DAVID: There's like world upon
world upon worlds and each
time we stumble upon them
it's like Indiana Jones and
Temple of Doom and like
uncovering this crypt that
we've never seen before and
suddenly we go down there
and it's like...wow.
(theme music plays).
I'm David Gruber, I'm a
deep sea marine biologist
who's interested in
all life in the ocean.
I want to understand it more
and by understanding it I hope
we can connect to it and
ultimately protect it.
4.6 billion years ago the
earth forms and it didn't take
that much time for the
first lifeforms to come about.
Those first kinds
of cyanobacteria,
and we could basically make a
tree and show how we're all
related and we all share DNA.
We live on a place where the
sun comes up and goes down,
but imagine you drop
deep down under water.
After 1,000 meters you're
living in an environment of
perpetual darkness.
It is dark 24/7 and animals
down there they've evolved
mechanisms to give off
light to communicate.
They're like, "Hey I'm
over here flash flasher.
Hey, I wanna escape I'm going
to give off a big burst of
flashes to
distract everybody."
So they've come up with lots
of ways to use light and this
has been going on for
millions of years.
By going down there
and studying things like
ctenophores, comb
jellies, jellyfish,
copepods, weird
bioluminescence worms
we can learn from them and
then from that information
we could then apply those
genes to other cells and
use that information
in really cool ways.
Whether you're a bacteria,
whether you're a worm,
whether you're an elephant.
We all share this same DNA.
So our relationship to the
ocean even though we came from
lung fish, from coelacanths,
and we're now going back in
the water in
really cool submarines,
we're still really
new to the ocean.
71% of our planet is
covered in this big, blue
watery beauty and it's filled
with life as a marine biologist,
I'm dedicating my life to
learning more about them.
And then finding out how
they're related to us.
Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.
