As documentaries about Earth’s accelerating climate crisis go, Expedition: Saving Our Seas is surprisingly buoyant. The ocean covers more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface. And “as the climate heats up, our seas are under pressure like never before,” narrator Auli’i Cravalho, the voice of the title character in Disney’s Moana, says at the opening of The National Geographic Society’s new documentary.
The film documents how oceanographers are racing to document and mitigate climate change’s impacts on ocean and coastal habitats. Expedition: Saving Our Seas premieres November 13 on the National Geographic Channel at 9pm EST and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu. Despite that solemn mission, Expedition: Saving Our Seas is full of hope — and stunning visuals.
The documentary offers a window into the scientists’ wonder and joy in their work as they discover new life forms in the depths of the Southern Ocean, or successfully nurture young corals threatened by warming in the Indian Ocean. The film opens with a twist on the usual world map: At the center is one great ocean, surrounded by land. Trivia buffs know Earth has five oceans: the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic.
But geographic names aside, these five oceans are just one, linked by a global system of currents known as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt. The documentary loosely follows the current’s path as it zips around the world from project to project. The first project in the documentary is Thurber’s.
He’s on board a research vessel in the frigid Southern Ocean, which rings Antarctica. Using a remotely-operated vehicle dubbed SuBastian, Thurber and his colleagues are scanning the seafloor, hunting for the world’s southernmost hydrothermal vent. Hydrothermal vents spew superhot, chemically-enriched seawater.
In the generally nutrient-poor Southern Ocean, that makes these vents a potential food oasis to support deep sea life. Throughout the night, as the ROV scans the seafloor, Thurber and his colleagues stay glued to the video it sends back, oohing and aahing as never-before-seen life-forms come into view. Then they see it: A large black smoker, the southernmost hydrothermal vent ever found.
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