The Outlaw Ocean Ep. 5 | Raiders of the Deep - video Dailymotion

TIME

The deep ocean floor is our planet’s final frontier. It is also the most hostile environment on Earth. Scientists have yet to discover what lives in its profound ecosystems, but governments and corporations, driven by the green economy, are already tussling over its riches.

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:26 This is the most hostile environment on Earth.

00:31 But the key to our future may lie in the deep.

00:34 Far from rules and oversight, the ocean floor

00:37 is now at the center of a tug of war between exploitation

00:42 and conservation.

00:43 2/3 of the planet is covered by water.

00:52 It's our planet's wildest frontier,

00:55 breathtaking as much as it is vital to all life.

01:00 A place of discovery and endless reinvention,

01:04 a metaphor for freedom, as well as a profoundly dystopian

01:07 realm where the darkest of all humanities play out.

01:10 Over 50 million people work at sea,

01:15 and human rights and environmental abuses

01:18 often occur with impunity.

01:19 [INTERPOSING VOICES]

01:20 Six of you.

01:21 Six people.

01:22 We are sleeping in there.

01:23 It's so hot.

01:25 This is-- I've never, ever seen this bad.

01:28 My name is Ian Urbina.

01:31 As a journalist, I've spent the past decade reporting

01:33 from this lawless frontier.

01:36 I run an investigative journalism organization

01:38 called The Outlaw Ocean Project that reports about crimes

01:42 happening in this space.

01:55 This is the outlaw ocean.

01:56 The deep sea is our planet's largest ecosystem.

02:15 It's also the largest depository of minerals.

02:18 For millennia, that wealth remained untapped.

02:22 But cutting edge technology is opening this new frontier

02:25 to both exploration and exploitation like never before.

02:29 In 2017, I traveled on board a Greenpeace ship

02:44 to the Barents Sea, far north of Russia and Finland.

02:48 That oil, the partly state-run Norwegian oil company,

02:52 was intent on drilling the seabed for more oil.

02:57 We are here to conduct a peaceful protest.

02:59 This is Arctic sunrise.

03:02 Unfortunately, I cannot consider the extraction of oil

03:08 from this remote area of the Barents Sea

03:11 to be a safe practice.

03:12 Boat crew is ready to launch now,

03:17 and then everybody else ready at the pilot door.

03:21 In international waters, the oil industry

03:23 had reached a new level of risk-taking.

03:27 No company had ever tried to drill

03:29 this far north in the Arctic.

03:32 Norway had signed the Paris Agreements

03:33 pledging to curtail fossil fuel extraction,

03:37 and yet it continued to prospect and drill.

03:40 The murky laws that govern the high seas

03:43 played fully in their favor.

03:46 I'm asking you as a captain

03:49 to take off the people from the water

03:51 because my ship is going to tug this ship.

03:54 That's an order.

03:57 This Greenpeace protest ended in failure.

04:00 Its equipment confiscated, its vessel towed away

04:03 by the Norwegian Coast Guard on request of the oil company.

04:07 One thing that we are going to continue is persist,

04:10 and we will continually protest until we hear

04:15 that the oil rig has stopped drilling.

04:18 The Statoil project proceeded with barely a delay.

04:22 These oil platforms are just a few kilometers

04:27 off the Brazilian coast.

04:29 Here, the semi-public corporation Petrobras

04:32 and other international companies

04:34 are extracting oil from beneath the seabed.

04:38 This type of extraction is expensive.

04:41 News reports on expanded drilling

04:44 off the coast of South America

04:46 sparked my next journey to Brazil.

04:49 We have 10 degrees port rudder.

04:58 We're making our turn to move 033.

05:03 I joined local scientists on board the Esperanza,

05:07 where Greenpeace activists were challenging

05:09 South America's biggest oil producer

05:12 from drilling near a coral reef

05:14 at the mouth of the Amazon River.

05:17 Given what I had witnessed in the Barents Sea,

05:19 I didn't hold much hope for the Esperanza's crew.

05:24 Here's where we are now, and this is showing

05:27 2.2 meters in seven seconds from the northeast.

05:32 Brazil's government had abandoned control

05:35 to the oil companies, accepting their reassurance

05:38 that no harm would be done to the ecology around the reef.

05:42 Greenpeace's goal was to empower Brazilian scientists

05:45 to document what might be at stake

05:48 if the drilling were to go ahead.

05:50 Nobody has properly surveyed this reef

05:52 except the oil companies that are looking for oil,

05:54 so they know what's down here,

05:55 but they're being quiet about it.

05:57 They're not letting the Brazilians know

05:59 that there's coral reefs and sponges and rotalists

06:01 and an interesting biome of life down here,

06:05 most likely new species

06:06 that have not even been discovered here.

06:09 It's a travesty.

06:09 Poorer countries do not have the resources

06:15 to both independently assess the risks

06:17 to offshore ecosystems

06:19 and to fact-check the oil companies.

06:22 The scientists were in a race against time

06:25 and vast oil company resources,

06:27 a classic David and Goliath.

06:29 We live on the water planet.

06:34 Most of the surface of our planet is water

06:38 and 98, 99% of the livable habitat is ocean.

06:43 It's amazing to me where we would risk things like this

06:48 or we don't even understand what we have to begin with.

06:51 There've been major discoveries in the ocean,

06:54 sponges especially,

06:56 and this is a really important sponge area

06:58 that provided major medical breakthroughs.

07:02 We could find the cure for cancer

07:04 or we could destroy it with an oil spill

07:06 before we even know what we have.

07:07 Besides the medical secrets that could be unlocked,

07:19 explorers and extractors are also looking at the seafloor

07:22 for solutions to wean ourselves

07:25 from our modern dependence on fossil fuels.

07:27 This is what treasure looks like,

07:33 a polymetallic nodule,

07:35 so rich that some research suggests

07:38 it could replace our need to mine on land

07:41 for cobalt, lithium, nickel, and manganese,

07:44 essential to power our batteries,

07:46 vital to our green revolution.

07:48 The rewards might be great, but so are the risks.

07:54 Waste from mining alone can travel through the ocean

07:57 and damage nearby seamounts and coral reef systems.

08:01 This would in turn put more fish stocks at risk.

08:05 Many small South Pacific nations feel very differently.

08:09 Their prosperity and future depend on their ocean floors.

08:14 The ocean is the next frontier for mining

08:26 and Nauru is part of a pioneering venture

08:28 that could soon power the world's green economy.

08:31 I believe that Nauru will benefit greatly.

08:34 Nauru has for centuries been plundered by colonial powers

08:42 for its rich phosphate.

08:43 Now large swaths of this Pacific island are uninhabitable.

08:49 With nothing left to exploit on land,

08:51 this tiny republic is now turning to its ocean floor.

08:56 It has applied to the International Seabed Authority,

08:59 the ISA, to license its drilling.

09:02 The ISA is an independent body

09:04 that regulates the ocean floor in international waters.

09:07 If Nauru gets permission,

09:10 it's likely to start the next gold rush.

09:28 Aboard the Esperanza,

09:29 the team of marine biologists are celebrating.

09:32 The Brazilian government reversed its decision

09:35 to block the expedition.

09:37 The mission can go forward.

09:38 - We have authorization, man.

09:41 - Let's go change course.

09:43 So we're turning around and going back to the position

09:47 where we went to do the dive,

09:48 but it appears like we have permission.

09:51 (dramatic music)

09:54 It was mind-altering.

10:21 I mean, the closest thing I can compare it to

10:24 is when you're in a plane

10:25 and you're flying through the clouds

10:27 and you know you're moving,

10:28 but you have a hard time measuring it or understanding it

10:32 because you're in the midst of this blinding thing.

10:35 - Parker, Deep Parker, at this time,

10:44 you've got permission to flood your soft tanks,

10:46 flood your soft tanks, proceed to bottom.

10:49 - Let's get that cost track at 1-0-0 feet.

10:52 - And then when you touch the floor,

10:56 a cloud of silk surrounds you.

10:59 And as the cloud of dust settles,

11:02 you can begin to make out the terrain

11:05 that looks almost like the moon's surface,

11:07 at least where we were,

11:09 and these structures, you know, a coral wall.

11:12 Here we are at the bottom of the Amazon reef.

11:18 We are approaching what looks to be a large mound.

11:23 - Deep Parker, Deep Parker,

11:26 I'll copy on VHF 6-9, over.

11:28 - I had imagined the seafloor to be barren,

11:33 but discovered it was the total opposite.

11:36 What I found was an exotic netherworld

11:41 full of wondrous forms of life

11:43 that no longer fitted the neat animal,

11:46 mineral, vegetable categories.

11:48 The lesson I learned was that

11:50 precisely because they were so alien,

11:53 not only unknown to science,

11:54 but also so far removed from the decision-making on land,

11:58 these creatures and their habitat

12:01 were even more vulnerable to destructive exploitation.

12:04 One of the challenges with the ocean

12:09 is that so much of it is out of sight,

12:11 and it's easy to imagine that there's really

12:15 nothing very interesting down there.

12:17 We've seen how important that can be.

12:21 Once people see it, they want to protect it.

12:26 It changes the way they feel about their ocean,

12:29 about our ocean.

12:30 - Minerals are inextricably linked

12:36 to the rise of mankind and civilization,

12:39 but today a very different

12:40 and much more precarious balance is at play.

12:43 - I want to see us have a new approach

12:45 to how we think about our oceans in general,

12:47 our planet, not even just the ocean,

12:50 and not just short-term gains that we can make

12:53 from taking and taking and taking,

12:56 drilling, mining, fishing.

12:59 - In Brazil, the scientists won an important battle,

13:04 but the larger war for the ocean floor

13:07 has only just begun.

13:08 (dramatic music)

13:11 (dramatic music)

13:13 (dramatic music)

13:16 (dramatic music)

13:19 (dramatic music)

13:22 (dramatic music)

13:24 (dramatic music)

13:27 (dramatic music)

13:30 (upbeat music)

13:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Outlaw Ocean Ep. 5 | Raiders of the Deep

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