WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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- I got an email from an aquarium,

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and it changed my mind about aquariums.

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Because biology and zoology...
never really interested me all that much.

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For me, somewhere like this,
The Deep in the city of Hull,

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wasn't somewhere I'd visit because, yes,

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important for conservation,
vital for science,

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but... it's just some fish, right?

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But then they sent me an email
and asked me if I'd be interested

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in looking at their life-support system.

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Now, I've only ever heard
the words "life-support system"

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in the context of spaceflight,
either realistic,

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like the oxygen scrubbers
and water recyclers

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on the International Space Station,

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or in... less realistic situations.

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- Life-support systems
sustaining on emergency.

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- But The Deep, here?

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It has a life-support system.

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- We are a closed system.

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So, much like your spaceship,
we are isolated.

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There's no input or output
to the oceans whatsoever.

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The water inside that system or exhibit
is constantly recirculating

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between the exhibit and
the life-support system.

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So, everything that we have here,
we have to control,

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including making our own seawater.

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The water starts off, just as it would
in your home, out of the tap.

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Now, the water is very, very
hard around here.

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It's lots of calcium
carbonate in the water,

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so the first thing we
have to do is soften it,

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so that is the removal of that calcium
and magnesium ions from the water.

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So, these are full of an ionic resin,

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and they scavenge those
ions out of the water.

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We don't want calcium to build up

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in our life-support systems,
on our heating elements.

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So, what we're left with, in this
great container over here

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is roughly 30,000 litres
of softened water

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that has gone through this
reverse osmosis machine.

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It's basically pumping water
across a very fine membrane

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under very high pressure to
give us very, very pure water.

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To that pure water we then
add artificial sea salt.

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We then pump it around where
needed around the building.

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So, this is a really good example
of a small-scale life-support system

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that we would use for some
small stand-alone tanks,

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like this research system here.

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Now, this has got all the components
of a life-support system

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that you would normally find
in an aquarium like this,

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and this is all scaled up
on a huge scale for things

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like our large
2.5-million-litre system.

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What we have at the back here,
that's a foam fractionator.

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So, all of these micro bubbles
that are being injected

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at the base of this foam fractionator
are scavenging organic molecules.

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Now, these molecules and compounds
are actually hydrophobic.

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They don't like water.

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And what they want to do
is they want to adhere

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to the surface of this micro bubble.

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And they rise to the surface,

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and we then remove them
via the cone at the top.

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This is a bio tower.

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So, fish excrete ammonia and urea.

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Now, we have to convert
those to less toxic forms.

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Inside here, we have a lot of bio-balls,
and that is a huge, huge surface area.

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The bacteria that live on these bio-balls

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are converting it through
to nitrite, then to nitrate,

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and we can then complete that process
by reducing that to nitrogen gas,

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which can just off-gas
into the atmosphere.

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We've got the sand filtration here.

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So, water enters the top of this unit.
It goes through a bed of sand,

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which scavengers out all those
particulates in the water,

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and then exits the bottom clean.

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One of the last steps in the
life-support process is ultraviolet light.

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It breaks down cell membranes.

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So, we're really looking at
anti-microbial action within these units.

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So, water is constantly recirculating

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between the life-support
system and the exhibit.

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- As I talked to the team
here, I realised that,

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sure, you can call this an aquarium,

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but you could also call
it "a spaceship for sharks".

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You've got creatures contained
in a higher pressure environment.

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And okay, it's not the vacuum
of space out here, sure.

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But if these walls are somehow breached,
the environment inside will spray out.

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And if it's not fixed quickly,
those fish are dead.

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And if that environment isn't controlled 
and maintained constantly and carefully,

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they're also dead.

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And that takes a lot more equipment
and a lot more precision

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than you might think.

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- So, just as we have a
small foam fractionator

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on our smaller life-support systems,

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this is the scale of this skimmer
on our large system.

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Now, this is part of the
building, it's so huge.

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Now, a key part of maintaining
this is making sure

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the mixture of gas is correct
that we're pumping into it.

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So, here we have a gas panel.

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Now, this is where we alter
the mixture of air and ozone 

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that is going into
the super-skimmer.

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So, that's helping to break down
those organic particles, molecules,

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so that the skimming can be
that much more efficient.

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So, we're going down into the
heart of the building now,

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into the basement, and
that's where the really large

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life-support equipment is
located, some of which is so large

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it forms the fabric of the building itself
and the pipework is built into the ground.

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So, we're now three floors down,

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and we're only just at the
base of the super-skimmer.

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We saw the cone right at the top.
Now, we're right down at the base,

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so it just gives you a sense of scale
for how big that super-skimmer actually is,

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and how much a part of the building
it actually is.

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The water then comes back
out of the super-skimmer

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and enters our giant sand filters.

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We need to remove all the
particulates out of the water,

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those little pieces that you
might see floating around,

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bits of food, things like that.

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So, here we have some
very large banks of UV.

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So, water is constantly passing
and exposing microbes to that UV light.

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And then the last step in the process

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is the huge pumps over there
take the water

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and pump it back into the main exhibit

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and we start the whole process
over and over again.

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It happens constantly,

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and the water is going round and round
completely about once every three hours.

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So, here we are above our
main exhibit, Endless Oceans.

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Now, this is a tropical marine system.

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It's 2.5 million litres.
It's 10 metres deep.

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And in here is where we keep
all of our really key species,

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including some that are unfortunately
now critically endangered in the wild.

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We do call it a life-support system

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because it is doing exactly that:
it is sustaining life.

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We're controlling every
single water parameter

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in order that the species that
we're keeping here are thriving.

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We are responsible for every
single life at The Deep.

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- Thank you so much to all
the team at The Deep in Hull.

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There's a link to them
down in the description.

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And thank you to my dive cameraman, Tom!