Exploring Beyond the Abyss: The Deep Sea Challenge Expedition

Explorer-filmmaker James Cameron emerges from his sub after returning from Challenger Deep. Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

In spring 2012, the Deep Sea Challenge Expedition, with film director and National Geographic Explorer in Residence James Cameron, conducted submersible operations in the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.

In “Exploring Beyond the Abyss: The Deep Sea Challenge Expedition,” Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Doug Bartlett, the chief scientist of this headline expedition and a leading expert in microbial life in the planet’s most remote and extreme places,  describes what the journey was like and how his research is providing greater insight into how organisms thrive in such extreme depths of the ocean.

The program premieres tonight (Feb. 13) at 8pm. Or you can watch it online now and take your own expedition inside the video archive of the fascinating “Perspectives on Ocean Science” series from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.