species of whale is the most likely source, the Brutus whale. When we look at the calls of Brutus whales, there's a call recorded in the Mariana's trench to the north of this that matches very well those characteristics. But Hilda Brand admits there's a problem. It matches well in the low frequency part, but it's missing some of the other parts. It leads some to fear the sound may be produced by an entirely unknown undersea entity. There might be all kinds of creatures down there that we haven't yet
recorded um or observed at all. Does make you wonder what kind of strange creatures might be hiding in the depths of our oceans. How might they have evolved into monsters that we could have never imagined?
