Most of the deep ocean has never been seen by human eyes, and a new one-hour National Geographic special is out to show why that matters. Expedition: Saving Our Seas follows National Geographic Explorers across all five ocean basins, pairing cutting-edge science with the knowledge of coastal communities, and it premieres on Monday, 16 November at 18:50 on National Geographic (DStv channel 181, StarTimes channel 220), with streaming on Disney+ in South Africa. Ocean conservationist Auliʻi Cravalho — the voice of Moana — narrates.
The film is part of the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Ocean Expeditions, a multiyear research programme. Some of the science is genuinely eye-opening. In the Southern Ocean, a team aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too) sent the SuBastian underwater robot nearly 13,000 feet down and came back with three firsts: the most southerly deep-sea hydrothermal vent ever found, Antarctic krill carrying eggs at around 3,000 feet, and the first live sighting of a giant Antarctic gonate squid.
Closer to home for South African viewers, Sheena Talma — the first deep-sea scientist from the Seychelles — trains her Seychellois team on deep-ocean camera lander systems off the South African coast, technology that will later feed into fisheries management and marine protected areas back in Seychelles. Other stops include New Zealand's South Taranaki Bight, where researchers and Māori communities track blue whales; the Cook Islands, where coral heat tolerance is being tested; the Gambian coastline, where mangroves and local students form a frontline against rising seas; and Gjoa Haven in Arctic Canada, where Inuit elders help map the previously unstudied Sherman Basin in an ocean warming roughly four times faster than the global average.
A connecting thread is Dr Katy Croff Bell of the Ocean Discovery League, who is developing DORIS — a lightweight, low-cost deep-ocean imaging system meant to put deep-sea research tools in the hands of communities and countries that have historically been priced out of the game.
Why should a traveller care? Because the places featured — from Antarctic waters to Arctic Nunavut, the Cook Islands to the Gambian coast — are exactly the destinations where responsible marine tourism depends on healthy ecosystems and good local data. The documentary also lands alongside a special November issue of National Geographic magazine on the ocean system, plus an interactive digital experience with 3D maps of currents, seafloor terrain and marine protected areas — a genuinely useful planning tool if you're weighing up a dive trip, a polar expedition cruise or a reef holiday. Produced by Offspring Films and directed by Katharine Arthy, it's an hour that will leave you looking at the ocean differently the next time you book a coastal getaway.
Story first reported by Getaway South Africa.
