The Silent World (Le Monde du silence)

The Silent World

A film by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Louis Malle

Frederic Dumas, Albert Falco and the Calypso Divers

Director de Photography Undersea production

Mounting and Music

50 meters from the surface, these men are going to shoot a film.

Provided with a diving autonomous compressed air

They are free from pressure. They move freely.

To make this film, they take cameras for the Mediterranean,

Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf to discover

a strange, almost unknown: the world of silence.

These men are divers the ship is Calypso,

an underwater research vessel, Commander Cousteau.

A dive more. With Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas

we have made thousands, for 20 years now.

20 years ago, because of our curiosity we ventured out to sea.

Dumas and I have hundreds and hundreds hours of immersion.

Our enthusiasm and pleasure still alive as the first day.

Now we share it with Calypso comrades.

The work planned for this season is over.

Falco leaves his diving, We are moving forward

The Calypso with 12 divers, their equipment and materials

It is a new tool the marine research service.

In each mission, we embarked scholars and specialists from universities,

museums and laboratories.

We put together our efforts and techniques to explore the seabed.

André Laban has managed to build himself this camera plastic material.

He unloads the film the last dive.

François Saout, our second for 10 years,

connects the autopilot.

It is he who prepares the crossing

orchestra and our daily lives.

Underwater exploration known today its golden age.

Thousands of men have adopted the method and immerse themselves in search of a dream

old as the world. This engraving, 1784,

illustrates the invention Engineer Freminet, the hidrostatergática machine.

To this day there remains a Equipment with a century old:

the diving helmet.

Our friends from the depths, sponge fishermen,

costume daily use.

Most are Greek.

We found one of those boats, They are sailing in the Mediterranean,

Gibraltar the Golden Horn.

This time, we are going to present over the sea.

an order is given, one piece is displaced,

a trapdoor in the floor rises kitchen and so open

our departure immersion

which crosses the middle hull.

Divers use it to get into the water

when the waves are very strong or very cold.

Thanks to her, Dumas and Falco down without attracting the attention of the Greeks.

The escafandrista, close to the ground for their footwear leaded

progresses slowly, in search of sponges.

His precious air tube and one security cuerrda

you link to your boat.

These men usually do 8 to 10 drops on the same day.

Many of them die every year, almost all end up disabled

by this terrible job.

This is why a man who descends to the sea, per meter down

You must breathe the air at the same water pressure around you.

A 10m, are 2 times atmospheric pressure.

A 20m, 3 times, and so on.

The more descends escafandrista, more it dissolved by the blood

nitrogen from the air, and then the tissue.

When submerged, anything can happen.

But as up, nitrogen is released, as the foam of champagne.

And so blocking balls joints and, in more serious cases,

clogged arteries, causing death from stroke.

The escafandristas usually have ailments that paralyze them

or they age them prematurely.

We are exposed to the same danger they,

but we are better prepared to combat it.

Prepare descomopresión camera.

Well, Laban, what happens?

I have a pain in the joint knee.

Ah! Who did you come down?

With Bebert.

What has happened, Bebert?

Here are the cuplables. Taking, carry them to the kitchen.

I went out today with Laban, I was looking for lobsters.

I followed him along a cliff

and I saw him down a dark fails.

He had seen the lobsters.

We should have spent 50m and that damn fault

He continued to decline.

We are approaching the bottom, where the air had a strange taste.

Where drunkenness seemed dangerous.

Suddenly, I heard a well-known whistle

Laban felt was open your reservation.

He already had to be a little drunk.

He began to let lobsters escape.

Until then, it was not serious.

But he began to get serious.

When I saw him take off his mask,

I realized that I had lost my mind.

I sent up and he seemed to have understood.

Instead of accompanying him, as it should have done,

I just pointed him to come in the decompression apparatus.

He must have left the water with blood filled with nitrogen.

And after that, you do not know the reason that it hurts the knee.

Come on, boy, the coffin. And fast.

Is it absolutely necessary?

Absolutely.

Give me your table.

Hello, Laban? How are you?

I do not feel bad.

That's why you is compressed air.

How long I will pass on this coffin?

Come to pour!

3 hours, depending on the table.

I trust the doctor. I'm going to eat.

Care for the sick, doctor.

Hey, my lobster!

We are approaching the tropics.

Some dolphins come playing near the boat.

The dolphins are not fish, but mammals close enough to the dogs.

They are endowed with intelligence and sense of humor.

Accompany effortlessly the fastest ship.

To admire them better, Laban down our observation chamber

beneath the boat.

Dolphins communicate together by means of

shrill cries that resound through the walls.

It's holiday for the dolphins.

They came by the hundreds, as we had never seen before.

Even at night, the Calypso sailing following a magical itinerary

to the bottom of the sea.

Our probe captures the waves sent from the depths.

The lilting cry of Calypso It is sharper than the dolphins.

In the graph of sonar

the top line represents the surface

while the curve traced by the pen reproduces the relief fund.

If we increase much the signal power

regular echoes are recorded in the open sea, 400m deep

revealing one or more layers of mysterious origin.

The existence of this layer creates problems scholars worldwide.

To help solve the problem, Professor Edgenton

We built automatic cameras, able to descend to 2,000 meters.

Containing film 30m film.

In 3 hours immersion at a rate of 1 flash every 15 seconds

the device can make 800 photos.

We have already made more than 25 thousand under 7 seas and 2 oceans.

This unexplainable layer exists in all seas.

The average depth is one where whales go to feed.

In the graph, we remain perfectly lowering the camera.

She disappears into the layer.

We stopped the ship.

300m beneath our feet, flashes light up the night of depth.

Disclose and increased negative board.

Most evoke a sky of stars.

Others show the jellyfish and colognes bodies in strange ways.

But here, the layer dispersion has kept his secret.

The most classical techniques are also used in the Calypso.

For example, open up the bottle, with a thermometer invested.

At a desired depth, a messenger back and closes the bottle.

But no instrument replaces to the man.

Divers are indispensable for explore the vast inventory sea.

Dumas and Falco leave for explore the twilight zone

at the foot of a cliff coral.

As you descend, warm colors disappear

Everything turns blue.

As we descend to 30m, light lanterns And it's uma explosion of colors!

The colors that no one, the same fish have seen before.

They often read depth in his wrist gauges.

Because the species fixed to the walls They vary according to the depth.

The more immersed It becomes warmer brown.

More violent red.

More than 60m, the brains are prey drunkenness depth.

The landscape looks like something out of a nightmare.

Still, they continue to 75m.

These are the images deepest ever filmed.

No need to go lower.

No need to stay longer.

They go up.

The brains react immediately.

To pick up a complete sampling reef, we must,

inevitably cause some damage.

In the garden of corals, no poisonous shrubs anemones.

They devour fish who risk your contact poisoned.

They are the wiles of the sea.

But they also have their protected

They are using their hospitality, in the midst of danger.

See the excitement of one of them,

that little yellow clown

divided between fear and curiosity.

This sleeve is a live sea cucumber, cucumber sea.

She moves slowly, sand swallowing food.

Removing the other hand, after confidence digest food.

Your intestinal cavity serves as a refuge fish-shaped eel,

who have the privilege to come and go in exchange for not know what.

In the coral reef, biologists use dynamite.

Commercial fishing with dynamite is illegal.

It is an act of vandalism.

But it is the only way do a reliable census.

10 fish killed by the explosion, only 1 or 2 float.

Most sinks, lost for the fisherman.

At bottom, divers discover a tragic picture.

At the slightest sign of danger, the fish balloon is inflated.

It is so swollen that no predator can catch him.

But the little trick does not work against dynamite.

The splendor of tropical fish not withstand much after last death.