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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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All right,
Mike, can you give me
an audio check?

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MIKE deGRUY:
Copy that.

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Bellows are set.

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Relatively comfortable
in there? Over.

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Absolutely. Everything's go.

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Oxygen's set.
Vacuum has been pulled.

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I'm looking at a minus pound
of pressure in here.

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If all goes well,
today I will break
the Pacific Abyss records,

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it is the first time
that I will actually
go beyond the range

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of even our deepest divers.

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In the immortal words
of Buzz Lightyear:

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To infinity and beyond!

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00:01:49,892 --> 00:01:52,242
Yeah, okay.
Confirm feed off.
And we're power up.

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- Power up.
- Power up.

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00:01:58,944 --> 00:02:01,947
Okay, Mike.
Ready for deep dive?
We're gonna let out umbilical.

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00:02:01,991 --> 00:02:04,211
Okay, I'm going down.

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Just passing 223 feet.

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00:02:07,127 --> 00:02:09,085
And I'm still heading down.

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I'm now at 232 feet.

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This is where you start
feeling like, "Mm,
I'm alone down here now."

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00:02:16,527 --> 00:02:21,402
No divers, nobody.
Just me and my space suit.

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I'm now at 385 feet.

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Still descending.

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00:02:27,930 --> 00:02:29,975
But it's dark out there!

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Right now, Mike is deep enough

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that, uh, we don't have
any divers on board

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capable of any rescue
or interventions.

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He's the master
of his own fate right now.

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He's on his own.

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Study
under the ocean these days,

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means you've got
to be very good at doing
quite a lot of things.

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And if you're going
to really study
deep water behavior,

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you've got to be
able to go there.

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That's a rather different
proposition than saying,

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"Join me at
the laboratory bench."

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Like, the best scientists,
the best explorers
that I've ever encountered,

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00:03:03,879 --> 00:03:06,490
they have never quite grown up.

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00:03:06,534 --> 00:03:08,753
Fortunately, Mike never did.

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It became who he was.

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Sorry.

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Good luck, little guy.

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See you later.

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MIMI deGRUY: It just seemed
to me that he understood
we all love the ocean,

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and that it appealed
to our better natures
and that it united us.

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I think if you were to say

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what was the one
defining characteristic
of Mike as a professional,

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as a filmmaker,
as a person,
it was enthusiasm.

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It used to remind me
of throwing potassium
into a glass of water.

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You're nuts!
Because it's freezing cold.

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- It's dark
and it's a long way home.
- Right.

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Mike became
a celebrity host
on Shark Week.

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I'm Mike DeGruy
and I've been lucky enough

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to swim with and film
sharks like this for 30 years.

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The problems
of getting those sort of shots
depended on people like Mike.

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00:04:02,764 --> 00:04:05,419
And, of course,
there weren't many
people like Mike.

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When I think of Mike,
I think of panache.

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He... he didn't
just tell the story.

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He told it with,
with, you know, with style.

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He always spoke
two languages simultaneously.

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English and hands. You know?

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All that hammerhead
has to do is slightly tilt up,

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00:04:20,347 --> 00:04:23,915
slightly tilt down,
and it becomes
extremely maneuverable.

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FRANK deGRUY: He was
mostly an explorer

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and a discoverer

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because he liked
to come back with the stories.

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He would say,

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"Let me show you what I saw!

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"Let me show you this!"

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He would come back
all excited
and enthusiastic...

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at something that nobody
had ever seen before.

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He always looked at it
like he had found
this secret code

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that unlocks
this whole other room,

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and he just was shocked
that everybody

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didn't wanna come into
the secret room with him

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and see this whole other world.

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As crazy as Mike sometimes was,

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we all know he did
a lot of crazy stuff,

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and some people may
have looked at him and said,

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"That's irresponsible.
You're nuts."

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This is classic
reef life good behavior
at night.

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Mike, I knew I could depend on
if I was in a tough situation.

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I knew I could depend on him.

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Mike was a risk-taker,

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but Mike
was a superb risk-taker.

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He always landed on his feet,
on that featherbed.

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There was a moment I felt

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it's just not worth it,
the risk is not worth it.

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It's not worth it
to the families
to get that phone call.

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I couldn't even believe that
what you were about to tell me

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was even, you know, possible.

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It was late at night,
I was home alone

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when I got the phone call
telling me that Mike had died.

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And I remember going outside,

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it was a really clear night,
and thinking,

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"This doesn't make any sense.
I spoke to him this morning."

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How can someone so full of life

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be here one minute
and then gone?

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I mean, this was my husband,

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the father of my children,

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my filmmaking partner.

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He was everything.

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When I finally made my way
back into our edit room,

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I started watching footage.

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It was almost like
Mike came alive.

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And then,
I found this piece of footage
shot shortly before he died,

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and I watched it over and over.

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To the insane
amounts of money...

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Because he was
so different from that
enthusiastic, joyful Mike.

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And it seemed to me that
his whole life had led him
to that moment

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and he really wanted
to share his outrage
with the world.

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But then he couldn't.

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So, I knew
I had to tell his story.

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I don't remember
how this started.

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KATHERINE deGRUY: He was
a different little boy.

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He really was.

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Mike was an animal lover.

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He had two ducks
herding the puppies together

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and taking 'em
down in the backyard.

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He was like a child.

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Everywhere he looked,
no matter what he saw,
what it was,

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he wanted to go touch, feel,

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00:08:12,709 --> 00:08:15,103
examine, get up close.
"Ooh, it bit me. Oh, well."
You know?

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I remember him
getting his thumb stuck

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00:08:17,061 --> 00:08:19,934
in the mouth of a Komodo dragon
in the Galapagos, you know.

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That's not something
you want to be
reaching out to pet.

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But that was Mike.

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Another adaptation
that the silky sharks
have made for...

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Shit!

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Living in the pelagic
environment...

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I was just bitten
by one, actually.

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The, uh...

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Actually, my hand hurts.

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- So you think
you gotta come up?
- Yeah.

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Mike had more enthusiasm
and interest and excitement,

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and he usually would take things
farther than the rest of us.

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But there was a lot of energy.
Four boys in five years.

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It was a little bit like,

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"Don't anybody
strike a match in this room."

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00:08:58,189 --> 00:09:02,367
He collected animals
a lot more
than the rest of us did.

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00:09:02,411 --> 00:09:04,152
Most of the time,
that went pretty well.

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00:09:04,195 --> 00:09:07,111
But sometimes, that went awry.

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I think it was a garter snake.
It might have been
a green snake.

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00:09:09,940 --> 00:09:13,465
Some kind of snake got away
and we forgot about it.

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He said, "Mama,
I can't find my snake.
It got away."

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A lot of distress.
No snake to be found
for months.

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And out of the TV,
the snake came up,

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and I don't know
why it wasn't electrocuted

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00:09:26,261 --> 00:09:28,785
with those tubes
and everything there

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00:09:28,829 --> 00:09:32,484
because Mike
was a little bitty boy,
so TV had just come out.

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And I could have killed him.
I could have killed him.

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I said, "You get that thing
and get it out of this house!"

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But it was those
early days of snakes
and frogs and lizards

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00:09:41,972 --> 00:09:46,890
in the Mobile delta
that probably got me started.

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He loved the water
from his earliest childhood.

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We lived on the water

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00:09:51,242 --> 00:09:55,899
and we had rivers and bayous,
sounds, lagoons

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and the Gulf of Mexico.

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We had a lot of different
kinds of water around

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and we fooled around
in all of that water.

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00:10:01,383 --> 00:10:04,560
And Mike was more
interested in it
than any of us.

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00:10:04,604 --> 00:10:09,609
You know, he spent
his summers at the pool,
swimming pool, diving.

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00:10:09,652 --> 00:10:12,437
We were all
divers growing up,
springboard divers.

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Their daddy,
at first, coached 'em.

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GLENN deGRUY: My dad,
in order to make himself
coach better,

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00:10:19,314 --> 00:10:21,229
he went and got
an eight millimeter camera

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00:10:21,272 --> 00:10:22,665
and filmed us diving,

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where we could play it back
and watch it.

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00:10:24,232 --> 00:10:26,930
That had a lot to do
with getting better.

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00:10:26,974 --> 00:10:29,237
And it got Mike
interested in filming,

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00:10:29,280 --> 00:10:31,587
and he made crazy home movies.

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00:10:40,640 --> 00:10:44,513
When Mike
started out as a diver,
he was scared.

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He wouldn't try new dives.

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He was just afraid to do 'em.

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And then one day,

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he decided that
he was gonna do 'em,
and he did.

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00:10:52,652 --> 00:10:56,568
Mike
got on the boards
and started trying stuff.

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He was flipping and twisting.
He was landing flat.

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00:10:59,528 --> 00:11:01,878
He would get back up there
and try it again.

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00:11:01,922 --> 00:11:03,880
We couldn't believe our eyes.

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00:11:03,924 --> 00:11:07,362
My dad and I
looked at each other
like, "What happened?"

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00:11:07,405 --> 00:11:09,712
He quit being scared.
I don't know how

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he exactly looked fear
in the eye, but he did.

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00:11:12,323 --> 00:11:17,807
That marked
an inflection point in his
psychological development.

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00:11:17,851 --> 00:11:19,766
He never went back.

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00:11:19,809 --> 00:11:21,724
He had more guts.
He had more courage.

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00:11:21,768 --> 00:11:24,727
He would push things
farther and harder

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00:11:24,771 --> 00:11:28,731
than anybody I knew
from then on.

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00:11:28,775 --> 00:11:31,560
My oldest brother
and Mike, my younger brother,

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00:11:31,603 --> 00:11:34,389
both beat guys
that won the Olympics.

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00:11:34,432 --> 00:11:39,002
It just so happened
their timin' wasn't right
to be in the Olympics.

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00:11:39,046 --> 00:11:42,440
Diving is all about
incredible timing

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00:11:42,484 --> 00:11:44,747
and incredible precision.

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00:11:44,791 --> 00:11:48,359
And so, I think he carried
a lot of that Olympic training
that he had

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00:11:48,403 --> 00:11:50,927
into how he even
approached his career.

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00:11:50,971 --> 00:11:52,407
This dive is so hard.

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00:11:52,450 --> 00:11:53,906
We saw one Russian
attempt it in Munich

199
00:11:53,930 --> 00:11:55,410
and he landed flat on his back.

200
00:11:55,453 --> 00:11:56,759
Now, let's see what Mike can do.

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00:11:56,803 --> 00:11:58,108
It's an awfully difficult dive.

202
00:12:01,677 --> 00:12:03,984
Oh, terrific!

203
00:12:04,027 --> 00:12:09,163
His lust for life,
his gusto, and in part,
the diving developed that.

204
00:12:09,206 --> 00:12:12,514
That freedom that you get
when you're really good,

205
00:12:12,557 --> 00:12:15,343
free-falling in the air,
line up right.

206
00:12:15,386 --> 00:12:17,998
There's nothing
as exhilarating as that.

207
00:12:18,041 --> 00:12:19,869
You're free of gravity.

208
00:12:19,913 --> 00:12:24,352
You're free of the constraints
of normal human limitations.

209
00:12:24,395 --> 00:12:29,574
His body was his wisdom
as much as his mind.

210
00:12:29,618 --> 00:12:34,014
The wonderful
thing for me about diving
is that you can fly.

211
00:12:38,758 --> 00:12:41,891
I just love the feeling
of weightlessness.

212
00:12:41,935 --> 00:12:45,373
Scuba diving is incredible,
or free diving even better,

213
00:12:45,416 --> 00:12:49,464
where you're completely
supported by this body
of water.

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00:12:49,507 --> 00:12:51,771
I feel nurtured by it.

215
00:12:51,814 --> 00:12:56,079
And therefore, I started
working very hard to learn
as much as I could about it,

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00:12:56,123 --> 00:12:59,213
and at a certain point,
decided to make films
about it.

217
00:12:59,256 --> 00:13:01,519
So I'm still with it a lot.

218
00:13:02,956 --> 00:13:05,175
So I was working
at the Waikiki Aquarium.

219
00:13:05,219 --> 00:13:08,004
That was three years,
and I just had a little bit
to go on a PhD.

220
00:13:08,048 --> 00:13:10,137
A guy walked
into the aquarium one day

221
00:13:10,180 --> 00:13:12,356
and he saw
the chambered nautilus
on display,

222
00:13:12,400 --> 00:13:14,445
which a friend of mine
and I had collected.

223
00:13:14,489 --> 00:13:17,579
And it happened to be
the animal that was
my study animal

224
00:13:17,622 --> 00:13:18,841
as a grad student.

225
00:13:18,885 --> 00:13:20,495
Anyway, this guy wanted me

226
00:13:20,538 --> 00:13:22,279
to collect some for him

227
00:13:22,323 --> 00:13:25,195
and send the nautilus
back to Florida

228
00:13:25,239 --> 00:13:27,284
so he could have them
on display.

229
00:13:27,328 --> 00:13:30,418
So he sent myself
and some friends out
to the South Pacific

230
00:13:30,461 --> 00:13:32,768
to collect chambered nautilus
for him.

231
00:13:32,812 --> 00:13:35,510
And we did.
We made a film
which was horrible, horrible.

232
00:13:35,553 --> 00:13:38,252
No, it was not.
It was a good film.

233
00:13:38,295 --> 00:13:39,862
- Said my wife.
- For you at least.

234
00:13:39,906 --> 00:13:41,777
Yeah!

235
00:13:41,821 --> 00:13:44,171
It was the most fun
I had ever had.

236
00:13:48,218 --> 00:13:52,483
And finally,
there they were, nautilus.

237
00:13:52,527 --> 00:13:55,878
It was a big moment for me
and my friend Bruce Carlson,

238
00:13:55,922 --> 00:13:58,054
with whom I first
collected nautilus.

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00:13:58,098 --> 00:13:59,989
They've probably
been here for hundreds
of millions of years

240
00:14:00,013 --> 00:14:01,579
in this kind of habitat.

241
00:14:01,623 --> 00:14:04,147
And I thought,
"Well, wait a second.

242
00:14:04,191 --> 00:14:06,410
"This was so much fun,

243
00:14:06,454 --> 00:14:08,562
"and I can make movies
about the animals that
I've been learning about.

244
00:14:08,586 --> 00:14:10,284
"Maybe I should
just be a filmmaker

245
00:14:10,327 --> 00:14:12,547
"and teach to the millions
rather than the hundreds."

246
00:14:12,590 --> 00:14:14,549
And so, I literally
came back from that trip,

247
00:14:14,592 --> 00:14:17,291
quit school,
hung my filmmaking shingle,

248
00:14:17,334 --> 00:14:19,138
never told anyone
I didn't know
what I was doing,

249
00:14:19,162 --> 00:14:21,295
and just started making films.

250
00:14:21,338 --> 00:14:23,775
But the point of it all
is that it was fun,

251
00:14:23,819 --> 00:14:25,865
and I just kept doing it
and kept doing it

252
00:14:25,908 --> 00:14:27,930
and got better
and better and better
and then got paid for it,

253
00:14:27,954 --> 00:14:30,304
and it's the only job
I've ever had.

254
00:14:30,347 --> 00:14:31,914
When I first met Mike,

255
00:14:31,958 --> 00:14:35,265
it was when we were coming
to film in Samoa

256
00:14:35,309 --> 00:14:37,354
with both of you,
all three of you,

257
00:14:37,398 --> 00:14:39,922
and I'd been told that
he'd had a shark attack

258
00:14:39,966 --> 00:14:41,837
and his arm was all messed up,

259
00:14:41,881 --> 00:14:46,929
and I expected to meet
this kind of immobilized,
gimpy guy

260
00:14:46,973 --> 00:14:50,454
and he walks in,
and here's this muscular

261
00:14:50,498 --> 00:14:53,457
just, you know, very vi...

262
00:14:53,501 --> 00:14:56,156
- Vitalious?
- I was gonna say virile.

263
00:14:56,199 --> 00:14:58,114
That didn't really sound right.

264
00:14:58,158 --> 00:15:02,292
- That's what
you were thinking.
- I know!

265
00:15:02,336 --> 00:15:05,948
I really didn't know
what to make of Mike
those first few days

266
00:15:05,992 --> 00:15:09,734
because he was so flirtatious.

267
00:15:09,778 --> 00:15:11,954
So I just thought, "Uh, no."

268
00:15:13,086 --> 00:15:14,870
But then something happened.

269
00:15:14,914 --> 00:15:16,959
We had an underwater shoot,

270
00:15:17,003 --> 00:15:21,224
and I had never seen
anyone like him.

271
00:15:21,268 --> 00:15:24,575
He was almost amphibious.

272
00:15:24,619 --> 00:15:27,752
And I just wish,
like anything I wish,

273
00:15:27,796 --> 00:15:33,236
that I had 10% of Mike's skill
being at home underwater.

274
00:15:34,324 --> 00:15:36,544
And he was so curious,

275
00:15:36,587 --> 00:15:41,288
he effervesced with this joy
and he was funny.

276
00:15:41,331 --> 00:15:43,638
He was incredibly funny.

277
00:15:46,206 --> 00:15:53,822
And he seemed to me
to be in really deep
conversation with the ocean.

278
00:15:53,865 --> 00:16:00,394
He became this kind of
emissary or shaman
from that world,

279
00:16:00,437 --> 00:16:03,223
and suddenly, I was hooked.

280
00:16:03,266 --> 00:16:05,877
And I fell totally in love.

281
00:16:07,705 --> 00:16:09,969
I was living in Hawaii
when Mimi and I met.

282
00:16:10,012 --> 00:16:12,623
Mimi was living in Atlanta.

283
00:16:12,667 --> 00:16:15,626
And we had this
long-distance relationship
going

284
00:16:15,670 --> 00:16:18,629
and you know how wonderful
those last.

285
00:16:18,673 --> 00:16:20,892
Mike and I stayed
in touch after we met,

286
00:16:20,936 --> 00:16:25,158
and he would write me
these beautiful, long,
descriptive letters

287
00:16:25,201 --> 00:16:29,771
about a film he was making
with Paul and Gracie Atkins.

288
00:16:29,814 --> 00:16:33,862
I was so fascinated
by his adventurous spirit

289
00:16:33,905 --> 00:16:38,084
because it wasn't
a simple adrenaline rush,

290
00:16:38,127 --> 00:16:40,608
he really had a higher purpose.

291
00:16:59,975 --> 00:17:02,064
We're fairly
early in our careers,

292
00:17:02,108 --> 00:17:05,328
and we want to do
a great natural history film
about Hawaii.

293
00:17:05,372 --> 00:17:09,028
We made a list to the BBC
about all these sequences
that could be filmed,

294
00:17:09,071 --> 00:17:11,160
and they said, "Great,
you're off and running."

295
00:17:11,204 --> 00:17:14,468
I mean, it was barely
a proposal or a budget
or anything.

296
00:17:14,511 --> 00:17:16,383
So here we are making this film,

297
00:17:16,426 --> 00:17:18,602
and only one other
cameraman in the world

298
00:17:18,646 --> 00:17:21,692
had ever shot
an image of lava
flowing into the ocean,

299
00:17:21,736 --> 00:17:24,347
and it had been off Hawaii
years before.

300
00:17:24,391 --> 00:17:28,090
We're not sure what
the film is really about,
you know?

301
00:17:28,134 --> 00:17:30,788
And Madame Pele let us know.

302
00:17:34,531 --> 00:17:36,857
We were a little bit
nervous about getting up close
to the lava.

303
00:17:36,881 --> 00:17:39,014
So we're sitting there
on the boat

304
00:17:39,058 --> 00:17:41,253
trying to figure out
exactly how we're gonna
conduct this dive,

305
00:17:41,277 --> 00:17:44,759
and Mike,
while we're talking this out,
grabs his boogie board,

306
00:17:44,802 --> 00:17:47,153
grabs his underwater housing,

307
00:17:47,196 --> 00:17:51,113
and swims right up to the lava,
right where it's going
into the water.

308
00:17:51,157 --> 00:17:55,291
So being his assistant,
I jump in,
I swim up behind him.

309
00:17:55,335 --> 00:17:58,033
All of this is brand new.
Nobody's done this before.

310
00:17:58,077 --> 00:18:03,212
And Mike is right there
in the heat of the moment,
in the eye of the storm.

311
00:18:03,256 --> 00:18:04,822
We didn't
know this at this dive,

312
00:18:04,866 --> 00:18:07,434
but over a few days,
the shelf builds up.

313
00:18:07,477 --> 00:18:11,090
The slope gets steeper
and steeper until suddenly,
it lets go.

314
00:18:16,791 --> 00:18:18,880
There were
flaming balls of methane gas

315
00:18:18,923 --> 00:18:21,012
that were going off
in front of your face.

316
00:18:21,056 --> 00:18:23,754
You'd feel this whoomp
against your chest
as they would go up.

317
00:18:23,798 --> 00:18:27,193
Scientists were aware
that methane gas
was being created by the lava,

318
00:18:27,236 --> 00:18:29,499
and it would blow trees
out of the ground on land,

319
00:18:29,543 --> 00:18:32,633
but no one had seen
the effect of that methane
underwater.

320
00:18:32,676 --> 00:18:36,463
It's like you're
driving down a freeway
in a car,

321
00:18:36,506 --> 00:18:39,030
and as long as
you don't stick your
head out the window,

322
00:18:39,074 --> 00:18:41,294
you don't realize
you're going
50 miles an hour.

323
00:18:41,337 --> 00:18:44,340
Until you stick
your head out the window,
you know?

324
00:18:44,384 --> 00:18:46,386
And that was like
we were in a car,

325
00:18:46,429 --> 00:18:48,431
dropping down
with all of this rock.

326
00:18:48,475 --> 00:18:51,869
So I had no idea
how deep we were going
or when we would stop,

327
00:18:51,913 --> 00:18:55,482
and unfortunately,
I got tossed out to the side.

328
00:18:55,525 --> 00:18:58,441
We all did, at various depths.

329
00:18:58,485 --> 00:19:02,010
Everything was fine,
but that was the end
of our lava dive.

330
00:19:06,014 --> 00:19:10,192
Eventually, Mike and I
realized we really wanted
to be together.

331
00:19:10,236 --> 00:19:14,327
So I left my job
and went to work with him,

332
00:19:14,370 --> 00:19:17,852
and we had a commission
to do a film on sharks.

333
00:19:17,895 --> 00:19:22,248
Mike was so charismatic
that he talked me,

334
00:19:22,291 --> 00:19:24,206
a girl from Pittsburgh,

335
00:19:24,250 --> 00:19:27,427
into diving with sharks
two weeks
after I was certified.

336
00:19:40,309 --> 00:19:44,487
We took three years
traveling all over the world,

337
00:19:44,531 --> 00:19:48,099
finding the best
shark behavior stories.

338
00:19:48,143 --> 00:19:51,059
Those were the days
when the budgets
would support that.

339
00:19:51,102 --> 00:19:57,239
The days before reality TV
and that endless appetite
for cheap programming.

340
00:19:57,283 --> 00:19:59,807
We often spent weeks
just observing

341
00:19:59,850 --> 00:20:02,331
before shooting
even a single frame.

342
00:20:02,375 --> 00:20:04,507
You know,
when he was in the ocean,

343
00:20:04,551 --> 00:20:08,381
and trying to decide
whether to roll on something,
it was hard

344
00:20:08,424 --> 00:20:10,513
because you only had
so many minutes of film,

345
00:20:10,557 --> 00:20:12,994
you were all the way
down at the bottom,
all this heavy gear.

346
00:20:13,037 --> 00:20:16,519
It was almost like
he knew exactly...

347
00:20:16,563 --> 00:20:18,913
the moment
that he should start rolling.

348
00:20:18,956 --> 00:20:21,045
I don't know
if that's intuition
or just skill.

349
00:20:21,089 --> 00:20:26,007
His sense of what
was going to happen next
was very good.

350
00:20:26,050 --> 00:20:28,314
His intuitions
misled him sometimes.

351
00:20:31,142 --> 00:20:33,493
I think it's impossible
for me to tell you

352
00:20:33,536 --> 00:20:35,408
how I feel emotionally
right now.

353
00:20:35,451 --> 00:20:39,107
This is the first time
I've returned
to Enewetak Atoll

354
00:20:39,150 --> 00:20:43,067
since the single
most extraordinary event
in my life took place

355
00:20:43,111 --> 00:20:45,766
in the lagoon right out there.

356
00:20:45,809 --> 00:20:48,943
I was scuba diving
with a friend of mine
at about 50 feet.

357
00:20:48,986 --> 00:20:50,771
It's a beautiful day,
a beautiful dive,

358
00:20:50,814 --> 00:20:53,295
everything was going
according to plan.

359
00:20:53,339 --> 00:20:55,297
I was taking still pictures.

360
00:20:55,341 --> 00:20:57,430
There was a variety
of sharks around,

361
00:20:57,473 --> 00:20:59,258
and they were coming
particularly close.

362
00:20:59,301 --> 00:21:01,521
And, as a matter of fact,
I remember thinking,

363
00:21:01,564 --> 00:21:05,481
"Boy, this is a great roll.
I'm getting good close-ups
of this fish."

364
00:21:05,525 --> 00:21:08,441
One of them in particular,
it was a five-foot female,

365
00:21:08,484 --> 00:21:11,705
was going through
a very dramatic posture
where its nose was up,

366
00:21:11,748 --> 00:21:14,577
its pectoral fins
were lowered,
its mouth slightly open.

367
00:21:14,621 --> 00:21:17,537
And I looked at it,
and my immediate reaction was,

368
00:21:17,580 --> 00:21:20,496
this was a warning
I was seeing,
that it is a threat posture.

369
00:21:20,540 --> 00:21:23,151
The more I looked at it,
the more injured it appeared.

370
00:21:23,194 --> 00:21:24,979
So I took its picture.

371
00:21:25,022 --> 00:21:28,330
The moment the strobe fired,
so did the shark,

372
00:21:28,374 --> 00:21:30,289
and it broke out of the posture.

373
00:21:30,332 --> 00:21:31,942
Before the mirror in the camera

374
00:21:31,986 --> 00:21:33,292
even returned
so that I could see

375
00:21:33,335 --> 00:21:34,641
through the viewfinder again,

376
00:21:34,684 --> 00:21:38,166
it had halved the distance
between us.

377
00:21:38,209 --> 00:21:41,082
So, all I could do was just
push the camera out toward it.

378
00:21:41,125 --> 00:21:42,649
At that point, it seemed like

379
00:21:42,692 --> 00:21:44,346
things were happening
in slow motion.

380
00:21:44,390 --> 00:21:46,870
I could see the shark
coming right at me.

381
00:21:46,914 --> 00:21:48,872
And right as it got
to the camera,

382
00:21:48,916 --> 00:21:50,352
it started opening its mouth

383
00:21:50,396 --> 00:21:52,789
and pushed the camera
to the side,

384
00:21:52,833 --> 00:21:54,574
which naturally presented
my elbow.

385
00:21:54,617 --> 00:21:56,315
And again, in slow motion,

386
00:21:56,358 --> 00:21:58,360
as though it had rehearsed it
a hundred times,

387
00:21:58,404 --> 00:22:00,449
just grabbed my arm
in its mouth,

388
00:22:00,493 --> 00:22:03,104
shook and took off
the top of my arm.

389
00:22:03,147 --> 00:22:05,106
He was in the hospital six weeks

390
00:22:05,149 --> 00:22:09,502
because they had to take parts
from all over his body

391
00:22:09,545 --> 00:22:13,375
to get that arm
back where he could use it.

392
00:22:13,419 --> 00:22:14,985
And it was amazing.

393
00:22:15,029 --> 00:22:18,119
And they wanted to patch it up
to make it look better.

394
00:22:18,162 --> 00:22:20,774
It looked like a quilt,
you know.

395
00:22:20,817 --> 00:22:23,733
But he wouldn't do that.
He said, "I've had enough."

396
00:22:23,777 --> 00:22:26,083
KEN deGRUY: Typical Mike,
good spirits.

397
00:22:26,127 --> 00:22:31,959
We're talking about the shark
that they found dead
washed up on shore.

398
00:22:32,002 --> 00:22:33,264
I said, "Really?" And he goes,

399
00:22:33,308 --> 00:22:35,223
"Yeah. He died
of food poisoning."

400
00:22:36,616 --> 00:22:38,139
But he healed
and he had a great scar

401
00:22:38,182 --> 00:22:39,812
to tell everybody about
for the rest of his life,

402
00:22:39,836 --> 00:22:41,403
which he did.

403
00:22:41,447 --> 00:22:43,187
I think he was
particularly fond of the fact

404
00:22:43,231 --> 00:22:46,887
that part of the grafted skin
came from his buttocks.

405
00:22:46,930 --> 00:22:51,935
Anybody less full
of whim than Mike
wouldn't have survived that.

406
00:22:53,328 --> 00:22:55,243
And yet,
not only did he survive,

407
00:22:55,286 --> 00:22:57,158
he went back
and going on doing it.

408
00:22:58,289 --> 00:23:00,335
Extraordinary.

409
00:23:00,379 --> 00:23:01,728
JOE MaclNNIS:
Risk is something

410
00:23:01,771 --> 00:23:03,686
that's so essential
to our lives.

411
00:23:03,730 --> 00:23:07,516
You go out there because
it's a discovery
of the other world.

412
00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:09,605
The ocean world,
the depths, the creatures.

413
00:23:09,649 --> 00:23:11,955
But it's a self-discovery
as well.

414
00:23:11,999 --> 00:23:14,523
And risk is the catalyst
that allows us...

415
00:23:14,567 --> 00:23:17,439
It's a lens that allows us
to look inside ourselves

416
00:23:17,483 --> 00:23:20,137
and see who we really are.

417
00:23:20,181 --> 00:23:22,749
One of the things
that I don't buy about sharks

418
00:23:22,792 --> 00:23:24,359
is that they're unpredictable.

419
00:23:24,403 --> 00:23:27,014
And that is exactly why
I went back to Enewetak

420
00:23:27,057 --> 00:23:29,233
and recreated my shark attack.

421
00:23:29,277 --> 00:23:33,629
I knew that if I put that shark
and myself in a position,

422
00:23:33,673 --> 00:23:35,588
that I could get that shark
to attack me.

423
00:23:35,631 --> 00:23:38,678
And sure enough,
I covered myself,
protected myself,

424
00:23:38,721 --> 00:23:41,724
and I was able to press
the shark and elicit an attack.

425
00:23:41,768 --> 00:23:43,813
Now, is that unpredictable?

426
00:23:50,516 --> 00:23:53,867
I was really moved
by Mike's reaction

427
00:23:53,910 --> 00:23:58,567
because he could have
hated that shark
that nearly killed him.

428
00:23:58,611 --> 00:24:01,527
But he understood
that he'd made a mistake

429
00:24:01,570 --> 00:24:04,660
and the shark
was just behaving naturally.

430
00:24:04,704 --> 00:24:08,447
It was a really beautiful
and brave response.

431
00:24:11,014 --> 00:24:14,975
Mike loved to tell people
he had two birthdays.

432
00:24:15,018 --> 00:24:18,544
The second was the day
he survived that attack

433
00:24:18,587 --> 00:24:21,808
because he really felt
he'd been given
a second chance.

434
00:24:23,157 --> 00:24:24,985
I think Mike took that scar,

435
00:24:25,028 --> 00:24:28,336
not as a badge of courage
about what he had survived,

436
00:24:28,379 --> 00:24:31,861
but I think he took it
as an impetus

437
00:24:31,905 --> 00:24:33,776
for standing up and saying,

438
00:24:33,820 --> 00:24:37,301
"If I can tell you
that sharks are not deadly,

439
00:24:37,345 --> 00:24:39,173
"they're beautiful
and magnificent creatures,

440
00:24:39,216 --> 00:24:41,523
"they need to be saved,

441
00:24:41,567 --> 00:24:43,893
"and this arm is evidence
of my being in a different
situation with the shark,

442
00:24:43,917 --> 00:24:46,789
"then you should give
my words some credit."

443
00:24:46,833 --> 00:24:49,183
Some people always
have been susceptible

444
00:24:49,226 --> 00:24:51,577
to wanting to watch programs
about sharks killing.

445
00:24:51,620 --> 00:24:53,274
Eating people, killing things.

446
00:24:53,317 --> 00:24:55,363
You know, that image
sticks in people's minds.

447
00:24:56,103 --> 00:24:57,408
And it sells.

448
00:24:57,452 --> 00:25:00,847
To me,
it's like animal pornography.

449
00:25:00,890 --> 00:25:03,066
Look at the heat profile
of this shark...

450
00:25:03,110 --> 00:25:05,808
Mike was always getting
into a battle with producers

451
00:25:05,852 --> 00:25:08,463
over this sensationalism

452
00:25:08,507 --> 00:25:11,858
versus trying to tell
a more honest story.

453
00:25:11,901 --> 00:25:15,688
We've seen an incredible variety
of sharks in this program,

454
00:25:15,731 --> 00:25:19,300
but is one of them
more perfectly designed
than another?

455
00:25:19,343 --> 00:25:21,607
I don't think so.

456
00:25:21,650 --> 00:25:24,958
Seems to me,
they're all perfectly designed
for their particular niche,

457
00:25:25,001 --> 00:25:27,613
and the time that they lived in.

458
00:25:27,656 --> 00:25:29,484
They're very
sophisticated animals.

459
00:25:29,528 --> 00:25:32,356
I mean, anything that's had
400 million years to evolve,

460
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,142
you can imagine how good
they are at what they do,

461
00:25:35,185 --> 00:25:36,839
and that's where sharks are.

462
00:25:36,883 --> 00:25:39,886
They're extremely well adapted
to the environment.

463
00:25:39,929 --> 00:25:43,280
And to be underwater
and look at these animals

464
00:25:43,324 --> 00:25:45,935
is something that can take
your breath away.

465
00:25:45,979 --> 00:25:47,415
They're beautiful!

466
00:25:49,112 --> 00:25:51,071
Mike was like a missionary.

467
00:25:51,114 --> 00:25:55,597
He was so driven to share
his admiration for sharks,

468
00:25:55,641 --> 00:25:59,253
in part, I think,
because they're so diverse,

469
00:25:59,296 --> 00:26:02,909
and for him,
it was a lesson in life

470
00:26:02,952 --> 00:26:06,739
that diversity is what's going
to enable you to survive.

471
00:26:09,959 --> 00:26:13,528
There were at least
nine shark-attack survivors
on Capitol Hill today

472
00:26:13,572 --> 00:26:16,618
lobbying to protect
their toothy attackers.

473
00:26:16,662 --> 00:26:19,447
They want the Senate to pass
the US Shark Conservation Act.

474
00:26:19,490 --> 00:26:20,840
Joining us now is Mike DeGruy.

475
00:26:20,883 --> 00:26:23,494
What I try to tell others about,

476
00:26:23,538 --> 00:26:25,801
especially others in a position

477
00:26:25,845 --> 00:26:28,108
to, you know, enact law,

478
00:26:28,151 --> 00:26:30,110
is that they're...

479
00:26:30,153 --> 00:26:33,026
They're are a lot more than,
you know, feeding machines

480
00:26:33,069 --> 00:26:35,289
that run around
making baby sharks

481
00:26:35,332 --> 00:26:36,638
and eating anything in sight.

482
00:26:36,682 --> 00:26:39,075
More appropriate
to why I am here,

483
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:41,425
with the rest of the people
who have been attacked,

484
00:26:41,469 --> 00:26:43,123
is that they're vanishing.

485
00:26:43,166 --> 00:26:47,083
My experience with sharks
has left scars.

486
00:26:47,127 --> 00:26:49,303
But more importantly,
it has given me knowledge

487
00:26:49,346 --> 00:26:52,088
about these
beautifully designed creatures.

488
00:26:52,132 --> 00:26:54,482
And I believe
knowledge dissipates fear.

489
00:26:56,397 --> 00:26:58,921
I'm convinced that the more
we know about them,

490
00:26:58,965 --> 00:27:00,619
the less we will fear them.

491
00:27:00,662 --> 00:27:03,230
And we'll realize
that they are not our enemies.

492
00:27:04,710 --> 00:27:06,973
My hope is
we can stop being theirs.

493
00:27:09,192 --> 00:27:10,890
In those early days,

494
00:27:10,933 --> 00:27:13,153
Mike was also working
on a David Attenborough series

495
00:27:13,196 --> 00:27:14,807
called Trials of Life,

496
00:27:14,850 --> 00:27:18,506
And he would be away
for long stretches of time.

497
00:27:21,204 --> 00:27:23,424
Well, it's April Fool's Day.

498
00:27:23,467 --> 00:27:24,860
How you doing, Mimi?

499
00:27:27,036 --> 00:27:28,535
It's kind of strange
talking into this thing,

500
00:27:28,559 --> 00:27:30,736
but it seemed like a good idea.

501
00:27:30,779 --> 00:27:32,172
What you hear out there

502
00:27:32,215 --> 00:27:34,261
is an incredible wind.

503
00:27:34,304 --> 00:27:36,916
I'm sitting on the edge
of the beach

504
00:27:36,959 --> 00:27:38,700
and I'm thinking of you

505
00:27:38,744 --> 00:27:40,896
and missing you and wishing,
wishing, wishing, wishing,

506
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:42,704
wishing that I were with you,

507
00:27:42,748 --> 00:27:44,706
there, here, anywhere!

508
00:27:44,750 --> 00:27:47,013
It's terrible.

509
00:27:47,056 --> 00:27:51,060
I first met Mike in 1990

510
00:27:51,104 --> 00:27:55,717
when I went to look
at some mind-blowing footage

511
00:27:55,761 --> 00:27:59,590
of killer whales taking
sea lion pups in Patagonia.

512
00:27:59,634 --> 00:28:02,942
It was the first time
that anyone had ever seen that.

513
00:28:02,985 --> 00:28:05,118
And, of course,
it was sensational.

514
00:28:05,161 --> 00:28:08,425
At that time,
animal behavior
was very rarely filmed.

515
00:28:08,469 --> 00:28:11,037
That was one
of the wonderful things
about working on that series.

516
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:13,604
Almost all the sequences
had never been done before.

517
00:28:13,648 --> 00:28:15,171
But at the same time,

518
00:28:15,215 --> 00:28:16,845
that was very worrying
because we didn't know

519
00:28:16,869 --> 00:28:19,610
whether we were
going to succeed often.

520
00:28:19,654 --> 00:28:22,788
So I spent a lot of time
with these baby sea lions.

521
00:28:22,831 --> 00:28:26,879
I would put on my wetsuit,
roll around in sea lion dung,

522
00:28:26,922 --> 00:28:28,489
put my camera on a boogie board

523
00:28:28,532 --> 00:28:31,448
and slowly inch my way
up to the colony.

524
00:28:31,492 --> 00:28:33,712
And after a while,
they pretty much ignored me.

525
00:28:33,755 --> 00:28:36,802
And suddenly,
killer whale fins turned up,

526
00:28:36,845 --> 00:28:38,301
and we thought,
"Oh, boy, here we go."

527
00:28:38,325 --> 00:28:40,849
And the sequence
started unfolding

528
00:28:40,893 --> 00:28:43,112
just as we had imagined
that it would.

529
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:52,121
We were shooting
all of it from the beach,

530
00:28:52,165 --> 00:28:53,993
and it was time
to get in the water.

531
00:28:54,036 --> 00:28:56,865
Juan Carlos Lopez,
the scientist in Patagonia

532
00:28:56,909 --> 00:29:00,956
who had been studying
this population of orcas
for over 20 years,

533
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:03,002
had made it crystal clear to us

534
00:29:03,045 --> 00:29:07,746
there is no way you can safely
get into the water
with the orca.

535
00:29:07,789 --> 00:29:11,140
Just about everybody
in Argentina said,
"You would die,

536
00:29:11,184 --> 00:29:14,013
"because these are killer whales
that hunt mammals,

537
00:29:14,056 --> 00:29:15,579
"and you're a mammal."

538
00:29:15,623 --> 00:29:19,061
For weeks and weeks
I watched this behavior.

539
00:29:19,105 --> 00:29:21,411
These killer whales
moving back and forth,

540
00:29:21,455 --> 00:29:24,588
and a sea lion pup
would go out into
what we call "The Kill Zone."

541
00:29:24,632 --> 00:29:27,069
And over the weeks,
I saw a pattern develop.

542
00:29:27,113 --> 00:29:30,246
There could be
a bunch of sea lions
crossing this channel.

543
00:29:30,290 --> 00:29:33,032
And there could be adults,
males and females,

544
00:29:33,075 --> 00:29:36,035
and hidden in there
in the surf and in the crazy,

545
00:29:36,078 --> 00:29:38,428
will be one little pup.

546
00:29:38,472 --> 00:29:40,691
And if there was
one pup in there,

547
00:29:40,735 --> 00:29:43,912
killer whales
who were sitting out,
50 yards out or 40 yards out,

548
00:29:43,956 --> 00:29:45,522
and unable to see,

549
00:29:45,566 --> 00:29:48,264
but using echo-location
or passive hearing,

550
00:29:48,308 --> 00:29:52,616
were able to detect
whether in the group
there was a pup or not

551
00:29:52,660 --> 00:29:54,357
from 50 yards out.

552
00:29:54,401 --> 00:29:56,533
And if there was a pup,
they would attack.

553
00:29:56,577 --> 00:29:59,101
If it was the same
sort of group of sea lions
with just adults,

554
00:29:59,145 --> 00:30:01,060
they would just sit there.

555
00:30:01,103 --> 00:30:04,193
So, obviously,
their sensory system
was so fine-tuned

556
00:30:04,237 --> 00:30:08,981
that Mike and I were convinced
that they were never
gonna mistake us,

557
00:30:09,024 --> 00:30:11,940
with metal tanks,
big metal housings,

558
00:30:11,984 --> 00:30:14,116
for a seal.

559
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:18,294
After seeing
probably 30 of these
die a violent death,

560
00:30:18,338 --> 00:30:21,689
now it's my turn
to put on my little
sea lion outfit, wet suit,

561
00:30:21,732 --> 00:30:25,301
and go into the water
and try to film this behavior
from the water.

562
00:30:25,345 --> 00:30:26,868
So I didn't take this lightly.

563
00:30:26,912 --> 00:30:28,783
And the fins
got closer and closer,

564
00:30:28,827 --> 00:30:30,350
and I remember, at one point,

565
00:30:30,393 --> 00:30:32,874
I, like, motioned to Mike
and said, you know,

566
00:30:32,918 --> 00:30:34,615
"Look, behind us,"
and we turned around

567
00:30:34,658 --> 00:30:36,617
and the seals...

568
00:30:36,660 --> 00:30:38,377
The sea lions
were all over the beach,
like, looking at us.

569
00:30:38,401 --> 00:30:40,205
I could just see it
in their eyes. They're like,

570
00:30:40,229 --> 00:30:41,669
"Get out of the water!
Are you crazy?

571
00:30:41,709 --> 00:30:44,016
"Do you see
what's coming?"

572
00:30:44,059 --> 00:30:47,106
Being on snorkel,
being in the killing zone
with a camera in your hands

573
00:30:47,149 --> 00:30:50,500
and there's a fin six feet tall
coming through the water,

574
00:30:50,544 --> 00:30:53,547
and every primitive instinct
you have is screaming,

575
00:30:53,590 --> 00:30:55,157
"Get out of the water!"

576
00:30:55,201 --> 00:30:57,159
While all that's going on
in the back of my head,

577
00:30:57,203 --> 00:30:59,248
I'm hearing
Mike and Paul saying,

578
00:30:59,292 --> 00:31:02,164
"Roll! Roll! Roll! Roll!"

579
00:31:02,208 --> 00:31:06,603
I noticed
one of the killer whale fins
turned straight at me.

580
00:31:06,647 --> 00:31:08,431
Just started moving in.

581
00:31:08,475 --> 00:31:11,391
And as I started to back up,
I realized

582
00:31:11,434 --> 00:31:14,046
"There's no way I have time
to get out of the water."

583
00:31:14,089 --> 00:31:15,612
I was now committed.

584
00:31:15,656 --> 00:31:17,658
So, all I could do
was take a deep breath,

585
00:31:17,701 --> 00:31:19,834
go underwater and start rolling.

586
00:31:19,878 --> 00:31:22,489
Something started emerging
in the viewfinder.

587
00:31:22,532 --> 00:31:25,187
It was a sort of
a milky white color

588
00:31:25,231 --> 00:31:28,974
which
turned into a killer whale head.

589
00:31:29,017 --> 00:31:30,540
And it came right at the camera,

590
00:31:30,584 --> 00:31:31,890
moved past the camera,

591
00:31:31,933 --> 00:31:34,370
and kept going past.
Kept going past.

592
00:31:34,414 --> 00:31:37,156
Kept going past. It was like
a freight train going by me.

593
00:31:37,199 --> 00:31:41,029
And then, I started hearing
this "Boom! Boom! Boom!" sound.

594
00:31:41,073 --> 00:31:44,032
"What the heck is that?"
And I realized
it was my heart and lungs!

595
00:31:44,076 --> 00:31:45,947
I hadn't been breathing!

596
00:31:45,991 --> 00:31:48,151
So I had to leap out
of the water
and take a big breath.

597
00:31:57,393 --> 00:32:00,831
I worried about
how it would be received.

598
00:32:00,875 --> 00:32:03,965
People saw that this was
a straight, scientific,

599
00:32:04,009 --> 00:32:06,925
dispassionate eye
trying to look at
how the world works.

600
00:32:06,968 --> 00:32:10,493
And it caused a sensation
in the unit.

601
00:32:10,537 --> 00:32:12,017
Everybody was talking about it.

602
00:32:12,060 --> 00:32:14,236
The moment had been shown.

603
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:18,675
We wanted to expose
the audience to the truth
about, what we felt,

604
00:32:18,719 --> 00:32:20,590
the truth about
what we were seeing.

605
00:32:20,634 --> 00:32:26,640
The absolutely
extraordinary beauty
and terror of nature.

606
00:32:34,039 --> 00:32:37,520
It is a complicated,
dangerous business

607
00:32:37,564 --> 00:32:40,175
and Mike and Paul
had worked at it.

608
00:32:40,219 --> 00:32:41,611
They set a high watermark

609
00:32:41,655 --> 00:32:44,223
which nobody else came near
for a long time.

610
00:33:16,168 --> 00:33:18,431
People making
natural history films

611
00:33:18,474 --> 00:33:21,042
can be given some kind of credit

612
00:33:21,086 --> 00:33:24,698
for opening up
all kinds of windows
on the natural world.

613
00:33:24,741 --> 00:33:27,962
And scientists
who lead us most of the time,

614
00:33:28,006 --> 00:33:29,790
just every now and again,

615
00:33:29,833 --> 00:33:33,402
can learn a bit from what
the cameramen have discovered.

616
00:33:33,446 --> 00:33:37,102
And so,
those pioneering sequences,

617
00:33:37,145 --> 00:33:40,844
I think,
actually hold their place
in the history of discovery.

618
00:33:40,888 --> 00:33:43,760
And they've raised
a lot of questions.

619
00:33:43,804 --> 00:33:45,371
People think fish feel no pain.

620
00:33:45,414 --> 00:33:48,200
But, Mike, he knew full well
that fish do feel,

621
00:33:48,243 --> 00:33:50,985
they have families, they have
all kinds of connections

622
00:33:51,029 --> 00:33:53,335
that we never really
give them credit for.

623
00:33:53,379 --> 00:33:58,036
And he just had that ability
to get people to think
outside of themselves.

624
00:33:58,079 --> 00:34:01,082
Now, this is a perspective
I've never seen.

625
00:34:03,171 --> 00:34:05,434
Well, welcome
to our octopus gymnasium.

626
00:34:05,478 --> 00:34:07,741
Each one of these tanks
was built specifically

627
00:34:07,784 --> 00:34:10,483
to show off
one of the many talents
that the octopus has.

628
00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:16,315
That tube it's trying
to pass through

629
00:34:16,358 --> 00:34:18,882
is one-tenth
the size of its body.

630
00:34:36,161 --> 00:34:39,729
He would use
every bit of gear
he could find.

631
00:34:39,773 --> 00:34:42,210
Beyond scuba,
he would use rebreathers

632
00:34:42,254 --> 00:34:44,212
because those would
let him go deeper

633
00:34:44,256 --> 00:34:47,563
and allow him to stay down
for longer lengths of time.

634
00:34:47,607 --> 00:34:49,826
He used full-face masks

635
00:34:49,870 --> 00:34:51,872
because those
would let him talk...

636
00:34:51,915 --> 00:34:53,613
Chased away the sharks.

637
00:34:53,656 --> 00:34:55,832
Haven't been able
to get near them since.

638
00:34:55,876 --> 00:34:57,182
Nonstop.

639
00:34:57,225 --> 00:34:58,748
So, I'm gonna go get rid of it.

640
00:34:58,792 --> 00:35:01,403
Anything that got him
into the ocean

641
00:35:01,447 --> 00:35:04,537
where he could also share
those experiences

642
00:35:04,580 --> 00:35:06,452
just thrilled him.

643
00:35:06,495 --> 00:35:07,931
There we go.

644
00:35:07,975 --> 00:35:09,615
I'm just gonna lay down
right next to him.

645
00:35:23,947 --> 00:35:26,515
So, anyway, this is what we do.

646
00:35:26,559 --> 00:35:28,213
We sneak up on otters.

647
00:35:29,388 --> 00:35:31,433
The likes of which we can't see.

648
00:35:33,131 --> 00:35:36,003
Peep holes, and look at that.

649
00:35:36,046 --> 00:35:38,745
Who would know
that we're a floating iceberg?

650
00:36:03,987 --> 00:36:06,729
While Mike
was thousands of miles away

651
00:36:06,773 --> 00:36:09,428
filming beneath
the ice in Antarctica,

652
00:36:09,471 --> 00:36:13,432
I was at home on bed rest,
pregnant with our first child.

653
00:36:15,695 --> 00:36:17,044
I jumped into a seal hole,

654
00:36:17,087 --> 00:36:18,567
pushing the ice away
as I entered,

655
00:36:18,611 --> 00:36:20,221
and they handed me my camera.

656
00:36:20,265 --> 00:36:22,180
Suddenly everything was quiet,

657
00:36:22,223 --> 00:36:24,486
and I found myself looking at,

658
00:36:24,530 --> 00:36:28,577
easily, one of the most
extraordinary scenes
I have ever, ever experienced.

659
00:36:35,541 --> 00:36:38,108
This was
a filmmaker's conundrum.

660
00:36:38,152 --> 00:36:40,850
It was
an incredible opportunity.

661
00:36:41,938 --> 00:36:43,375
We needed the money,

662
00:36:43,418 --> 00:36:45,725
but it was
a really delicate time for us.

663
00:37:14,971 --> 00:37:17,887
Everything
above me on the land
was roaring with wind.

664
00:37:17,931 --> 00:37:20,629
And down there,
there was absolutely no sound

665
00:37:20,673 --> 00:37:23,545
except for the distant trills
of Weddell seals.

666
00:37:37,342 --> 00:37:38,908
Max, give us a smile.

667
00:37:39,474 --> 00:37:40,736
Ooh!

668
00:37:40,780 --> 00:37:41,824
Hi.

669
00:37:44,131 --> 00:37:45,350
There you go.

670
00:37:46,351 --> 00:37:47,526
Zooming in.

671
00:37:47,569 --> 00:37:48,744
Good morning.

672
00:37:51,834 --> 00:37:55,273
If we couldn't be out
in the world with animals,

673
00:37:55,316 --> 00:37:58,972
they seemed to find
their way inside with us.

674
00:38:02,715 --> 00:38:03,890
Hi, Max.

675
00:38:07,589 --> 00:38:09,852
Hi, Max. Hi.

676
00:38:09,896 --> 00:38:11,724
God, this focus is terrible.

677
00:38:11,767 --> 00:38:13,378
Hi, Max.

678
00:38:13,421 --> 00:38:16,206
Max, you got a hummer.

679
00:38:16,250 --> 00:38:17,488
You got a hummer on your tummy.

680
00:38:17,512 --> 00:38:18,905
A hummer, Max!

681
00:38:18,948 --> 00:38:21,081
You don't even know it!

682
00:38:21,124 --> 00:38:23,039
Max, the hummingbird
is growing up.

683
00:38:23,083 --> 00:38:25,564
Today, he's gonna fly away.

684
00:38:25,607 --> 00:38:29,089
In about 18 years,
you'll do the same thing.

685
00:38:31,091 --> 00:38:34,312
It wasn't too long
before we had a second child,

686
00:38:34,355 --> 00:38:35,965
and we realized,

687
00:38:36,009 --> 00:38:39,229
our life was fairly
indistinguishable from work.

688
00:38:39,273 --> 00:38:43,364
And we would find ourselves
looking at our kids
like little animals.

689
00:38:43,408 --> 00:38:45,148
Little mammals.

690
00:38:45,192 --> 00:38:47,890
Max, why don't you stop
and talk to us for a second?

691
00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,380
There you go, small circles...

692
00:38:59,424 --> 00:39:00,816
You guys were there,

693
00:39:00,860 --> 00:39:03,515
the kids were there,
we were there.

694
00:39:03,558 --> 00:39:06,169
It was cool. It was just this
kind of unique atmosphere

695
00:39:06,213 --> 00:39:09,999
where exciting work kind of
overarched everything.

696
00:39:10,043 --> 00:39:14,352
"Where were we going?"
"Oh, we're off Australia.
We're going to Indonesia."

697
00:39:14,395 --> 00:39:15,831
So you were either coming home

698
00:39:15,875 --> 00:39:19,444
or getting ready to go
to some exotic locale.

699
00:39:19,487 --> 00:39:22,098
The only thing hard about it
was just how long
you'd be gone for.

700
00:39:22,142 --> 00:39:25,145
And sometimes,
that was the biggest bummer.

701
00:39:25,188 --> 00:39:27,408
I don't remember him
missing things.

702
00:39:27,452 --> 00:39:31,369
You know,
every big part of my life
that I remember growing up,

703
00:39:31,412 --> 00:39:33,434
I don't know whether
it's because I kind of
insert him

704
00:39:33,458 --> 00:39:35,155
or if it's because
he actually was there.

705
00:39:35,198 --> 00:39:37,549
But it didn't really matter
because it felt like he was.

706
00:39:37,592 --> 00:39:40,987
In the end, I think,
the stories that he would tell,

707
00:39:41,030 --> 00:39:42,858
I gotta be honest, they're cool.

708
00:39:42,902 --> 00:39:44,469
The cool knickknacks
he would bring back

709
00:39:44,512 --> 00:39:46,688
from all the different places
he would have been.

710
00:39:48,255 --> 00:39:50,562
Those kind of made up
for the times gone.

711
00:39:52,477 --> 00:39:54,317
If you ever really
want to get away from it all

712
00:39:54,348 --> 00:39:56,481
and see something
that you have never seen,

713
00:39:56,524 --> 00:39:59,745
and have an excellent chance
of seeing something
no one has ever seen,

714
00:39:59,788 --> 00:40:01,442
get in a sub.

715
00:40:01,486 --> 00:40:04,445
The first time I went down
in a sub was actually in Hawaii.

716
00:40:04,489 --> 00:40:06,447
I was in the Star boat,
you know?

717
00:40:06,491 --> 00:40:08,536
- Oh, I do. I do. Yes, I do.
- Yeah, the Bocalii.

718
00:40:08,580 --> 00:40:11,452
As you well know, you go down
in this acrylic sphere

719
00:40:11,496 --> 00:40:12,888
and suddenly it goes away.

720
00:40:12,932 --> 00:40:14,542
I know, you're in the water.

721
00:40:14,586 --> 00:40:16,386
-You're in the water!
But you're dry!
-Not wet.

722
00:40:18,328 --> 00:40:20,722
I love this!

723
00:40:20,766 --> 00:40:26,467
Mike liked the deep
because it literally was
a final frontier opportunity

724
00:40:26,511 --> 00:40:30,689
short of becoming an astronaut
and going into space.

725
00:40:30,732 --> 00:40:33,518
He became a pilot
of a number of different subs.

726
00:40:33,561 --> 00:40:37,347
And, you know, every time
he got ready to go down,

727
00:40:37,391 --> 00:40:38,751
you could see
a twinkle in his eye.

728
00:40:38,784 --> 00:40:41,569
He just absolutely adored that.

729
00:40:41,613 --> 00:40:44,659
It changed me.
"Wow! Here's a place."

730
00:40:44,703 --> 00:40:46,444
It's another planet.

731
00:40:46,487 --> 00:40:48,750
They're alien animals,
only this is on Earth.

732
00:40:48,794 --> 00:40:51,013
It's our planet,
it's not an alien place.

733
00:40:51,057 --> 00:40:53,320
We're the aliens,
if anything is.

734
00:40:53,363 --> 00:40:56,283
Exactly! There's a lot
more of them than us,
and they've been there longer.

735
00:41:01,067 --> 00:41:03,112
What I'm seeing is...

736
00:41:03,983 --> 00:41:06,638
ink blackness.

737
00:41:06,681 --> 00:41:09,815
Why do people
like Mike and myself

738
00:41:09,858 --> 00:41:13,383
want to get into little
experimental vehicles

739
00:41:13,427 --> 00:41:18,650
and go down into the cold,
dark depths by ourselves?

740
00:41:18,693 --> 00:41:21,957
But I'm not sure
what I'm gonna run into.

741
00:41:26,832 --> 00:41:28,137
It's pretty simple.

742
00:41:28,181 --> 00:41:29,878
It's the same thing
that has driven

743
00:41:29,922 --> 00:41:32,141
human exploration
from the get-go.

744
00:41:33,969 --> 00:41:35,710
'Cause we wanna see
what's there.

745
00:41:45,633 --> 00:41:48,854
Mike was extremely precise

746
00:41:48,897 --> 00:41:51,900
in life, and especially
in his filmmaking.

747
00:41:51,944 --> 00:41:55,121
Once he had
made a decision,
that was the decision.

748
00:41:55,164 --> 00:41:57,384
And lightning
could have hit you,

749
00:41:57,427 --> 00:42:00,256
and you could have been
warning Mike
about the lightning

750
00:42:00,300 --> 00:42:03,129
and he would have
proceeded along without you
and got the shot.

751
00:42:03,172 --> 00:42:05,305
Some people would say stubborn.

752
00:42:05,348 --> 00:42:09,091
The most stubborn person.
When he got his mind
on something,

753
00:42:09,135 --> 00:42:11,006
it was...

754
00:42:11,050 --> 00:42:13,487
Stubborn.

755
00:42:13,531 --> 00:42:15,750
It was our major issue,

756
00:42:15,794 --> 00:42:18,057
because he saw the world
one way,

757
00:42:18,100 --> 00:42:20,320
and that's the way
the world was.

758
00:42:20,363 --> 00:42:22,496
And it was really difficult
to convince him

759
00:42:22,540 --> 00:42:24,367
there was another way
of seeing things.

760
00:42:24,411 --> 00:42:26,587
He would say,
"No, it's black and white."

761
00:42:26,631 --> 00:42:29,329
And I'd say, "No,
there are all kinds of
shades of gray,

762
00:42:29,372 --> 00:42:31,418
"and that's what
makes it interesting."

763
00:42:31,461 --> 00:42:34,900
He wouldn't
recognize that his take

764
00:42:34,943 --> 00:42:37,598
was just one take
of many on the world.

765
00:42:37,642 --> 00:42:39,426
He was in the world.

766
00:42:39,469 --> 00:42:42,951
And so, how he saw it
is how it was.

767
00:42:42,995 --> 00:42:45,693
He and I could disagree
about a production,

768
00:42:45,737 --> 00:42:50,611
but if he wanted to do it,
there was no
convincing him otherwise.

769
00:42:50,655 --> 00:42:53,745
He could drive me nuts.

770
00:42:53,788 --> 00:42:55,200
One of the things
I think he got wrong,

771
00:42:55,224 --> 00:42:56,661
and I said this to him,

772
00:42:56,704 --> 00:42:59,098
he was too passionate
when he got cross.

773
00:42:59,141 --> 00:43:02,405
You know, he wasn't
a politician, Mike.

774
00:43:02,449 --> 00:43:05,060
This just isn't gonna work.
I can't see anything.

775
00:43:05,104 --> 00:43:07,497
To win the war,
you don't have to win
every battle.

776
00:43:07,541 --> 00:43:09,630
But Mike had to win
every battle.

777
00:43:09,674 --> 00:43:12,502
Mike sometimes
struggled with broadcasters

778
00:43:12,546 --> 00:43:17,595
because he really
wasn't willing to compromise
his standards or integrity.

779
00:43:17,638 --> 00:43:19,161
I definitely remember
this one time,

780
00:43:19,205 --> 00:43:21,511
he slammed the phone down,

781
00:43:21,555 --> 00:43:25,254
threw it across the room,
and I said, "Well, you just
burned that bridge."

782
00:43:25,298 --> 00:43:30,172
One of the problems
in doing deep dives in filming

783
00:43:30,216 --> 00:43:32,392
is that these submersibles
that we're using

784
00:43:32,435 --> 00:43:34,960
were built for research,
not filmmaking.

785
00:43:36,004 --> 00:43:38,267
They've had our two best lights,

786
00:43:38,311 --> 00:43:39,834
the HMIs,

787
00:43:39,878 --> 00:43:42,750
way up on the top
next to a big xenon spotlight.

788
00:43:42,794 --> 00:43:44,404
And that works
great for science.

789
00:43:44,447 --> 00:43:45,840
Gives you nice, flat light,

790
00:43:45,884 --> 00:43:47,886
lot of information in the frame.

791
00:43:47,929 --> 00:43:49,888
But that's not
what we're interested in.

792
00:43:49,931 --> 00:43:53,108
We wanna get shadows and detail
and darks, and lights.

793
00:43:53,152 --> 00:43:56,938
I had these guys build big booms

794
00:43:56,982 --> 00:44:00,855
that I could spread out
and put the light way away
from the camera.

795
00:44:00,899 --> 00:44:04,119
I think
Mike was always actually
rather frustrated by his gear.

796
00:44:04,163 --> 00:44:06,469
It was never good enough.

797
00:44:06,513 --> 00:44:08,360
Apart from the fact
that he used to lose
quite a lot of it quite often.

798
00:44:08,384 --> 00:44:10,125
When we were
filming the Abyss projects,

799
00:44:10,169 --> 00:44:12,911
he was rechristened
as Mike Debris

800
00:44:12,954 --> 00:44:16,566
because he had an ability
to break cameras
like nobody else.

801
00:44:16,610 --> 00:44:18,394
He was
constantly complaining to me,

802
00:44:18,438 --> 00:44:21,615
"I want the lights out here.
I want the camera out here."

803
00:44:21,659 --> 00:44:24,357
And always fighting
with the guys
that ran the submersible

804
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:26,422
saying, "Well, if you do that,
we'd probably get stuck
on the bottom."

805
00:44:26,446 --> 00:44:28,622
He says, "I don't care,
we need to get a better shot."

806
00:44:28,666 --> 00:44:31,973
I don't think
he ever, ever said,
"I'm happy with my gear."

807
00:44:32,017 --> 00:44:34,019
Not in my experience, ever.

808
00:44:34,062 --> 00:44:36,412
You know, you were always aware

809
00:44:36,456 --> 00:44:39,851
that he was thinking,
"Oh, how can we improve this
with what we've got?"

810
00:44:39,894 --> 00:44:42,636
Which, for some people,
could be stubborn,

811
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,118
but I think
I always felt it was him
trying to be creative.

812
00:44:46,161 --> 00:44:49,948
I think
Mike had a very clear vision
of what Mike wanted to do.

813
00:44:49,991 --> 00:44:51,819
I think we all saw that.

814
00:44:51,863 --> 00:44:55,083
But with that
came a wonderful
generosity of spirit,

815
00:44:55,127 --> 00:44:58,608
a wonderful enabling of people.

816
00:44:58,652 --> 00:45:02,917
It was funny, for a man
with enormous presence,
and enormous energy,

817
00:45:02,961 --> 00:45:04,876
he actually had
rather a small ego.

818
00:45:26,462 --> 00:45:29,639
The deep diving
definitely worried me,

819
00:45:29,683 --> 00:45:33,382
but Mike was
so excited about it,

820
00:45:33,426 --> 00:45:37,430
to ask him not to
would be like asking him
not to breathe.

821
00:45:42,478 --> 00:45:45,612
MaclNNIS: When you've been
at sea for months at a time,

822
00:45:45,655 --> 00:45:49,268
and you come off the ship
and you come back
into the terrestrial world

823
00:45:49,311 --> 00:45:50,748
in the world of your family,

824
00:45:50,791 --> 00:45:53,011
and those responsibilities,

825
00:45:53,054 --> 00:45:56,536
it's a serious decompression.

826
00:45:56,579 --> 00:45:58,407
Many nights
I've spent growing up

827
00:45:58,451 --> 00:46:00,366
when he was away on those trips.

828
00:46:00,409 --> 00:46:03,543
I was probably thinking
about what he was doing,
like, imagining

829
00:46:03,586 --> 00:46:07,329
what kind of weird fish
he was looking at
2,000 feet under the ocean.

830
00:46:07,373 --> 00:46:10,550
So I think
there was a lot of wonder.

831
00:46:10,593 --> 00:46:12,552
MaclNNIS: It's like combat.

832
00:46:12,595 --> 00:46:14,597
If you weren't there,
it's very hard to describe,

833
00:46:14,641 --> 00:46:16,991
so a lot of folks
come off the ship,

834
00:46:17,035 --> 00:46:22,605
and they don't say very much
about the hardships
and the exhaustion,

835
00:46:22,649 --> 00:46:26,348
and the risks
and the close calls.

836
00:46:26,392 --> 00:46:30,091
Because that stays on the ship.

837
00:46:30,135 --> 00:46:31,832
I remember
Mike telling me, he said,

838
00:46:31,876 --> 00:46:35,140
"I don't know that I'm feeling
like diving this deep

839
00:46:35,183 --> 00:46:37,490
"or taking these kinds
of risks anymore."

840
00:46:37,533 --> 00:46:40,319
You can press your luck
only so long before
something's gonna happen

841
00:46:40,362 --> 00:46:43,583
because he had kids
and he had a family
to worry about.

842
00:46:43,626 --> 00:46:47,674
I saw him as this very brave,

843
00:46:47,717 --> 00:46:50,851
adventurous, kind of
invincible person that,
I think,

844
00:46:50,895 --> 00:46:53,593
definitely didn't occur to me
that anything would go wrong.

845
00:47:07,912 --> 00:47:13,961
Why or how have we
allowed it to go so long
and know so little about,

846
00:47:14,005 --> 00:47:16,311
you know, depths beyond scuba?

847
00:47:16,355 --> 00:47:18,879
And... why do I care?

848
00:47:18,923 --> 00:47:21,664
Why does anybody care
what happens

849
00:47:21,708 --> 00:47:24,754
way the hell down there
in the bottom of the ocean
in the mud?

850
00:47:24,798 --> 00:47:28,497
To me,
it's one of the great mysteries
of the sea,

851
00:47:28,541 --> 00:47:31,413
why we have
so neglected the ocean.

852
00:47:31,457 --> 00:47:35,243
Imagine if you just knew
about the skin
of our own bodies.

853
00:47:35,287 --> 00:47:40,031
We need to care
about the stuff that goes on
inside the ocean.

854
00:47:40,074 --> 00:47:46,080
It's taken us a long time
just to even begin to ask
the right questions.

855
00:47:46,124 --> 00:47:49,388
The deep ocean
in terms of volume for life
on our planet

856
00:47:49,431 --> 00:47:52,913
is 90% of the actual space
in which animals live.

857
00:47:52,957 --> 00:47:55,916
Five percent
of that has ever been explored.

858
00:47:55,960 --> 00:47:58,136
There's so much
more to discover.

859
00:47:58,179 --> 00:48:00,268
We'll never discover
a new species on Mars.

860
00:48:00,312 --> 00:48:03,706
Every single dive you do
in a deep ocean submersible,

861
00:48:03,750 --> 00:48:06,927
you have a very high chance
of seeing or discovering
a new species.

862
00:48:06,971 --> 00:48:09,364
It's crazy.

863
00:48:09,408 --> 00:48:12,150
And when
you look at the vast variety
of creatures that you see,

864
00:48:12,193 --> 00:48:14,761
utterly unlike anything
you've seen before,

865
00:48:14,804 --> 00:48:17,111
well, if that doesn't
blow your mind,

866
00:48:17,155 --> 00:48:20,854
you have an unblowable mind.

867
00:48:20,898 --> 00:48:23,248
Every time you find
a hydrothermal vent

868
00:48:23,291 --> 00:48:24,684
in a different part
of the ocean,

869
00:48:24,727 --> 00:48:26,947
you'll find a different
set of life.

870
00:48:26,991 --> 00:48:31,082
So why is it that
we are spending
so much money

871
00:48:31,125 --> 00:48:33,345
trying to find the meaning
of life on a rock

872
00:48:33,388 --> 00:48:34,999
spinning around the universe

873
00:48:35,042 --> 00:48:39,220
rather than actually looking
at what's in the ocean,

874
00:48:39,264 --> 00:48:42,484
which is really the lifeblood
of this planet?

875
00:48:44,660 --> 00:48:47,098
I think we're drawn up
towards space

876
00:48:47,141 --> 00:48:50,840
because to dive deep
into that abyss is scary.

877
00:48:50,884 --> 00:48:53,191
It's dark, it's mysterious,

878
00:48:53,234 --> 00:48:57,543
and in many ways,
it's analogous
to our own inability

879
00:48:57,586 --> 00:49:00,111
to be introspective.

880
00:49:00,154 --> 00:49:05,725
We don't really like
to explore our own darkness.

881
00:49:05,768 --> 00:49:09,076
I think you could say
that going into the deep ocean

882
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:11,557
is more of a spiritual
interior journey,

883
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:14,516
and going out into the universe
is more of a dualism

884
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:17,171
between the feminine
and masculine spirit.

885
00:49:17,215 --> 00:49:19,565
You know, we go
and we conquer space.

886
00:49:19,608 --> 00:49:21,567
You don't conquer the ocean.

887
00:49:21,610 --> 00:49:24,526
You understand the ocean,
you become intimate
with the ocean,

888
00:49:24,570 --> 00:49:26,876
you let it teach you.

889
00:50:28,764 --> 00:50:33,030
The mid-ocean ridge
is a huge mountain range
40,000 miles long

890
00:50:33,073 --> 00:50:35,119
snaking around the entire globe.

891
00:50:35,162 --> 00:50:37,730
And they're big mountains,
thousands of feet tall,
some of which

892
00:50:37,773 --> 00:50:40,341
are tens of thousands of feet
and bust through the surface

893
00:50:40,385 --> 00:50:42,387
creating islands like Hawaii.

894
00:50:42,430 --> 00:50:46,434
In fact,
this whole area is like
a Yellowstone National Park

895
00:50:46,478 --> 00:50:47,914
with all of the trimmings.

896
00:50:47,957 --> 00:50:50,395
And all along the sides
of these chimneys

897
00:50:50,438 --> 00:50:53,572
is shimmering with heat
and loaded with life.

898
00:50:53,615 --> 00:50:55,269
You've got shrimp,
fish, lobsters,

899
00:50:55,313 --> 00:50:58,098
crab, clams
and swarms of amphipods.

900
00:50:58,142 --> 00:51:03,582
This whole ecosystem
wasn't even known about
until 33 years ago.

901
00:51:03,625 --> 00:51:06,628
And it completely
threw science on its head.

902
00:51:06,672 --> 00:51:09,370
It made scientists rethink

903
00:51:09,414 --> 00:51:12,199
where life on Earth
might have actually begun.

904
00:51:12,243 --> 00:51:14,462
And before the discovery
of these vents,

905
00:51:14,506 --> 00:51:16,638
all life on Earth,
the key to life on Earth

906
00:51:16,682 --> 00:51:18,858
was believed to be the sun
and photosynthesis,

907
00:51:18,901 --> 00:51:22,470
but down there,
there is no sun,
there is no photosynthesis.

908
00:51:22,514 --> 00:51:25,560
It's chemosynthetic environment
down there driving it,

909
00:51:25,604 --> 00:51:28,128
and it's also ephemeral.

910
00:51:28,172 --> 00:51:31,958
For him, seeing those
volcanic processes firsthand

911
00:51:32,001 --> 00:51:36,919
was to witness
one of our lifetime's
great scientific discoveries

912
00:51:36,963 --> 00:51:40,184
and to see part
of Earth's very core.

913
00:51:40,227 --> 00:51:44,101
And for me, looking back now
at his excitement,

914
00:51:44,144 --> 00:51:47,321
that it was all ephemeral,
is even more poignant.

915
00:52:12,346 --> 00:52:15,175
Tonight,
an offshore oil rig
is in flames

916
00:52:15,219 --> 00:52:17,046
in the Gulf of Mexico,

917
00:52:17,090 --> 00:52:20,528
and rescue teams
are desperately searching
for survivors.

918
00:52:20,572 --> 00:52:22,835
When I heard on April 20th,

919
00:52:22,878 --> 00:52:27,492
that an oil rig had exploded
in the Gulf of Mexico
and was on fire,

920
00:52:27,535 --> 00:52:29,755
it got my attention.
I knew straightaway about this.

921
00:52:29,798 --> 00:52:31,800
I was there.
I was listening to the news.

922
00:52:31,844 --> 00:52:33,628
Then two days later, it sunk,

923
00:52:33,672 --> 00:52:36,327
dragging a drill stem
down with it.

924
00:52:36,370 --> 00:52:40,505
It is nearly a mile deep
and more than 20 miles long.

925
00:52:40,548 --> 00:52:42,550
Deep sea life
is threatened by the oil

926
00:52:42,594 --> 00:52:46,554
that scientists say
is not going away
any time soon.

927
00:52:46,598 --> 00:52:49,340
I grew up near here.
I grew up in Mobile.

928
00:52:49,383 --> 00:52:53,779
And I spent my, some might say,
misguided youth

929
00:52:53,822 --> 00:52:57,478
running around these bayous
going into the Mobile delta,

930
00:52:57,522 --> 00:52:59,828
spending a lot of time
in Mobile Bay

931
00:52:59,872 --> 00:53:04,006
fishing, swimming,
learning to scuba dive
in the Gulf of Mexico.

932
00:53:04,050 --> 00:53:05,356
This is home for me.

933
00:53:05,399 --> 00:53:07,314
The spill is spreading,

934
00:53:07,358 --> 00:53:11,100
and has grown considerably
over the past two days.

935
00:53:11,144 --> 00:53:14,800
Mike was desperate
to get down to the Gulf.

936
00:53:14,843 --> 00:53:18,195
He recognized
that the spill was growing

937
00:53:18,238 --> 00:53:21,067
into one of our country's worst
environmental disasters,

938
00:53:21,110 --> 00:53:24,244
and he really wanted
to tell the story.

939
00:53:24,288 --> 00:53:27,073
But he couldn't find anybody
willing to fund it.

940
00:53:27,116 --> 00:53:30,642
So finally, he just grabbed
his camera and went.

941
00:53:30,685 --> 00:53:32,121
When we went down to the Gulf,

942
00:53:32,165 --> 00:53:35,037
Mike, and Max and I

943
00:53:35,081 --> 00:53:37,605
were basically scouting,

944
00:53:37,649 --> 00:53:40,042
but capturing some footage
while we were there.

945
00:53:40,086 --> 00:53:43,655
It was hard for me
'cause I wasn't ready
for such a shift

946
00:53:43,698 --> 00:53:46,658
going from my dad
being a funny guy,

947
00:53:46,701 --> 00:53:49,226
who was pretty easygoing
about most things, to going...

948
00:53:49,269 --> 00:53:51,967
Come on, you need to wake up.
We're gonna do it, okay?

949
00:53:52,011 --> 00:53:54,274
You know, full-on rigid mode.

950
00:53:54,318 --> 00:53:56,320
"We gotta get this shot
by this time

951
00:53:56,363 --> 00:53:58,365
"or else we're totally
off schedule."

952
00:53:58,409 --> 00:54:00,280
Every time I talked to Mike,

953
00:54:00,324 --> 00:54:03,805
he was so frustrated
because he was denied access

954
00:54:03,849 --> 00:54:06,852
and was having
such a hard time
getting the story.

955
00:54:06,895 --> 00:54:08,767
This was not an easy task.

956
00:54:08,810 --> 00:54:12,466
You know, we had to use
everything we could think of

957
00:54:12,510 --> 00:54:14,990
to get into these areas
we were not allowed.

958
00:54:15,034 --> 00:54:20,039
One morning, we decided
to head into the PX store
owned by BP

959
00:54:20,082 --> 00:54:22,259
'cause we need rubber boots.

960
00:54:22,302 --> 00:54:25,262
So we drive in there
like we own the place,

961
00:54:25,305 --> 00:54:27,307
and they thought
we were working for 'em,

962
00:54:27,351 --> 00:54:31,137
and they just handed us
as many rubber boots
as we needed.

963
00:54:31,180 --> 00:54:33,357
The reason
that I wanted to come here

964
00:54:33,400 --> 00:54:37,491
is because I wanted to find out
from a scientific point of view,

965
00:54:37,535 --> 00:54:41,408
what they're finding
in these waters,

966
00:54:41,452 --> 00:54:43,323
in the estuaries,

967
00:54:43,367 --> 00:54:45,238
in the bays,

968
00:54:45,282 --> 00:54:47,196
and in the Gulf of Mexico.

969
00:54:47,240 --> 00:54:49,044
From a scientific
point of view,
what is this oil doing?

970
00:54:49,068 --> 00:54:51,244
What is this dispersant doing?

971
00:54:51,288 --> 00:54:56,162
And what do you think
might happen
three or four years from now?

972
00:54:56,205 --> 00:55:01,123
So we're about, what,
25 miles southeast of Mobile,

973
00:55:01,167 --> 00:55:06,520
and we just started coming out
and kind of getting a little bit
of sheen on the surface.

974
00:55:06,564 --> 00:55:08,479
Then the next thing
that happens is

975
00:55:08,522 --> 00:55:11,569
we started seeing
what looked like possibly
were some bait fish,

976
00:55:11,612 --> 00:55:13,353
something along those lines.

977
00:55:13,397 --> 00:55:14,920
Then we smelled it.

978
00:55:14,963 --> 00:55:17,096
We slowed down.
There was a sheen on the water.

979
00:55:17,139 --> 00:55:20,012
Then we got out here,
and there's just
this massive slick

980
00:55:20,055 --> 00:55:22,493
after slick after slick in rows.

981
00:55:36,681 --> 00:55:38,465
What were the real consequences

982
00:55:38,509 --> 00:55:40,337
for the people
who were affected?

983
00:55:41,425 --> 00:55:43,122
It's changed their lives,

984
00:55:43,165 --> 00:55:47,387
but the creatures
who cannot speak
for themselves,

985
00:55:47,431 --> 00:55:51,739
they're the ones who have to
bear the brunt of the impact.

986
00:55:51,783 --> 00:55:54,481
I've spent a lot of time
in the water with whale sharks,

987
00:55:54,525 --> 00:55:57,005
and I see them often
on the surface,

988
00:55:57,049 --> 00:55:59,138
mouths open, literally skimming,

989
00:55:59,181 --> 00:56:02,054
and they were going
into areas of oil.

990
00:56:02,097 --> 00:56:04,273
I mean. could they possibly
survive that?

991
00:56:04,317 --> 00:56:06,667
If this stuff was ingested,

992
00:56:06,711 --> 00:56:10,149
it would probably take
the matter of seconds
to coat the gills,

993
00:56:10,192 --> 00:56:13,065
and they're gonna basically
succumb and sink to bottom.

994
00:56:13,108 --> 00:56:15,459
The chemical dispersants
used early in the spill

995
00:56:15,502 --> 00:56:19,898
were like carpet bombing
the Gulf with a toxic stew
of chemicals, oil, and gas.

996
00:56:26,208 --> 00:56:29,342
The job of dispersants
is to break apart oil.

997
00:56:29,386 --> 00:56:31,431
It breaks it apart
into little droplets.

998
00:56:31,475 --> 00:56:32,998
It's a detergent, in a way.

999
00:56:33,041 --> 00:56:35,304
A very powerful
kind of detergent

1000
00:56:35,348 --> 00:56:38,177
that you shake it up
and,
as waves would do,

1001
00:56:38,220 --> 00:56:41,180
you get the little
droplets of oil throughout
the whole water column.

1002
00:56:41,223 --> 00:56:45,314
Which is exactly what happened
in the Gulf of Mexico.

1003
00:56:45,358 --> 00:56:48,796
Our goal, our mission
is to document photographically

1004
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:52,234
exactly what's happening
to the corals

1005
00:56:52,278 --> 00:56:54,106
about a mile below us right now,

1006
00:56:54,149 --> 00:56:56,891
and see if it's somehow related

1007
00:56:56,935 --> 00:57:01,592
to the Deepwater Horizon
disaster in the Macondo oil.

1008
00:57:01,635 --> 00:57:06,292
Finally, with the help
of Dr. Chuck Fisher
from Penn State University,

1009
00:57:06,335 --> 00:57:09,338
we were able to get a grant
from the National
Science Foundation

1010
00:57:09,382 --> 00:57:11,645
to follow the science
of that spill.

1011
00:57:11,689 --> 00:57:13,821
I have never seen
anything like this

1012
00:57:13,865 --> 00:57:15,649
in any other ecosystem.

1013
00:57:15,693 --> 00:57:20,045
We dove at 30 different sites
all over the Gulf.

1014
00:57:20,088 --> 00:57:24,658
We've never seen
a coral community
that was dying.

1015
00:57:24,702 --> 00:57:27,269
And when you have animals
that live as long as these do,

1016
00:57:27,313 --> 00:57:30,272
a whole field of dying corals
is an alarm bell.

1017
00:57:30,316 --> 00:57:32,492
That's just something
you don't see

1018
00:57:32,536 --> 00:57:34,668
unless something
is killing them.

1019
00:57:34,712 --> 00:57:37,628
This was
the thing that really
kind of got to my heart,

1020
00:57:37,671 --> 00:57:40,282
and made me really sad
was that these sea fans,

1021
00:57:40,326 --> 00:57:42,371
these guys are 500 years old.

1022
00:57:42,415 --> 00:57:45,940
The brittle stars
that normally are bright red
and proud,

1023
00:57:45,984 --> 00:57:50,162
and wrapped tightly
around these gorgonian corals
that we were seeing,

1024
00:57:50,205 --> 00:57:52,294
limp and pink,

1025
00:57:52,338 --> 00:57:53,861
and not doing well.

1026
00:57:53,905 --> 00:57:55,863
And these dead and dying corals
were covered

1027
00:57:55,907 --> 00:57:59,606
in some sort of brown material
that we couldn't
quite identify.

1028
00:57:59,650 --> 00:58:02,522
We have now identified it,
and it was indeed oil.

1029
00:58:02,566 --> 00:58:04,393
And we're trying
to fingerprint it

1030
00:58:04,437 --> 00:58:06,178
to find out
where that oil came from.

1031
00:58:06,221 --> 00:58:07,571
But I think we all know.

1032
00:58:07,614 --> 00:58:10,922
It was pretty darn clear
to everyone on that boat

1033
00:58:10,965 --> 00:58:12,967
that there was a serious impact

1034
00:58:13,011 --> 00:58:15,404
that this oil
and dispersant had had

1035
00:58:15,448 --> 00:58:19,713
on the Deepwater
coral communities
in the Gulf of Mexico.

1036
00:58:19,757 --> 00:58:22,281
We went back
to the Gulf as a family

1037
00:58:22,324 --> 00:58:24,413
and it had its moments.

1038
00:58:24,457 --> 00:58:28,417
Max, come in here and zoom in,

1039
00:58:28,461 --> 00:58:31,899
reframe it, then we're gonna
pick up on that.

1040
00:58:31,943 --> 00:58:34,946
You've worked for 45 minutes
and you've burned out.

1041
00:58:34,989 --> 00:58:36,949
- I know. Unbelievable.
- Yeah, you guys are lazy.

1042
00:58:36,991 --> 00:58:39,167
- You're right.
- Everything's rolling.

1043
00:58:39,211 --> 00:58:41,319
I'm done. I'm done.
- long time.
If you're in the back row,

1044
00:58:41,343 --> 00:58:43,823
- don't sigh,
and rolling your eyes.
- Go, Dad. Please, just go.

1045
00:58:45,826 --> 00:58:47,436
It's been almost two years

1046
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:49,874
since the Deepwater Horizon
rig exploded

1047
00:58:49,917 --> 00:58:53,181
in the Gulf of Mexico
some 60 miles from here.

1048
00:58:53,225 --> 00:58:55,532
And in that time,

1049
00:58:55,575 --> 00:59:00,580
it may have left
the headlines of the news,
but we're still doing it.

1050
00:59:00,624 --> 00:59:03,801
We're still drilling
in Deepwater,
in the Gulf of Mexico

1051
00:59:03,844 --> 00:59:06,238
as well as many other places
in the world,

1052
00:59:06,281 --> 00:59:09,023
and issues are still coming up.

1053
00:59:09,067 --> 00:59:13,375
BP unleashed a huge experiment

1054
00:59:13,419 --> 00:59:15,987
on the public
and on the ecosystem

1055
00:59:16,030 --> 00:59:18,946
by dumping probably
what will amount

1056
00:59:18,990 --> 00:59:23,255
to over two million gallons
of dispersants in our ocean.

1057
00:59:23,298 --> 00:59:25,276
You know,
when people would ask me
about dispersants,

1058
00:59:25,300 --> 00:59:28,565
my answer was always
we just don't know enough
to be doing this

1059
00:59:28,608 --> 00:59:30,107
because we don't have
any background information

1060
00:59:30,131 --> 00:59:31,785
on the effects
of these dispersants.

1061
00:59:31,829 --> 00:59:35,006
The only tested it
on a zebra danio,

1062
00:59:35,049 --> 00:59:36,747
and a freshwater shrimp.

1063
00:59:36,790 --> 00:59:38,749
And that was the only life
they tested it on.

1064
00:59:38,792 --> 00:59:41,926
And they didn't test it
in conjunction with oil.

1065
00:59:41,969 --> 00:59:45,103
So let's see what happens

1066
00:59:45,146 --> 00:59:51,631
when we add Corexit 9500,
the dispersant of choice
in the Gulf spill,

1067
00:59:52,937 --> 00:59:54,503
into one of these beakers.

1068
00:59:54,547 --> 00:59:57,681
This is
a qualitative experiment.

1069
00:59:57,724 --> 01:00:00,509
Nevertheless, here we go.

1070
01:00:02,947 --> 01:00:04,339
That should be enough.

1071
01:00:08,343 --> 01:00:09,344
Wow.

1072
01:00:10,389 --> 01:00:11,999
That's not taking very long.

1073
01:00:16,221 --> 01:00:18,266
We'll just let that spin
for a while.

1074
01:00:24,708 --> 01:00:26,579
Wow.

1075
01:00:26,623 --> 01:00:33,891
This, to me, is just
a completely different
material now.

1076
01:00:33,934 --> 01:00:37,242
Seems to me that
by not dispersing the oil,

1077
01:00:37,285 --> 01:00:39,810
and allowing it to concentrate
on the surface,

1078
01:00:39,853 --> 01:00:42,116
you're dealing
with a layer of oil

1079
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:44,031
that is at least accessible.

1080
01:00:44,075 --> 01:00:46,425
You can get to this,
you can scrape it,

1081
01:00:46,468 --> 01:00:48,296
you can skim it,
you can burn it,

1082
01:00:48,340 --> 01:00:51,256
you can do something with it
because there it is.

1083
01:00:51,299 --> 01:00:53,867
It's concentrated
on the surface.

1084
01:00:53,911 --> 01:00:56,522
You disperse it, you get this.

1085
01:00:56,565 --> 01:01:00,047
How in the hell
can you clean that up?

1086
01:01:00,091 --> 01:01:03,703
How is it possible
that BP was allowed

1087
01:01:03,747 --> 01:01:07,707
by the US government
to release two million gallons

1088
01:01:07,751 --> 01:01:11,493
of a known toxin to be dumped
into the Gulf of Mexico?

1089
01:01:11,537 --> 01:01:16,020
In this country,
I just go back to
"The spiller is in charge."

1090
01:01:16,063 --> 01:01:19,197
Basically, the industry
has looked for

1091
01:01:19,240 --> 01:01:23,375
what would be the cheapest way
to do a spill response.

1092
01:01:23,418 --> 01:01:27,509
According to the BP scientists,

1093
01:01:27,553 --> 01:01:32,645
just because the dispersants
pushed the oil
out of sight, out of mind,

1094
01:01:32,689 --> 01:01:35,996
they're declaring dispersants
are a success story,

1095
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:39,043
and that this is not
an alternative method
of treatment now,

1096
01:01:39,086 --> 01:01:42,699
this is the method of treatment
for future oil spills.

1097
01:01:44,831 --> 01:01:46,920
This is a stream
of consciousness,

1098
01:01:46,964 --> 01:01:51,098
and I just can't stop
and start over.

1099
01:01:51,142 --> 01:01:54,972
This was the footage
I couldn't stop watching
in the edit room.

1100
01:01:55,015 --> 01:02:00,238
Because Mike had so obviously
become a different guy.

1101
01:02:00,281 --> 01:02:05,330
And I realized
his entire life and career
had led him here.

1102
01:02:05,373 --> 01:02:06,766
Tell me what's happened.

1103
01:02:06,810 --> 01:02:09,203
What was it like before?
What is it like now?

1104
01:02:09,247 --> 01:02:11,031
What will it be like
in three years?

1105
01:02:11,075 --> 01:02:13,338
Those were the questions
that I wanted answered.

1106
01:02:13,381 --> 01:02:15,035
And we weren't
getting those answers.

1107
01:02:15,079 --> 01:02:18,256
So I thought, "Well,
they don't want to answer

1108
01:02:18,299 --> 01:02:22,434
"or they're legally bound
not to answer."

1109
01:02:22,477 --> 01:02:25,263
And the more scientists
that we spoke with,

1110
01:02:25,306 --> 01:02:26,830
the more I started feeling,

1111
01:02:26,873 --> 01:02:28,677
well, maybe that's not
actually what's going on.

1112
01:02:28,701 --> 01:02:31,356
I started feeling,
what's going on

1113
01:02:31,399 --> 01:02:35,882
is these people
really don't know
what's going on.

1114
01:02:35,926 --> 01:02:38,493
When we got into the details

1115
01:02:38,537 --> 01:02:41,670
of the specific species
that were impacted,

1116
01:02:41,714 --> 01:02:43,455
we didn't even know their names.

1117
01:02:43,498 --> 01:02:46,632
We didn't have any previous data

1118
01:02:46,675 --> 01:02:49,417
on their life history,
on their associates,

1119
01:02:49,461 --> 01:02:51,855
on their interaction
with other fauna.

1120
01:02:51,898 --> 01:02:55,119
So we were in some ways
working in the dark.

1121
01:02:55,162 --> 01:02:56,860
People often ask me,

1122
01:02:56,903 --> 01:02:59,819
what are the broader effects
of this spill

1123
01:02:59,863 --> 01:03:02,822
on other animals
associated with the corals.

1124
01:03:02,866 --> 01:03:04,868
We don't know
what those animals are.

1125
01:03:04,911 --> 01:03:06,652
And you're just
looking at, you know,

1126
01:03:06,695 --> 01:03:08,610
the instant data set
that you have right now.

1127
01:03:08,654 --> 01:03:10,525
You have no idea
what it was a week ago,

1128
01:03:10,569 --> 01:03:12,832
a month ago, a year ago,
ten years ago.

1129
01:03:12,876 --> 01:03:15,400
And we know very well
that it takes around
two decades

1130
01:03:15,443 --> 01:03:18,751
to get enough background data
to see natural change.

1131
01:03:18,795 --> 01:03:21,034
We don't have anything close
to that in the Gulf of Mexico,

1132
01:03:21,058 --> 01:03:23,234
or most other places
in the ocean.

1133
01:03:23,277 --> 01:03:25,845
And it seems what is happening

1134
01:03:25,889 --> 01:03:29,283
is that
the scientific community
in the Gulf of Mexico

1135
01:03:29,327 --> 01:03:31,111
is seriously underfunded,

1136
01:03:32,983 --> 01:03:34,811
and I think "underfunded..."

1137
01:03:34,854 --> 01:03:36,725
How much money do you need?

1138
01:03:36,769 --> 01:03:39,990
And I get figures like,
"Well, we just got
a $100,000 grant,

1139
01:03:40,033 --> 01:03:42,403
"and we're
really happy about that.
Next summer we're going out."

1140
01:03:42,427 --> 01:03:45,604
I'm thinking $100,000,
okay, that's a lot of money.

1141
01:03:45,647 --> 01:03:49,347
But compared to the insane
amounts of money

1142
01:03:49,390 --> 01:03:52,393
that corporations
like oil companies

1143
01:03:52,437 --> 01:03:56,180
spend pulling oil
out of the environment,

1144
01:03:56,223 --> 01:03:58,182
trashing the environment
in the process.

1145
01:04:00,662 --> 01:04:02,534
A hundred thousand dollars?

1146
01:04:02,577 --> 01:04:05,885
They're spending billions
of dollars exploiting

1147
01:04:05,929 --> 01:04:09,280
and destroying the very habitats

1148
01:04:09,323 --> 01:04:11,369
that we don't even understand

1149
01:04:11,412 --> 01:04:15,025
because the scientists
don't have $100,000

1150
01:04:15,068 --> 01:04:16,983
to go out and study
the sargassum?

1151
01:04:17,027 --> 01:04:19,899
Why isn't there
more of a parity?

1152
01:04:19,943 --> 01:04:21,379
I think there should be.

1153
01:04:21,422 --> 01:04:24,034
And I think, until there
becomes more parity,

1154
01:04:24,077 --> 01:04:28,168
and we release more funding
to do more science,

1155
01:04:28,212 --> 01:04:30,823
and understand
what we're dealing with,

1156
01:04:30,867 --> 01:04:32,781
and give ourselves the tools

1157
01:04:32,825 --> 01:04:36,263
to better manage these places,

1158
01:04:36,307 --> 01:04:37,525
that we're doomed.

1159
01:05:05,423 --> 01:05:10,819
MaclNNIS: This injury
to the Gulf where he grew up,
he took personally.

1160
01:05:10,863 --> 01:05:13,779
I've never seen the depth
of feeling for the ocean

1161
01:05:13,822 --> 01:05:15,868
that I saw in Mike at that time,

1162
01:05:15,912 --> 01:05:18,088
and he wanted to do
something about it.

1163
01:05:18,131 --> 01:05:20,742
This was a problem
that needed solution.

1164
01:05:22,222 --> 01:05:25,922
He felt like people
just didn't care.

1165
01:05:25,965 --> 01:05:27,880
They don't care
about the environment.

1166
01:05:27,924 --> 01:05:32,145
They don't care about
underwater wildlife.

1167
01:05:32,189 --> 01:05:35,366
These big corps
care about making money
and that's it,

1168
01:05:35,409 --> 01:05:40,545
and that just went against
everything Mike believed in.

1169
01:05:40,588 --> 01:05:42,547
Maybe I just had never seen

1170
01:05:42,590 --> 01:05:45,724
what heartbroken
Mike deGruy looks like,

1171
01:05:45,767 --> 01:05:49,858
and heartbroken over
something that
is so avoidable.

1172
01:05:49,902 --> 01:05:51,817
I remember, he was mad
because that's what

1173
01:05:51,860 --> 01:05:54,385
we were in the Gulf for,
and that's why
we were filming.

1174
01:05:54,428 --> 01:05:56,145
It was something
that really mattered to him

1175
01:05:56,169 --> 01:05:58,215
and it was really important
and he was really angry.

1176
01:05:58,258 --> 01:06:01,087
For the first time,
maybe, in his career

1177
01:06:01,131 --> 01:06:03,437
he was faced with a situation

1178
01:06:03,481 --> 01:06:08,965
with a film that he couldn't
quite get his head around.

1179
01:06:09,008 --> 01:06:11,576
It really was eating him up.

1180
01:06:11,619 --> 01:06:13,317
I really didn't know what to do

1181
01:06:13,360 --> 01:06:15,493
because he didn't
wanna talk about it.

1182
01:06:15,536 --> 01:06:17,103
And I thought, "Wow,

1183
01:06:17,147 --> 01:06:19,714
"you've taken me into the ocean,

1184
01:06:19,758 --> 01:06:23,805
"so come with me
to explore this inner space."

1185
01:06:23,849 --> 01:06:26,983
But he just didn't
want to do it.

1186
01:06:27,026 --> 01:06:30,638
It was ironic
because here's this
deep ocean explorer

1187
01:06:30,682 --> 01:06:33,554
and I couldn't get him
to explore his sadness.

1188
01:06:38,124 --> 01:06:41,823
But he was
not particularly
psychological-minded,

1189
01:06:41,867 --> 01:06:43,521
not the same kind of...

1190
01:06:45,044 --> 01:06:49,483
exuberance at discovering
a psychological truth

1191
01:06:49,527 --> 01:06:52,573
as a physical truth
in the world.

1192
01:06:52,617 --> 01:06:56,621
He wasn't gonna
be able to keep going
like he'd been going.

1193
01:06:56,664 --> 01:06:59,841
He could throw in the towel
or rage at the world

1194
01:06:59,885 --> 01:07:02,496
or he could come
to a new accommodation.

1195
01:07:02,540 --> 01:07:06,892
But in order to do that,
he was gonna have to learn
some things about himself.

1196
01:07:06,935 --> 01:07:09,460
So here's a 60-year-old guy

1197
01:07:09,503 --> 01:07:14,639
really breaking into frontier
psychological territory
for the first time.

1198
01:07:14,682 --> 01:07:17,120
He didn't like it.
He didn't wanna talk about it,

1199
01:07:17,163 --> 01:07:20,123
but he knew
he was gonna have to do it.

1200
01:07:20,166 --> 01:07:23,039
He was scared to death.

1201
01:07:23,082 --> 01:07:26,129
For the first time
since he was a young
springboard diver,

1202
01:07:26,172 --> 01:07:29,306
he just couldn't push
through that fear.

1203
01:07:29,349 --> 01:07:32,700
I think he was scared
of the depth of his rage.

1204
01:07:32,744 --> 01:07:36,443
He couldn't believe
we were so disconnected
from the natural world

1205
01:07:36,487 --> 01:07:38,880
that we would let that spill
happen to the Gulf.

1206
01:07:43,798 --> 01:07:46,279
Director
James Cameron is on a mission

1207
01:07:46,323 --> 01:07:49,108
to dive to the deepest point
on the planet.

1208
01:07:49,152 --> 01:07:50,936
That voyage deep into the sea.

1209
01:07:50,979 --> 01:07:52,894
When Jim Cameron called

1210
01:07:52,938 --> 01:07:56,942
and asked Mike
to join his next expedition,
he jumped.

1211
01:07:56,985 --> 01:08:00,598
Mike saw it as a resurgence
in an interest in the deep,

1212
01:08:00,641 --> 01:08:02,208
and it thrilled him.

1213
01:08:02,252 --> 01:08:05,429
That one very talented guy
with a capable team

1214
01:08:05,472 --> 01:08:09,737
would be able to do
what no government
had done in 50 years.

1215
01:08:09,781 --> 01:08:12,088
It's 36,000 feet down.

1216
01:08:12,131 --> 01:08:14,220
That is seven miles
to the bottom.

1217
01:08:14,264 --> 01:08:18,616
Mount Everest could fit
in the trench with
7,000 feet to spare.

1218
01:08:18,659 --> 01:08:21,793
We'd worked with him before,
in 2005, at Titanic.

1219
01:08:21,836 --> 01:08:25,710
We knew that he was
the most capable guy out there.

1220
01:08:25,753 --> 01:08:28,147
He knew subs,
he knew underwater lighting.

1221
01:08:28,191 --> 01:08:31,933
He would put the right kind
of spin and pizazz on it.

1222
01:08:31,977 --> 01:08:33,979
And Andrew,
as the director of the project,

1223
01:08:34,022 --> 01:08:36,503
really wanted Mike at his side.

1224
01:08:36,547 --> 01:08:40,942
And of course,
he jumped right in
with his usual enthusiasm.

1225
01:08:40,986 --> 01:08:44,555
And said, "Okay, you know,
when, where, I'm there."

1226
01:08:44,598 --> 01:08:46,687
Mike was
just so excited...
Yeah.

1227
01:08:46,731 --> 01:08:49,168
You know?
He was like a kid
in a candy store.

1228
01:08:49,212 --> 01:08:50,778
Oh, absolutely.

1229
01:08:50,822 --> 01:08:53,346
MaclNNIS: And at that moment,
when it was clear

1230
01:08:53,390 --> 01:08:56,262
that the sub was gonna work,
and we were going to sea,

1231
01:08:56,306 --> 01:08:58,656
Mike was excited.

1232
01:08:58,699 --> 01:09:00,919
As excited
as I've ever seen him.

1233
01:09:00,962 --> 01:09:04,488
That expedition
was really energizing him,

1234
01:09:04,531 --> 01:09:08,492
and I could hear in his voice
his old enthusiasm

1235
01:09:08,535 --> 01:09:10,320
coupled now
with a determination,

1236
01:09:10,363 --> 01:09:14,062
and I was so excited to see
where it was gonna take him.

1237
01:09:14,106 --> 01:09:16,456
I had performed a test dive

1238
01:09:16,500 --> 01:09:18,371
that was resoundingly
successful.

1239
01:09:18,415 --> 01:09:22,375
And Mike was in the water.
He's videoing at night.

1240
01:09:22,419 --> 01:09:25,161
So he got to shoot
the mothership,

1241
01:09:25,204 --> 01:09:27,293
you know,
which is what it looked like.

1242
01:09:27,337 --> 01:09:29,600
So we came up
and we were just
high as kites.

1243
01:09:29,643 --> 01:09:33,560
I mean, it was just
so much fun
to get it all working.

1244
01:09:33,604 --> 01:09:36,476
And to know the next stop
was gonna be thousands
of feet deep.

1245
01:09:36,520 --> 01:09:38,696
Don, do you have
any tips for Jim

1246
01:09:38,739 --> 01:09:42,265
if at about 20,000 feet,
if he hears a crack?

1247
01:09:42,308 --> 01:09:43,720
If you can hear it,
you're still alive,

1248
01:09:43,744 --> 01:09:45,304
and might as well
keep on with the dive.

1249
01:09:46,269 --> 01:09:48,140
You never hear
the one that gets you.

1250
01:09:48,184 --> 01:09:51,491
There was a real
festive atmosphere
on the ship that night.

1251
01:09:51,535 --> 01:09:54,059
We got together
for a glass of wine afterwards,

1252
01:09:54,102 --> 01:09:57,410
Andrew, myself and Mike,
and we were all telling stories.

1253
01:09:57,454 --> 01:10:01,022
And they were all
the kind of "old-dog"
war stories.

1254
01:10:01,066 --> 01:10:04,635
"Yeah, I remember this thing,
and when I saw that,
and how I photographed it."

1255
01:10:04,678 --> 01:10:08,247
There were a lot of laughs
and went on till, you know,
2:00 in the morning

1256
01:10:08,291 --> 01:10:10,075
because we felt we'd really...

1257
01:10:11,294 --> 01:10:13,034
We just turned a corner.

1258
01:10:13,078 --> 01:10:16,037
- All right, we'll see you
at the bottom.
- All right.

1259
01:10:16,081 --> 01:10:18,039
We'd completed all our checks.

1260
01:10:18,083 --> 01:10:20,607
Ronnie was in the sub,
we'd bolted the hatch down.

1261
01:10:20,651 --> 01:10:22,870
And the sub was just
about to be launched

1262
01:10:22,914 --> 01:10:25,525
and Mike and Andrew
were coming out

1263
01:10:25,569 --> 01:10:27,397
to film it in the helicopter.

1264
01:10:27,440 --> 01:10:30,617
We were just about to lift him

1265
01:10:30,661 --> 01:10:33,707
when my deck supervisor,
David Wotherspoon,

1266
01:10:33,751 --> 01:10:36,144
came to me and said,
"There's been an accident.

1267
01:10:37,015 --> 01:10:38,973
"The helicopter is down."

1268
01:10:39,017 --> 01:10:41,411
And I said to David,
"All right,
let's not overreact,"

1269
01:10:41,454 --> 01:10:43,935
because I heard that
it crashed on take-off.

1270
01:10:43,978 --> 01:10:46,459
So most helicopter crashes
on take-off

1271
01:10:46,503 --> 01:10:48,983
are very, very low-speed
incidents,

1272
01:10:49,027 --> 01:10:51,856
and usually the helicopter's
just sitting there broken

1273
01:10:51,899 --> 01:10:53,771
and everybody's standing around.

1274
01:10:53,814 --> 01:10:57,427
MaclNNIS: And then Jim
went ashore to the crash site,

1275
01:10:57,470 --> 01:11:02,867
and then I got a call
to come ashore and meet Jim.

1276
01:11:02,910 --> 01:11:06,262
When he turned and looked at me,
I knew what had happened.

1277
01:11:06,305 --> 01:11:08,612
And we embraced.
There was a long...

1278
01:11:09,700 --> 01:11:12,006
profound embrace with tears.

1279
01:11:12,050 --> 01:11:15,096
And... we were shattered.

1280
01:11:19,144 --> 01:11:21,451
American filmmaker
Michael deGruy

1281
01:11:21,494 --> 01:11:24,541
and Australian filmmaker
Andrew Wight were killed

1282
01:11:24,584 --> 01:11:27,326
when their helicopter
crashed soon after take-off.

1283
01:11:37,031 --> 01:11:42,341
It was like he left me
mid-conversation.

1284
01:11:42,385 --> 01:11:45,779
I just found myself thinking
"Wait, you know,

1285
01:11:45,823 --> 01:11:48,086
"we had so much more to do,

1286
01:11:48,129 --> 01:11:51,002
"I had so many more things
I wanted to say to you."

1287
01:11:52,525 --> 01:11:54,745
Did I tell him
that I loved him enough?

1288
01:11:57,313 --> 01:12:02,143
Had I been afraid to love him
as fearlessly as he'd lived?

1289
01:12:25,515 --> 01:12:28,082
I think there was
a lot left unsaid.

1290
01:12:28,126 --> 01:12:31,129
I'm grateful that
our last conversation
was a really good one,

1291
01:12:31,172 --> 01:12:33,740
like, a really good one.

1292
01:12:33,784 --> 01:12:37,440
I'm super grateful that
that is my last memory
with him,

1293
01:12:37,483 --> 01:12:40,965
but really sad that, you know,

1294
01:12:41,008 --> 01:12:44,403
we didn't get to make
the most of that time left.

1295
01:12:44,447 --> 01:12:47,101
But how can you know?
And that's a good lesson.

1296
01:12:47,145 --> 01:12:48,276
Good lesson I learned.

1297
01:12:49,103 --> 01:12:50,540
I think that...

1298
01:12:53,630 --> 01:12:55,632
I don't know.
That's the thing I want to know.

1299
01:12:55,675 --> 01:12:57,460
I would want to know
what he would be doing,

1300
01:12:57,503 --> 01:12:59,375
and I want to ask him
what I should be doing.

1301
01:13:02,595 --> 01:13:07,295
Zest, wonder,
energy, laughter...

1302
01:13:09,863 --> 01:13:12,953
courage, companionship...

1303
01:13:16,870 --> 01:13:18,002
wonder.

1304
01:13:18,045 --> 01:13:19,090
Wonder.

1305
01:13:21,788 --> 01:13:27,098
Mike wasn't here just
to entertain us, which he did,

1306
01:13:27,141 --> 01:13:29,970
or educate us, which he did,

1307
01:13:30,014 --> 01:13:33,234
or inspire us, which he did,

1308
01:13:33,278 --> 01:13:36,368
or to love us,
which he also did,

1309
01:13:36,412 --> 01:13:39,066
but to get inside us
and change us,

1310
01:13:39,110 --> 01:13:40,807
to make us behave differently.

1311
01:13:45,682 --> 01:13:48,032
His enthusiasm, his excitement,

1312
01:13:48,075 --> 01:13:51,165
his beautiful silver hair
and that unfortunate haircut.

1313
01:13:53,603 --> 01:13:55,300
His sense of wonder.

1314
01:13:55,343 --> 01:14:01,262
Terry Ellis described Mike
as a human exclamation mark.

1315
01:14:01,306 --> 01:14:03,047
You know,
when his brother said that,

1316
01:14:03,090 --> 01:14:04,938
everybody in the space said,
"You know, actually,

1317
01:14:04,962 --> 01:14:07,355
"that's a really good way
of describing Mike."

1318
01:14:07,399 --> 01:14:10,663
There was a wonderful, I think,
Hawaiian-inspired ceremony,

1319
01:14:10,707 --> 01:14:12,796
of throwing flowers
into the ocean.

1320
01:14:12,839 --> 01:14:17,061
We were holding hands,
and we were all
very emotional, actually.

1321
01:14:17,104 --> 01:14:20,238
And it was a wonderful sunset,
and then suddenly, in the sky,

1322
01:14:20,281 --> 01:14:23,676
as clear as day,
was a cloud formation

1323
01:14:23,720 --> 01:14:25,243
that was an exclamation mark.

1324
01:14:26,549 --> 01:14:28,594
And it wasn't
sort of a "maybe."

1325
01:14:28,638 --> 01:14:30,422
It was absolutely clear,

1326
01:14:30,466 --> 01:14:32,511
and everybody who was there,
it suddenly went quiet.

1327
01:14:32,555 --> 01:14:34,707
We were all chatting,
we looked at it,
and people said, "Wow."

1328
01:14:34,731 --> 01:14:36,559
That was a phenomenon.

1329
01:14:36,602 --> 01:14:39,431
I don't think
I've ever seen a more powerful,

1330
01:14:39,475 --> 01:14:43,914
you know, testimony to
there's something,

1331
01:14:43,957 --> 01:14:47,221
you know, beyond
just organic life

1332
01:14:47,265 --> 01:14:49,615
than that exclamation point.

1333
01:14:49,659 --> 01:14:51,487
And I remember
thinking to myself,

1334
01:14:51,530 --> 01:14:53,053
that bugger, Mike deGruy,

1335
01:14:53,097 --> 01:14:54,968
he's never, ever
gonna miss a party.

1336
01:14:55,012 --> 01:14:58,189
There is no way
that we're not gonna know
he's there.

1337
01:14:58,232 --> 01:15:02,541
That noisy, energetic,
amazing guy, even...

1338
01:15:02,585 --> 01:15:04,978
even after death,

1339
01:15:05,022 --> 01:15:07,198
made sure that we still
knew he was around.

1340
01:15:09,113 --> 01:15:14,292
Mike's energy drew both
people and animals to him.

1341
01:15:14,335 --> 01:15:16,468
That was his magic.

1342
01:15:16,512 --> 01:15:22,039
It might send down
a tentacle, caress me
with its sucker discs.

1343
01:15:22,082 --> 01:15:25,085
It's just unbelievable
what this animal
is capable of,

1344
01:15:25,129 --> 01:15:26,826
and I loved them.

1345
01:15:26,870 --> 01:15:29,916
He wasn't this
earnest environmentalist.

1346
01:15:32,615 --> 01:15:36,575
He wasn't driven by duty
in that kind of sense.

1347
01:15:36,619 --> 01:15:39,143
Just within him,
there was just this great

1348
01:15:39,186 --> 01:15:43,539
warm, throbbing kind of,
you know, "Isn't life great?"

1349
01:15:43,582 --> 01:15:46,585
These jack number
hit the thousands!

1350
01:15:46,629 --> 01:15:48,979
In this last year,
he was retooling.

1351
01:15:49,022 --> 01:15:52,635
He was determined
to get the truth out.

1352
01:15:52,678 --> 01:15:56,116
We'll spend billions
and billions and billions
of dollars exploiting an area

1353
01:15:56,160 --> 01:16:00,033
that we haven't even spent
a little bit of money
understanding.

1354
01:16:00,077 --> 01:16:01,687
It doesn't make sense.

1355
01:16:01,731 --> 01:16:05,038
If everybody could take
a little bit of that juice,

1356
01:16:05,082 --> 01:16:09,086
the inspiration,
the fire that burned
so brightly in Mike deGruy,

1357
01:16:09,129 --> 01:16:11,479
if we could just
spread it around,

1358
01:16:11,523 --> 01:16:15,179
there'd be no problem.
Everybody'd be wanting
to get out there.

1359
01:16:15,222 --> 01:16:17,747
When I talked
with schools and kids,

1360
01:16:17,790 --> 01:16:21,446
"Well, gee, how do you become
an underwater filmmaker?
I wanna do that."

1361
01:16:21,489 --> 01:16:23,753
"Just do it.
Just start making movies.

1362
01:16:23,796 --> 01:16:25,885
"They'll be horrible at first,
it doesn't matter."

1363
01:16:25,929 --> 01:16:27,844
You know, you'll still
have fun doing it.

1364
01:16:33,632 --> 01:16:35,852
I fell so in love with Mike

1365
01:16:35,895 --> 01:16:38,898
and saw the ocean
through his eyes,

1366
01:16:38,942 --> 01:16:45,731
and it was clear to me
that he wanted us all
to love it like he did.

1367
01:16:45,775 --> 01:16:48,386
He would be shouting
from the rooftop

1368
01:16:48,429 --> 01:16:51,824
that the ocean is not for sale.

1369
01:16:51,868 --> 01:16:58,788
And it's up to us to have those
difficult conversations now
before it's too late.

1370
01:16:58,831 --> 01:17:03,140
And to take care of the ocean
like our life depends on it.

1371
01:17:04,315 --> 01:17:08,232
Because, honestly, it does.

1372
01:17:08,275 --> 01:17:11,670
I've been to a lot of lectures
where at the end of it,

1373
01:17:11,714 --> 01:17:14,325
inevitably, one of the first
questions that comes up is,

1374
01:17:14,368 --> 01:17:15,718
"But what can I do?"

1375
01:17:15,761 --> 01:17:19,069
My answer to that
is don't look at the big,

1376
01:17:19,112 --> 01:17:21,462
overwhelming issues
of the world.

1377
01:17:21,506 --> 01:17:23,203
Look in your own backyard.

1378
01:17:26,293 --> 01:17:28,469
Look into your heart, actually.

1379
01:17:28,513 --> 01:17:32,125
What do you really care about
that isn't right where you live,
and fix it.

1380
01:18:26,614 --> 01:18:30,270
So we've returned
to my hometown, Mobile, Alabama,

1381
01:18:30,314 --> 01:18:33,360
to talk to a lot of people
and get people involved,

1382
01:18:33,404 --> 01:18:36,102
and maybe, you know, we can...

1383
01:18:36,146 --> 01:18:38,104
We can make the world
a better place.

1384
01:18:39,976 --> 01:18:41,542
Cut.