THE WORLD BENEATH THE SEA

[Music] this strange looking creature is called a spiny lobster we know about this creature we can study and examine it but we know much less about its home the ocean itself a world filled with strange creatures and unsolved mysteries today discovery explores the world beneath the sea [Music] discovery 68 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen welcome to discovery if a visitor from outer space ever does come to our planet probably the first thing you'll notice will be our oceans because as far as anyone knows earth is the only planet that has vast deep seas on its surface the ocean many of us have touched it walked and swum in it it's a powerful force in our everyday lives and yet we know comparatively little about it we can study the plants and animals of the sea we've learned to make food from seaweed and to improve our harvest of fish and shellfish for instance we know a great deal about this spiny lobster it lives right here on the coast of southern florida it has no large front claws like the northern lobster but like most lobsters it does shed its shell every year and it is very good to eat we know about this creature's life and habits but we know much less about the world in which it lives the world beneath the sea [Music] if you look at a map of the world you can see that the oceans cover almost three-quarters of the earth's surface and most of the sea is still a vast mystery we know more about outer space than about our own oceans there are better charts of the surface of the moon than of the bottom of the ocean and the bottom is not all flat and smooth as people used to think their huge undersea mountains valleys and canyons even more amazing are the great depths of the ocean floor the deepest point measured so far is in an undersea trench off the philippine islands discovered in 1962 by the british ship hms cook it measured 37 782 feet almost eight miles down and there may be places even deeper still unexplored the world beneath the sea is filled with many strange and beautiful creatures plants and animals some are harmless others are dangerous to man the shark on the move continually the bright yellow and brown spiny fins of this lion fish may be beautiful to look at but some species carry venom in those spines [Music] the more eel is considered one of the most vicious undersea creatures both this green moray and the spotted moray eel live in rocky caves and crevices they can inflict a dangerous bite with those sharp teeth it disturbed [Applause] [Music] usually the moray eel comes out only at night to feed in the daytime they burrow deep inside their rocky hiding places [Music] [Applause] [Music] there's great beauty and variety beneath the sea these black angel fish and yellowtail snappers hunt their food along the coral reef the reef is always filled with colorful life for defense this puffer fish can blow himself up like a balloon to make himself bigger this puffer is called a burr fish because of the sharp spines or burrs along its back the brilliant gold and blue colors of the queen angelfish the spot finn butterfly fish and this black and yellow rock beauty are all very striking these colors and markings serve as camouflage just like the spiny lobster his color is almost hidden against this rock the stingray is also camouflaged when seen from underneath it's light like the water above it but from above it's dark brown to blend in with the bottom [Music] some fish have unusual characteristics like the seahorse the male seahorse is the one who gives birth to its young and this tiny fish only four inches long is called a jaw fish because of its huge jaws which it uses to scoop out sand and pebbles to make a burrow a deep hole that it lives in it spits out the pebbles and even builds a rock barrier outside his front door using its jaws like a construction engineer this strange-looking fish is called an angler fish because it carries its own fishing pole on the end of its nose with a worm-like lure that it dangles and waves back and forth to attract other smaller fish close enough so it can snap them up there are huge creatures beneath the sea like this sawfish [Music] and some so tiny that they can be seen only with a microscope plankton these tiny creatures are the food of the largest living creature in the sea the blue whale over 100 feet long weighing more than 150 tons other forms of life live too far down in the depths for us to study them but they are there life has been observed in the deepest and darkest parts of the ocean all the way down to 35 800 feet the sea gives us more than just fish and food there are minerals in seawater magnesium chlorine calcium iodine in fact seawater contains traces of all the important elements known to man there are rare elements like gold and common compounds like salt on the bottom of the sea there are unused deposits of copper nickel and cobalt and beneath the sea floor fields of oil and even diamonds have been discovered as the world's population increases there are more hungry people to feed more demand for products and supplies these are the reasons why the world beneath the sea is being fished farmed and mined and we've just begun to discover some of the wonders and wealth that are there the people who do this work are called oceanographers we're going on board an oceanographic research boat to see how and where they work and we'll do that in just a minute this is a starfish one of the strange and unusual creatures that live in the ocean the mysteries of the ocean have attracted man's curiosity since the beginning of civilization but oceanography the science of the sea is relatively new the basic elements of marine science go back only about a hundred years today discoveries on board a research ship a collecting boat used by the miami aquarium to gather live specimens this is dr robert stevenson of miami's institute of marine science bob your kind of work is going to make it possible someday to feed much more of the world's population isn't it yes we hope so bill uh it might eventually be possible to catch perhaps four or five times as much seafood from the ocean as we now do today say on the order of something like 400 billion pounds per year might eventually be taken bob stevenson specializes in marine biology one of the methods marine biologists use to study fish habits is called tagging as they're doing here with this nurse shark to find out where a fish swims how far and how fast it swims a plastic tag is placed on the fish in a way that doesn't injure it a record is made of the tag number the time and place and then the fish is released on the tag is a request to whoever finds the fish asking him to return the tag to the laboratory with information about when and where it was caught by tagging edible species of fish we can learn enough about their habits to be able to make bigger and better catches to find out more about the ocean itself oceanographers use special equipment like this gravity core this is device we use to go down completely to the bottom of the ocean and when it gets there it sinks into the bottom and gets a sample of mud this long hollow tube with a heavy weight on top is dropped over the side of a ship when it hits the bottom the impact forces the end of the tube down into the mud and the sample is picked up inside the tube when the core is hoisted back up the sample of mud is carefully drawn out of the tube from these mud samples you can tell what specimens of life and what mineral or oil deposits there are down there in addition to samples of the bottom oceanographers can take samples of seawater itself with this device this is a niskan water bottle bill one of those devices for taking that water sample it was invented by one of our scientists here at the marine institute as you can see it's a hollow tube and this tube is fastened very rigidly onto this line or a line like this and then the whole line is lowered down into the water at any depth that the scientist wishes to get his water it's open here and open here so the water flows through smoothly as it goes down when it reaches the proper depth the man on the surface takes a heavy weight like this called a messenger and he puts it on the line and then at the proper time he lets it go and the bottle closes the water is now entrapped by two plastic corks inside of here and the whole line with the bottle is drawn up from the ocean and then the scientist takes the water off here taps it off into a beaker and he can study its chemical composition salinity or any other factors that he wants to over on this side there is a bank of thermometers which is also used to take the temperature down at any particular depth and this is one of the earliest forms of simple oceanographic equipment still in use today the drift bottle well as you say bill this is indeed a simple instrument it's a bottle with a note inside of it and the scientist merely throws it over into the ocean wherever he's interested in starting his current study the current takes the bottle drifting along the surface to some point where hopefully somebody will find it take the note out of the bottle fill out his name address and where he found the bottle and then send it to us would you like to throw that over the side incidentally there is a reward for these bottles so the lucky finder can send them right to us another important part of oceanography is collecting live specimens and for the smallest of all plankton they use this kind of a net with a bottle at the end the net is dropped over the side and towed underwater [Music] when enough time has elapsed the net with the plankton specimen bottle is pulled back on board and the plankton specimen bottle is removed inside this bottle are thousands of plankton these tiny forms of life are usually too small to be seen with the naked eye under a microscope they have many different shapes and forms plankton are important not only as food for fish they can provide a food source for human beings as well we have much to learn from even the most common substance in the sea for instance this clump of floating seaweed that bob stevenson is collecting is called sargassum weed and it's actually a floating home for many tiny forms of life this little fish is called a sargassum fish because its coloring is exactly like the weed it lives in [Music] here's another called a pipefish inside this one ordinary piece of drifting seaweed there are many fish and shellfish tiny crabs an abundance of life growing and providing food for larger fish [Music] by studying these sources of food oceanographers are able to help commercial fishermen bring in a bigger harvest all over the world today to collect very large specimens a long drift net or sein is laid out in a circle as this aquarium boat is doing here in order to catch a porpoise by collecting small and large specimens food fish shellfish game fish even porpoises marine biologists can study not only their habits but also their body construction their methods of communication and adaptability to new environments you can see why oceanography is a fascinating subject and why there's so much to be learned yet not only in the ocean but in the laboratory as well we'll take a look inside the institute's laboratories to see a rare and unusual octopus and we'll see how a shark distinguishes different colors we'll do all that in just a minute here at the university of miami institute of marine science much of the fascinating work of oceanographic research is going on every day many new species of life have been discovered and some very unusual specimens have been collected and photographed some that have never been seen before people have often seen this beautiful shell called the paper nautilus but hardly ever see the animal that lives inside the argonaut octopus doesn't look like an octopus because most of its body is inside the shell you can see it inside there as it moves around in this lab dr warren wisby and dr arthur murberg of the institute have been studying shark behavior and they've made some remarkable discoveries about shark vision and hearing in the experiments a small shark usually a lemon shark like this one is placed inside a plastic tube so it can be carefully observed and held while photographs are taken in hearing experiments a transmitter inside the tube plays different sounds and the shark's reaction is recorded for vision experiments they're able to look very closely at the shark's eye and study how it reacts to various kinds of light for instance they found that a shark's eye is able to adapt to darkness it becomes one million times more sensitive when kept in darkness for eight hours they've also discovered that sharks actually are able to distinguish between different colors like red and blue until recently scientists thought sharks could only see in shades of black and white many different experiments are being conducted here in the institute's laboratory [Music] in this tank bob is conducting an experiment with damselfish and the underwater sounds they make inside the tank are several male and female damsel fish at mating time the male damsel performs what scientists call a courtship display an unusual dipping or looping dance to attract the female and while they're dancing they make some very unusual sounds we listen by using this hydrophone here which picks up the sound puts it on this tape recorder and then we film the fish's activity bob what's the purpose of these experiments by watching the fish's activity and listening to the sounds that they make we're able to go out into the ocean and just by listening underwater tell what kind of fish is making a sound whether the fish is just chasing around or whether it's reproducing for instance or whether it's feeding now a fisherman can eventually do this too and therefore know where to go to find the fish and where to set his net in addition to film observations scientists are also using television underwater the institute of marine science recently installed a new television camera and two-way sound system on the floor of the ocean right off bimini in the bahamas with the two-way system they not only can receive sounds underwater but can also play sounds directly to the fish in the ocean and can watch their behavior on a television receiver in the laboratory on shore it's far from being a silent world down there the ocean can be a very noisy place as a matter of fact there are a great many different sounds made by all sorts of marine life you might be interested in hearing some of these for instance this is a sound made by the toad fish [Music] and here's a squirrel fish and bill what i find even more interesting are the sounds that we've recorded underwater that we cannot identify for instance we don't know yet what forms of life are making these sounds [Applause] [Applause] the unknown creatures that made those sounds live somewhere in this world beneath the sea the things we've seen today and discovery are only one part of the many mysteries of the sea that are being investigated all around the world oceanography is helping increase the world's food supply helping predict weather and prevent hurricane and flood disasters oceanographers hope to find out what the core of the earth is made of when life in the sea actually began what new forms of life flourish at great depths but before man can conquer the sea he must first explore it and in order to explore it he must go down into the sea himself we'll be back in just a minute next week on discovery we're going underwater with some of the newest and most unusual undersea vehicles and we'll see how porpoises man's best friend in the sea are actually helping our oceanographers at work bye bye see you next week [Music] the discovery production units domestic transportation arrangements and production consideration provided by united airlines [Music] our guest today was dr robert stevenson of the university of miami accommodations courtesy of quality courts motels and university inn coral gables florida [Music] this has been a jules power production in association with abc news and public affairs