Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:17unique ecological function of
00:00:23driving a jeep is like a voyage which lasts a few
00:00:26hours but is extremely intense.
00:00:31every dive is pressure, I love it, I am happy to go,
00:00:35but there is something always in my head, there
00:00:39dolphins is a good indicator of is pressure, it's not like diving at 20
00:00:41meters, it's a huge dive, something goes wrong and it's
00:00:45over, I don't panic but I like to feel fear
00:00:48because it's a very good thermometer of what I can do
00:00:51and what I don't want to do, okay th
00:00:55two one
00:00:57go!
00:01:05understanding of the ecology of It's like going from one world to another
00:01:10main and major problem of world, no noise anymore,
00:01:14you forget what's on the surface, and you
00:01:17start to focus on what's on the
00:01:19ground,
00:01:25you are always curious to go to sea a little
00:01:29bit further. You always have an eye to the bottom
00:01:32with this wonder what lies
00:01:34beneath.
00:01:38Little by little you want to go deeper because you
00:01:42wonder 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
00:02:10is home to some of the least explored and least
00:02:13understood ecosystems on earth. Beneath the
00:02:17surface, ocean ecosystems are collapsing. As sea
00:02:21temperatures rise, shallow coral reefs are the canaries in the coal
00:02:25mine, succumbing to mass bleaching events, and blasted
00:02:29into eco-logical oblivion, but
00:02:32deeper ecosystems are still
00:02:34clinging
00:02:40on. As part of the Rolex Perpetual Planning Initiative,
00:02:44husband and wife duo Gilan Bardou and Emmanuel Prieur
00:02:47Bardou are in Greece searching for these deep
00:02:50ecosystems, what they call marine animal
00:02:53forests. We go in places where
00:02:57nobody has been before, so every... thing you look
00:03:00at is kind of new. I remember when I was a
00:03:04small girl, I sort of like underwater
00:03:07exploration was finished 'cause I've been looking at Cousteau
00:03:11for years and it looked like everything was done
00:03:15and uh then I grew up and it was like a new area
00:03:19for exploration appeared and each dive we do in the
00:03:22mesophotic is like a new sense of
00:03:26exploration.
00:03:30The mesophotic zone, sometimes known as the ocean's twilight
00:03:33zone, lies between 30 and 150 meters below the
00:03:37surface, the deepest waters the sunlight
00:03:39reaches. Aboard their expedition schooner, the
00:03:43Why, Gilan and Emmanuel have taken their organization, Under the
00:03:47Pole, to the furthest reaches of the planet, diving
00:03:50beneath polar ice and among tropical
00:03:53reefs, all with the aim of discovering and documenting
00:03:57this mysterious environment before it's too late.
00:04:01We are talking about
00:04:04a huge ecosystem that covered the entire
00:04:07planet, all the shore everywhere, it's
00:04:10just below 30 meters, 40 meters, and there are for
00:04:14sure many species, many different
00:04:18ecosystems that all have huge
00:04:21importance. So acquiring a better understanding of
00:04:25their ecology is essential for the conservation
00:04:28of those depths.
00:04:32"The mission is to locate these deep-sea hotspots and
00:04:35create comprehensive scientific records, demonstrating their vital
00:04:39ecological function and gaining protection for their
00:04:43future. It's very important to study now on the
00:04:46Mediterranean coast because of all these heat
00:04:49waves uh that we had underwater that have killed a
00:04:53lot of ecosystems in the surface zone. So we want to
00:04:57see now how is going the Mesophotic one." We are not
00:05:00interested in one species in particular, we are
00:05:04interested in the forest to prove their
00:05:07importance and to protect it. In
00:05:10the same way, a terrestrial forest
00:05:12forms a canopy and creates its own microclimate.
00:05:16Underwater tree-like corals like red gorgonia and black
00:05:20coral also create a refuge for species, changing the
00:05:24microenvironment. Gorgonians
00:05:26or black corals are like trees, let's say small
00:05:30trees, they can be that high, that high, that high, but
00:05:34they are really a shelter,
00:05:37a habitat for many other species, it's an
00:05:40ecosystem which is highly...
00:05:43"it's a source of abundance at
00:05:46sea, but as far as you cut
00:05:49it, the ecosystem collapses, disappears,
00:05:52and afterwards you just have desert down
00:05:55there.
00:05:57The challenge is finding them. Most of the Mediterranean
00:06:01has never been explored below 50 meters
00:06:04and indicators for the best spots to dive are
00:06:08limited. Here in Fourni, an underwater drone
00:06:11captured images of a potential forest in 2021, but
00:06:15identifying the precise location is like finding a
00:06:18needle in a hay stack. All the dives we are
00:06:21doing with Under the Pole are
00:06:24technical, generally deep
00:06:27here, we, we are diving at more or less
00:06:30100 meters, it's deep, it's
00:06:34engaged. Okay, is everybody
00:06:36ready?
00:06:49The dives can last anywhere from 3 to 6 hours, and at the
00:06:53seafloor, every second counts. 15 to
00:06:5720 minutes below 100 meters necessitates three or four hours
00:07:00of decompression on the way back to the surface, so the team
00:07:04rarely spends more than half an hour at the maximum
00:07:07depth.
00:07:09Up on the rib, it's a waiting game, and the only way to know what is happening
00:07:13below is from messages delivered by underwater
00:07:16parachutes, so popped up the
00:07:19signals, saying that everything is all
00:07:22right, that it's very beautiful, but it looks
00:07:26like there is no
00:07:27forest.
00:07:32It's very
00:07:32frustrating.
00:07:36Topography was more or less like we
00:07:38expected, but it was uh just sand,
00:07:43and so we went down to 95
00:07:46meters searching for some
00:07:49either isolated spot of black corals or
00:07:52whatever, but they were not. I'm pretty sure there are some,
00:07:56but not everywhere. We have to find
00:07:58it.
00:08:00The frustration is compounded by signs of bottom trawling on the
00:08:04seafloor and fear that any corals that were photographed in
00:08:072021 may now be destroyed.
00:08:11The problem with bottom trawling is that it destroys
00:08:14everything down there. When you have species like black or
00:08:18gorgonian for example, they can take
00:08:21years, dozens of years, hundreds of
00:08:24years to reach the size they are, and
00:08:27which build the habitat for all the other
00:08:31species and that can be destroyed in just one
00:08:34trawl.
00:08:39Unlike the industrial trawlers, Fourni's
00:08:42fishing community understands the value of the mesophotic
00:08:45ecosystem and are eager to help Under the Pole locate the
00:08:49forest. Back on the Why, Guilan and Emmanuel are meeting with
00:08:53local conservation organization Archipelagos, who have an
00:08:56update from the fisherman. This is where the black
00:08:59corals
00:09:00and
00:09:07here where we had the best chance.
00:09:11music it's okay. Yeah,
00:09:13hopefully,
00:09:18hopefully.
00:09:38In Greece's Fourni archipelago, husband and wife
00:09:41team Guilan Bardou and Emmanuel Prieur Bardou
00:09:44are on the hunt for an underwater oasis
00:09:48never before documented, and a tip off a potential
00:09:51location from some local fishermen has doubled their
00:09:55resolve, and as they approach the site, a
00:09:58welcome party is already there to greet them.
00:10:12And... I've been passionate by dolphins and whales since I'm a
00:10:16very small girl, so it was a really nice
00:10:19show.
00:10:28Their name are common dolphin, but they are not so common these days, we
00:10:32don't see them all the time, and it shows how wild and special
00:10:36this place is. Of course I saw many, many dolphins
00:10:39in my life at sea, but that
00:10:43was a really, really good moment with them, you know
00:10:47when you have a strong and nice and beautiful
00:10:50experience with wildlife, take it as a
00:10:53gift, as a privilege'.
00:11:01Seeing such a large pod of
00:11:04the area's marine health, and after seven dives without
00:11:08success, the Under the Pole crew are eager to see if they
00:11:12can finally locate the elusive marine animal forest down
00:11:15in the depths. We have never been so close to
00:11:19find it. We discussed with the fisherman and uh
00:11:23they gave us alignment, the... us GPS
00:11:26location and uh another fisherman
00:11:29is uh fishing here around so definitely
00:11:33it's a fishing spot and they know from their
00:11:36net that there are black corals
00:11:39and what we are looking for so it will
00:11:43be a good spot. We'll
00:11:45see now we are just waiting for the red
00:11:48parachute.
00:11:55Around 40 minutes later, word from the seabed arrives
00:11:58and
00:12:02oh amazing, huge
00:12:05gorgonian forest, many black corals,
00:12:09sponges, unbelievable and
00:12:12beautiful, a lot, a lot of
00:12:14fish, forest between 100 and
00:12:1878 meters,
00:12:21a very large uh range.
00:12:26So that's a very, very good news.
00:12:28Yeah.
00:12:32Yeah.
00:12:45The first time we see the forest is like a huge
00:12:49relief and also a very beautiful
00:12:53surprise because it's one of...
00:12:55the most beautiful marine animal forests I have ever seen.
00:12:59It's very big, with one
00:13:02dive you cannot explore all the
00:13:05forest.
00:13:10You have so many fish, so many spaces,
00:13:14it really gives
00:13:15hope.
00:13:18At that depth we are not used to see so much
00:13:21color, it was amazing, it's really for...
00:13:25moments that I am doing this, so I was very
00:13:27happy.
00:13:37The discovery of the Fourni Marine Animal Forest is the result of
00:13:40years of planning, but it is also just the
00:13:44beginning. Now the team will collaborate with Lorenzo
00:13:47Bramanti, a renowned coral ecologist to collect as much
00:13:51data as possible to aid in the protection of this newfound
00:13:55ecosystem.
00:14:04For the first time, me and other colleagues are trying to really define
00:14:08this concept of forest and putting it in a scientific
00:14:11quantification that makes it possible to use it in
00:14:14conservation. You have to imagine the ecosystem like the
00:14:18Eiffel Tower. If you take out a screw, nothing happens.
00:14:22Eiffel Tower. If you take out two... three, 10,
00:14:2620 screws, probably nothing happens, but then if you
00:14:29take out too many screws, it arrives at the point in which that screw
00:14:33that are taken out, if there's a wind a little bit stronger, the
00:14:36Eiffel Tower is going down. So the marine animal forest is like
00:14:40the Eiffel Tower and the, and the screws are the
00:14:43species. If we eliminate too many species, we arrive at a point in which the
00:14:47ecosystem collapses and we don't come back.
00:14:51The science is a multidisciplinary approach to
00:14:54establish how robust these deep forests are to the effects of
00:14:58climate change, and whether they can be a refuge for sea life as
00:15:02shallower ecosystems continue to decay.
00:15:05Involving ecology, chemistry,
00:15:08acoustics, hydrodynamics and physics, each
00:15:11research element needs to be run past the divers to make sure it's
00:15:15feasible in the limited time they have at such extreme
00:15:18depths. Okay, so this is the the new device
00:15:21that you are going to have to deploy. The goal of this
00:15:25setup is to measure the calcification of the community, so to
00:15:28see how the community is growing, how many times
00:15:31should we measure what's in the water? The goal would be to try to
00:15:35go first on the part with the gorgonian,
00:15:38then the part with the black coral if there is time
00:15:41and if the weather allows it, then have like a control site
00:15:45without coral.
00:15:49Very few people in the world have the training to dive to the
00:15:52mesophotic zone and fewer still have the ability
00:15:56to work down
00:15:57there.
00:16:04To reach these depths, Under the Pole's divers must use three
00:16:08rebreathers. Originally used for military purposes, rebreathers
00:16:11absorb the carbon dioxide from each exhale and
00:16:15recycle it back through a closed circuit as oxygen.
00:16:19This allows divers to stay underwater for far longer than
00:16:22scuba tanks and without bubbles, causing a lot less
00:16:25disruption to the sea life.
00:16:29It's a revolution in underwater exploration
00:16:33uh to dive deeper, longer, safer
00:16:36and that's an those new scientific
00:16:39programs to get better the
00:16:43depths.
00:16:49Every deep dive is very tiring physiologically,
00:16:52sometimes we lose 5 kilograms during one dive. It's
00:16:56just water, but it's very dehydrating to dive like
00:17:00this. A typical mission lasting six or seven
00:17:03months, the crew will complete between 3 and 400 dives
00:17:08to different hot spots all across the Mediterranean. I think
00:17:11when you are doing exploration like like we are doing, it
00:17:14gives us huge responsibility.
00:17:18We see things that nobody can see, but it's not
00:17:21enough. Exploration for exploration's sake is not
00:17:25enough, so we need this very strong collaboration with
00:17:28scientists, and this is what I love is that we take very
00:17:32different people with very different specialties, very
00:17:36different ways of working, together
00:17:39to work for one purpose.
00:18:02Guilan Bardou and Emmanuel Prieur Bardou have spent the summer
00:18:06sailing across the Mediterranean in search of marine
00:18:09animal forests in the deep ocean. As with all their
00:18:13expeditions, they are joined by a fleet of expert scientists and
00:18:16divers, but also their two young sons,
00:18:20Robin and Tom. So Robin is
00:18:2412 now, Tom is eight. They
00:18:27spent both of them like half of their life on
00:18:30board on different missions, sometimes for years
00:18:34on board without leaving it, sometimes for months and months.
00:18:38"I think they are really accommodated
00:18:41to the life on board, to the lifestyle also of
00:18:44this, of life. An expedition
00:18:48neither you or I would have given
00:18:51up on his passion and the
00:18:55way we wanted to live it, so it's also the thing that we wanted
00:18:59to do that together, and it's not something that really
00:19:02exists, so we had to invent it in a way.
00:19:06So we invent..." the way we wanted to work and
00:19:10live with our family. Between
00:19:122017 and 2020 they spent three years
00:19:16exploring beneath the ice packs of the Arctic's Northwest
00:19:19Passage before sailing their boat the Why south to the
00:19:23tropical climes of French Polynesia. I remember
00:19:27when we came back home in France for Tom, Why was his
00:19:31home? It is new. We had a house in France
00:19:34and and life in France.
00:19:38"Though it's just 18 meters long, the boat often plays host
00:19:42to 15 people at once, utilizing every
00:19:45nook and cranny for beds, food, supplies
00:19:48and the endless bits and pieces of diving
00:19:51equipment. There's no privacy,
00:19:54there's we are in contact every day and we are doing work that
00:19:58is hard, dangerous and
00:20:01intellectually challenging, so I have to
00:20:04say that Guilan and Manu have the greatest.
00:20:37sticks to the bacteria and sea life, we took the
00:20:41fishes in two different environments,
00:20:44inside a gorgonian forest and
00:20:47outside each fish is a... identified,
00:20:51measured and counted, and
00:20:54at the end with the repetition of this we have data that possibly show
00:20:58that inside the forest there is a difference of fish community than
00:21:02outside. For the divers, the
00:21:07these marine animal forests is so clear to
00:21:10see. Those ecosystems, deep ecosystems
00:21:14are a hotspot of biodiversity, of course they
00:21:18are. We immediately understand it from our eyes
00:21:21inside the marine animal forest
00:21:24biodiversity is high, and if you
00:21:27move just a few meters on the side where
00:21:31it's only sand that can be trawled, it's like
00:21:35a desert. And it's beautiful by the way, it's not
00:21:38only an ecosystem or an
00:21:41underwater habitat for species that we are not used
00:21:45to see, it's also a beautiful
00:21:48place which is also important and to to show, to do
00:21:52those images and pictures and films
00:21:55and and to reveal it, because this is the
00:22:00the ocean in that we don't see what's living down
00:22:03there.
00:22:09The next steps for Guilan and Emmanuel will not be
00:22:12easy. Proving an ecosystem's value is one
00:22:15thing, but gaining meaningful protection for its
00:22:18future is an entirely different proposition. For the
00:22:22moment, the big majority of
00:22:25MPAs, marine protected areas are protected in
00:22:282D, so it, it takes a surface into
00:22:32consideration, but not the
00:22:34depths,
00:22:36which is uh absolutely nonsense,
00:22:40because oceans are in 3D. Everything in the
00:22:43surface is right, not very damaged and is
00:22:46protected, but the part which is not protected
00:22:50is the one that is going well and that
00:22:53needs protection right now. What we don't know is if the forest
00:22:57will be there in one week, in two weeks, in two months,
00:23:00so it's incredible to find this in
00:23:04Fourni, and now there is a really
00:23:07urgent work to do with the Greek government to protect the
00:23:11zone. In June 2025, Guilan and
00:23:14Emmanuel hope to present their findings at the third United
00:23:18Nations Ocean conference in France. They will implore
00:23:22governments to take action against the damage inflicted by
00:23:25overfishing and bottom trawling on the mesophotic
00:23:29zone, and they will champion these deep, unexplored
00:23:32forests as some of the last thriving habitats for marine
00:23:36life, anywhere on planet Earth.
00:30:18Good afternoon, dear viewers, today's
00:30:20events.
00:30:24The large fire in the Konjic area is not yet under
00:30:28control.
00:30:31The Main Committee of the New Željezara Zenica Trade Union
00:30:35demands from the company's management the payment of severance
00:30:38pay to all employees by August
00:30:3910.
00:30:43New hearings of associates of the Srebrenica Memorial Center.
00:30:47The center offers legal aid to current and former
00:30:49associates.
00:30:55The large fire in the Konjic area is not yet under
00:30:58control.