Awesome Underwater

To create the music video for his original song Farewell, musician Bernth dove beneath the water with his guitar and performed the track while holding his breath for more than two minutes. It’s a beautiful and emotive track, and the studio recording really was performed with his guitar partially submerged in water to give it a dream-like quality.

While diving in Lempeh, Indonesia, Pall Sigurdsson came across a tiny coconut octopus wearing a plastic cup. Realizing it needed a sturdier survival shelter, he stayed patiently on the seafloor with the little guy while his fellow divers collected shells. After checking out a few options, the octopus settled into its new and improved home.

Perhaps it’s because they think nobody can see them down there, but the deeper you go beneath the water’s surface, the weirder-looking the creatures get. MBARI takes us on deep-dive with the strange animals that dwell in the depths of Monterey Bay and beyond. That black seadevil is some major nightmare fuel.

It’s time to swim with the fishes. Ace Underwater put a GoPro on a fishing line and lowered it beneath Florida’s Navarre Beach fishing pier. After exploring the shallow waters for a few minutes, he headed to the end of the pier, dropped some bait, and recorded the feeding frenzy.

While Avatar: The Way of Water shot its underwater scenes by training actors to hold their breath, there are lots of other tricks that moviemakers use to create the illusion of underwater action. Insider explores some of the visual effects techniques – both practical and digital which bring underwater scenes to life.

As we’ve seen before, freediver Kristina Makushenko has the amazing ability to dance underwater. The “Aqua Queen on Heels” recently performed an interpretation of Jenna Ortega’s captivating school dance from Wednesday at the bottom of a swimming pool. And no, it wasn’t filled with Goo Goo Muck.

Inspired by the torpedoes on a submarine, electrosync wanted to see if he could make a tiny version to launch in a swimming pool. He designed 3D-printed shells for the mini torpedoes and powered them with CO2 cartridges. A spring mechanism gives them an initial push. Grab the STL files for free on Thangs.com. (Thanks, Bruce!)

While diving in the Gulf of California, nature photographer, Sea Legacy co-founder and NatGeo contributor Paul Nicklen captured this awe-inspiring footage of a massive school of mobula rays – aka “devil rays.” It’s an amazing sight that reminds us how important it is to protect our oceans and the species that live beneath its surface.

Nature photographer Nico Zimm was shooting footage of tiger sharks when one of them figured his Insta360 camera looked like a snack. The resulting footage provides a first-person view of what a squid or fish might see in its final moments. Fortunately, the shark spat the camera back out when it realized it wasn’t lunch.

When young, the striped eel catfish likes to stick close to its siblings. In fact, they travel so close together that they look like some kind of larger creature made up of smaller creatures. The Abyss Diving School Bali shared this incredible footage of a school of the fish as they made their way across the ocean floor in Jelemuk Bay.

Sleep with the fishes at Conrad Maldives Rangali Island. The Muraka is a $15 million, two-level rental resembling a fancy docked houseboat in a blue lagoon. Located sixteen feet below sea level, the king suite’s 180-degree acrylic dome exhibits natural and wild views of the Indian Ocean’s tropical habitat.

Ever wanted to know what a torpedo sees when it’s launched from a submarine? Now’s your chance. While this particular projectile doesn’t have explosives on board, it’s still cool to see its perspective as it speeds through the water. If you freeze-frame at 1:11 you can catch a glimpse of the sub in the rear-view shot.

After running into ice in 1915, explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship the Endurance has been found at the bottom of the ocean off of Antarctica. The Endurance22 Expedition located the ship and shared this incredible 4K footage of the vessel, which is still largely intact, where it came to rest nearly 10,000 feet below the surface.

The Seabreacher is a single-person sea craft that can momentarily dip beneath the surface of the water. This POV footage by Jason Prado gives you a sense of what it’s like to ride inside one. It looks like a lot of fun, though it’s unfortunate that it can’t stay submerged for longer.

With a depth of 36,070 feet, the Mariana Trench is the deepest known point in the Earth’s oceans. Bright Side explains what you might experience if you descended all the way to the bottom and what equipment upgrades you’d need as you went lower and lower.

The Hydraulic Press Channel tried something they’ve never done before. They placed the business end of a 40-ton press inside of an aquarium, then smooshed a soda can and some bottles to see how they would behave underwater. Their new slow-mo camera produced some nice high-quality images of the explosions.

During a dive in 2019, conservationist and freediver Ocean Ramsey came face to face with one of the most impressive sharks ever seen. Ocean and her team from OneOceanDiving encountered the 20 foot long, 8 foot wide great white shark while in the waters off the shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

We love seeing the creative designs that fans submit to LEGO Ideas. Kris Kelvin’s lush and colorful set celebrates nature instead of man-made objects, with hundreds of organic shapes inspired by life at the bottom of the sea. We imagine the build instructions for this kit would be challenging, but we’re willing to try.

As early as the 1950s, oceanographers like Jacques Cousteau were experimenting with the idea of setting up shop deep beneath the ocean and living down there for extended periods of time. Bloomberg sat down with experts in the field to discuss the unique challenges and opportunities presented by undersea living.

This quiet and contemplative sim game from indie developer Slug Disco Studios makes you god of an underwater ecosystem. Every creature you create in the game’s habitat evolves on its own, with each subsequent generation changing and adapting to its environment. Available on Steam Early Access 3.16.2021.

It’s hard enough to hold your breath underwater for a long time, let alone walk while you’re doing it. Freediver Boris Milosic set the Guinness World Record for the feat, walking back and forth along the bottom of a pool while wearing a weighted belt. He walked for almost 4 minutes and covered 315 feet on a single breath.

“Although they look noticeably different from the other sea-dwelling animals, they’re doing their best to fit in.” Morgan Freeman narrates this documentary short film which about a terrifying undersea killer that is 100% man-made. Created by Hot Fuss Films for the sustainable living organization The Global Goals.

The Backyard Scientist has a penchant for dangerous, yet impressive experiments. In this clip, he takes to his swimming pool with a contraption that’s designed to blow perfect bubble rings, but instead of just filling them with oxygen, he introduces some propane, so when hit with an electric charge, they explode.