Episode 1 Waterworld

This is Waterworld. Our last unexplored frontier. We will take

you on a scuba diving adventure, discovering stars beneath the sea.

We will uncover life in the black abyss. I will swim with the biggest

fish in the Atlantic Ocean. That is class! Come on in.

Rathlin Island stands proud of the Atlantic Ocean, an impressive craggy

wilderness just six miles from Ballycastle. The island's old name

means the high rocky place, but our mission will uncover the life that

is hidden below the spectacular cliffs. Only a few explorers have

ever been here. I am in Bruce's Cave, where legend has it Robert the

Bruce watched a spider try and try again to spin a web. And this is

where our ambitious quest begins. A 21st-century odyssey into Rathlin

Island. -- into Waterworld. I have always imagined the fabulous

creatures that live in the water and now I am finally getting the chance

to find out. I learned to scuba dive especially for Waterworld so I am a

novice, but the rest of our team is first class. Our underwater

cameraman, Doug Anderson, worked on the ground-breaking BBC series Blue

Planet and Planet Earth. His right-hand man is Hugh Miller who

has also dived and filmed around the world. Dive supervisor Richard Bull

is in charge of safety, he is a veteran of many television series

and a real character. And Jim Delaney is responsible for my

personal safety underwater, and no better man. He taught me to scuba

dive. And our base for this underwater tour of Northern Ireland

is the luxury -- this luxury motor cruiser skippered by Graham Strong.

We are cruising to one of the most beautiful dive sites in Europe, it

is internationally famous among divers who know it as the north

wall. My guide is a world expert on sponges. I am told this is a very

special day. -- special dive. It is one of the best in the British

Isles, probably in northern Europe. I am a bit nervous. It does go very

deep off the edge. You have lived and worked in Egypt on the Red Sea.

I know this is a special day for you as well. Absolutely. Every time I

come, it is always a joy. The soft corals are next to none, apart from

some of the top of the range ones in Europe. This is extraordinarily

heavy. I am very calm. I hope everybody keeps their fingers

crossed that I can do this after all the training I have put in.

This mask allows me to speak to Bernard and the surface from the

deep. Based in summer sunshine, the

landscape is glorious -- based in summer sunshine. But my land is

fixed on submarine delights. With Jim at my side, we slip into

Waterworld. This is unbelievably exciting.

We are heading down below the Celt Forest. This tangled canopy devours

sunlight, smothers the rock and prevents other creatures getting a

foothold. The wildlife that is waiting for us below 20 metres looks

more like plant life. Colourful dead men's fingers,

slender hydrides and delicate and enemies cling to the edge of a

darkening abyss. Bernard has long been fascinated by the mysteries of

this secret Kingdom. I was always interested in creatures all sorts,

when I was eight I used to kite butterflies and things. When I went

underwater, I could see there was stuff that not many people knew much

about -- are used to collect butterflies.

This is where the sponge is really firm.

This grey sponge is elephant ears bunch. They are very common around

here, but you would not take them to the bar. They are full of Seleka,

which is class, they would cut you to pieces.

We did a big survey all around the Northern Ireland coast about 20

years ago and that threw up that Rathlin was particularly unusual and

it had a lot of different sorts of sponges, more than anywhere else.

You are used to seeing photographs and film of the tropics underwater,

but we are not used to seeing much film of underwater around the UK. On

Rathlin in particular you get these beautiful gardens of soft coral, see

an enemy, soft sponges, all mixed in in a very attractive way. I think

there is a perception, especially in the UK, that all of the animals and

plants were named by the Victorians. I think what we have been able to

show on Rathlin is that even in the North Atlantic, there are still

large numbers of sponges that don't even have a name. Bernard is a

scientist with the Ulster Museum where his samples are examined under

microscope. Some species he has identified may exist nowhere else in

the world. Hunting for more, he leads asked deeper still, past and

crossed being anemones. They are predators, armed with deadly

tentacles. See slugs operable blue one of the first creatures I got

interested in. I think they are -- are probably one of the first

creatures. I think they are charismatic invertebrates. One of

the other big discoveries that people have made was that some of

them were taking the actual noxious chemicals from their food, the

sponge has something in it that prevents fish from using it. They

can then reprocess some of those chemicals ample them back into their

own body, and to warn the fish they must not be eaten, they would go in

for quite bright colours. And in an archway frosted with soft corals, we

are touched by the void. When I go underwater, I feel so privileged to

be able to go down there and know that I am seen things that perhaps

nobody has seen before. You can discover something completely new.

It seems to me it is the last frontier where you can find a whole

load of different sorts of animals and plants, probably be seeing some

of those for the first time. It looks like a tropical sea. The

archway is festooned, bejewelled, encrusted with life. All too soon,

we are low on air. OK, guys! I am out of here. A reminder that we can

only be brief visitors in a beautifully alien world.

The surface gives no clue to the mysteries of the deep. Rathlin is a

place of myth and legend, an island where mermaids can be seen. Hannah

Stacey is a world-class free diver. The Elian dive reflex is a concept

that when your face goes into the water, you would start holding your

breath because it triggers this breath hold instantly. It is

something that goes back thousands of years in humankind but people

have lost the ability to train it. Free drivers latch onto that reflex

and train it again. Hannah has broken several UK depth records and

can hold her breath up to four and a half minutes. A lot of people will

do a lot of yoga, tai chi, different martial arts, anything that helps

the body strength and its inner core. You want the intercostal

muscles, the ones that help your chest, moved to fill yourself with

air, they need to be supple and flexible.

It is all about focusing and getting your mind into the right mindset.

You have to be very balanced and focused. What you are trying to do

is overcome that urge to breathe. You have got to make yourself relax

and believe you can continue holding your breath without the need to come

up for air. One of the reasons I come out to

Rathlin is to dive in more testing conditions, where the water is cold.

-- it is the most stunning backdrop. It

sounds a bit strange for somebody who will be under the water to be

worried about the backdrop but that moment when you are in the water,

bobbing on the surface, to be in an arena, an amazing setting, makes a

real difference. When the sea is flat, calm, like a

millpond, like we have experienced here at Rathlin, it means that when

you are on the surface of a water, repairing to do a dive,

you are on the surface of a water, repairing to do when you are taking

in the important, long, slow breaths, you will not have a wave

smashing in the face -- smash you in the face with it was easy and meant

I could do and easy dive and disappear under the surface.

I think for me, free diving has helped me find a place that I didn't

know really existed before. When you are by yourself, heading down to

your target depths, you are surrounded by this amazing... The

blueness encompasses you and you feel very safe and when you dive

down past about 20 metres, when you lose your buoyancy, you can just

slow down and drop like a stone and just relax, just be able to drop

into the sort of at this. -- at this.

When I get to the target depths, I will stop for a moment and look

around me and then sort of look up, and you see through the water and

you think, there are 50 metres above my head, and you can only get that

vision by going down there yourself. You are not surrounded by

bubbles, you don't have tanks Allaire on your back, you feel a bit

a fish or a mermaid -- tanks of air. And then you have to go back up

to reality that as you come whizzing back up, it gets lighter and lighter

and the sun shines down in beautiful columns through the water.

die, I think. As long as I can still go down to a beach and put on the

mask and fins, I will be in the water.

I will free dive until the day I die, I think. As long as I can still

This is a wild and moody island, and so, too, is the sea.

I'm taking a stroll to the exposed cliffs at the

Wes is a marine archaeologist who knows that tragedy haunts

For as long as people have been coming here, that tidal rip that

races around the side of the island has been posing problems, hasn't it?

They are really quite dangerous waters.

The whole of the Irish Sea is being filled up and emptied every day, and

Before the Lighthouse was built, Mariners travelling at night or in a

sea mist really had to be very, very careful they wouldn't be wrecked.

This place is very strategic, isn't it?

In the two World Wars it was very strategic because the United Kingdom

and the allies needed the lifeline with North America, and so there

were large convoys heading across the Atlantic from this point.

There's thousands of wrecks off the north coast here and the south coast

And of course evidence of that in the graveyard here as well.

Yes, amazingly there are people interred in

the graveyard that maybe come from ships as far out as Donegal, and

the bodies washed into the island and were buried in the graveyard.

It is a testament, if you like, to the nature of what is out there,

the elemental power of what washes the doorstep here.

A very turbulent area, and very, very dangerous, the North Atlantic,

a dangerous environment to be in for any length of time.

Rathlin's worst maritime disaster happened under these cliffs.

We're sailing half a mile off Doone Bay to the wreck

It is a spectacular dive for the team, and a real challenge

We need a bit of discipline on this dive.

It's deeper than you've been before, right?

We've got tidal conditions that won't bend to us,

This is a classic example of time and tide wait for no man.

Anything goes wrong at all, you're out of there.

This is what diving is all about, that little extra bit.

This is well within your capabilities, but it is

a little bit beyond what you've done before, and that's exciting.

I will not be diving in the full face mask.

It is your first dive on the Lochgarry as well, Wes,

Another dive club has just arrived at exactly the same time that we

were hoping to get into the water, so we are going to let them get in

first, and it will be interesting because when we are down that there

will be lots of divers in the water and they will all need to get up

and down at the same time, so it will be really busy.

We're dropping 30 metres, or 100 feet, down to the deck

She once played a part in the troop evacuations at Dunkirk,

but now she lies upright on the sea bed, a rusting hulk, a living reef.

We're swimming into the past, touching history

This enormous troopship sank in 1942 after hitting rock

Helpless and drifting in a storm, she finally disappeared

There was time to abandon ship, but tragedy struck when one

This ship is silent witness to their fate.

The scale of this gigantic vessel is incredible.

She was built in Glasgow in 1898 as a passenger ship for the Belfast

to Ardrossan route, and later converted for the war effort.

She's now a popular dive destination for underwater tourists like us.

Specs of humanity marvelling at the life that cloaks her boughs.

We press on, and among a forest of feathery hydroids, bright buttons

Cup corals, with their delicate stinging tentacles,

Their mouth is in the centre of a calcium carbonate skeleton.

These translucent creatures are our only common stony corals.

There is never enough time down here.

And, as we head back towards light, warmth, and air,

I'm struck by how lucky we've been to share an encounter few people

It's like hanging in space, being in air.

It's all laid out in front of you, and it is painted in life.

All those anemones, and hydroids, and fish swimming everywhere.

As a marine archaeologist, is that a good wreck?

It is in great condition but it is only 60-odd years old,

but fantastic to see so much structure still there.

A lot of the time it's flattened down in the

sea bed after a while, so the fact it is still upstanding decks and

The waters around Rathlin never fail to surprise and delight.

And, on a perfectly airbrushed summer evening, we are heading

out into Church Bay to explore another shipwreck, in the dark.

Emotions in night diving are entirely predictable.

I don't care who you are, on your first night dive you're

You don't go anywhere on a night dive.

Because your attention is focused entirely

As the light fades, so, too, do our chances of making a dive.

While the islanders are tucked up in bed, just beyond the harbour the sea

The tide refuses to slacken, despite hours of waiting.

Principal thing now is to test this and see if it is diveable.

If it's not, you turn around and we're out of here.

Would love to do it, we're all excited about it,

We don't want to look back at the event, and say,

The divers head into the crystal clear water to check it out.

The kelp on a huge gun barrel tells a tale.

It's borderline, but we're in business.

We're going to send the guys in, they're going to descend to

the bottom, pulling themselves down on the rope.

You can see to the bottom, it's worth the wait.

We had to wait for quite a long time for the

current is to ease off so we could go into the water, and we're using

I just can't believe that, looking down there, it looks almost

In a silent, torchlit world, the ship is barely recognisable,

One o'clock in the morning, the gun stands silent here.

All of the kelp waving in the currents.

19 sailors lost their lives when this ship went down.

The HMS Drake was torpedoed in 1917, and simply being here is

This is really what you'd call a deep sea adventure.

It is beginning to run quite fast up here, over.

We had planned to film the nocturnal creatures here,

If you are coming up, make sure you come up that line because

I'm scared, terrified I'll be swept away and lost in the darkness.

I'm so much happier now I have my hand on the rope to the surface.

Yes, I'm going to hold onto Jim coming up.

I'm scared, it's really beginning to rip through here.

Hang on to that line, we are ready up here.

We have got the boat station downstream, we have got ropes out.

You hang onto the rope, hang on to Jim.

We are ready to grab you when you come up.

It should have been an easy dive, but Rathlin's infamous tides caught

That was really very scary at the end there, because the tide

started to run, and I had to take Jim's hand to be led out of it.

There is relief all round, and frustration for Doug.

Disappointing, because I started picking up shots,

If we could have spent an hour there and just really soaking it up...

I'm ever so pleased to see you lot back.

It looked fantastic from up here had obviously,

At last, we find the jetty in a pea soup fog.

It's been a long, hard night for everyone.

With the searchlight, we could just see both piers,

and in the distance the green leading light of the harbour.

We couldn't see that green light for more than about 100 yards out.

Glad to be in, safely in.

We came to Rathlin in search of adventure.

And, at half past three in the morning, I'm off to bed.

Humbled, and happy that we did just that.

Hello, Glastonbury! CHEERING

HE LAUGHS What's happening?