[George Matsumoto]
You might think that the world's largest animal migration
takes place on land, but in reality,
it takes place in the ocean. Every single night.
[George Matsumoto: Deep-Sea Biologist, MBARI]
Millions of animals are moving tremendous distances
from the deep sea up to the surface at night to feed,
there's this constant process of moving up
and down through the water as the sun is going up and down.
[MacKenzie Bubel: Aquarium Biologist]
Right when the sun goes down,
deep-sea animals come up to the surface, which is amazing!
They're coming to where we can see them with our own eyes.
We don't need any advanced robotics
to go down and search for them.
We can actually go scuba diving and find them.
[George Peterson: Director of Dive Programs, MBA]
Tonight, our max depth is gonna be 60 feet.
A lot of the animals are located between 20 and 30 feet.
Does anybody have any questions about the dive tonight?
- I'm good. - No.
[George Peterson] All right. Let's have a safe, fun,
and productive dive!
Blackwater diving is a really cool technique
that allows biologists or divers to get into an environment
that's normally very foreign and hard to get to.
[George Matsumoto] We're diving at nighttime
because of this incredible phenomenon
called vertical migration,
where animals are moving up to the surface at night to feed.
And then they go back down when the sun starts coming up,
because they're afraid of getting eaten.
Imagine if you are hungry, and you want to eat a meal,
and you had to run half a marathon
up to the surface in order to eat your meal.
And then when you were done eating,
you had to run another half marathon back down
into the deep sea to stay safe.
[MacKenzie] It's the right time to get
in the water when the sun goes down,
because that's when these deep sea creatures are coming
up to the surface.
[George Peterson] You're ready.
[MacKenzie] All these creatures that I study in the lab
and have tried to learn so much about
will be right in front of my face, finally.
[George Matsumoto] For 25 years, I've been working
in MBARI studying deep sea animals,
and this blackwater diving expedition gives me
a chance to actually see
these animals in three dimensions right in front of me.
And it's amazing!
[George Peterson] Okay?
[George Matsumoto] Blackwater diving to someone
who's not a blackwater diver is hard to explain.
It's hanging out off of a line
underneath a boat where the bottom
of the ocean may be 3000 feet below you, or deeper.
It's all black above you, below you, all around.
It's just black.
You just don't know what's in the water next to you
until you move your flashlight to highlight
whatever it is that's near you.
Monterey Bay Aquarium is opening up a deep sea exhibition,
and it's gonna bring unusual, deep sea animals
that people have never seen before up to the surface.
[MacKenzie] I really hope it will blow some minds,
and expand people's consciousness
in what's around them on their planet.
The deep-sea animals
that migrate up to the surface,
many of them are the larval forms
of marine creatures that we know.
You may think you know what an animal looks like,
but their larval form looks completely different.
They look like a little potato chip
with crazy claws coming out.
Salps are very interesting,
because they're like big filters for the ocean.
They're cleaning the ocean constantly.
Sometimes salps look like a big chain of animals.
Sometimes the chain is long,
sometimes the chain is ringed,
and they all kind of move through the water connected.
The mauve stinger is a beautiful,
small, voracious predator of a jelly.
It can sting any prey from basically anywhere on its body.
It actually has the ability to sting prey items on its bell.
I've personally only seen this in a few jellies.
I find it very unique and interesting.
The Christmas tree siphonophore looks like one animal,
but really, it's many animals working together.
They are a colonial organism,
which is an organism that's mind-blowing to me,
and I think many scientists that study them.
It's like a little spaceship with all the people on it
all working together for a common goal.
We will see them in great numbers sometimes
in the middle of the night,
up at the very surface of the ocean.
The next day, after that,
when the sun is shining, they're completely gone.
[George Matsumoto] I love the deep sea
because every time we go down and visit the deep sea,
we're learning something new, something brand new.
When the exhibition opens,
we're gonna have these animals on display,
and who knows what you're gonna discover?
You might find some brand new behavior
that we haven't figured out yet!
[MacKenzie] Displaying these very delicate creatures
is something we've been working really hard
at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to do over the last five years.
I think one of the major services that public aquariums do
is expose people to animals that they don't know exist.
And it's our job to bring
these animals closer to people's eyes,
and hopefully deepen their hearts
after they see an inspiring display of animals.