Palau.
A remote and tiny island chain near the equator
is home to one of the world's richest reef ecosystems.
It is also home to giants.
Massive Second World War wrecks
harbor dark secrets on the ocean floor.
I turn around,
there's a huge monster wreck behind me.
My heart went whoomp.
Undersea trenches,
deep enough to swallow mountains
offer a glimpse into the abyss.
The old phrase that
"we know more about the surface of the moon and Mars
than we know about the bottom of the ocean" holds true.
And large and mysterious creatures
soar through its azure waters.
You turn around and all you see
is these big, gaping mouths coming out of the blue.
It's basically like a mouth with wings on it coming at you.
Here, in this land of the giants.
(♪♪♪)
At the southern end of the Palau islands
near a dive site called German Channel,
manta researcher Mandy Etpison
prepares to descend into the blue.
(♪♪♪)
During the German occupation of Palau,
prior to the First World War
miners blasted and dredged a channel here
to create a shipping route between the islands.
Today, strong currents carry plankton
to the mouth of the channel, making it an ideal feeding site
for one of the ocean's most graceful and gentle giants.
The manta ray.
One of the largest creatures in the sea survives by feeding
almost entirely on one of the smallest.
It's sort of like a bottleneck
so the plankton gets concentrated here
and that's why it's famous for mantas.
So we're hoping to see mantas obviously
and, if we're lucky, maybe a new individual
that hasn't been recorded yet
so we can add it to our database.
Mandy began the Palau Manta ID Project
in 2009.
Identifying each animal by the spots on its belly.
The spot formation on a manta is as unique as a fingerprint.
We started taking pictures of the bellies
to identify the mantas and trying to show,
especially Palau government,
that we don't need to hurt the animals
or tag them to be able to find out more about them.
We've identified over 280 right now.
Five years ago, nobody would have believed
we have that many mantas in Palau.
This simple ID project can do a lot.
By tracking the numbers and movements of mantas,
Mandy and the UK based Manta Trust
can identify any population decline
caused by illegal fishing,
and whether or not tourism may be driving mantas away
from German Channel.
Tourism is on the rise in Palau,
a collection of more than 200 islands
nearly 1,000 miles east of the Philippines
in the Western Pacific ocean.
The tourists that flock here to explore its natural wonders
contribute about $125 million to the economy,
more than half of Palau's gross domestic product.
Hundreds of miles of sky-blue ocean
surround the archipelago.
Limestone islands,
blanketed in thick and pristine jungle
rise like mushrooms from the sea.
They appear to be floating gardens.
Scuba divers from across the globe
are drawn to Palau
for what lies beneath the emerald lagoons:
One of the world's richest reef ecosystems.
These coral gardens overflow with 1,500 species of fish,
500 species of coral,
and more than 100 species of sharks and rays.
Palau's seas may contain more species of marine life
than anywhere else on earth
and provide researchers an exceptional window
into a vanishing underwater world.
The explosion of marine life here
is due to marine geology.
Palau sits on the tip of an underwater mountain
that formed 70 million years ago.
Far below the island peaks
currents crash against the drowned mountain
then surge upward, carrying the nutrients
that underpin the oceanic food chain.
There is another reason for the sheer numbers of fish
that throng these waters.
Palau has a long history of conservation.
For centuries, Palauans have lived in harmony
with the sea,
never taking more than they needed.
In 2009,
Palau created the world's first shark sanctuary,
making it illegal to catch sharks in its seas.
Then in 2014, it expanded its conservation efforts
and banned all foreign fishing within its waters.
Palau is now home to the world's largest marine sanctuary,
a swath of protected ocean nearly the size of California.
Marine-law officers patrol the Palauan seas
on the lookout for illegal fishing vessels.
As a result, the big fish that have been all
but wiped out in some areas of the Pacific
are still very much alive in Palau.
(♪♪♪)
Hefty grey reef sharks.
Five-foot-long Napolean wrasses.
And of course, manta rays:
The marine giants that patrol these seas.
Though smaller than their oceanic cousins
reef mantas are still among the largest fish in the sea.
They have an average wing span of 11 feet
and reach weights of more than 3,000 pounds.
Mantas have exceptionally large brains
specifically the region responsible for hearing, touch
and vision.
They are highly social and curious about humans.
If you've been diving a long time
you interact with different animals.
You can see the difference, for instance,
between a guppy or a Napoleon wrasse.
The Napoleon wrasse,
you can tell there's somebody home.
There's an intelligent being in there
and it's the same with mantas.
When you look at them and you start realizing
they're actually, in my opinion
they can recognize certain dive guides.
They will go over a dive group
and go straight for the dive guide,
and especially the newborn mantas
they will play with divers when it's not too crowded.
You can see it's an intelligent animal
like a dog or a cat and they can learn.
At German Channel, mantas swim against the current
to feed on large concentrations of plankton
swept into the channel entrance.
Fins curving around its face direct water
into the manta's large, open mouth.
You turn around and all you see is these big, gaping mouths
coming out of the blue.
It's basically like a mouth with wings on it coming at you.
It's an amazing sight.
Tissue between the manta's gills
sift tiny crustaceans and plankton from the water.
A manta is like a giant filtering machine,
capable of vacuuming up more than 400 pounds of plankton
in a single week.
At times, manta feeding can be a dizzying display.
Depending on the current and the wind direction,
sometimes they'll feed by themselves and roll.
They call it "barrel rolling".
It's like an underwater ballet.
Really nice to watch.
The manta may look like it's chasing its tail
but by rolling, it pushes more plankton
into its waiting mouth.
When the current is strong usually right before a full moon
mantas adopt an entirely different
but equally captivating feeding strategy
known as "train feeding".
So you can get anywhere from 2 to 20 or 200
if there are that many, feeding together in a train,
which is an amazing sight.
They'll just keep going back and forth across the line
where the plankton gets trapped.
(♪♪♪)
One of the largest creatures in the sea,
mantas are also one of the most mysterious.
Research into their mating and birthing behavior
has barely begun.
For hundreds of years, mantas were simply known
as "Devil Fish" due to their imposing size
and bat-like appearance.
But they're very, very gentle
like when the current's strong sometimes
and you're taking photos or video
it's very hard to stay out of their way,
especially when there's that many of them.
So when you're free diving you dive down to take a picture,
they'll come straight at you,
and sometimes you get thrown in their path basically.
And they'll just very gently lift their wing
and try not to touch you.
They're very careful with people, which is amazing.
They could just slap you, you know, if they wanted to.
Mandy believes that physically tagging mantas
can cause harm to these gentle giants.
A manta's skin is like rubber
and wounds can take years to heal.
Even though they might be able to recover from it,
it leaves scars.
And by photographing the mantas at German Channel
we've seen how long it can take for those scars to heal.
By photographing them every season
you can start seeing those results.
So we prefer to not do actual tagging.
Previous tagging studies enabled scientists
to track the movement of mantas.
Photo IDs can't do that,
but Mandy has developed an alternative
that is unveiling more secrets of their behavior.
She places time-lapse cameras at the cleaning stations,
spots on the reef where small fish rid the mantas
of dead skin and parasites.
It takes pictures every 10 seconds or 30 seconds
and normally we put four or five around a cleaning station
and then when you pick it up
you've got thousands of pictures to go through.
(Camera clicks)
In the previous year,
Mandy was able to identify 44 new mantas
from thousands of time-lapse photos.
It's a lot of effort, but worth it in the end.
Because instead of acoustic tagging
where you can just see a beep
how many times a manta passed by,
you can actually see the manta, what they're doing
and learn about their behavior at the same time
without hurting them.
Mantas are curious creatures
and will closely inspect the cameras
left behind on the reef.
When we put the time-lapse cameras
we start realizing that they're immediately aware
of something changing in their cleaning station
so they come up to the cameras
and they unfold their cephalic flaps
which are sort of like feelers for them also.
So they're doing like this to the camera
to see like what is this thing
that's sitting on my cleaning station.
So those are the kind of things
you would never find out any other way.
Today at German Channel,
one of the busiest manta sites in Palau
there are no mantas to be seen.
Currents, which should be incoming
based on the moon cycle have switched to outgoing.
Which means no plankton is flowing into the channel,
and that means fewer mantas.
Mandy spots something on the bottom.
A feathertail stingray,
buried up to its eyes in the sand.
Finally, she sights a large male manta.
It's one called Uncle Fester, a regular at German Channel
that has fed here for at least 10 years.
On this day, Mandy sights just three other mantas.
One pregnant female already logged in the database
and two others that passed by
without stopping at the cleaning station.
Mantas may be large,
but they are dwarfed by another giant
living in the waters of Palau,
its barrier reef.
Coral reefs are the world's largest living structures,
made up of millions of tiny plant-like animals
known as "coral polyps".
Reefs begin when a polyp attaches itself
to a surface on the ocean floor
then divides into thousands of clones,
which secrete a calcium carbonate skeleton.
Together, the polyps act as a single, immense organism.
Coral reefs are always growing.
When coral dies,
it leaves behind the rock-like skeleton.
The next generation of coral grows on the old skeleton.
Coral reefs are the rainforests of the sea.
They cover fewer than 2% of the ocean floor
and yet they provide food and shelter
for about one-quarter of all ocean species.
One billion people depend on coral reefs
for food and income from fishing and tourism.
Reefs also provide protection from hurricanes and typhoons.
The Palau Reef believed to have formed
about two million years ago
may be the most essential giant in these waters.
The bone-white beaches of the low-lying Rock Islands
are built from sand that originated as coral.
Reef animals like this Parrotfish
feed on coral and algae
that grows on the surface of the reef.
The parrotfish's hard, beak-like teeth bite off
not just the coral but its hard skeleton as well.
The pulverized hard-coral material
ingested by the fish passes through its digestive system
and is deposited back into the ocean
in clouds of fine white coral sand.
One parrotfish can produce 200 pounds of sand
in a single year.
These Rock Islands built by coral sand
and topped by lush and untouched Pacific jungle
are a major tourist draw.
(♪♪♪)
Palau is a country of just 20,000 people.
In 2015, it received more than 150,000 visitors.
This tiny island nation is struggling to find a balance
between the profit tourism generates
and its impact on the reef.
You know, if you have one or two people
and they go there and they do a little bit of damage,
it's not a big deal.
But if you have thousands and thousands of people
doing that every day, then eventually
we would destroy the corals and destroy the structure.
The research we're doing is to look at these sites
that are visited by tourists
and try to look at their impact on the reef communities,
including the corals and the fish and the animals
that live around the reef.
(♪♪♪)
Today we're trying to look to see the impacts of snorkelers
on shallow coral reefs.
So with Palau's tourism boom
we've seen an increase of tourists
on our snorkeling reefs
and a lot of them have as we've noticed
have very little or little confident
swimming skills.
So we want to see
if that has any impact on the corals
and if they're breaking corals or standing on them
and the effects of that.
To determine the health of the coral at this site,
Evelyn uses a sampling square, called a quadrat.
She throws it randomly, 50 to 60 times at a given site.
When the quadrat lands on the lagoon floor,
she photographs the area within the frame.
Researchers study the photos for evidence of coral damage
and compare the sample photos taken at busy snorkeling sites
With those taken at sites untouched by tourists.
Initial research by Dr. Golbuu's team reveals
that the reefs at crowded snorkeling sites
are dominated by broken coral
which seriously threatens the health of the reef.
But the team is studying more than just corals today.
Gary is going to be counting fish today.
He's one of our experts at the Coral Reef Center.
He knows a lot of our fish species.
The common names, their Palauan names,
as well as their Latin names.
So what he will do is
he will go and measure any fish
that comes within five-meter radius of him.
It's what we call a stationary fish count.
So he'll stay in one spot for 3 minutes
and he'll count any commercially important fish
that comes in that five meter-radius
and then write down their sizes in centimeters.
The fish count, like the reef survey,
is designed to assess the impact of tourism on the lagoon.
Although it's prohibited,
tour operators have been known to feed fish
to attract them to tourist snorkeling sites.
Hand-feeding fish makes them associate humans with food
and can interfere with their natural feeding cycles.
This study will help determine the effect fish feeding has had
on both the size and numbers of fish
in the lagoon.
On a global level, coral reefs face a threat
far greater than tourism.
Ocean acidification.
Humans have produced more and more
carbon dioxide emissions
through the burning of fossil fuels.
More than one-quarter of carbon dioxide
pumped into the atmosphere is dissolved into the oceans
where it upsets the chemical balance
making water more acidic.
This acidification threatens the survival of the animals
on the reef.
The skeletons of most marine organisms,
including crustaceans and fish are made from calcium carbonate.
If the acidity of the water increases,
there are fewer carbonate ions in the water
and it becomes harder for these animals
to form a skeleton.
Acidity can be increased to the point
where even coral can no longer make a skeleton.
Even before that stage, the struggle to make a skeleton
can leave coral weak and vulnerable.
So you might have a coral, but it's not strong,
like, a little storm and it would break.
Or, you would have very high bio-erosion.
A lot of other organisms will be able to live inside
and break the skeleton of the coral.
It's yet another threat on the Palau Barrier Reef
that was already stressed by reckless overfishing.
For decades, foreign fishing vessels
plundered these seas,
brutally raking fish from the reef.
The reef is an ecosystem
and you need corals and you need fish
and if you take all the fish from the system,
then you will affect the reefs.
It will affect its health,
and its recovery from disturbance.
And so that is one of the main issues
that we need to ensure that
we still have enough fish in the reef
to allow the reef function to continue.
(♪♪♪)
Not all of Palau's reefs are two million years old.
Some are relative youngsters
that can be traced back just 70 years,
to a time when battles raged over Palau's tropical skies.
At the bottom of Malakal Harbor
a massive, broken skeleton appears slowly from the blue.
It is the Iro, a Japanese navy tanker
that met its doom during the Second World War
when US airplanes rained explosives
on the Japanese fleet.
Over the decades, the Iro has transformed
into an artificial reef.
Providing shelter for prey, food for predators,
and a breeding ground for the hard and soft corals
that have taken hold of the ship.
She's a spectacular wreck to dive now.
She is teeming with life
and it's just an amazing wreck dive
because you have all that history.
You have all that drama of the sinking of the vessel
and now, 70 years-plus years later,
you look at it and it's just the most
beautiful, spectacular reef there is around there.
The Iro sits upright in its watery grave,
130 feet below the surface.
It's a colossal wreck, nearly 500 feet long,
weighing upwards of 14,000 tons.
And remains largely intact, except for the damage caused
when a massive explosion in the engine room
sent the ship to the bottom.
On the bow, sits a turret gun,
its barrel and armored shield draped in soft coral.
Wrecks like the Iro provide a stable setting for coral.
Corals spawn in the water column.
Eggs are carried by the current and can land anywhere.
The shallow depth, warm water,
and relative stillness of this lagoon
make an ideal breeding ground for the algae
that cements coral reefs together.
The Iro is alive with stony staghorn coral.
Ivory tube sponges.
And black coral trees.
Fish make their home on or near the wreck as well.
Clouds of fry...
Lionfish...
And Pacific spadefish.
Three masts reach toward a distant sky
and provide an ideal surface for sun-seeking organisms,
including huge colonies of bubble tip anemones.
A close relative of both jellyfish and coral
the bubble tip anemone is equipped
with sweeping venom-filled tentacles
that ensnare passing prey.
The slightest touch triggers the tentacles
which inject a paralyzing neurotoxin
into its victim.
But not to the tomato clownfish nestled inside its tentacles.
To defend itself and ensure it has enough to eat,
the bubble tip anemone forms an unlikely alliance.
A layer of mucus on the clownfish's skin
makes it immune to the anemone's lethal sting.
It's a symbiotic relationship,
the anemone protects the clownfish
from predators,
and snacks on its leftover meals.
In return, the clownfish drives off intruders
and cleans the anemone of parasites.
The coral-encrusted Iro is just one of more than 60
Second World War wrecks in Palau.
In March 1944,
US Navy planes appeared high above the islands
bombarding the Japanese fleet with rockets and torpedoes
and sending most of its vessels to the bottom.
The coordinated attack was code-named
"Operation Desecrate One".
In September, 1944, the Island of Peleliu
was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles
of the Second World War.
US marines made an amphibious assault
on these beaches
to liberate the island from Japanese forces.
Fighting lasted for months and took the lives
of 10,000 Japanese and 1,800 American soldiers.
Today the island is surreally peaceful.
Although scattered amid the lush vegetation
are the reminders of past horrors.
A crippled Japanese fighter plane
reclaimed by the jungle.
A gutted US marine landing craft,
corroded by the elements.
And sobering memorials to the thousands,
Japanese and American, that spent their final moments
on what was once an island paradise.
Francis Toribiong is a native Palauan
who grew up on the islands in the years following the war.
He founded Palau's first dive operation
and in the 1980s,
helped discover more than 30 Japanese wrecks...
Including the 285-foot-long Chuyo Maru.
Like the Iro, it sits upright
and is overgrown with corals, sponges
and oysters.
The Chuyo Maru was a coastal freighter,
sent to the bottom during Operation Desecrate One
and discovered by Toribiong in 1989.
I follow the line down and there's nothing there.
I turn around,
there's a huge monster wreck behind me.
My heart went whoomp.
I got scared.
Actually I got a little bit scared
because it's a huge thing right behind me.
I did not see it because I was going down this way.
That was exciting.
I mean that completely changed my way of diving.
Today when I take people diving
I don't try to explain everything.
I talk about safety, the depth, time,
and how we go around this way
and I tell them that's good enough.
I don't want to go beyond that.
Why?
I say I want you to have that excitement like I do.
I want you to have that feeling.
It's hard to explain, but when things are in the water
for last 50-some years, 70 years,
and then the first time you go it's a really exciting dive.
The Chuyo Maru shares its watery grave
with a mystery ship.
Its true name remains unknown,
no records of the ship can be found
in Japanese navy archives.
Though like most wrecks in Palau
it was sunk along with most of the Japanese fleet
during Operation Desecrate One.
Today, it's known simply as the Helmet Wreck,
or Depth Charge Wreck for the dozens of bombs
found in its hold.
Divers are warned not to touch any of the charges.
Many of Palau's wrecks are laden with live ammunition
that can explode if disturbed.
In fact, it's illegal for divers to take anything
from Palau's sunken historical treasures.
The Depth Charge Wreck is a trove
of Second World War artifacts.
The cylinder poking out of the wreck is a clinometer
used to measure the height of clouds
to predict incoming storms.
These Sake bottles
and a corroded Japanese gas mask
are grim reminders that men died here
in what is now a living museum of the sea.
When I take the Japanese diving there
I can see they have a goose bump.
They tell me a little bit eerie.
That's the way they do, I respect that.
It's a part of history
and part of our relationship with Japan
and something that people need to understand
that we need to respect other people.
These once-mighty wrecks won't last forever.
Saltwater corrodes and eats away at the steel skeletons.
Eventually, the lagoon will swallow these remains.
Over the eons, saltwater erosion has also carved stunning caverns
and tunnels into Palau's limestone geography.
(♪♪♪)
Hidden 12 feet below the surface
Chandelier Cave is one of the largest cave systems
in Palau.
At one time, it was an open-air cave,
on the surface of the Rock Islands.
After the last ice age, oceans rose
filling the cave with seawater and concealing the entrance.
Stalactites, formed from calcite
deposited by water dripping from the cave ceiling,
hang like glittering light fixtures,
giving Chandelier Cave its name.
Inside the cave there is no sunlight
to nourish plankton.
Free from these microscopic organisms,
the water is crystal clear.
At Siaes Tunnel divers drop down
to enter a chamber that reaches depths
of more than 140 feet.
(♪♪♪)
Even this far below the surface
sunlight penetrates the tunnel
to illuminate gorgeous orange sea fans
and lionfish nibbling on soft corals.
Palau is a jumping-off point for some of the deepest diving
in the Pacific.
It sits atop what is essentially a sunken mountain range.
A steep drop-off, more than 30,000 feet deep
fringes the islands.
This is The Palau Trench.
It just drops off and it plummets into the abyss
and very, very close to shore as well.
So people always talk about the Marianas Trench,
the deepest part of the planet.
That's a challenger deep.
That's nearly 300 kilometers off shore.
We've got massively deep water
within 15 or 20 kilometers of our shoreline.
So it's very, very unique.
The Palau Trench is deep enough
to completely submerge Mount Everest.
Scuba divers typically descend about 130 feet,
less than half of 1% of the depth of the trench.
Divers have only just scratched it's surface.
What is known about what's down the Palau Trench?
Honestly very, very little.
The old phrase that we've all heard that
"We know more about the surface of the moon and Mars
than we know about the bottom of the ocean" holds true.
Collins has compiled a 3D map of the trench
from satellite-derived gravity data
and sonar measurements collected on dives.
The green shows the Palau islands
just the tip of a massive underwater mountain.
You can see that some of these sheer walls,
they plummet miles, literally miles,
two or three miles before they might have a slight shelf
and another feature and, again,
before they just plummet into the abyssal plain
at over 9,000 meters deep.
Once we look over the edge of that reef,
sometimes it's a little daunting
because you have the beautiful colors,
the shallow waters, and you just look over
and it's literally looking down a cliff.
And especially knowing how deep that is.
So sometime it can be a little bit daunting
and a little bit disorientating but it's also a bit thrilling.
A short boat ride from Siaes Tunnel
lies a marine environment so spectacular
it's considered one of the seven underwater wonders
of the world.
Palau is home to more than 50 marine lakes.
When glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age
10,000 years ago
ocean levels rose,
filling low-lying areas with seawater.
Fissures and tunnels in the limestone
connect these saltwater lakes to the ocean.
Beneath the surface of a 100-foot-deep marine lake
on the uninhabited coral island of Eil Malik
is an astonishing sight.
(♪♪♪)
Millions of rippling jellyfish pack the fluorescent-green water
their shimmering bodies casting a luminescent glow.
This is Jellyfish Lake.
These golden jellyfish have thrived in the lake
for more than 10,000 years.
In this closed system, there are few predators.
So the jellyfish have lost their need to sting.
They possess stinging cells,
just not ones powerful enough to cause serious harm to humans.
Getting to swim through that many jellyfish
is a pretty weird but wonderful experience.
When you find a very dense patch of them,
the whole lake is essentially pulsating with these jellyfish
so it's very cool to see.
They're not harmful,
unless you have very sensitive skin.
They're very soft,
they're just doing their own thing cruising along.
There's another, even more remarkable way
in which these jellyfish differ from their cousins
in Palau's nearby ocean lagoons.
Most species of jellyfish, like this moon jelly,
drift serenely on ocean currents
just as their ancestors have
since before the age of the dinosaurs.
The five million specimens at Jellyfish Lake
are far from passive.
They may look like their drifting aimlessly
but in fact they're on a journey.
Migrating almost a mile,
they follow the same path and same schedule every day.
As the sun rises in the east,
the jellyfish swim toward its life-giving rays.
They have to make the trek, to survive.
The body of each jellyfish contains a crop of algae,
its main source of food.
The algae processes sunlight to produce sugar
that feeds the jellyfish.
For hours, they swim east toward the sun
pumping water through their bells,
and rotating counter-clockwise
to provide even exposure to the sun
for the algae in their bodies.
Trees that surround and shelter the lake
also cast shadows on the surface.
The jellyfish must avoid the shade.
They need to absorb as much sunlight as possible
to maximize the energy created by the algae
within their bells.
So what they do is they follow the sun around the lake
so at a given time during the day
they'll be in the brightest spot of the lake
finding the most food.
As the sun begins to set in the west,
the dense bloom of jellyfish reverses course
and heads back to the western shore.
All this swimming churns up nutrients in the water
that form the base of the lake's food chain.
When the sun disappears into the horizon,
the jellyfish sink 50 feet down,
where nitrogen-rich waters help sustain the algae
in their bodies,
before ascending to the surface before dawn
to start their complex migration once more.
Of Palau's 52 marine lakes,
five are home to persistent populations
of golden jellyfish.
Fragile creatures, they have shown
an outstanding ability to adapt in these land-locked lakes,
lakes that were once connected to the ocean
that defines and sustains this tiny island nation.
(♪♪♪)
For thousands of years,
Palauans have depended on their coral reef
for survival.
It's such a diverse habitat.
So if we lose that,
we've really lost a lot of our ocean,
a lot of the biodiversity in our ocean.
Billions of people live near the coast
and they depend on coral reefs, so all of those.
And especially us on these small islands,
we would be severely affected
and our way of life, you know, it's totally changed.
It would be a devastation to us, you know, not to have the reef.
These Pacific islanders hold to traditions
of deep respect for the sea.
Yesterday, one of my customer asked me,
"Francis, don't you get tired
of coming out here in the ocean?"
And I said: "It's amazing."
Not one day is the same as another day, never the same.
The cloud, the sun, the rain, the wind,
the tide, the movement.
"So never the same so that's why
I don't get tired of going to the ocean."
In these protected waters
that contain more species of marine creatures
than almost any place else on earth,
long-lost war wrecks claimed by the power of the ocean
burst with energy and life.
Yawning trenches plunge into unseen depths,
and manta rays soar,
here, in this exotic land of the giants.
(♪♪♪)