Unnamed Researcher
Appearances
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
We can see the sunlight is running out all around it as it's sinking down and down. It took an hour for it to reach our destination, which was 2,000 metres down on the seabed, on the abyss. These abyssal plains, just big, undulating, muddy seabed. And we finally saw the robot landing down on the seabed. And then we lay the alligator down on the seabed and we left it there.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
And we came back a day later, went back down, and we didn't know what we were going to see. It was really exciting. It's one of those things you just think, oh, you know, what could be? Will it just, will have anything found it? Will it be, will it be still there? And the camera panned around across the seabed. You know, just imagine that what you can see is as far as the lights can go.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
And there on the seabed is our alligator. It's still there. But it's been found. And it's covered in these giant scavenging crustaceans called isopods, giant isopods. Imagine an animal the size and almost the shape of a rugby ball. Pale pink in colour, an odd colour for the deep, you might think. But yeah, pale pink. They look like wood lice.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
They're actually relatives of wood lice that you would see on land, you know, under a flower pot or scuttling across the garden. But massive. They're huge. And they were eating this alligator. They found... They'd clearly smelt it, I imagine. There was probably chemicals in the water wafting away from this slowly decomposing body.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
And they'd found the softer parts of it to start eating and then they were really getting into it. Because they're scavengers. The big thing about their big bodies is that that gives them huge stores of energy. They're basically fat. And they're filling up those energy supplies so that they don't have to feed again for months. And that is what the deep sea is all about.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
It's about surviving in conditions that are super challenging. And there isn't a lot of food. There's no light. There is a lot of pressure of all that water crushing down, but life finds a way. And if it means scavenging on an alligator that some scientists have left for you, then, you know, that's great. It wasn't the only alligator we took down. There was another one. We left it for longer.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
We went back after a few weeks and it was completely gone. Something had chewed through the rope. And we will never know exactly what did take that alligator away. But in my mind, I think it was a giant squid. And it could have been. Biting through that rope, deciding that this was really the jackpot food that they had found in this big, long alligator.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
And they had grappled it and taken it off into the dark to go and feed. That's what I think. I think that's what happened.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
So we started on the research ship. We're way offshore. The ocean is thousands of metres beneath the deck. And we put our robot in the ocean, this massive car-sized machine that's going to be our eyes and ears and hands in the deep. But we've also clasped in its hands a dead alligator, which had never been done before.
Lucky Boy | Tortoise Investigates
Introducing...Oceans: Life Under Water
So we watch this alligator disappear down beneath the waves, this robot sinking down with it. And we waited until the cameras came on and we ran back into the control room and could look at the screens, which is the video coming up from this robot as it's sinking down into the deep. And we can see that the water at first is green and there's light, but quite quickly it's getting darker.