WEBVTT

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Pilot has control. Pull the pin. The Aleutian
Chain is one of these areas in the world

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which has seen really high biodiversity for 
different species of sponges and corals. So far ,

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this entire dive has been totally dominated 
by ecosystem engineering species. [Music]

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I believe this is one of my favorite corals, 
the red tree coral, Primnoa pacifica.

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Red tree coral is actually one of the 
most important species in Alaska.

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It provides a lot of habitat for rockfish and 
juvenile crabs and lots of other species.

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This is truly a coral garden area. [Music] 
This is blowing my mind quite honestly,

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this morning. This is a wonderful thing 
to see first thing in the morning. [Music]

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I personally find it really interesting to think

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about the interplay between 
the biology and the geology.

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Corals grow at very, very slow paces. It was a very restricted 
in food compared to in the upper ocean. [Music]

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And that's really useful information 
for geologists to have when thinking

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about the relative timing of different 
events here on the seafloor and this area

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seems to have experienced quite a lot 
of activity over a long period of time.

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And it's interesting to note that those first 
boulder fields we examined had big, fresh-looking

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blocks with hardly any corals on them right. Yeah, 
there was hardly anything on those rocks earlier.

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And these are very well covered,

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and the blocks are more rounded and so, yeah, I 
think these have been sitting here for a while.

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[Music] Being a geologist and making 
observations means that you go a little

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slower and you really can look around and take 
in a place. It's been a really cool adventure.

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The water column is the largest living space 
on the planet and it's also the least explored.

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And the reason that we do so many different 
transects are these different depths is different

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organisms like to live in different parts of 
the water. I think traditionally people think

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of the water column as kind of this big mixed mass 
that it's all the same. But there's lots of different

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currents in the ocean. Some currents that run 
deep, some currents that run in the midwater,

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and some currents that run in the shallow water 
as well. This is what's called a glass squid. Yeah

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This is a Taonius borealis. Oh did you just 
see the muscular portion that's covering the

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eye, the cornea, just opened a little bit. 
That was incredible. It's really amazing.

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This is the first time I've ever dove 
on a cold seep area so I'm super excited.

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This really is a needle in a haystack 
situation very often. The pilot has

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pointed out a really good view from Seirios 
that shows an overview of this giant bush of

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tubeworms. The fact that the tubeworms 
are here means that the seeps are here.

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The seeps are definitely here. So these tubeworms 
do not occur outside of chemosynthetic areas.

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Those are some healthy-looking 
tubeworms. Look at those. Beautiful.

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Any nothing that comes out has the ability to 
combine with water before it gets dissolved and

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forms this white ice-like material on the seafloor. Oh oh 
oh oh! That's a wonderful shot. Thank you so much.

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These tiny bubbles gave a glimpse of the community 
that might be below. With our sonar from the ship

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and then sending down D2 2,000 meters below, 
seeing these small bubbles just always makes

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me reminded of like how impressive the feat of 
human engineering is. Oh wow look at that. I think

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it's really important to be able to translate the 
science that we're doing into something that will

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inspire children, will inspire undergraduates, 
will inspire other students to become deep-sea

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biologists. With exploration, you're not even at 
the point where you can generate a hypothesis.

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You are trying to figure out what to ask and 
there are all these new things that you discover

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that either go along with your hypothesis or 
don't and I just love how these expeditions

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get us to the point where we can ask questions 
in some cases and in other cases collect enough

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data that we can answer some questions so that's 
the really cool part about these trips. [Music]