Diving Gone WRONG _ Deep Ocean Incidents

In the deep ocean, there are creatures that are truly the stuff of nightmares. The water, pressure, and darkness have all forced them to adapt in unique and horrifying ways, many of which seem to be almost alien-like in appearance. So in today's video, we're going to go over two stories about the deep, dark ocean and why it is one of the scariest places anywhere on earth. As always, viewer discretion is advised. This video is brought to you by Babbel, one of the top language learning apps in the world. When I started this channel, one thing I never considered was how many unfamiliar names and words I would need to pronounce. Like for example, many of the videos in my mountain climbing series take place in the French Alps, and despite having taken French in school for years, the pronunciations were just not very natural to me anymore, which is why I was super happy when Babbel reached out to me about their app. Immediately upon registering for an account, I was prompted to take a quiz to determine my placement level, meaning with my previous experience, I could immediately start at the correct level for my abilities. And from there, not only are there multiple ways to learn, like lessons, podcasts, and even games, Babbel's speech recognition ensures that I'm able to work on my pronunciation and accent. Like for example, les vêtements. But more importantly, Babbel actually teaches real-world conversations. It doesn't just teach you random vocabulary, so you can have real, practical conversations with native speakers. And one of the best parts about this is that when I'm away from my computer, I can do all of the lessons conveniently from the Babbel app on my phone. With all of these features, it's easier for me to brush up on my French speaking, or if I want, I can learn an entirely new language in no time. I'm curious to hear what languages all of you would want to learn, and if you've ever wanted to learn one, because right now, Babbel is offering 60% off a subscription for all scary interesting viewers. On top of this discount, they're offering a 20-day money-back guarantee, so there's no risk in giving it a try with the link on screen now or in the description below. Historically, there have been a lot of bad jobs, and not just boring bad, I mean super dangerous, lose your life, or your limbs bad. For example, railroad work is one of these jobs that is typically considered to be a dangerous job, even today. And this is even more true historically, when workers used to have to go in between moving cars to couple and uncouple them from one another. If anything went wrong, if a worker slipped or made a small error, they could easily fall underneath and get run over or get squished in between the two massive cars. In fact, some railroad companies even had surgeons on site at all times because of the likelihood and severity of the injuries. And unfortunately, railroad work is not unique in this. During the industrial revolution, job conditions were exceptionally bad compared to today's standards. All of the new equipment and machinery hadn't been perfected yet or made very safe, so things would frequently catch fire. There were also no safety covers or safety fences, meaning that you constantly ran the risk of losing an arm or a leg or worse. Pre-workplace safety and pre-modernization, there was essentially nothing to protect the workers, so people worked 12-16 hour days, 6 days a week, often in just dim light from the windows in the factory because there weren't even any light bulbs yet. These factories and machines were also powered by steam created by fires, so there was often smoke everywhere, causing many workers to suffer from lung and eye issues later in life. And these conditions were more or less the norm for decades. The industrial revolution started in the 1760s in England, giving birth to these awful conditions, and there would be no major changes to safety standards until 60 years later, in 1833, as a response to just how many injuries were occurring in the workplace. Unfortunately, these improvements were only the first of many that would take over a century to get us to where we are today. And even then, significant improvements to workplace safety were still occurring in many places well into the 20th century. Now, based on the analytics of my channel, it seems that the majority of you are from the US, with the next significant segments coming from other developed countries around the quote-unquote west. Which makes sense, given that you probably need to understand English to understand my videos, and you need easy access to the open internet. This also means that the majority of us, myself included, are very fortunate to live in countries where safety regulations are what they are. Many of these horrifically dangerous jobs still exist worldwide in some capacity, but even in the developed world, there are still some jobs that are inherently risky. These are jobs that, much like the industrial revolution, the technology simply does not exist yet to perform them more safely. One of these jobs is commercial diving, in particular, something known as saturation diving. Occasionally used for scientific work, saturation diving is primarily used in the oil and gas industry to set up and maintain oil rigs. This includes tasks like welding, tightening bolts, or even just switching large valves on pipelines. If you've seen some of my other diving videos, you're probably familiar with the fact that when scuba divers breathe gas at high pressures, some of these gases dissolve into their blood and tissues. When the divers resurface, these gases then diffuse out of the tissues again, but crucially, this takes time. If divers ascend too quickly, these turn into large bubbles like a shaken and then opened pop bottle. This can cause several physiological effects, ranging from mild decompression sickness to serious, life-threatening conditions. When severe enough, these bubbles can cause tissue damage and block the veins and arteries leading to vital organs, which can then be fatal. To combat this, divers ascend in stages based on the time and depth of the dive to allow all of the gases to diffuse safely. In commercial diving, the depths and times required for the work to be completed make it entirely impractical to go through the normal decompression following each day. For example, just a single hour at 250 feet of depth requires 5 hours of decompression, so you can only imagine how much would be required for a full day of work. Instead, commercial divers enter a metal chamber known as a dive bell. This chamber is actually a living quarters attached to a large cable that is then lowered into the water. The cable supplies the living quarters with gas and electricity and the dive bell has weights on it so that it will sink to the correct depth. Saturation divers will then live and work for up to a month at a time in this tiny metal chamber on the sea floor. This is more practical because eventually, the dissolved gases fully saturate the tissues around the body, meaning that after a certain period of time at depth, the decompression time is the same regardless of how long you're there. Theoretically, divers can live and work at depth indefinitely and always have the same 8 day decompression period. And yes, you did hear that correctly, it takes 8 days to fully decompress after full saturation. And although saturation divers are quite well paid for what they do, these conditions are obviously incredibly bizarre, bordering on horrifying. The space itself is cramped, hot and humid, there's usually no natural light because these typically occur at between 65 and 1000 feet. But the conditions on the dives themselves are, in my opinion, much, much worse. In the pitch black water, light barely travels any distance. On top of that, there are particles in the water that give it an almost smoke-like appearance. It's been described as being in a void where the only thing that exists are you and the rig that you're working on. And if that wasn't bad enough, the combination of pressure, nothingness, and the mixture of gases can make the diver's senses a bit weird on occasion, adding to the already surreal experience. Not to mention the fact that divers will frequently catch glimpses of large sea creatures moving quickly just at a view of their lights. It's almost as if they're being watched or hunted at all times. You can't quite see what's out there, but it feels as though you're being watched, and occasionally you can feel the water shift rapidly around you and behind you. And finally, if all of this wasn't already bad enough, the soundtrack to this nightmare is deep groaning of the rig and seafloor, creating an ominous, bass drum-like noise. Truly the stuff of nightmares. As you might imagine, if something goes wrong at these depths, the divers are completely trapped because of the decompression sickness they'd experience if they were to be brought up quickly. And depending on where these dives are taking place and how deep they are, the water can be very cold, adding the risk of hypothermia to an already dangerous situation. It's for this reason that commercial diving has one of the highest fatality rates of any profession. Divers can become tangled in the lines, drown, panic, and obviously suffer from severe decompression sickness. Another horrifying one to think about is dives that are conducted that are not directly on the seafloor. This would be a situation where the dive bell is sort of hanging part of the way down the rig. It's theoretically possible the diver could become untethered and accidentally fall away from the rig, only to plunge into the abyss below to the In any case, on January 16th, 1974, two men were working on a rig in the North Sea. The North Sea is a fairly cold body of water with surface temperatures ranging from 13-18 Celsius or 55-66 Fahrenheit. The upper end of that range can easily induce hypothermia in swimmers, and the seafloor is often much colder than that. The two men were working at a depth of 250 feet or 76 meters and were on their first dive of the operation. They slipped into their gear and then proceeded to get the dive bell ready by opening and closing all of the appropriate valves for chamber pressure and other functions. Then they popped open the bottom hatch and hopped into the water to start their work. At first, everything seemed to be normal, except that particular dive bell had been modified, but the instructions for its operation had not been updated. This meant that one of the valves they moved was in the wrong position. As they started their work, pressure was slowly building inside of a locking mechanism holding the weight to the bottom of the dive bell. This weight keeps the dive bell negatively buoyant, so eventually, when the pressure was high enough, the locking mechanism opened and let go of the weight. This then caused the dive bell to rapidly ascend, dragging the divers with it all the way up to the surface. By the time the dive bell reached the surface, the men had died due to a combination of drowning and severe decompression sickness. And this was unfortunately one of the many deaths that occurred early in the history of saturation diving due to the newness of the technology. It is now no longer possible to accidentally release a dive bell weight like they did. But this was also not the first or last saturation diving death. There are some recent and particularly horrifying incidents that have gotten a lot of attention. There are also some older, lesser known incidents, both of which I plan to cover in future videos. Scott Cassell is an American explorer, underwater filmmaker, and ocean pioneer who's worked with several large productions like Disney, MTV, Discovery, Animal Planet, and the History Channel. Known largely for his expert diving, Scott has recorded over 13,000 hours and 20 years of experience in the water. During that time, he set several records, including the record for the longest distance travelled by a diver at a total of 52 miles. Growing up in California, Scott worked as an underwater welder in his teens and has continued diving ever since. At some point, he got into film and television and was able to combine it with his skill and passion as a diver. During this time as well, he developed a fascination for the Humboldt squid and would spend a decade working on various projects involving them, and it's easy to see why he would be so fascinated by them. The Humboldt squid, also known as the jumbo squid, but not to be confused with the giant or colossal squid, is a predatory cephalopod that lives primarily in the eastern pacific ocean. Their bodies typically reach about 5 feet or 1.5 meters in length or so, and their tentacles usually add another several feet in length. Like other members of the species, the Humboldt squid can change colors instantly between shades of white and red and typically live at depths of between 660 feet and 2300 feet. They also live just 1 to 2 years on average, which is incredible considering how big they get in that time. It's possibly for this reason that they've developed a reputation for being voracious predators. It's thought that these squids routinely eat 30% or more of their body weight during their first life cycle, which occasionally includes members of their own group. When food availability is low, the squid are known to cannibalize the smaller individuals of the species. Unsurprisingly, they also have a reputation for being aggressive towards humans when they're feeding, which is pretty horrifying when you consider that they can travel up to 15 miles per hour or 24 kilometers per hour. Once they've caught up to you, they can grab a hold of you with their eight arms that have 100 to 200 suckers each that are also lined with up to 36 teeth. They also have two longer additional tentacles for feeding on top of that, which amount to tens of thousands of teeth to grab a hold of something. And instead of having teeth in their mouth, they have something that might be worse, which is a large parrot-like beak. Each bite from this beak can take a fist-sized portion of flesh and is known to bite right through the thick bone of a tuna's head like nothing. Theoretically, a bite from one of these beaks could fairly easily amputate your hand from your arm if a humble bit your wrist in the right spot. Even worse, they're also known to hunt in groups of dozens or more. Typically, one squid will come and check to see if something is prey and vulnerable, and if it determines that to be the case, the entire group will descend on the animal ferociously. Now, for whatever reason, the first time that Scott got in the water with the Humboldt squids, he wasn't properly informed about the risks. After jumping into the water, he started looking through his camera when suddenly a squid came from behind him and yanked on his camera. The force of the pull was so strong that it immediately pulled his arm from his socket. Then as he was reeling in pain from the bite, two other squids grabbed his fins and started pulling him deeper into the water. This happened so quickly that one of his eardrums actually burst from the rapid increase in pressure. Still sinking, Scott started viciously fighting back, hitting the squid and using his camera to fight them off. He was finally able to break free and get back up to the surface, where thankfully, the squid seemed to lose interest. In the attack as well, one of the squid had also taken a bite of his wrist and broken it in five places, which I guess is lucky considering how much worse it could have been. A few years later, now about five years into studying the Humboldt squid, Scott was preparing to make a dive in the Sea of Cortez in the Gulf of California, filming for a documentary known as The Man-Eating Squid. By then, he was well aware of the dangers of diving with Humboldts and this was only strengthened by talking to the local fishermen who frequently encountered them. In fact, in that area of Mexico, the Humboldt squid is known as Royo Diablo, which translates to Red Demon. The fishermen explained to him that there were plenty of stories of people accidentally falling into the water and then getting pulled into deep water by the squid to be eaten. Coupled with his own harrowing experience, Scott took every precaution in preparation for the dive. He'd even developed special equipment to ensure his safety. This included an armor suit that covered most of his body, armor plating for the vulnerable areas of his gas tanks and rebreather, chainmail gloves, and a 250-foot steel cable attached to him from the boat. Then, in late afternoon, he rolled off of the side and into the water. At about 45 feet, the water began to darken. Off in the distance, he could sort of see the squid moving around as they disturbed bioluminescent plankton. As he approached 80 feet, it looked almost as though he was approaching the seafloor, but this was actually a massive cloud of plankton. His fins gently brushed through the cloud as he descended, but then just as he hit about chest level, a large squid head popped out of the cloud not too far in front of him. Before his vision was obscured by the cloud, he watched as the squid flashed from a white to an ominous deep red. Once he was fully engulfed in the cloud, his vision was essentially zero. Turning on his headlight made no difference because the light reflected right back off of him and blinded him. He just had to wait blindly as he slowly descended to the other side of the plankton. When he finally exited the cloud, the water was darker as less and less of the light filtered from above. As he estimated visibility to be about 65 feet or so, he noticed a large trail of bubbles rising from below. This meant that some large animal was swimming somewhere deep below him and letting out air. It was possibly a whale or some other large mammal, but the scariest of all to him was the Sudorca, or false killer whale. Of everything he didn't want to run into, the false killer whale was highest on his list because of the danger it could pose to him. And as he sat there thinking about the ominous trail of bubbles, a group of 30 or so humbled squids came flying at him and then past him. He sort of watched as they went by him and then whipped back around, worrying about what could have caused them to do that. He quickly scanned the direction they came from, trying to see if anything was there, but then his brain caught up to the glance he made behind him and realized there had been a large shape in the water, sitting motionless in the distance. He slowly turned around to realize he was face to face with a huge humbled squid about 10 feet away. Scott sat there frozen, looking at the large creature, not sure what to do. Then, as he slowly lifted his camera, hoping to get a shot, the squid rushed directly at him and slammed into his chest. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of him as the squid then wrapped its arms around him. All he could hear was the sound of its beak grinding against his chest plate. Finally, it let go and backed away from him, almost as if it was surveying to see if it had done any damage. Behind this massive squid now, there were dozens of smaller ones that seemed to be watching and waiting for a signal to attack. As the squid watched him, Scott noticed that it had scars all over one side of its body, and it was missing part of one of its tentacles. He briefly wondered what had caused that and also noticed just how much larger it was than the rest of the squid. He estimated that its body was close to 7 feet long and at least 3 feet to the ground. It also looked to be well over 200 pounds, compared to the average humble which is only around 100 pounds. Upon noticing this, he was acutely aware of the fact that it could still probably kill him if it launched an all out attack. The plating he was wearing had weak points, so if it just started biting at random, it would start to get through to his flesh. As Scott sat there with his heart pounding, the squid started slowly swimming in circles around him, almost as if it was scanning him. As it did this, waves of white and red rippled across its body, and each of them stared back at one another for a long while. In fact, this would go on for about 10 minutes as more and more squid gathered in the area. At some point, the squid became interested in Scott's camera, so he held it out and let it examine it. In response, the squid wrapped its tentacles around the camera and tried to bite the lens. Finally, after a long while of swimming slowly around him and feeling different parts of his body and equipment, the squid hovered a few feet away and flashed a deep red, then a bright white. Over his years of studying the humbled squid, he'd frequently seen this right before a squid left after an attack. This would prove to be true once again as the squid then turned upside down and then accelerated away down into the darkness. Scott watched in amazement as it slowly disappeared out of view. Suddenly, one of the other squids slammed into his chest, then another bit his wrist, then others grabbed at his fins, then it seemed as though there were dozens attacking him all at once. Thankfully, they were smaller, so they weren't doing much damage, but fending them off was quickly tiring him out. With that, he decided he should probably end his dive and head back to the surface. He got back up to the cloud of plankton, and the squid seemed to have a hard time tracking him as he made his way through the cloud. Then, by the time he exited, they had lost interest entirely as another school of sardines had caught their attention. From that point onward, his decompression stops were uneventful as he watched the humbled squid hunt the sardines until he finally resurfaced. This experience really makes you wonder what might occur during an encounter with some of the much larger squid species. In particular, the largest species of squid, the colossal squid, are almost horrifyingly large. The largest ever confirmed colossal squid was 1,091 pounds, which is roughly 10 times the size of the average humbled squid. However, beaks found in the stomachs of whales suggest they might grow even larger, to between 1,300 and 1,500 pounds. Colossal squid also reach lengths between 33 and 46 feet and have the largest eyes of any living creature to ever exist on earth. It's because of this squid and the other large species, the giant squid, that the myth of the kraken even exists. It's not hard to imagine these massive tentacles coming out of the ocean and wrapping around people or smaller boats, although these instances are exceptionally rare. Their main predators are sperm whales, and sperm whales often have large scars on their backs which are thought to be the result of the massive hooks on the tentacles of these squids as they fight off the whales. There is something uniquely terrifying about the image of the deep ocean, 6,000 feet down in complete darkness. Around you, somewhere in the darkness, is a 40 foot monster and its massive, dinner plate sized eye, watching you and deciding if you're food. Hello everyone, my name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting. This is part 3 of my Diving Gone Wrong series, so you may want to check out the other videos in the series. Thank you so much for watching, and hopefully I will see you in the next one.