Educational Media Reviews Online

Narrated entirely in French, with English subtitles, this historical review emphasizes scientific developments in deep sea exploration across the twentieth century and illuminates important links to later space exploration. Beginning with pioneer "aquanauts" William Beebe and Otis Burton, who reached a record sea depth of 908 meters via manned submersible in 1934, the history of scientific developments continues with various efforts to reach greater depths with more refined technology. The first half focuses especially on the work of Auguste Piccard and his son Jacques, whose comments punctuate historical footage of the men's work. The latter portion emphasizes international efforts to map the ocean floor against the backdrop of Sputnik and the Cold War. U.S. oceanographer Robert Ballard's comments intersperse footage of "Project Famous," which resulted in greater use of robotics in exploration, confirmed plate tectonics, and unintentionally discovered chemosynthetic life forms on the ocean floor. Occasional digital animations of unusual fish capture the viewer's attention, but the most startling images are the original footage of extraordinary deep sea life on the ocean floor. Overall production values are high, though the DVD-R media may not play in some DVD players. To a lesser extent than its companion piece, My Jules Verne (2006, National Film Board of Canada), Aquanauts contextualizes these scientific explorations as inspired by the speculative fiction of Jules Verne.