Can explosive new evidence prove
that one of the worst maritime disasters in recent years
was no accident?
All they can find are lifeboats
and people terrified in the water.
Does the answer to one of America's
most iconic aviation mysteries
lie hidden in a mighty river?
What happened to Cooper
and the $200,000 of cold cash?
And what are the bizarre growths
on the deep ocean floor
said to be worth trillions of dollars?
They have enough rare metals
to supply civilization for thousands of years.
What are they? How did they get there?
The underwater realm is another dimension.
It's a physically hostile place...
where dreams of promise
can sink into darkness.
I'm Jeremy Wade,
and I'm searching the world
to bring you the most iconic
and baffling underwater mysteries known to science.
The vast majority of our ocean
is unobserved, unmapped and unexplored.
It's a dangerous frontier
that swallows evidence.
You have nowhere to run.
Where unknown is normal,
and understanding is rare.
When disaster strikes at sea,
even the most exhaustive investigations
sometimes fail to get it right.
With 852 lives lost,
the sinking of the passenger ferry MS Estonia
is one of the worst civilian sea disasters
after the loss of the Titanic.
But now, will modern underwater technology
deployed by a daring team of investigators
overturn the official version of events?
September 28th, 1994.
It's the dead of night,
and cruise ferry MS Estonia is making a routine crossing
of the Baltic Sea.
Carrying almost 1,000 passengers,
she's five hours into her journey
from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm in Sweden.
Storm winds are creating 20-foot high waves.
But the conditions aren't out of the ordinary
for the 515-foot long ship.
It has made countless crossings
across the Baltic in very stormy conditions.
The journey on this particular day was nothing special.
The Estonia is a huge ship.
It's bigger than 12 buses
or two-thirds the length of Titanic.
But shortly after 1:00 a.m.,
the Estonia is in deep trouble.
The third officer reports that the ship is leaning
dangerously to one side.
Then, in a dramatic worsening of events,
a total blackout.
The ship loses all its lights, all its power.
But, amazingly, the third officer is able
to still read the coordinates
on the battery-operated equipment.
Nearby vessels race towards the Estonia' s coordinates.
But they're too late.
The ferry vanishes below the waves in a matter of minutes.
It's a shocking and inexplicable event.
How could this have happened?
Is it possible something sinister is at play?
All they can find are lifeboats and people terrified in the water.
It's the Baltic,
and it's very, very cold.
And these people are really
in the last minutes of hypothermia
and are close to drowning.
Rescuers work through the night
to pull survivors from the water.
But hundreds of passengers are missing.
Of the 989 passengers on board,
only 138 are rescued.
No one understands
how or why a ship this size could sink so quickly.
It's unprecedented in modern maritime history.
In all, 852 lives are lost in the tragedy.
The sinking of the MS Estonia
was completely unexpected and out of the ordinary.
Given the previous reliability of this ferry,
it's shocking that it would sink in these conditions.
What happened on that fateful night
to cause one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century
is a question that many are still trying to answer.
And there's strong suspicion that this was no accident.
Two days after the sinking,
a Finnish survey vessel finds the wreck using sonar.
The Estonia's found
resting on her side in a depth of about 230 feet.
Plans are quickly made to get a closer look at the wreckage.
Investigators deploy
two remotely-operated submersibles.
The grainy black-and-white footage is difficult to analyze.
But before long, officials uncover a clue.
The Estonia is missing its bow visor.
This is a critical piece of the front of the ship.
But bizarrely, it's nowhere to be seen.
The MS Estonia had been built
to transport vehicles as well as passengers.
The bow would actually lift up
and cars would drive inside the ship.
If this weak spot in the hull was compromised,
could it explain how the Estonia went down so quickly?
It takes salvagers two weeks to find the bow visor.
To their amazement, it's on the seafloor
over one nautical mile from the Estonia.
Why is it so far from the wreck?
After raising it to the surface,
investigators are confident
that the damaged steel visor
is the cause of the disaster.
The official report found that
because of the storm the Estonia was in,
The waves had smashed into the bow, and this had weakened
the locking mechanism,
ultimately ripping it off.
While this explains why the bow visor
was so far from the wreck,
some refused to believe this version of events.
For a start, there was a strange noise
just before the Estonia started sinking.
Witnesses reported hearing a loud bang
just before the lights went out.
And according to others, the passenger ferry
may have been carrying a secret military cargo.
Eyewitnesses claim
they saw military vehicles
being loaded onto the vessel
in the weeks leading up to the disaster.
What were they carrying,
and was there an explosion?
The answer could point
to a shocking act of sabotage
and an international cover-up.
The only way to know for sure is to return to the wreck
230 feet beneath the Baltic Sea.
The sinking of the passenger ferry
MS Estonia cost 852 lives.
The official investigation claims
rough seas weakened the ship's bow visor,
causing it to come loose.
But reports of covert military smuggling on board
and rumors of an explosion
have caused people to question the official narrative.
There are theories there was an explosion on the vessel,
because people heard a big sharp bang.
Is it possible that
a secret military cargo exploded?
Was the ship sabotaged by ex-Soviet forces?
Or, even more shocking,
was the cause of the sinking closer to home?
Not long after the disaster,
European officials put forward
controversial plans to bury the Estonia on the seafloor.
Authorities decide that
they actually want to entomb the wreck
so that nobody can access the wreck.
And, of course, this immediately raises suspicion.
The only motivation I can think of for entombing a shipwreck
would be to cover up something
that had occurred before the ship sank.
Fortunately, the entombing is stopped
after a backlash from victims' families.
Instead, authorities declare the site a grave,
Instead, authorities declare the site a grave, prohibiting anyone from approaching it.
prohibiting anyone from approaching it.
If people wanna go visit this wreck site
to honor their lost loved ones,
why should that be stopped?
Some are still determined to uncover the truth.
And in 2019,
two Swedish filmmakers hatch a daring plan.
They approach the wreck site
in defiance of the law and patrolling vessels.
They deploy a high-tech underwater drone far more advanced
than the equipment available in 1994, when the ship sank.
These new ROVs have much higher resolution,
so this allowed researchers
to be able to see the Estonia
like it had never been seen before.
Monitoring the video feed from the surface,
they explore the outer perimeter of the Estonia.
And it's not long before they make a shocking discovery.
All of a sudden,
they see this astonishing fact that
there is a big hole in the ship. A significant hole.
Estimates suggest the massive hole in the hull
is 13 feet tall and four feet wide,
straddling the waterline on the starboard's side.
This was a total surprise
because it has never been reported
that there is a hole in the ship's side.
In a bid to understand
what could have created this gaping hole,
Jorgen Amdahl was asked to scrutinize the findings.
I am professor at the University of Science and Technology
based in Trondheim, Norway.
We were asked to conduct an analysis of this damage.
And we made a model of the side.
The first observation Jorgen makes
is that the force that ruptured the hull
could not have come from inside the ship.
The damage points inwards,
so I am very convinced that
it has been an external action that has caused it,
and not, for example, an internal explosion.
So, it's possible that
something struck the Estonia.
The force is equivalent to a collision with a freight train.
What could have created such an immense impact?
Scans of the seabed reveal
there are no rocks capable of gauging a hole this large.
If it is not due to
something that happened on the seafloor,
if there's something that hit it on the sea surface,
then there is a different situation.
Some speculate that only one seafaring vessel could cause
this type of damage without being detected.
A submarine.
There were no other ships nearby.
It's possible that a submarine may have actually ran into it.
There have been speculations about submarines.
We don't know. We don't know which object that could be.
Why would a submarine strike the Estonia?
Were Russian forces unhappy with military smuggling?
Or was it a devastating maritime mistake
that European powers are trying to cover up?
The hole found in the side of the wreck...
at present, there is no known explanation for it.
There are a lot of theories,
but it still remains a mystery.
For now, there's no further evidence
to confirm or rule out
the theory that the Estonia was struck
as she crossed the Baltic.
But, for many, this previously unreported hole
throws suspicion on the findings
of the official investigation.
This hole is completely unexplained.
One wonders if the authorities have something to hide.
The hole in the Estonia's hull
raises more questions than it answers.
With demands growing for a new investigation,
perhaps, soon, we'll get to the bottom
of one of the world's most devastating ocean disasters.
In 2016, the FBI closes the file
on one of the most infamous heists of all time.
D. B. Cooper's notorious jump from a hijacked plane
has puzzled official investigators for half a century.
But now, have amateur sleuths
found evidence that can finally solve
one of America's most puzzling cold cases?
November 24th, 1971,
a well-dressed man going by the name of Dan Cooper
boards a Northwest Airlines flight in Portland, Oregon
bound for Seattle.
Once in the air, Cooper hands the stewardess a note.
There's a bomb in his briefcase.
When they touched down,
he exchanges the passengers
for $200,000 in cash and four parachutes.
They have no idea what's going to happen.
Cooper instructs the pilot and crew
to fly south to Mexico so he can evade capture.
But not long into the flight,
somewhere over the state line between Washington and Oregon,
Cooper does the incredible.
He jumps from the back of the plane
with a parachute and his ransom money.
This is the biggest skyjacking in US history.
The plane lands safely.
But what becomes of Cooper after his jump
is a mystery that has perplexed
and fascinated the world ever since.
Did D. B. Cooper fall to his death?
Did he escape never to been seen or heard from again?
What happened to Cooper
and the $200,000 of cold cash?
Authorities launch a full scale manhunt.
The FBI do this huge search for D. B. Cooper.
Hijacking an airplane is not the best thing to do
if you're a criminal
because you're going to have the full power
of the federal government come down on you.
Initial calculations place Cooper's landing zone
in the area of the southern most outreach
of Mount Saint Helens.
Not only is this a vast mountainous wilderness,
it's also crisscrossed by mighty waterways.
I've explored the Pacific Northwest.
Its rivers are powerful and treacherous,
and its forests populated with deadly bears.
Well, I think I'm gonna make a graceful retreat.
It's hard to imagine being dropped
into this environment
without any means of survival.
They focus searches through the woods,
boats on the lakes, uh, up and down the rivers,
looking for any bits of evidence.
Despite an extensive search,
investigators come up empty handed.
Cooper disappeared without a trace.
While public interest in the case never goes away,
eight years pass without a significant breakthrough.
Then on February 10th, 1980,
a chance discovery changes everything.
A young boy is building a campfire
on the banks of the Columbia River.
As he digs into the sand,
he discovers three bundles of cash
totaling almost $6,000.
His parents took that cash to the FBI.
A nd it turns out that the serial numbers
match the cash that was involved in the ransom.
The discovery of the money could be the ticket
to solving this enduring puzzle.
Now more than 50 years on,
can new cutting edge scientific analysis of the cash
finally tell us what became of D. B. Cooper?
The mystery of D. B. Cooper
and his $200,000 ransom takes a strange turn
when some of the money is found on the banks of the Columbia River.
But despite this incredible breakthrough,
the cash creates a new conundrum.
In terms of where the money was found,
it was actually 18 miles away
from the proposed drop zone.
Investigators are puzzled.
How did the cash travel from the drop zone
to the beach where it was found?
The leading theory is that it went on an epic river journey.
Initially, they think the cash flowed into the Columbia River.
But there's a problem with this.
The cash could not have fallen into the Lewis River
within the drop zone
because it joins the Columbia
downstream of where the money was found.
Some argue the cash could've entered
the Washougal River Valley to the east,
washing into the Columbia and down to the beach.
But there's a problem with this, too.
Experts don't believe that
the cash could've remained so well preserved
after such a journey.
The bills still have rubber bands around them
and bundles of cash seem to be buried on top of each other.
How would they all have washed down river over months
and stayed intact?
Still no closer to answering
what happened to D. B. Cooper and his cash,
in 2016 the FBI shuts down the investigation.
In their place, a determined group of amateur sleuths
keeps the search alive.
In 2020, armed with an electron microscope,
researcher Tom Kaye examines the bills
in closer detail than ever before.
What he finds astounds him.
So, what new science have you been able to bring to this case?
Under the microscope,
we found that this form of algae called diatoms,
they're not the slimy algae you're used to seeing.
The diatoms form a glass shell,
like a shoebox,
around each individual cell.
Most rivers have dozens of species of diatoms.
They die and fall to the bottom of the river,
but the glass shell remains.
So many years later, we can pick them up and identify
what species of diatoms are there in the river.
Throughout the year,
the types of diatoms in a river change
depending on the season.
Crucially, Tom detects a specific species
that doesn't match the time of year that Cooper jumped.
The particular type of diatom
that we found on Cooper's cash
was Asterionella formosa, a Latin name.
But that particular diatom is only found in the spring,
not in November when Cooper jumped.
The lack of winter diatoms indicates that
the money couldn't have become submerged in November
when the hijack happened,
suggesting a significant time delay between Cooper's jump
and his cash getting exposed to river water.
It tells us that the money spent at least six months
somewhere other than getting buried.
Where? We don't know yet,
but that's what adds to the mystery of the case.
The money can't have been
floating in the water after Cooper landed.
The finding definitively rules out
the theory that these bills
came splashing down into a waterway with Cooper.
But that's not all.
It removes any suspicion
that Cooper landed on the ground
and quickly buried some of the cash himself.
Tom runs tests on $20 bills.
Research shows that the diatoms
couldn't have entered the bills once the bills were in the ground.
The cash is submerged in the water months after Cooper jumped.
Somehow, it winds up buried in the ground.
This research creates a new riddle in the Cooper mystery.
Why was there this strange time delay?
How did the cash get buried?
It's like Cooper is still messing with us
more than 50 years after this event.
While new evidence often helps to rule out long-held theories,
this time, it widens the mystery.
People will never stop trying
to solve the Cooper case,
but now experts realize the answer may lie beneath the surface.
The AE1, Australia's first ever submarine,
disappears at the start of World War I.
It's the only naval vessel in the nation's history
whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Can a dedicated team uncover
how the AE1 vanished without leaving a trace?
September 14th, 1914.
What's now Papua New Guinea
is divided into British and German held territories.
Australia's flagship submarine, AE1,
is on patrol scouting for German warships.
World War I has just begun.
The Australians are part of the British Empire
and Australian resources
are brought into the war effort.
With 35 crew on board, the AE1 patrols
alongside the torpedo boat HMAS Parramatta.
The two vessels plan to rendezvous at 6:00 p.m.
once their watch is over.
But at 3:20, the Parramatta's crew
loses sight of the submarine.
The Parramatta immediately tried to make contact with AE1
by radio using Morse Code,
but was unable to make contact with it.
By 8:00 p.m. there's still no sign of AE1.
Was she spotted and engaged by the enemy?
Or did she get into trouble
navigating around the area's many islands?
In 1914, there was no radar.
They didn't have technology like sonar.
They didn't have any beacons like we do today.
So, basically, you're looking for a needle in a haystack.
The Australians
searched for the vessel for three days.
If any of the sailors remained alive on the submarine,
by that time, the oxygen would've been used up
just through breathing.
With no bodies and no debris found,
AE1 is declared lost at sea.
For Australia, losing this iconic symbol
of their emerging naval strength is a tragic blow.
But it's also a perplexing mystery.
AE1's commander was known for having a spotless record at sea.
And of all the vessels lost in the Navy's history,
AE1 is the only one still unaccounted for.
This is a mystery that has haunted
the Australian Navy for decades.
Over the course of a century,
the search for AE1 never truly stops.
Twelve separate missions try and fail
to find the sub and determine what happened.
Then in 2017, a pioneering team
armed with an autonomous underwater vehicle
finally catches a break.
Seabed scans show a distinctive shape
on the seafloor at a depth close to 1,000 feet.
It's the AE1.
This is the first sighting of the submarine
since she disappeared over 100 years ago.
Not only is she sitting upright,
the sub is in one piece.
It turns out that the hull of the submarine
was more or less intact.
There was no sign of a debris field around it whatsoever.
No bodies or wreckage was found outside of the submarine.
It was completely in one piece.
To some, this is a clear indication that AE1 wasn't attacked.
But despite finally finding her,
we still don't know what happened.
There was no enemy action.
How does this submarine go down?
After 12 failed missions,
in 2017, the Australian submarine AE1 is finally found.
But why she sank with all 35 hands lost is still a mystery.
Sonar images reveal that
she's sitting upright at a depth of around 1,000 feet.
Bizarrely, there are no clear signs she was attacked.
If we can examine it, look at it,
we may be able to discover what went wrong.
During the 2017 expedition,
the only underwater camera the team have is tethered to a winch.
It limits them to a top-down view of the wreckage.
But it's enough to reveal a vital clue.
Special fins called hydroplanes
that control the submarine's pitch
are set in what's called the hard-to-rise position.
That indicates there was a desperate attempt by the captain
to get the submarine to the surface.
More importantly,
it reveals that AE1 had executed a dive.
It's a strange maneuver
for a submarine that's only on a scouting mission.
Theoretically, there's no real need for them
to dive dee below the surface.
Could it be that the submariners on AE1
spotted an enemy vessel?
And is that why they dived to greater depths?
Was the dive a training exercise?
We know the crew was trying to train up
and were hoping to be deployed
to a more active theater of conflict soon.
They could well have been putting themselves
through some very, very hard training
to get themselves ready.
In order to truly lay this mystery to rest,
the team must figure out what went wrong.
In 2018, they go in for a closer look.
Could this be their chance to solve
the 100-year-old mystery?
Before long, the wreck of AE1
comes into sharp focus.
The footage reveals, for the first time,
the devastating forces that would have killed AE1's 35 crew members.
Researchers could see from the video that the forward section
of the submarine had actually been crushed,
much like if you squeezed a soda can.
The submarine actually imploded.
Before long,
video from the ROV reveals a small,
but highly significant clue.
An open vent above the sub's engine room.
Archaeologist, Dr. James Hunter,
is watching the feed from the surface.
As we're looking, we realize,
"Wait a second. Um, hold up.
It looks like one of those might not be completely closed.
It might be, you know, partially opened."
This is something we weren't expecting at all.
And we realized this is a really significant piece of the puzzle.
The vent may not look like much,
but if left open when the submarine dived,
it would have caused a catastrophic ingress of water.
It, no doubt, short-circuited the electric engines,
shutting them off.
And as that water enters the submarine,
it starts to create more weight in the stern.
And that causes the submarine
to start to sink by the stern.
We suspect around 300 feet.
The hull could no longer withstand the external water pressure
and the front end of the submarine imploded.
We now know how sub AE1 met its end,
but why the valve was left open is still unsolved.
It could have been one of the crewmen forgetting to close it,
and then realizing too late.
Or it could have been something like a piece of debris.
Whether it was human error or sheer bad luck
may one day be answered.
For many though, the most important mystery is solved.
The AE1 and her 35 brave submariners
are found and not forgotten.
In a world of dwindling natural resources,
could the answer to our future renewable energy needs
be hiding in the depths of our planet's oceans?
Potato-sized metallic nodules
which contain the materials to power electric cars
cover vast areas of the ocean floor,
and they're worth trillions of dollars.
When people think of what's valuable on the seafloor,
they most often think of shipwrecks
and valuable treasures, like gold and silver.
But what most people don't realize is
there's something more valuable.
Mining finite resources from the earth
can make or break a nation's fortunes,
and even start wars.
These nodules contain rare earth elements,
and some of the most precious metals known to humankind.
But what exactly are they?
And is it possible to turn them to our advantage?
The world is changing.
As we transition to sustainable power
and a technology driven society,
the demand for precious metals
mined from the earth is at an all-time high.
But there is an alternative.
Deep beneath the ocean, in the dark realm
that's almost totally unexplored by humans,
there is a mysterious crop of black,
potato-sized objects named polymetallic nodules.
Scientists think these so-called nodules
are millions of years old,
and there could be over 500 billion tons of them
on the sea floor.
What's more,
they're loaded with highly valuable resources.
Individual nodules were first discovered
by early ocean explorers in the 1870s.
They didn't know what they were.
They didn't have any feel for whether
this was something created by an organism,
or whether it was just a rock.
Examining them reveals strange tree-like rings inside
that suggest these small, mysterious objects are somehow growing...
and that they contain concentrations
of the precious metal, manganese.
But without the scientific tools to investigate further,
these unexplainable curiosities are filed away
and forgotten for 100 years.
It's not until 1974,
that they are thrust back into the limelight
in a very unexpected way.
When US Intelligence reacts to intel
of a Soviet submarine wrecked at the bottom of the Pacific,
1,500 miles west of Hawaii.
In a bid to recover the sub and the Soviet secrets inside,
the CIA launches a top secret mission
involving iconic entrepreneur, Howard Hughes.
They wrangled in this eccentric billionaire,
and they claimed together that what they were looking for,
instead of the sub, was polymetallic nodules.
The secret mission is a failure for the CIA,
who are unable to raise all of the sub from the sea floor.
The ocean mining cover story, however, is a remarkable success.
For the first time, scientists are able to examine
the strange nodules in detail.
They find high concentrations of nickel, copper and cobalt,
and trace amounts of silicon, aluminum and titanium.
Now, we know that these nodules are highly valuable
because of the metals and the minerals that they contain.
And these are essential in today's modern technology,
whether it's the car you drive
or the cellphone that you use.
The nodules are so plentiful,
it's said that if we mine only 10 percent,
they'd keep the world supplied
with key metals for thousands of years.
In one part of the Pacific Ocean alone,
estimates of their worth run from eight to more than 16 trillion dollars.
As worldwide economies transition
from using fossil fuels
to more modern technologies,
these metals are going to become increasingly important.
This untapped, underwater goldmine
has the potential to transform the global economy.
But scientists still don't understand what these nodules are,
or how they've seemingly grown on the seabed
since before humans walked the earth.
The mystery is how these nodules actually form.
Are they biological? Are they an animal?
Are they geological? Are they a rock?
Could unlocking the secret of these mysterious nodules
be the key to our technological future?
In a remote part of the Pacific Ocean,
a vast and mysterious crop of black nodules
is said to be worth trillions of dollars.
But what are they,
and why do they seem to grow at impossible depths?
In addition to these nodules being very valuable,
they're also very precious
because on average,
they grow one centimeter per million years.
During X-ray examination in the 1970s,
scientists discovered that the growth rings
in the center of these mysterious nodules
often formed around a piece of organic matter,
like a shark's tooth.
The deep ocean is a highly pressurized broth
of dissolved metals and minerals.
One theory is that some unknown microbial process
draws them towards the tooth.
The theory is that shark teeth act as a catalyst
to cause these minerals to precipitate out.
It's an astonishing thought.
The metal nodules that could change
the fortunes of humanity
are the remains of a shark tooth graveyard.
Now, one might ask, how many shark teeth
can there possibly be on the seafloor?
But the reality is, some species of shark
shed over 35,000 teeth over the course of their life.
So, if one shark can shed 35,000 teeth,
imagine how many shark teeth there must be
at the bottom of the ocean.
In another bizarre twist,
scientists can't explain
why or how the nodules stay visible on the sea floor.
Over millions of years,
ocean's sediments should bury them out of sight.
You would still expect sediment to be drifting
through the water column
and gently covering these nodules.
But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Somehow, this ancient, deep ocean crop
remains exposed on the sea floor.
It's a mystery that continues to stump scientists.
Some researchers have theorized that starfish
or other invertebrates
who live on the seafloor
might be constantly clearing the seafloor sediment
off of the polymetallic nodules,
thus leaving them exposed on the seafloor
for thousands, if not millions of years.
Although the nodules are still shrouded in mystery,
the technology to harvest them
from the seafloor now exists.
Today, deep sea mining companies are in a race to perfect the machines
that will raise the nodules from the ocean floor
on an industrial scale.
At the moment, no one on the planet has the right
to extract minerals from the sea floor.
However, licenses have been given
to explore whether it might be feasible.
International authorities are scrambling to figure out
how the spoils of this modern day gold rush
should be divided fairly.
But many fear this race to the bottom
could have devastating consequences.
Because for now, it's impossible
to harvest the nodules from the seafloor
without laying waste to the life around them.
There are an incredible amount of sea creatures down there
that remain undiscovered.
And the ones that are discovered, are poorly understood.
We have to be careful that we don't cause other lifeforms
to become extinct in the process.
We're still trying to find out
how these mysterious natural treasures grow
and how they stay visible on the seafloor.
Meanwhile, as humans reach into the deep to fill their pockets,
what will this mean for the future
of our oceans and our world?