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Journey Into Amazing Caves
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Our universe seems |
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full of extreme conditions |
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Our own planet has such |
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Places where, until recently, |
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Yet life is tenacious if |
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We call the tiny organisms living in |
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microbes which thrive in |
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Caves, long dismissed as |
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turn out to be ideal homes |
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Their scientific |
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This underground frontier ... |
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holds an irresistible attraction |
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The Arizona desert, |
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bone-dry and scorching-hot. |
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Perfect for extremophiles. |
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Nancy Aulenbach and Hazel Barton ... |
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are part of a small team |
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near the Grand Canyon. |
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The rest of the team, |
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search for other caves. |
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Hazel and Nancy are almost certainly |
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To get here they rappeled |
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Nancy Aulenbach from Georgia is |
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As an instructor in |
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Nancy's rope skills |
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At 98½ pounds, she is well suited for |
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In unexplored caves |
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Later my husband will use our data to |
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He is a caver. |
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In fact, I come from an |
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Hazel Barton, a native of |
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I found crystals which |
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This cave probably formed |
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While Nancy studies the cave |
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Hazel collects samples |
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which could help cure |
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You are never sure what speck of dust |
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that could save lives. |
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Often, the most dangerous part of |
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Gordon will vouch for that. |
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What turns this river so |
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The limestone is |
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to form travertine dams ... |
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which are first cousins to |
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All this blue water and travertine ... |
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is visible proof that caves |
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I got time-off from my job |
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because I promised to e-mail field |
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Here is how Hazel described her |
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The tiny organisms called |
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might contain special chemicals |
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You know caves are not |
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they are a place where you |
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you can survey, you can |
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you can find new species that |
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I look for medically useful |
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even in scum ponds, |
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after all a rather useful |
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was found in the same mould |
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You know, just collecting some more |
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While we were on Navajo land, |
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Nancy and I heard |
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making a sand painting. |
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Through these sand paintings, |
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the Navajo believe that they can tap |
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Of course that's what I do too, |
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I go deep into the earth |
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We are using kayaks |
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because the river is |
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for spotting unexplored |
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As my husband, Brent, says, |
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"if you aren't wet |
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Some rivers run through caves for miles |
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but that's of little concern as |
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"is this a good idea?" |
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Unlike canyons, which are |
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caves are formed by a subtler, |
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Most limestone caves start when groundwater |
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As the mildly acidic water leaks |
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it dissolves the surrounding |
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caves. |
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That's how a chamber 300 ft. high |
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in less than a million years. |
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Walls are decorated when trickling |
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to form stalagtites, stalagmites |
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Since the purest water on earth |
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sometimes we use rafts to explore, |
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which cause less contamination |
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Cave decorations are as |
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easily shattered and |
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That's why good cavers are trained |
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When water leaves a |
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they crystallise and |
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to become delicate cave formations. |
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As Hazel and her colleagues |
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extremophiles are tough. |
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We suspect that, because of the |
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extremophiles produce |
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If we can isolate these |
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we can use them in the |
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Only the hardiest |
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deep in the ice of the North Pole. |
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To collect them, |
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Hazel and Nancy have joined |
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to Greenland. |
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Greenland's ice cap is massive. |
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If melted, it would raise |
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When I first saw camp and saw all these |
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you know I started thinking ... |
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"we are going to be |
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The expedition is led by |
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Janot has gone deeper into ice |
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In summer, |
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melting ice creates raging rivers, |
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which plunge into the caves, |
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cutting them deeper and deeper. |
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Heat from the sun can weaken ice. |
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These jumbled blocks were |
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just like the one we are |
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We started early so we wouldn't |
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Once I dropped into the cave, |
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I focused on how |
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one of the first people |
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The ice is alive and you can |
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as it all inches very |
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The ice is a databank, |
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storing centuries of information |
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Dr Luc Moreau. |
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And also the ice is a |
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You see different layer ... |
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a blue layer represent the summer ... |
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and white layer represent the winter, |
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so we can calculate |
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The glacier is truly a time capsule, |
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the deeper you go, |
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the more the seasonal |
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Only 60 ft. down, |
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Hazel can collect samples |
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centuries ago. |
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Err so far we so far found just |
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gram negative, gram positive, |
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all kinds of cool looking stuff, |
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and the thing is there's not much I |
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the only thing I can do this freeze |
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The bacteria Hazel wants most ... |
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lie buried beneath 500 ft. of ice. |
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The team cannot descend the deep |
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to stop the flow of water. |
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They soon get their wish. |
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The other day it was -12 centigrade |
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which is colder than a freezer ... |
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so it was very cold, bitterly cold. |
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Big-time. |
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Too cold to be pleasant. |
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Waiting for the water to |
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because we're out in |
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there's not a whole lot to do. |
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This is definitely a caver's haircut. |
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To prepare for the deep descent, |
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Nancy has to learn to measure |
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as the cave walls are slowly pushed in by |
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Oh, so from this point to this point ... |
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is what we measure |
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Four days into the cold snap, |
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Janot decided to risk perhaps |
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to get samples for Hazel. |
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Only days ago this |
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The deeper you go, |
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the more unstable the ice becomes. |
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Janot has seen ice boulders burst |
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10 foot spears can break |
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So he purges the |
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to protect the team |
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Sometimes to set ice |
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Janot turns himself |
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Assisting Janot on the descent, |
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Luc is concerned |
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icing up the rope at 200 ft. |
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I have rappeled under hundreds |
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but never anything like this. |
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Ice adds an element |
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At just over 500 ft., |
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Janot grows increasingly concerned |
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This is the second deepest ice |
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As Hazel rappels, |
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Janot radios up and warns |
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Instead, he will bring |
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A large block of ice above |
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He wastes no time in collecting |
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before starting the |
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Perhaps the microbes Janot |
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will one day offer |
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But it will take years of |
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Some extremophiles can |
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but I have found a few |
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I knew I would miss my |
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When you go caving with someone, |
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you trust your life to them ... |
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and they to you, |
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you become friends for life. |
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The hills near my |
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are ideal terrain for |
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Just as extremophiles thrive |
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bats are well adapted to |
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These flying mammals sleep all |
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40% of all bat species |
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but not this colony. |
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The 20 million bats here eat a half |
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Thanks to special training, |
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Nancy can introduce |
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under appreciated creature |
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Any questions? |
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What to do bats eat? |
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Well, this kind of |
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Do you believe that? |
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I wouldn't want to eat |
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And bats eat a lot of insects too, |
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they get rid of those nasty |
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make you itch. |
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Like bats, serious cavers will |
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So when Hazel invited me on another |
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I was raring to go. |
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Southern Mexico, |
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the Yucatan peninsula |
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These ancient Mayan temples ... |
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were built on one huge |
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The plateau holds hundreds |
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the longest underwater |
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The caves are entered |
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natural wells. |
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How did it go, did you |
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Hey kids, I'm still down |
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and we are looking for something |
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A halocline is where the freshwater |
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meets the salt water of the ocean, |
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and it forms this really blurry layer. |
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You see this blurry layer? |
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Hazel thinks there are some special |
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so that's why we are looking for it. |
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Well, that's about |
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And I love you all and give |
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Goodbye. |
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To find an uncontaminated halocline, |
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our guide, Jorge Gonzalez, |
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led us to a remote cave, |
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If the freshwater in this cave |
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it must pass through a halocline. |
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To find out, Nancy and Hazel |
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which does not harm |
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If this green dye comes |
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at a coastal lagoon, |
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then we will know that this cave |
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Hazel retrieved the water collector |
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The slightest trace of fluorescein |
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Since the green dye went |
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we went back to the |
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I respect Hazel's decision |
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but I promised my |
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Cave diving has been called the most |
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Survival takes training, |
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We are laying a dive line, |
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it is a bit like leaving |
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to find your way back home. |
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Jorge affixes arrows to the line, |
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to guide the divers |
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There are rules |
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We always turn around |
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when we have used up |
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so we have extra air in case we |
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Life in total darkness has made |
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To compensate, its other senses |
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When debris rains down |
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you know that no one has |
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If the silt gets kicked up in a huge cloud |
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you may never find it again. |
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And you could run out of air before you |
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When we reached a breakdown pall, |
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I wasn't sure if I could get |
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but the volume of |
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suggested that was more |
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so I had to find out. |
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Open ocean divers wear scuba |
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but cave divers go sidemount, |
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so we can squeeze through |
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In any really tight spot, |
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you can remove your tanks, |
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push them ahead ... |
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and then follow them |
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We were approaching |
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I will not break that |
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Just when the cave seemed to be reaching |
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we hit a dead end. |
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In the few moments it took for |
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we kicked up a huge cloud of silt. |
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As soon as Hazel and Jorge worked |
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they headed for the exit. |
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Just because fluorescein dye |
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that doesn't mean that we can. |
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You don't look too happy, |
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I wasn't in much of a talking |
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we'd try a different cave. |
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The rainforest is an important |
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due to its biological diversity. |
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A great variety of cave life ... |
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is starting to prove |
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I wanted more biological diversity, |
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but the arrival of the rainy season |
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we needed to find |
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We saw a chain of cenotes, |
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perhaps connected by |
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I got GPS coordinates on the |
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a good starting point |
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We decided to use scooters ... |
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to give us more range in |
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As the sunlight |
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I felt what all scientists |
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"here I go again, |
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There was already a dive |
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toward the ocean. |
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Someone had been here |
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It was spooky when the |
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This must be where our mystery |
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We made an educated guess as to where |
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That's where I'm headed with my GPS. |
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Still no halocline, |
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but the cave was getting deeper, |
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so I had a good feeling about our |
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The elusive halocline. |
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When we got our glimpse |
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we anchored our scooters ... |
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to keep the propellers from |
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I knew from the blurry layer, |
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a well-defined and |
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Anything living in this boundary |
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by definition, an extremophile ... |
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with a unique system for survival. |
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I made sure to collect from |
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to increase the variety |
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My samples from the halocline |
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Who knows what cures may be waiting |
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Unfortunately, I will have to |
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because it can take years to |
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For the moment, |
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all I know is that |
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I got it. You got it? |
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It may seem I'm this |
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but I'm really part |
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My colleagues count on me to |
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Often I don't find what |
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but I find something else, |
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totally unexpected, |
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Life is full of surprises. |
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A powerful microscope can reveal a |
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In just six short years ... |
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the search for extremophiles ... |
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has produced a potential |
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and added 12 new kingdoms |
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Each kingdom is distinct |
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as, say, a cabbage |
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Just when we think we have |
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we find somewhere |
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Remote, mysterious places |
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places where the |
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and waits for cavers to |
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I am going to be caving until |
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I'm going to do everything possible ... |
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that I can contribute |
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in my wheelchair if I have to. |
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I'm always going to be |
