SERIES
Revealing the mysteries of the oceans
‘Imagine if we could empty oceans, letting the waters drain away to reveal the secrets . . .’
Take a (sunken) treasure hunt. Cross it with a mystery, or rather, mysteries. What you get is a clue to the theme of Drain the Oceans, a new documentary series that exposes secrets of the sea hidden far below its surface until now.
Want proof of how the dinosaurs were obliterated? Was the legendary city of Atlantis found off a Japanese island? How close was Hitler to building a nuclear bomb? (For that, drain a deep Norwegian lake). How did one of the seven wonders of the world, the lighthouse of Alexandria, look in ancient Egypt?
Using new underwater technology,
Drain the Oceans attempts to piece together these puzzles by mapping and modelling historic ruins, natural wonders and shipwrecks on the sea bed.
Pioneering underwater scanning technology makes it possible for marine archaeologists and geologists to collect and study — and dispute — evidence from the ocean’s floor for the first time.
Three-dimensional digital images created from the data and exceptional photography and footage give a glimpse into the unseen and unrecorded history of the planet’s watery realm.
“Imagine if we could empty oceans, letting the waters drain away to reveal the secrets of the sea . . . ” is how each episode of the Nat Geo series begins.
The legend of Atlantis is the first one I watched. Described thousands of years ago by the Greek philosopher Plato, Atlantis was reputed to be home to a glorious civilisation.
But, says Plato, the gods destroyed Atlantis because of human pride, and the story of this lost civilisation remains “an idea which fascinates A-list archaeologists and the producers of B-list movies”.
In swims Japanese scuba diver Kihachiro Aratake. Scouting for a new dive site off the island of Yonaguni, he comes across a massive structure eight storeys high.
“I thought it was similar to [the 15thcentury Inca city of] Machu Picchu and called it the submarine ruins,” he says of the smooth walls that seem to be carved out of stone and with terraces the size of five football fields.
Artefacts and talismans retrieved at this site suggest this could have been a temple or fortress for an ancient civilisation.
This is only one of the wonders explored in the series, which traverses the world from the sunken battleships of the China Seas to the Pacific Rim of Fire with its volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis, to the Black Sea, North Sea, Baltic Sea and Mediterranean, and out to the vast Atlantic and Indian oceans.
The footage is wonderful but, be aware, this is a series that people with a geeky bent — be it archaeological, historical or scientific — will appreciate more for its detail. The subjects do, however, fast-forward through centuries up to modern times.
“It explores the stories of war, piracy (loot like tarnished silver bars) and slavery in the Gulf of Mexico,” say the producers, who also touch on the forces behind the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil marine spill in 2010.
Dazzling footage of a diver in sinkholes leads into the story of what happened to the dinosaurs, whose death, Nat Geo says, “can only be understood by looking deep below the waves”.
The series also features 21st-century issues like the global underwater cables that connect us on the internet and how a 2006 underwater earthquake affected them, and the long search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that disappeared in 2014.
Even though it breaks new ground by showing evidence of a world that’s been hidden forever, many of its mysteries remain unsolved.
The Nat Geo series Drain the Ocean starts on Wednesday July 25 at 8pm