Run to the Deep

With Pierre-Yves Cousteau, you'll be journeying to the bottom of the ocean. The ocean takes up 70% of the Earth's surface, and produces half of the oxygen we breathe. We start out on the surface of the ocean, but take a deep breath as we go deeper...

At 500m, most of the marine life is behind you, including even the deepest coral reefs. The ocean floor isn't flat, so you'll be going with Pierre-Yves all over the globe to highlight some of the fascinating parts of our oceans.

At 1K, you're reaching the end of the Twilight zone, where the last of the sunlight reaches, moving into the Midnight zone. It's estimated that 90% of deep-sea creatures have bioluminescent qualities, producing flashes of colour, but we'll learn more about that as we go deeper.

Now you're deep into the Midnight zone, where the most famous residents include the anglerfish and the vampire squid, each with fantastic bioluminscent qualities that both confuse predators and attract prey.

At 3K, you've now gone deeper than the deepest recorded dive of any mammal! Whales are the greatest mammalian divers, being able to conserve oxygen in their fatty tissues. The Cuvier's beaked whale has been recorded at depths of 2,992m, and can hold its breath for 2 hours! If you listen closely, you can even hear its call...

3.8K is the final resting place of the HMS Titanic. The wreck was discovered in 1985 and was remarkably well preserved, but it's slowly disappearing now, thanks to metal-eating bacteria.

You're halfway through the Abyssal zone now, at 5k. We're in the Caribbean now, in the Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field, which are the deepest hydrothermal vents in the world. Around these vents are entire ecosystems, including strange microorganisms that eat methane!

At 6.5K, you're in the final ocean frontier -- the Hadal zone, the depths of which were measured using weighted wires and explosions!

Nowhere is untouched by human waste, as you discover at 7.5km. 70% of plastics sink, so many make their way down here -- even traces of chemicals banned in the 70s can still be found here. Shouldn't we be trying to protect the mysterious of these depths?

You're reaching the end of your journey now that you're at 8.5km. You are travelling to a place few have ever been, and there's no telling what is down here. There are many theories, some more fantastical than others, though we do know that at least some things manage to live down here. But only 10% of the deep has been explored, and we have so much left to learn.

You've done it! You've reached 10km! Just one kilometre further down, and you'd hit the deepest point on Earth, Challenger Deep. And before we surface, we should think about the fact we've sent more people to the moon than we have to these depths. The ocean has always seemed so vast, but we are quickly destroying it, with climate change, pollution and overfishing. We need to protect our oceans.