After last Sunday's first dip in the ocean, Blue Planet II continues this Sunday 5th November – but this time we're leaving the surface far behind. It's time to explore The Deep.

Advertisement

Find out more about this eery, incredible underwater voyage under the sea.

What time is Blue Planet II episode two on TV?

Episode two begins at 8pm on BBC1, with David Attenborough narrating an episode full of inky black oceans and extraordinary creatures.

Find out more about just some of the wildlife on show below.

Life in the frozen oceans
Filmed in the Antarctic

The three-man submersible 'Nadir' used in Blue Planet II: the team spent a thousand hours in subs across the world (BBC, photographer Luis Lamar, JG)
The three-man submersible 'Nadir' used in Blue Planet II: the team spent a thousand hours in subs across the world (BBC, photographer Luis Lamar)

“We might have expected that deep beneath the surface of the polar seas, the waters would be truly barren. But in fact we find life here in unimaginable abundance,” David Attenborough says in the opening moments of episode two.

Submersibles take us down beneath the ice of the Antarctic to another world, one rarely explored on TV. As Attenborough says, “Astonishingly in the deep sea, there is more life than anywhere else on earth.”

Ferocious humboldt squid hunting for lanternfish
Filmed in the oceans off Chile

The voracious humboldt squid have eight arms and two feeding tentacles. If they can't find enough prey, they turn on each other...

Fangtooth fish and cock-eyed squid
Filmed off the Atlantic Coast, USA

BBC, JG

"There's life here, but not as we know it" – the episode becomes even more out of this world. The fangtooth fish (above) has the largest teeth for its size of any fish, while cock-eyed squid have one eye that points downwards while the other scans the water above for prey.

Bluntnose sixgill sharks eating a sperm whale carcass
Filmed off the Azores in the mid-Atlantic

Four months after the body of a sperm whale lands on the deep seafloor off the Azores, it has been reduced to a bare skeleton (BBC, JG)
Four months after the body of a sperm whale lands on the deep seafloor off the Azores, it has been reduced to a bare skeleton (BBC)

What happens when one of the largest mammals in the sea dies? The Blue Planet II team capture how a sperm whale carcass that falls to the bottom of the ocean becomes the focus for a feeding frenzy. A behind the scenes video reveals the terrifying moment the sharks turned on the film crew's submarine...

Shrimp mating inside the Venus Flower Basket
Filmed near the Galapagos, Ecuador

BBC, JG

A male and a female shrimp swim inside a peculiar-looking sponge known as the 'Venus Flower Basket'. Inside they mate, but by the time they produce offspring the shrimp are too large to get out. They will stay inside for the rest of their lives...

Methane Volcanoes
Filmed in the Gulf of Mexico

This spectacular volcanic hotspot was, unsurprisingly, a nightmare to film, according to producer Orla Doherty.

"It felt as if we had voyaged to another planet and we nicknamed the site ‘War of the Worlds,’" she says. "Suddenly, we were entirely surrounded by giant bubbles of methane, erupting from what had been an empty abyssal desert only minutes before."

Advertisement

She added, "We returned to ‘War of the Worlds’ twice more during our expedition. Both times, there was barely a puff coming from the methane volcano. We had been unbelievable lucky - the deep had given up one of its great secrets, but only the once."

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement