Additionally, I was blown away that some of this footage could even be captured. A major reason the world’s largest habitat is understudied is that just getting equipment down to such depths is unbelievably time consuming, expensive, and if submersibles are manned, dangerous. Cables to lower equipment to the deep ocean must be even longer than the depth itself (that’s several kilometres of cable) and winching up and down takes several hours. The ability to capture aesthetically beautiful and detailed footage of organisms here is even more astonishing considering these tremendous bathymetric hurdles.

The deep sea scientists who I have learned from have always highlighted that demand for natural resources has greatly increased the economic incentives for deep sea mining, and so a challenge for the future will be ensuring that any such ventures are sustainable. This is made even more difficult by the minimal knowledge of these habitats. Ancient deep ocean coral reefs being destroyed had greatly concerned me when I learned about them earlier in my degree, and it is heartening to know that this issue has hit the largest audience possible. Being able to communicate science is as important as conducting it, and Blue Planet is doing us a tremendous favour.

I hope that this episode encourages more public engagement with the deep ocean – there is this widespread idea that it is totally isolated from our life on land, but this is not the case. Even with little known about the deep ocean, there is no debate that life there is inextricably intertwined with our world above

The post Blue Planet 2 | Episode 2 | The Deep appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .

After 16 years, the new episode of Blue Planet has aired. I attended a live screening which the Marine Conservation Society had organised, which was heaving with very excited young scientists and other enthusiasts who grew up with the original series.

There was the occasional laugh, or ‘woah’ as complex characters unfold, whether it was the charismatic cetaceans that have long captured the public imagination, or novel behaviours in otherwise unassuming reef dwelling fish. The ebb and flow of the Hans Zimmer score streams into the jaw dropping seascapes while animals soar across them, and at each other, before disappearing again into the blue. I heard people crying. The original Blue Planet can be credited as a major reason many of us are here.

What is particularly rewarding for marine science students such as myself watching Blue Planet is to see scientific knowledge translated into an understandable, and beautiful, work of art, for millions of people to enjoy and learn from. In science, we deal in datasets to understand the world as objectively as we can, and the BBC turns this into beautiful stories. As undergraduates working in science, these stories remind us why what we do is so important. Laughing at tool use in a toothfish reminds us of mapping out fish neural networks. Seeing juvenile walruses unable to rest because of diminishing sea ice emphasizes the importance of understanding how the world will change during our lifetimes. Blue Planet without the science beneath it would be beautiful images without direction, and our science without Blue Planet runs the risk of losing some of its passion for the wider world. It is very fortunate that we are here in a time when they coexist.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be bringing you more blog posts about the new Blue Planet series and linking it to three and a bit years of studying marine biology. Feel free to send questions or comments, I look forward to sharing Blue Planet 2 with you.

The post Blue Planet 2 | Episode 1 | The Start of a Beautiful Story appeared first on Exploring our Oceans .