Treasures of the Deep Our World

In the deep ocean in lie some of the most mysterious features of the

planet. In extreme heat and pressure bizarre forms of life

somehow thrive. One discovery is about this rock with much of it far

richer than anything on land. Anywhere up to two or $3 billion

worth of copper is my estimate for that deposit alone. There are plans

for Mining the ocean floor. It's a gold rush that comes with danger

and causes lasting damage. We are on the brink of an entirely new

relationship with the ocean to a combination of discovery and

exploitation I have come to investigate an amazing new world

out on the sea bed and a battle over its future. The heat of the

Caribbean night. We are on the Cayman Islands are getting ready

for a journey. Over the centuries these waters have witnessed

everything from piracy to wars. Recently they have become the scene

for banking and tourism. But beyond the gaze of most people, certainly

in the towering cruise ships, there is another attraction. It's far

offshore. There's a bit of swell because of the storm blowing

through here in the last few days. As we push our way from Georgetown,

the capital of the Cayman Islands, to the east we can see Jamaica and

over to the west we see the coast of Mexico but we are headed for a

run debut in the ocean with a British research ship for James

Cook. This is that leading research vessel named after captain Cork the

famous explorer who Matt to vast areas of the Pacific Ocean. He

could never have imagined what lay below the surface. We have come to

spend a few days on board. The plaster behind might here is

supposed to stop seasickness which releases a drug which is supposed

to help, we will see. We pull up alongside. It's taking years to

arrange this. We need to transfers via this ladder. The safest way to

shift Gier is to sling it in a net and hoist it on board. The James

Cook is a floating laboratory. It has all the latest devices for the

latest ocean research. Dozens of scientists like Rachel, a chemist,

make it their home for weeks on end. Their work around the clock

investigating different aspects of the marine world. There is real

excitement about what is to come. This is the centrepiece of the

research effort. Engineers are getting it ready. It's called Isis,

a remotely operated vehicle, a robot submarine. It looks ungainly

but this is the cutting edge of underwater exploration. A

mechanical arm will work 5,000 metres below, essential for

gathering samples. The technology involved is at the outer limits of

deep-sea Engineering. This is the view you get from a little camera

fixed to the end of a mechanical arm giving you an insight into the

extraordinary view the machine can gather not just up here but down in

the abyss as well. With infinite care this hi-tech emissary to the

deep is inched towards the water. Ahead of it is a descent for three

straight miles to the ocean floor. A mission of genuine discovery. The

submarine is tethered to the ship via cables. As adventures down it

will be managed all the way by a team on board. Re- D when you are.

The control room looks like something from NASA. What's

happening here is not that different from a space mission.

David age is flying for submarine into the abyss. It's a very serene

and smooth feel. The joystick controls the thrusters. We have

very fine control over them. It's like gliding around as if you are

snorkelling. If Sounds like you Lovett? Our I do, it's very

interesting. It's an opportunity to see things people have never seen

before, you never know what you're going to come across on the screens.

The scientists guide us to where they want to go and what they want

to look at. We try to take them on a taxi ride through the bend fields.

We get instructions to where they want to sample and what they wanted

to sample. The chief scientist is John, each dive brings fresh

insights to the world below. For remotely operated vehicle has to

work. Describe what's going on now. The vehicle is on its way down to

the sea bed for this detailed look at the vents. Are you excited,

nervous, what are you feeling? Anticipation, excitement, we are

going to the deepest known dense 5,000 metres deep, 3.1 miles. We

are about halfway down and has another 1.5 hours to go up to get

to the sea floor and it's the first time we will see these dense close-

up. We have mapped them up, we have a mac to navigate by but we will

look at them in detail and I can't wait to get down there. The Saab

makes it to the sea floor. We are watching scenes relayed live back

to the ship. Then we see what the expedition has come for. The

mesmerising almost industrial site of what are called hydrothermal

vents. These strange dark Jamie's rise from the ocean floor. They

belched out incredibly hot water, more than 400 degrees Celsius.

air we go. Excellent! There's been plenty of expeditions but never

with such capable cameras and these particular bent have never been

seen before, they have a deeper so far discovered anywhere in the

world. What is the reaction? Is it surprise, what is your reaction

amongst all of you when you come across these incredible and he

recites of the twisted Jimmy's. Surprised. It's humbling because

its twitchy how little we know and how much more we have to find out

and you are little humble, in all, and you can revel in the beauty of

it. For a few minutes it's not about science. It's about the

wonder of this part of Allah Planet, something that's been hidden for so

long. Hydro, vents are found what ever fault lines divide the ocean

floor. It includes the deep canyon where we are now. These weird

Features rise from the seabed like miniature volcanoes. This is how

they work. Cold sea water is forced under massive pressure into the sea

bed itself. It's then heated by the magma in the rock below and blasted

out. It creates a unique habitat for extraordinary creatures.

Everyone on board is gripped by it alive shots from three miles deep.

Biologist, geologist, chemists. Scientific Korea's are made with

discoveries like these. Each new insight has the researchers

puzzling and debating. I think it's probably a sea anemone. You get

them down there. Many of them chimneys are turned almost white by

shrimp, tiny creatures crowding and jostling. In water so deep they

never see the sunlight and they have lost their colour. They feed

off the bacteria which grows in the mix of chemicals and heat. The

shrimp has another highly unusual feature in the total darkness. They

are blind. Nearby, migrate masses of tube worms who will also feed

off bacteria. Life beside the chimneys has evolved in ways that

keeps surprising if the scientists. After a mission of 24 hours, the

robot submarine is bought back to the surface. The researchers cannot

wait to get their hands on the samples. Were it waited long enough,

it's taken three years for this expedition. We've been working for

18 hours and three hours to get down and three hours to get back so

a few more minutes, we can hang on. If two scientists have to be turned

back. The engineers need to check that everything is safe. Then, a

frantic rush. The quicker the samples are retrieved the less they

will be damaged in this tropical heat. This is for about 4960 metres.

It's a hydrothermal chimney where these shrimp leave. There's many

shrimper down there. Creatures have been plucked from an environment of

incredible pressure. Right now, speed is everything. This is the

key moment. Everyone has their head down checking and sorting

everything that's been hauled back from the deep. To ensure that we

get all of the life from the sample, even microscopic samples, we take

out any tiny animals in a sieve and we look under the microscope for

the next few hours looking for through this. We've are sorting

them into different sections for organic chemistry or for molecular

rebate relationships and the other thing for biology. We divide them

into 10 each. We do it quickly because obviously they are out of

their natural environment so we will get this done, forgive me as I

work. A motivation for all of them his discovery. This is a rare

chance to find totally new species living in conditions that are

utterly unfamiliar. He it's the excitement of not knowing what you

will find, seeing things that others have not seen before. Even

if I just kept coming back here time after time there is enough to

keep my interest going because it's just stunning visually and

scientifically and has a lot more that we can still learn from these

sites, they are so unique. Each expedition as this new

understanding. He builds up 3D maps of the sea bed. He is providing

clues as to how it was formed and where more Chinese may be found.

This is the first time I've got down to this amount of detail. It's

rather exciting that we can do this. As a massive fall climate in the

geology here. It's about 80 metres wide here. That cliff face is 80

metres wide? Yes, it's a massive cliff, a big geological fault and

that possibly has a large story to tell in the creation of these

The submarine will be sent on mortarboard riots -- diets. No-one

can be sure how many trips it could handle. For the geologist on board,

this is a priceless opportunity to investigate exactly what the events

are made of it. Controlled from the surface, the mechanical arm reaches

out. The aim, to collect a event without damaging it. It is

extremely delicate work and remember this is being managed at a

distance of three miles. The controller has to extract the piece

of chimney and then very carefully manoeuvred it into a collection

basket. Mission accomplished. This is one of the rocks the robot Sabu

has just brought back from the ocean floor. It is part of one of

on the video. This is where the hot water would have blasted out. I am

wearing gloves because it turns out that hydrothermal vents are rich in

minerals and metals, including cadmium and mercury. Most

significant, have a look at this, just inside, these gold flecks are

copper. The fact that these are so rich in valuable metals has

attracted a lot of attention. In the lab, the rocks lie glinting.

They contain far more mettle than any rocks on land. That is why

mining companies are looking at operations in the oceans. The

geologists here have been calculating how much metal is in

this part of the sea bed and what it could be worth. If we were to

assume that was all a deposit, and there is this is it -- no reason to

suspect it is not, it would give us a mass of men all deposit of around

4 million tonnes. -- mineral deposits. We are talking billions

of dollars worth of copper. If it were on land, it would be a very

valuable deposits. Because it is underneath five kilometres of water,

it makes it virtually inaccessible. Trying to access these as mining

deposits would be a little bit akin to mining asteroids. We can bring

up samples, but to bring up economically viable amounts of

mineral would be very different. No-one is suggesting mining this

area are. This exhibition -- expedition is about science, not

prospecting. The rich deposits on many parts of the ocean floor of

are definitely targets for exploitation and pretty soon. This

is the vision of a Canadian mining company, Nautilus Minerals. It

plans to dig up the sea bed of Papua New Guinea. Huge machines

would break up the ocean for, pulverise the rock and pipe up the

fragments. The operation was due to start this year. It is on hold

because of a legal dispute. The company is keen to start. This is

where the Nautilus animation becomes reality. Its first

underwater mining machines are under construction in Newcastle in

the north-east of England. When you see people beside them, you get a

sense of their immense scale. The company argues that gouging out the

sea bed would be a list -- less destructive than mining on land.

The deposit sit above the sea floor so we do not need to dig through

mountains to get to them. That means the high-grade with not

needing to remove material means we have the potential to offer the

world a mineral solution which has the potential to have a lot last

place. -- lot less waste. Nothing could replace this machine chewing

up the sea bed, or would it? There are a number of strategies that

have been delivered -- developed to make sure that any impact are

minimised or mitigated against where possible. One of the

strategies involves moving animals out of the path of mining and

putting them in places where mining has already occurred. In addition

we have committed to creating artificial substrates. Studies at

the side have shown we expect the system to recover within a few

years, which is very quick. Nautilus believes it can mind the

sea bed and help wife return afterwards. Obviously there are

plenty of people who question that. The idea of exploiting the ocean

floor is gaining ground. The mining machines are being built on

Tyneside, once a key centre for British sit -- British shipbuilding.

It is valuable work. Deep-sea mining could be big business and

the British Government is among many promoting it. One British plan

even got a personal Porsche from the Prime Minister. The British arm

of Lockheed Martin, the American defence giant, what's to vacuum

pieces of rock called modules. Unlike hydrothermal vents, nodules

lie on vast areas of the ocean for and a race is on to secure work the

best access to them. The UN through its International seabed Authority

sells licences for exploration for nodules and hydrothermal vents. But

doesn't so far, the majority in the Pacific. -- a dozen. China, Russia,

South Korea, France and Belgium are among the countries to buy them. We

are on the brink of seeing if mining will actually happen.

think the biggest uncertainties for seabed mining are firstly that

nobody has yet done this at a commercial scale. People have

tested technology but that is very different from operating at a full

commercial scale. Secondly, we do not fully understand the

consequences for the marine environment of operating a mind

over a prolonged period of in excess of ten years. So no-one can

be sure of the impact of mining because it hasn't yet started. The

International seabed Authority is working on a set of rules designed

to minimise the damage. What are you going to try and do in terms of

protecting the environment? There will always be some impact from

mining, whether it is on land or at the bottom of the sea. It is

impossible to mind without creating some sort of environmental impact.

What we need to do is to understand the scale of that impact. We need

to understand the consequences, the time that environmental damage will

take place and whether there is any knock-on impact on other parts of

the ocean or on coastal states. Back on board the James Cook, there

is a real debate about mining. The scientists argue among themselves

about the rights and wrongs. Overshadowing everything, questions

life and whether or mining is even feasible. This material is not luck

oil or gas. It is extremely Abbott -- corrosive and abrasive. It will

destroy pumps and pipes. It will be difficult to lift the material to

the surface. Then we mustn't lose sight of the fact that these

deposits are oases of exotic wife. We need to be careful that in their

attempt to exploit what might be a mineral resource we don't treble a

more valuable resource, the biological one which we know so

little about. The biological cost is that the animals living there

are endemic. That is their home. They have adapted over many

millions of live -- millions of years to live there. If you wipe

out that area by mining, those animals have to do one or two

things - they disperse and they colonised another hydra virtual --

hydrothermal vent elsewhere or they die. What happens when they die is

it will become biologically extinct. At the heart of this argument is a

fundamental question about our attitude to the oceans. Whether we

think they deserve special protection or whether they Richard

should be exploited, like any other part of the planet. If society

wants these metals, maintains these demand, then we need to Privy -- we

need to be ?I ? need to be these metals from wherever we find

them. I am not sure we can simply Corral areas of the Earth Resources

off and say they are not accessible. I don't think we particularly own

the deep ocean. Instead we share responsibility for its stewardship.

The more people can see what is down there and sharing that

discovery with us, then we can all start thinking deep for the future.

The scientist, Rachel Mills, the things that as consumers we all

need to confront this question. It is Arab demands that have fuelled

the search for new researchers in the first place. -- is our demands.

She has carried out research on waterless and believes no-one

should avoid thinking about this. Everything we have from the watches

the -- watches we wear, the clothes we wear, relies on Miller at --

mineral resources the. We don't often ask where they come from. We

need to have a bigger debate about it. About sustainable mining on the

land or in the oceans. There are a lot of questions, but they are the

same whether you are in the deep sea or on land. Our time on the

James Cook leaves two impressions. First, that the moment of discovery

created a real buzz on board. We are all thrilled by exploration.

Second, but the more we know about the ocean, the more likely we are