What is the main idea for Part Three? 6 I am no stranger to deep-sea exploration. In fact, I was on the same research vessel, just before the filming of the squid, making a documentary that would later become the Shark Week program Alien Sharks of the Deep . We sank a whale, which had died from apparently natural causes and washed up on shore, 2,000 feet below the Sea of Japan and then descended in submersibles to observe the ensuing feeding frenzy by an array of creatures. 7 Although we did not get to film the giant squid or observe any species new to science, we did manage to film an important and often overlooked part of the ocean life cycle. When animals in the ocean, particularly large ones like whales, die and sink to the bottom, they create their own micro - ecosystem, sort of like an oasis in the desert. Hagfish, deep sea isopods and the large and powerful six-gill shark all showed up to feed on the buffet we had set on the sea floor. 8 Making these kinds of observations are incredibly important to understanding how the ocean works. Think of it like an antique watch. As long as it keeps ticking, you will know what time it is. What happens if it is not keeping accurate time or it stops? You can’t understand what the problem is by just looking. You have to crack it open and when you do, you find an intricate and complicated system of gears designed to make this machine function. Unfortunately, getting inside every part of the ocean is not as simple as opening a watch. 9 The deep sea is the most hostile environment on Earth. Reaching it requires the same kind of methods, technology and expertise required for exploring space. Yet despite the similarity in how we employ technology to explore both the ocean and space, there is a great disparity between the amount of funding put toward space exploration and ocean exploration. The result? We have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of our own planet’s sea floor.