N1BOS — broadcast
20260807 123000 UTC
376 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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[00:00:17] unique ecological function of
[00:00:23] driving a jeep is like a voyage which lasts a few
[00:00:26] hours but is extremely intense.
[00:00:31] every dive is pressure, I love it, I am happy to go,
[00:00:35] but there is something always in my head, there
[00:00:39] dolphins is a good indicator of is pressure, it's not like diving at 20
[00:00:41] meters, it's a huge dive, something goes wrong and it's
[00:00:45] over, I don't panic but I like to feel fear
[00:00:48] because it's a very good thermometer of what I can do
[00:00:51] and what I don't want to do, okay th
[00:00:55] two one
[00:00:57] go!
[00:01:05] understanding of the ecology of It's like going from one world to another
[00:01:10] main and major problem of world, no noise anymore,
[00:01:14] you forget what's on the surface, and you
[00:01:17] start to focus on what's on the
[00:01:19] ground,
[00:01:25] you are always curious to go to sea a little
[00:01:29] bit further. You always have an eye to the bottom
[00:01:32] with this wonder what lies
[00:01:34] beneath.
[00:01:38] Little by little you want to go deeper because you
[00:01:42] wonder what are you going to find, what lies in the depths?
[00:02:07] "the ocean covers nearly three quarters of our planet, but it
[00:02:10] is home to some of the least explored and least
[00:02:13] understood ecosystems on earth. Beneath the
[00:02:17] surface, ocean ecosystems are collapsing. As sea
[00:02:21] temperatures rise, shallow coral reefs are the canaries in the coal
[00:02:25] mine, succumbing to mass bleaching events, and blasted
[00:02:29] into eco-logical oblivion, but
[00:02:32] deeper ecosystems are still
[00:02:34] clinging
[00:02:40] on. As part of the Rolex Perpetual Planning Initiative,
[00:02:44] husband and wife duo Gilan Bardou and Emmanuel Prieur
[00:02:47] Bardou are in Greece searching for these deep
[00:02:50] ecosystems, what they call marine animal
[00:02:53] forests. We go in places where
[00:02:57] nobody has been before, so every... thing you look
[00:03:00] at is kind of new. I remember when I was a
[00:03:04] small girl, I sort of like underwater
[00:03:07] exploration was finished 'cause I've been looking at Cousteau
[00:03:11] for years and it looked like everything was done
[00:03:15] and uh then I grew up and it was like a new area
[00:03:19] for exploration appeared and each dive we do in the
[00:03:22] mesophotic is like a new sense of
[00:03:26] exploration.
[00:03:30] The mesophotic zone, sometimes known as the ocean's twilight
[00:03:33] zone, lies between 30 and 150 meters below the
[00:03:37] surface, the deepest waters the sunlight
[00:03:39] reaches. Aboard their expedition schooner, the
[00:03:43] Why, Gilan and Emmanuel have taken their organization, Under the
[00:03:47] Pole, to the furthest reaches of the planet, diving
[00:03:50] beneath polar ice and among tropical
[00:03:53] reefs, all with the aim of discovering and documenting
[00:03:57] this mysterious environment before it's too late.
[00:04:01] We are talking about
[00:04:04] a huge ecosystem that covered the entire
[00:04:07] planet, all the shore everywhere, it's
[00:04:10] just below 30 meters, 40 meters, and there are for
[00:04:14] sure many species, many different
[00:04:18] ecosystems that all have huge
[00:04:21] importance. So acquiring a better understanding of
[00:04:25] their ecology is essential for the conservation
[00:04:28] of those depths.
[00:04:32] "The mission is to locate these deep-sea hotspots and
[00:04:35] create comprehensive scientific records, demonstrating their vital
[00:04:39] ecological function and gaining protection for their
[00:04:43] future. It's very important to study now on the
[00:04:46] Mediterranean coast because of all these heat
[00:04:49] waves uh that we had underwater that have killed a
[00:04:53] lot of ecosystems in the surface zone. So we want to
[00:04:57] see now how is going the Mesophotic one." We are not
[00:05:00] interested in one species in particular, we are
[00:05:04] interested in the forest to prove their
[00:05:07] importance and to protect it. In
[00:05:10] the same way, a terrestrial forest
[00:05:12] forms a canopy and creates its own microclimate.
[00:05:16] Underwater tree-like corals like red gorgonia and black
[00:05:20] coral also create a refuge for species, changing the
[00:05:24] microenvironment. Gorgonians
[00:05:26] or black corals are like trees, let's say small
[00:05:30] trees, they can be that high, that high, that high, but
[00:05:34] they are really a shelter,
[00:05:37] a habitat for many other species, it's an
[00:05:40] ecosystem which is highly...
[00:05:43] "it's a source of abundance at
[00:05:46] sea, but as far as you cut
[00:05:49] it, the ecosystem collapses, disappears,
[00:05:52] and afterwards you just have desert down
[00:05:55] there.
[00:05:57] The challenge is finding them. Most of the Mediterranean
[00:06:01] has never been explored below 50 meters
[00:06:04] and indicators for the best spots to dive are
[00:06:08] limited. Here in Fourni, an underwater drone
[00:06:11] captured images of a potential forest in 2021, but
[00:06:15] identifying the precise location is like finding a
[00:06:18] needle in a hay stack. All the dives we are
[00:06:21] doing with Under the Pole are
[00:06:24] technical, generally deep
[00:06:27] here, we, we are diving at more or less
[00:06:30] 100 meters, it's deep, it's
[00:06:34] engaged. Okay, is everybody
[00:06:36] ready?
[00:06:49] The dives can last anywhere from 3 to 6 hours, and at the
[00:06:53] seafloor, every second counts. 15 to
[00:06:57] 20 minutes below 100 meters necessitates three or four hours
[00:07:00] of decompression on the way back to the surface, so the team
[00:07:04] rarely spends more than half an hour at the maximum
[00:07:07] depth.
[00:07:09] Up on the rib, it's a waiting game, and the only way to know what is happening
[00:07:13] below is from messages delivered by underwater
[00:07:16] parachutes, so popped up the
[00:07:19] signals, saying that everything is all
[00:07:22] right, that it's very beautiful, but it looks
[00:07:26] like there is no
[00:07:27] forest.
[00:07:32] It's very
[00:07:32] frustrating.
[00:07:36] Topography was more or less like we
[00:07:38] expected, but it was uh just sand,
[00:07:43] and so we went down to 95
[00:07:46] meters searching for some
[00:07:49] either isolated spot of black corals or
[00:07:52] whatever, but they were not. I'm pretty sure there are some,
[00:07:56] but not everywhere. We have to find
[00:07:58] it.
[00:08:00] The frustration is compounded by signs of bottom trawling on the
[00:08:04] seafloor and fear that any corals that were photographed in
[00:08:07] 2021 may now be destroyed.
[00:08:11] The problem with bottom trawling is that it destroys
[00:08:14] everything down there. When you have species like black or
[00:08:18] gorgonian for example, they can take
[00:08:21] years, dozens of years, hundreds of
[00:08:24] years to reach the size they are, and
[00:08:27] which build the habitat for all the other
[00:08:31] species and that can be destroyed in just one
[00:08:34] trawl.
[00:08:39] Unlike the industrial trawlers, Fourni's
[00:08:42] fishing community understands the value of the mesophotic
[00:08:45] ecosystem and are eager to help Under the Pole locate the
[00:08:49] forest. Back on the Why, Guilan and Emmanuel are meeting with
[00:08:53] local conservation organization Archipelagos, who have an
[00:08:56] update from the fisherman. This is where the black
[00:08:59] corals
[00:09:00] and
[00:09:07] here where we had the best chance.
[00:09:11] music it's okay. Yeah,
[00:09:13] hopefully,
[00:09:18] hopefully.
[00:09:38] In Greece's Fourni archipelago, husband and wife
[00:09:41] team Guilan Bardou and Emmanuel Prieur Bardou
[00:09:44] are on the hunt for an underwater oasis
[00:09:48] never before documented, and a tip off a potential
[00:09:51] location from some local fishermen has doubled their
[00:09:55] resolve, and as they approach the site, a
[00:09:58] welcome party is already there to greet them.
[00:10:12] And... I've been passionate by dolphins and whales since I'm a
[00:10:16] very small girl, so it was a really nice
[00:10:19] show.
[00:10:28] Their name are common dolphin, but they are not so common these days, we
[00:10:32] don't see them all the time, and it shows how wild and special
[00:10:36] this place is. Of course I saw many, many dolphins
[00:10:39] in my life at sea, but that
[00:10:43] was a really, really good moment with them, you know
[00:10:47] when you have a strong and nice and beautiful
[00:10:50] experience with wildlife, take it as a
[00:10:53] gift, as a privilege'.
[00:11:01] Seeing such a large pod of
[00:11:04] the area's marine health, and after seven dives without
[00:11:08] success, the Under the Pole crew are eager to see if they
[00:11:12] can finally locate the elusive marine animal forest down
[00:11:15] in the depths. We have never been so close to
[00:11:19] find it. We discussed with the fisherman and uh
[00:11:23] they gave us alignment, the... us GPS
[00:11:26] location and uh another fisherman
[00:11:29] is uh fishing here around so definitely
[00:11:33] it's a fishing spot and they know from their
[00:11:36] net that there are black corals
[00:11:39] and what we are looking for so it will
[00:11:43] be a good spot. We'll
[00:11:45] see now we are just waiting for the red
[00:11:48] parachute.
[00:11:55] Around 40 minutes later, word from the seabed arrives
[00:11:58] and
[00:12:02] oh amazing, huge
[00:12:05] gorgonian forest, many black corals,
[00:12:09] sponges, unbelievable and
[00:12:12] beautiful, a lot, a lot of
[00:12:14] fish, forest between 100 and
[00:12:18] 78 meters,
[00:12:21] a very large uh range.
[00:12:26] So that's a very, very good news.
[00:12:28] Yeah.
[00:12:32] Yeah.
[00:12:45] The first time we see the forest is like a huge
[00:12:49] relief and also a very beautiful
[00:12:53] surprise because it's one of...
[00:12:55] the most beautiful marine animal forests I have ever seen.
[00:12:59] It's very big, with one
[00:13:02] dive you cannot explore all the
[00:13:05] forest.
[00:13:10] You have so many fish, so many spaces,
[00:13:14] it really gives
[00:13:15] hope.
[00:13:18] At that depth we are not used to see so much
[00:13:21] color, it was amazing, it's really for...
[00:13:25] moments that I am doing this, so I was very
[00:13:27] happy.
[00:13:37] The discovery of the Fourni Marine Animal Forest is the result of
[00:13:40] years of planning, but it is also just the
[00:13:44] beginning. Now the team will collaborate with Lorenzo
[00:13:47] Bramanti, a renowned coral ecologist to collect as much
[00:13:51] data as possible to aid in the protection of this newfound
[00:13:55] ecosystem.
[00:14:04] For the first time, me and other colleagues are trying to really define
[00:14:08] this concept of forest and putting it in a scientific
[00:14:11] quantification that makes it possible to use it in
[00:14:14] conservation. You have to imagine the ecosystem like the
[00:14:18] Eiffel Tower. If you take out a screw, nothing happens.
[00:14:22] Eiffel Tower. If you take out two... three, 10,
[00:14:26] 20 screws, probably nothing happens, but then if you
[00:14:29] take out too many screws, it arrives at the point in which that screw
[00:14:33] that are taken out, if there's a wind a little bit stronger, the
[00:14:36] Eiffel Tower is going down. So the marine animal forest is like
[00:14:40] the Eiffel Tower and the, and the screws are the
[00:14:43] species. If we eliminate too many species, we arrive at a point in which the
[00:14:47] ecosystem collapses and we don't come back.
[00:14:51] The science is a multidisciplinary approach to
[00:14:54] establish how robust these deep forests are to the effects of
[00:14:58] climate change, and whether they can be a refuge for sea life as
[00:15:02] shallower ecosystems continue to decay.
[00:15:05] Involving ecology, chemistry,
[00:15:08] acoustics, hydrodynamics and physics, each
[00:15:11] research element needs to be run past the divers to make sure it's
[00:15:15] feasible in the limited time they have at such extreme
[00:15:18] depths. Okay, so this is the the new device
[00:15:21] that you are going to have to deploy. The goal of this
[00:15:25] setup is to measure the calcification of the community, so to
[00:15:28] see how the community is growing, how many times
[00:15:31] should we measure what's in the water? The goal would be to try to
[00:15:35] go first on the part with the gorgonian,
[00:15:38] then the part with the black coral if there is time
[00:15:41] and if the weather allows it, then have like a control site
[00:15:45] without coral.
[00:15:49] Very few people in the world have the training to dive to the
[00:15:52] mesophotic zone and fewer still have the ability
[00:15:56] to work down
[00:15:57] there.
[00:16:04] To reach these depths, Under the Pole's divers must use three
[00:16:08] rebreathers. Originally used for military purposes, rebreathers
[00:16:11] absorb the carbon dioxide from each exhale and
[00:16:15] recycle it back through a closed circuit as oxygen.
[00:16:19] This allows divers to stay underwater for far longer than
[00:16:22] scuba tanks and without bubbles, causing a lot less
[00:16:25] disruption to the sea life.
[00:16:29] It's a revolution in underwater exploration
[00:16:33] uh to dive deeper, longer, safer
[00:16:36] and that's an those new scientific
[00:16:39] programs to get better the
[00:16:43] depths.
[00:16:49] Every deep dive is very tiring physiologically,
[00:16:52] sometimes we lose 5 kilograms during one dive. It's
[00:16:56] just water, but it's very dehydrating to dive like
[00:17:00] this. A typical mission lasting six or seven
[00:17:03] months, the crew will complete between 3 and 400 dives
[00:17:08] to different hot spots all across the Mediterranean. I think
[00:17:11] when you are doing exploration like like we are doing, it
[00:17:14] gives us huge responsibility.
[00:17:18] We see things that nobody can see, but it's not
[00:17:21] enough. Exploration for exploration's sake is not
[00:17:25] enough, so we need this very strong collaboration with
[00:17:28] scientists, and this is what I love is that we take very
[00:17:32] different people with very different specialties, very
[00:17:36] different ways of working, together
[00:17:39] to work for one purpose.
[00:18:02] Guilan Bardou and Emmanuel Prieur Bardou have spent the summer
[00:18:06] sailing across the Mediterranean in search of marine
[00:18:09] animal forests in the deep ocean. As with all their
[00:18:13] expeditions, they are joined by a fleet of expert scientists and
[00:18:16] divers, but also their two young sons,
[00:18:20] Robin and Tom. So Robin is
[00:18:24] 12 now, Tom is eight. They
[00:18:27] spent both of them like half of their life on
[00:18:30] board on different missions, sometimes for years
[00:18:34] on board without leaving it, sometimes for months and months.
[00:18:38] "I think they are really accommodated
[00:18:41] to the life on board, to the lifestyle also of
[00:18:44] this, of life. An expedition
[00:18:48] neither you or I would have given
[00:18:51] up on his passion and the
[00:18:55] way we wanted to live it, so it's also the thing that we wanted
[00:18:59] to do that together, and it's not something that really
[00:19:02] exists, so we had to invent it in a way.
[00:19:06] So we invent..." the way we wanted to work and
[00:19:10] live with our family. Between
[00:19:12] 2017 and 2020 they spent three years
[00:19:16] exploring beneath the ice packs of the Arctic's Northwest
[00:19:19] Passage before sailing their boat the Why south to the
[00:19:23] tropical climes of French Polynesia. I remember
[00:19:27] when we came back home in France for Tom, Why was his
[00:19:31] home? It is new. We had a house in France
[00:19:34] and and life in France.
[00:19:38] "Though it's just 18 meters long, the boat often plays host
[00:19:42] to 15 people at once, utilizing every
[00:19:45] nook and cranny for beds, food, supplies
[00:19:48] and the endless bits and pieces of diving
[00:19:51] equipment. There's no privacy,
[00:19:54] there's we are in contact every day and we are doing work that
[00:19:58] is hard, dangerous and
[00:20:01] intellectually challenging, so I have to
[00:20:04] say that Guilan and Manu have the greatest.
[00:20:37] sticks to the bacteria and sea life, we took the
[00:20:41] fishes in two different environments,
[00:20:44] inside a gorgonian forest and
[00:20:47] outside each fish is a... identified,
[00:20:51] measured and counted, and
[00:20:54] at the end with the repetition of this we have data that possibly show
[00:20:58] that inside the forest there is a difference of fish community than
[00:21:02] outside. For the divers, the
[00:21:07] these marine animal forests is so clear to
[00:21:10] see. Those ecosystems, deep ecosystems
[00:21:14] are a hotspot of biodiversity, of course they
[00:21:18] are. We immediately understand it from our eyes
[00:21:21] inside the marine animal forest
[00:21:24] biodiversity is high, and if you
[00:21:27] move just a few meters on the side where
[00:21:31] it's only sand that can be trawled, it's like
[00:21:35] a desert. And it's beautiful by the way, it's not
[00:21:38] only an ecosystem or an
[00:21:41] underwater habitat for species that we are not used
[00:21:45] to see, it's also a beautiful
[00:21:48] place which is also important and to to show, to do
[00:21:52] those images and pictures and films
[00:21:55] and and to reveal it, because this is the
[00:22:00] the ocean in that we don't see what's living down
[00:22:03] there.
[00:22:09] The next steps for Guilan and Emmanuel will not be
[00:22:12] easy. Proving an ecosystem's value is one
[00:22:15] thing, but gaining meaningful protection for its
[00:22:18] future is an entirely different proposition. For the
[00:22:22] moment, the big majority of
[00:22:25] MPAs, marine protected areas are protected in
[00:22:28] 2D, so it, it takes a surface into
[00:22:32] consideration, but not the
[00:22:34] depths,
[00:22:36] which is uh absolutely nonsense,
[00:22:40] because oceans are in 3D. Everything in the
[00:22:43] surface is right, not very damaged and is
[00:22:46] protected, but the part which is not protected
[00:22:50] is the one that is going well and that
[00:22:53] needs protection right now. What we don't know is if the forest
[00:22:57] will be there in one week, in two weeks, in two months,
[00:23:00] so it's incredible to find this in
[00:23:04] Fourni, and now there is a really
[00:23:07] urgent work to do with the Greek government to protect the
[00:23:11] zone. In June 2025, Guilan and
[00:23:14] Emmanuel hope to present their findings at the third United
[00:23:18] Nations Ocean conference in France. They will implore
[00:23:22] governments to take action against the damage inflicted by
[00:23:25] overfishing and bottom trawling on the mesophotic
[00:23:29] zone, and they will champion these deep, unexplored
[00:23:32] forests as some of the last thriving habitats for marine
[00:23:36] life, anywhere on planet Earth.
[00:30:18] Good afternoon, dear viewers, today's
[00:30:20] events.
[00:30:24] The large fire in the Konjic area is not yet under
[00:30:28] control.
[00:30:31] The Main Committee of the New Željezara Zenica Trade Union
[00:30:35] demands from the company's management the payment of severance
[00:30:38] pay to all employees by August
[00:30:39] 10.
[00:30:43] New hearings of associates of the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
[00:30:47] The center offers legal aid to current and former
[00:30:49] associates.
[00:30:55] The large fire in the Konjic area is not yet under
[00:30:58] control.