VIRTUE VOYAGE:DOWN,DOWN,DOWN.
Thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean is New Zealand, made up of two large islands, North Island and South Island. On the northeast coast of South Island is a mountainous peninsula the Maori people named Kaikoura (KIGH koor uh).
It was formed 125,000 years ago by the volcanic action of plates beneath the waters offshore. That action also formed the destination for your virtual voyage: Kaikours Canyon. Just beyond the shore, the bottom drops to 2,600 feet (800m), then plunges to the canyon bottom more than a mile (1.5km) below. Kaikoura is not the deepest spot in the ocean, but it’s quite a trip.
Upwelling currents from the blackness of the mile-deep canyon bring cold water rich in nutrients toward the surface. The waters are filled with sea life, including sperm whales and giant squid. One of the rarest creatures on the planet.
THE DIVE: The great thing about this trip is that you don’t need to swim or even breathe underwater. All you have to bring along is your imagination. As you slip beneath the waves it’s as if you’re on the ceiling of an enormous room, so large that you can’t see the floor. As you second the first 100 feet (30m), notice those reddish clouds. They’re krill, tiny shrimp like creatures that are an important food source for a wide variety of sea creatures, including whales. Krill are drawn toward the surface by the upwelling current.
Watch out! That mako shark is looking for a snack. It doesn’t eat krill, but it does eat other krill eaters such as the octopus. Most sharks are harmless, but the mako and the blue have been known to attack humans, so maybe you’d better scurry along. Those sharks can’t follow more than a few hundred feet.
You’re now 700 feet (more than 200m) down. That thing over there that looks like a mountain? It is a mountain, called a seamount. It rises from the floor of the canyon to a height of 4,600 feet (1,400m). A school of albacore tuna swims by. Those small pink fish that look like sunfish are called orange roughies.
ON TOP OF A MOUNTAIN: Let’s wait here until we see… Wow! Look at the size of that whale! See the long, narrow mouth on the underside? It’s a sperm whale, one of the few toothed whales. Awesome, isn’t it? Sperm whales can grow 60feet (18m) long and weigh more than 50tons. They eat a ton of food a day. They can dive a mile (more than 1.5.km) deep and stay underwater for several hours. How about following this big fellow?
IN THE DARK: It’s a good thing you can see in the dark-because it is pitch black here. Faint rays of sunlight reach only 2,000 feet (600m) below the surface. A lot of the creatures down here are bioluminescent- they can make their own light, like fireflies. Look at those eels and those long-bodied tadpole-shaped fish, which are called ling. Don’t worry about these sharks- they’re harmless species: spiny dogfish and plunket.
SMOOTH LANDING: Feel that fine sand on the canyon floor? It’s called silt. It’s been shaken loose from canyon walls and seamounts during undersea earthquakes. Ah, both you and the sperm whale have gone about as far as you can go. You see him, but he doesn’t see you. See the round, ragged scars on his snout? They were made by the suckers with squid. Wouldn’t it be great to see one of those giants? If you did, you’d be the first human to see one alive. They are much like their tiny cousins who live in shallower depths, except that they can grow up to 60 feet (18m) long and weigh up to a ton. Their boneless bodies are covered with a rubbery skin. Te head is connected to a band of muscle, which leads to eight tentacles as thick as fire hoses. Two longer, thinner tentacles extend beyond those eight. At the end of the tentacles are four rows of suckers that look like mouths with tiny pointed teeth.
To capture a prey, perhaps a barracuda or a shark, the squid shoots out its tentacles like bungee cord. It pulls the catch back to its parrotlike beak and cuts the flesh into bitesized chunks. The food slides down the squid’s throat, past its brain, to its stomach. If the squid takes too big a bite, it could suffer brain damage!
FIGHT! In this darkness, it’s no surprise that the giant squid has the largest eyes of any animal – as big as your head. All the better to see you…uh,oh. Is it coming after you? No! You’re about to be the first human to witness a battle between a sperm whale and a giant squid. The whale is the squid’s only natural enemy. These two sea creatures are at the top of the food chain that began with the krill you saw thousands of feet above.
What a battle! It looks like the whale has won – he’s swallowing the squid. It’s probably time for him – and you – to head toward the surface. Now, don’t go up too quickly.
Dedicated by Kavignar Thanigai.
Sources from: Discovery Channel.






















































































































