Do the sounds of the ocean hold the key
To the biggest aviation mystery of modern times?
If the airplane is there, they'll find it.
What's behind the discovery of a bizarre body on the high seas?
How can a man be mummified on a boat
Drifting in the middle of the ocean?
And is a ghostly entity
Appearing to adventurers in extreme peril?
Is it magic? Is it faith?
What is it?
The underwater realm is another dimension.
It's a physically hostile place,
Where dreams of promise can sink into darkness.
I'm jeremy wade.
I'm searching the world to bring you the most iconic
And baffling underwater mysteries known to science.
Shipwrecks can't just disappear.
Or can they?
It's a dangerous unexplored frontier
That swallows evidence...
We know more about the face of mars
Than we do our deepest oceans.
Where unknown is normal,
And understanding is rare.
Captions by vitac... Www.Vitac.Com
Captions paid for by discovery communications
On march 8th, 2014, malaysia airlines flight 370
Departs kuala lumpur with 239 passengers and crew
Bound for beijing, china.
It never arrives.
Years later, the fate of mh370 remains a mystery.
But now, pioneering science involving a new way
Of listening to the ocean
Offers to unlock the location of the missing aircraft,
And solve the greatest aviation mystery of modern times.
They communicated to indonesian air-Traffic control.
It was supposed to be handed off to vietnamese aircraft control.
And it just disappeared.
A real vexing part of this mystery is that the pilot says,
"goodnight," but then, the plane turns off course.
The transponder then gets switched off,
And then the aircraft... Mh370...
Flies along seams of radar lines outside of radar coverage.
There's no distress call.
There are no calls from cellphones from the passengers.
Just complete silence.
What happened to the flight
Has haunted the world ever since.
We're not used to planes just disappearing.
If they come down, we expect to be able to find out why.
An international team of reconnaissance aircraft
With naval support combs the vast indian ocean
For signs of the plane.
Analysis of satellite data and drift modeling
Identifies an area of the indian ocean
That searchers dub "the seventh arc."
The seventh arc is determined by the experts
To be the maximum distance a plane could've reached,
Dependent on the fuel that was in the plane.
Experts narrow down the hunt to a section of the arc
2,000 miles off the coast of western australia.
But the search team faces huge challenges.
The average depth of the indian ocean is over 12,000 feet.
The deep ocean is truly the abyss.
We often think of the land as being mountainous,
But that compared to the ocean is a smooth pebble.
And although satellites and radar
Can aid in the search from above,
They can't penetrate the deep ocean.
Anything deeper than 200 meters is very poorly explored.
It's hard to get to, and there's no light down there.
We don't have accurate maps of the seabed in that area.
Unable to see in the dark waters,
The search team adopts a different method.
Once you start to look below the surface,
Really sound is the best tool that we have.
So, we have to convert that sound search
Into a visual picture.
And that's effectively what sonar is doing.
We call it "mowing the lawn."
And you just have to work those transits back and forth,
Back and forth, back and forth, until you find something.
Autonomous and remotely operated vehicles
Sweep the ocean floor with sonar,
Looking for the stricken plane.
They allow you to get deep enough for long enough
To map the seafloor at incredible depths.
The team combs an area of 46,000 square miles,
But nothing is found.
Dr. Usama kadri, a mathematician and expert in fluid dynamics,
Is frustrated by the lack of progress.
But he has an idea.
When an object hits the sea's surface,
It causes a sudden change in water pressure,
Which creates a special type of sound wave
Called an "acoustic gravity wave."
In addition, acoustic gravity waves
Can travel many hundreds of miles.
By tracking these waves, it should be possible
To work out the time an object struck the water,
And potentially its location in the ocean.
So, could an acoustic gravity wave
Caused by the impact of mh370
Unlock the secret of its final resting place?
Across the planet's ocean floor
Lie listening posts called "hydrophones."
These underwater microphones convert sounds in the ocean
Into electrical signals that can be measured.
They're used from everything from tracking whales
To tracking submarines.
So, did hydrophones record an acoustic gravity wave
Made by mh370 when it hit the water?
Hydrophones are incredibly sensitive.
So, something impacts the surface 1,000 miles away,
It will still be heard.
And as an international organization that's listening,
The ctbto...
The nuclear-Test-Ban treaty organization...
Operates hydrophones stations around the world,
Listening out 24/7 for evidence
Of unsanctioned nuclear weapons testing.
Dr. Kadri's hope is that they may have inadvertently
Captured the impact of mh370.
One listening station sits at cape leeuwin,
On the southwest tip of australia,
Close to the original search site.
Frustratingly, the signals he finds are very weak.
But there's another ctbto station in the indian ocean
Whose signals have not yet been investigated.
This is over 3,000 miles away, to the northwest,
On the tiny and remote militarized island
Of diego garcia.
Is this really gonna be a way that we can turn back the clock
To the origin of the mh370's loss at sea?
It is a long shot, but dr. Kadri believes
That hydrophone recordings from diego garcia
Could help pinpoint the impact of mh370 in the ocean,
And thereby be the key that opens up the investigation
Into the missing aircraft.
But when he gets his hands on the recordings,
Vital data is missing.
The disappearance of flight mh370
Has baffled the world for years.
But now, a radical new technique
That hunts sound waves underwater
Could pinpoint the aircraft's impact site in the ocean.
The initial search for mh370 in the south indian ocean
Has been the largest and most expensive in history.
Millions and millions of dollars have been spent,
Thousands and thousands and thousands of hours,
Of vessels, doing survey in the indian ocean.
But what if they've been looking in the wrong place?
Now, a new theory is pointing to a different area
3,000 miles away, where underwater recordings
Could hold the key to the mystery.
But when dr. Kadri finally gets his hands
On the relevant recording data from the diego garcia
Listening station, crucial information is missing.
There's a 25-Minute hole in the recordings,
And it's vital data from right around the time
That the plane disappeared.
Was the hydrophone turned off
Due to some type of technical issue that was anticipated?
The missing data has opened up a further mystery,
And yet more speculation.
Would there be the threat of a rogue nation intercepting data?
Could it have been interference from other states who,
For their own reason,
Are finding ways to switch off the hydrophones?
Requests from dr. Kadri's team for answers
Are met with silence.
The missing 25 minutes is absolutely vital because,
If we have those 25 minutes,
Then we would actually know,
Almost certainly, whether we're talking about mh370.
Undeterred by the unforeseen setback, dr. Kadri
Digs into the remaining data from diego garcia,
And finds something astonishing
Buried deep inside the recordings.
One of these mysteries signals could be the impact of mh370.
If it is, it means the plane took a route
No one has yet examined,
And it could launch a brand-New investigation
Into what really happened in the final hours
Of the ill-Fated flight.
Usama kadri and his colleagues are giving us
A new perspective on this mystery.
If the airplane is there, they'll find it.
Much detailed data analysis remains to be done by dr. Kadri
And his team.
But in time, his investigations could trigger a new search
In a brand-New area,
Bringing fresh hope to the families of the missing,
And perhaps finally solving this terrible tragedy,
One of the most enduring mysteries of the deep.
What is the disturbing secret beneath the decks
Of a stricken boat drifting in the middle of the ocean?
He was literally mummified, basically turned to leather.
What happened here? What happened to the captain?
What happened to the vessel?
My investigations on an under the water have brought me
Face-To-Face with the bizarre,
The unexplained, and the down-Right horrific.
But just when you think you've seen it all,
The waters throw up an even more disturbing phenomenon...
A mummified man in the middle of the ocean.
January 31st, 2016, the clipper round the world yacht race
Is in full flow through the western pacific,
On its fifth leg from australia to vietnam.
Leading the pack is the lmax exchange.
500 nautical miles west of guam,
They come across a disconcerting sight.
They find a stricken vessel with a broken mast.
There's a code of the sea
That says you don't leave your fellow mariner in peril.
They went over to see if the vessel was in distress.
Nobody came out.
The ocean is always moving, and so, it's impossible for them
To really pull up alongside each other.
So, it was necessary for the crew of the race boat
To pull up nearby, and send someone to swim across.
The crew member manages to battle his way
To the stricken yacht, and clamber aboard.
What he found was horrific.
A dead sailor slumped over his charts,
Seemingly frozen in time.
I can't imagine climbing aboard a vessel to offer assistance,
And finding a dead person onboard.
It must have been horrifying.
How long has he been sitting there dead?
How did he die? Was it foul play?
Was he injured?
One thing that's really eerie is that you look at the way
That he's frozen in the position.
He's slumped over the table.
He may have known he was having some kind of medical issue,
Going for the radio to say, "s.O.S. Help."
There's no sign of a struggle or injury,
And certain obvious clues
That would be available on land are missing.
Often, the first things to arrive at a dead body
Will be flies.
And their maggots can actually give us a time line
For how long that body has been dead.
But in this case, we don't have that.
Out in the middle of the ocean, there aren't any flies.
The race crew called the coast guard.
The coast guard said they'll take care of the issue,
Basically, "race on. We've got this."
The racing yacht continues on her way,
But no one comes to deal with the stricken vessel.
Fast forward 26 days,
600 miles away, near the philippines.
A group of fishermen come across the very same boat.
The gentleman who was in it, who expired,
Was still in his same position.
It's unbelievable that he was drifting
For so long, and so far.
How he wasn't picked up by the authorities, no one knows.
And something bizarre has happened to him
Since he was last scene.
This is where the mystery really begins,
Because they find him at the table slumped over,
But he looks like a mummy.
He was literally mummified, basically turned to leather.
What happened here? What helped to the captain?
What happened to the vessel?
The mummified sailor is brought ashore,
And the local police start searching for clues.
A few new pieces of information come to light.
This yachtsman was very, very experienced.
He'd gone all over the world.
He'd been sailing from 2008 almost continuously,
First with his wife, and then on his own.
The autopsy concludes that the most likely cause of death
Was a heart attack.
But it can't explain how the body has completely dried out
Just 3 feet from a vast expanse of water.
The fact that he was found in this sort of mummified state
Is a pretty curious thing.
When we think of mummification, we, of course, think of egypt.
Ceremonial mummification was practiced in egypt
And parts of america and asia for thousands of years.
To prepare a dead body for the afterlife,
Internal organs and all liquid were removed
To prevent rotting and aid preservation.
So, by removing a lot of these internal organs,
You're also removing the moisture.
That was one of the ways that they tried to slow down
The decomposition process, and promote the mummification.
This process took months, and involved surgery,
Elaborate ritual,
And a wide range of minerals and ointments.
And it was carried out in the driest places on the planet.
So what miracle created this modern-Day mummy
In the middle of the ocean in just 26 days?
This hasn't been observed before,
So it's something quite new and quite mysterious.
How did it happen? And how did it happen so fast?
A lone sailor has naturally mummified
In the middle of the ocean.
All we know is that he died of a heart attack,
And this shocking transformation happened within a month.
How on earth can a process
Which normally takes twice that time with assistance
Happen in the middle of the ocean on its own?
What kind of conditions must have been present on this vessel
In order for him to become mummified?
On land, natural mummification can occur in extremely cold
Or arid environments, or when a body is deprived of oxygen.
Famous examples have been found around the globe.
There's the iceman, basically preserved within the ice.
For over 5,000 years, otzi the iceman
Lay in snow and ice in the tyrol mountains of italy,
Where his body slowly dehydrated.
Or there's people who sink down into bogs.
The tollund man was found buried in peat
Near silkeborg in denmark,
His head startlingly well-Preserved
After more than 2,000 years in an oxygen-Deprived bog.
But few examples exist of mummification
Happening naturally when surrounded by the ocean.
There's sort of a preservation process happening.
So, you need to have a situation where insects
And things that you normally have on the land
That would promote decomposition aren't actually there.
But there are other, much more powerful, factors at play.
The mummification process here
Was likely a combination of the heat and the wind.
We know that the yacht would've been quite warm,
And we also know that there was a hatch left open,
And there would've been a bit of a breeze
Coming through the ship.
If you have a contained space
That's being heated up by the sun,
That can become incredibly hot and powerful,
With air continually flowing through, warming up,
And dehydrating this body over time.
In addition to heat and wind, experts speculate
That another element might be a factor,
And it's something found in abundance in the sea.
The egyptians would use natron, which was a form of salt
That would be used to preserve the body.
He was in a salty environment.
If you're bathing, usually, you're bathing with salt.
So, it's entirely possible that he had salt on his skin.
And perhaps the sea salt behaved like the natron, in this case.
But for their mummification process,
The ancient egyptians would cover the corpse
With large quantities of natron.
So, could a much smaller quantity of sea salt
Have had the same effect?
And one other vital question still remains...
How could this transformation happen in just 26 days,
Less than half the time it took the ancient egyptians?
In just the right conditions,
Mummification can happen quite quickly.
It's something that they refer to as
"precocious mummification."
Precocious mummification has been observed to occur
In confined spaces and specific microclimates.
Maybe it was a perfect storm of conditions.
But exactly how a process that naturally can take a year,
And with assistance several months, can happen in weeks,
And at sea, is still unclear.
It's a mystery as to why that happened
Over the period of time that it did.
The ocean usually swallows its victims without a trace,
But this one is preserved for the annals of science
By a process that may never be fully understood.
Many of our greatest cities were borne out of the ocean,
Ports providing safe haven from storms,
Enemies, and deep-Sea creatures.
San francisco has always been faced by an additional threat...
Earthquakes.
Now, an amazing discovery of ships underground
May mean that the city's nautical past
Could threaten its future when the next big one strikes.
Down below, there's something hidden.
I think the people wouldn't believe it.
In 1978, workmen digging foundations
In downtown san francisco make a remarkable discovery...
And it's the first of many.
When construction workers are digging tunnels
For the metro, or foundations for large buildings,
They're constantly finding the remains of ships.
Over 60 shipwrecks are known to be in the harbor area,
Or in the downtown business core.
But where have these ships come from?
You're finding razor blades. You're finding bottles.
You're finding all kinds of goods
That these people were taking with them.
Is this an ancient shipyard?
Is this a burial ground?
It's like, "holy cow. How'd this ship get,
You know, three blocks from the sea?"
San francisco is not the only coastal city
Where this phenomenon has come to light.
It's happening in cities like new york, for example.
When they rebuilt the twin tower,
They actually found a shipwreck at the bottom of the new site.
The same thing has been found in istanbul,
And in places all around the world.
What is unique about san francisco is
You have so many.
It's really one of the largest collections of shipwrecks
That have survived in a land context.
The more ships archaeologists find,
The more they notice a strange connection.
They are all from the same era...
170 years ago.
So what happened in the mid-19th century
That created this extraordinary ship cemetery?
The answer is gold.
January 24, 1848...
Flakes of gold are discovered at coloma, california.
San francisco is the nearest port
For thousands of wannabe prospectors.
The population of san francisco
Exploded from 1,000 people to 25,000 people.
People were coming from all over the world,
So you had this river of men flowing in from the ocean.
It was like a huge parking problem.
The desire for gold is so strong that the new arrivals,
Including many crews, desert their ships,
And head straight for the gold fields.
And i think, at one point, there were over 900 vessels
Just abandoned in san francisco harbor.
It must have looked like hundreds of trees
Without any limbs.
But how did they end up creating new land?
Scuttling ships is the purposeful sinking of vessels.
Often, they're filled with rocks,
Or they're filled with sediment,
Or they have big piles driven through them,
In order to keep them in place.
They started to fill the in-Between spaces in
With refuse, and dirt, and all kinds of things
To basically fill in the area
Around an in between the ships to make land.
Starting from shore,
They would just creep out another vessel,
Another vessel, another vessel.
And thanks to a loophole in san francisco law,
If you sank a ship, you could claim it as land.
And boom, you own a piece of waterfront property
In san francisco.
170 years later, these boats are now
The skeletons of the city's past,
And the foundations of a 21st-Century gold rush.
It is one of the tech centers of the united states.
It's an incredibly important region.
But is there a downside to this urban expansion?
When you build a city like san francisco
On fill that's comprised of old shipwrecks,
It's not the most stable platform.
And what also adds to the challenge
Is when you're living near an active fault line,
Like the san andreas fault line.
You start thinking about, "hang on.
Is this gonna hold up in the next seismic event?"
Yeah, i wouldn't want to be there for the next big one.
Shipwrecks underwater are amazing to dive.
They're eerie places that echo their tragic pasts.
But in san francisco, buried shipwrecks underground
May point to a tragic future.
It's not the most stable platform,
Especially for big, modern buildings.
This is just sediment.
This is just timbers which have rotted away.
This is just ships which have slowly collapsed down
Into the ground, or been swallowed by mud.
You can live on it with no problem,
Until there's a problem.
San francisco is located in one of the most
Seismically active places in the world.
The san andreas fault lies 3 miles from san francisco,
Running through deep water just outside the bay.
The san andreas fault is the boundary
Between the pacific plate and the north american plate.
It runs parallel to san francisco,
Which makes the city susceptible to devastating earthquakes.
The fault has shown its deadly force many times,
Most destructively in 1906,
When over 4 square miles of the city were leveled,
And the inferno that followed destroyed some 28,000 buildings.
3,000 people are believed to have died.
A century later, there remains a 72% probability
Of the city being hit by a high-Magnitude earthquake
In the next 30 years.
And such a large section of the downtown area
Is built on sand and ships.
As well as the obvious damage aboveground,
Earthquakes can have a dramatic impact beneath our buildings.
Liquefaction is the process
Where by vibrations from an earthquake liquefy the sediments
Deposited in an area, making it act as though it is water.
Heavier structures that are sitting on top of that land
That's unconsolidated,
They can actually sink into the sediments.
A city consumed by liquefaction is not without precedent.
There's the case of port royal, jamaica.
In a single morning, it went from a vibrant city
Into submerged into the ocean several meters.
That was liquefaction.
The area of san francisco where the ships have been unearthed
Is one of the most prone to liquefaction
In the whole of california.
But do the buried ships make this natural instability worse?
So, the ship structures might actually be better
Than just fill, because you still have all the fill,
But then, also, the ship structures.
I don't know that it being built on top of old ships
Is gonna make a difference,
Given the fact that those high-Rises
Are buried into bedrock.
Bedrock is hard rock beneath surface soil
And substrata that can help support large structures.
But in the heart of the city, cracks have already appeared.
The millennium tower, which was only built in 2009,
Has already sunk 16 inches, and is leaning about 2 inches.
The foundations of the city's third tallest skyscraper
Were installed in dense sand 80 feet down.
This is something that is of serious concern
For the residents there.
The skyscraper has been certified as safe,
But the next big one... A major earthquake
With the destructive power to bring down buildings...
Has long been feared by the citizens of san francisco.
The question is, when will it come?
It's a huge mystery when these earthquakes will occur.
And even if we could predict them,
We'd be powerless to prevent them.
So, a city borne of the sea is still in its grip.
But how much san francisco's high-Tech future
Will be brought down to the earth
By the skeletons of its maritime past,
We'll have to wait and see.
Being out in the vastness of the ocean alone can be a disturbing
And sometimes terrifying experience,
But what it would be like to be a solo sailor
After weeks out on the water, and to suddenly be overcome
By the sensation that you're not, in fact, alone?
This is exactly what happened to a man in the 1970s
As he battled a massive storm.
1973, cape horne, chile...
Caught in treacherous conditions in notorious seas
Is world-Famous 63-Year-Old yachtsman bill king.
He's attempting to circumnavigate the globe solo,
But a once-In-A-Lifetime storm is threatening
To take him and his boat down.
Encountering storms at sea is terrifying,
And it's physically exhausting.
You're up for hours on end,
At the wheel, in heavy concentration.
What do you do? You're in a stressful situation,
And it's just like, how do you get through it?
After 2 days, he's on the brink of collapse,
When something remarkable happens...
Something otherworldly.
It's pretty dire.
And then, he feels the presence of somebody there with him,
Which gives him the reassurance to go below,
And be able to check his position, and chart his course.
But this incredible tale is not an isolated incident.
Explorers across the world and throughout time
Claim a guardian angel has appeared,
And guided them to safety.
To modern researchers,
This phenomenon is known as "the third man."
Shackleton experienced it on his escape from antarctica.
He reported there was another individual
That gave him the courage to survive,
And to escape with his comrades.
Ernest shackleton's extraordinary journey
To have his entire stranded crew
Is considered one of the most heroic survival stories
Of the modern era.
So, who or what is the strange apparition that appeared to him
And to sailor bill king?
Is it an imaginary friend
That we create to help comfort ourselves?
Is it a hallucination from not sleeping?
What are they? Who knows?
Is it magic? Is it faith?
What is it?
In 1973, sailor bill king is losing a life-Or-Death solo
Struggle against an epic storm when he experiences
A mysterious being that science cannot explain.
This feeling of presence is known today as "the third man."
Even though he's alone in the middle of the ocean,
And he knows he's alone, mentally,
He's got this idea that, when he's not on deck,
Somebody else is watching the ship.
For a few days, he's sharing the responsibilities
With this person that he feels is there,
Up to a point where he even goes to sleep,
And he actually tries to stay quiet
When he thinks the other person is resting.
Once he got through this stressful situation,
The sensation left, and he was on his own again.
Is this presence a physical manifestation?
Who or what is it?
Is it mind-Generated? Is it physical?
What we do know is that it isn't just experienced on the surface.
The ocean is a dynamic environment,
And it pushes people to the limit,
Whether you're racing around the world on a sailboat,
Or whether you're diving.
In 1997, stephanie schwabe,
A world-Renowned diver,
Found herself minutes from running out of air
When diving off the bahamas.
She describes feeling the presence of her dead husband
Coming to her aid, and helping her to the surface just in time.
Imagine what a relief that might be,
If you're off in the ocean by yourself.
These people had the presence, the third-Man presence,
Until they knew they were going to be safe.
And it was like, after they're safe,
Boom, gone.
As well as appearing to adventurers
In extreme situations,
The third man has been experienced
By people going through different types of ordeal,
Including brain injury and bereavement.
If you are overtired, hungry, cold, haven't slept for hours,
And you have built up stresses,
And the human body reacts in different ways.
And not only in the body, the human mind.
In lausanne, switzerland, a team of neuroscientists
Are pioneering attempts to understand the third man
With a unique experiment.
A blindfolded participant rigged to a robot
Makes movements with his finger.
These patterns are then replicated by a robotic arm
On the person's back with a small time delay.
The scientists are observing their subjects have a disconnect
Between where that sensation is actually coming from.
The researchers believe that the illusion of feeling
Another person nearby is caused by us
Misperceiving the source and identity of some brain signals.
And this can result in an unsettling experience.
Some of them ask to stop being part of the study
Because it freaked them out so much.
They didn't want to continue because it's like,
"what this outside-My-Body experience?"
Even though test subjects know a robot
Is pressing on their back,
The feeling of presence is still experienced,
Just like bill king knew he was alone
But still felt another being on the boat.
But why does this phenomenon feel benevolent to those
In the wild, yet disturbing in the laboratory?
Can scientists really recreate the situation
In a lab environment?
Can they recreate the ghostly presence?
Can they recreate the stress?
Because ultimately, the person in the lab
Knows they're in the lab,
Not in a boat alone in the middle of the ocean,
Facing mother nature's fury.
Perhaps in a life-Or-Death situation,
Stress shatters our normal understanding of reality,
Causing a kind of guardian angel to appear when we need it most.
There are still many unanswered questions.
Why can't we summon the third man at will?
And why doesn't every person in extreme danger
Experience the helping hand of this benign entity?
Many people just freak out, and die,
And never have this third-Man experience.
Some people have equated this to ghosts and apparitions,
And mariners are superstitious by nature.
Is it evidence of something bigger?
Perhaps.
What that is, is a mystery.
Part of me hopes that i will never experience the third man,
But another part is not so sure.
Those who have lived through it
Give us hope that, deep within us,
There is a power to survive the most extreme situations
We could ever imagine.
Subtitles diego moraes(oakislandtk) www.Opensubtitles.Org