Blue Planet sub started to leak at 450m down
Beeb show crew suffer scare in abyss
A BLUE Planet producer has told how the submersible she was in sprang a leak 1476ft below the sea’s surface.
The pressure kills at that depth and Orla Doherty, who was with a pilot and a cameraman, knew it would take 45 minutes to return from the Antarctic Ocean dive.
She said: “It was far colder than most dives, -1.8C. We noticed water gathering in the bottom. All sorts of things go through your mind. There’s a giant crack and it’s going to go. There isn’t a way out.
“There’s no happy ending. It took 20 minutes to figure out where it was coming from and how to stop it. An inlet on a pressure gauge wasn’t watertight. It was a case of sealing it. The pilot asked if I wanted to go to the surface and I said, ‘No. Every dive is precious’.”
James Honeybourne, executive of the BBC1 show, insisted there was “never a moment of panic”.
And he revealed how what they discovered in the second instalment, The Deep, left one expert “gobsmacked”. He added: “No one had dived 1000 metres deep. Some scientists were saying, ‘It’ll be dead’. We discovered a world richer than we had imagined. That’s so exciting – it’s genuine discovery.”
Humans have viewed less than one per cent of the ocean floor, it is thought.
Creatures seen included a Fangtooth, which has the largest teeth in relation to its body of any fish.
Bluntnose sixgill sharks were also on patrol and the team filmed Humboldt squid hunting at 800 metres.
Filming took place off the coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Azores, Chile, the Galapagos, Ecuador, the US and Australia.
Producer Mark Brownlow said there were inherent risks in undersea filmmaking. But he added: “We work with incredible expertise and calculate the risks.” ●Blue Planet II is on BBC1 on Sunday at 8pm. Please post me free & without obligation full details of the Alta2 Pro hearing aid. K Tick if pensioner. Mr/Mrs/Miss Surname Address First Name