Two incredible stories of encounters with nature and a $100 million pearl discovery highlight the vast and unexplored world of the Earth's seafloor.
Two Divers and a Fisherman Share Unbelievable Encounters with Nature. In 2021, a 56-year-old lobster diver from Cape Cod, Michael Packard, experienced an incredible encounter with a humpback whale .
While diving 45 feet below the surface, the water around him suddenly turned dark, and he found himself trapped inside the whale's mouth. For nearly 30 seconds, he was surrounded by muscle and water, convinced he wouldn't survive. The whale then surfaced and spat him out, leaving Packard bruised but alive. Just weeks later, he was back in the water, diving again.
Another incredible story comes from 17-year-old Addison Bethea, who was scalloping in shallow waters near Grassy Island by Keaton Beach, Florida, when a shark suddenly attacked. Her older brother, 22-year-old Rhett Willingham, a firefighter and EMT, leapt into action, punching and kicking the shark until it released Addison. Despite the trauma, those close to her say she's keeping her spirits up.
In a separate incident, a fisherman in the Philippines unknowingly stumbled upon a $100 million treasure during a routine trip at sea. Tangled in his anchor was a massive pearl weighing 34 kilograms, which he brought home and casually stored under his bed for over a decade, believing it to be a good luck charm.
The irregularly shaped 'baroque' pearl, later dubbed the 'Pearl of Puerto' or 'Puerto Princesa Pearl,' stunned authorities and is estimated to be worth up to $100 million. It has since been on public display at city hall. The Earth's seafloor is incredibly huge, roughly 335 million square kilometers, and inaccessible far offshore, which is why only a tiny fraction of it has been explored, despite the advancements in technology.
A team of scientists has put together a Global Dive Dataset containing information from around 44,000 dives into the deep. These were carried out by scientists inside submersibles, as well as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous robots that steer themselves. Collectively, these deep submergence vehicles filmed and photographed an area equal to less than 0.001 per cent of the deep seafloor.
However, there is a bias in these exploratory dives, with nearly two-thirds (65%) taking place within 200 nautical miles of the United States, Japan, or New Zealand, and the absolute majority (97%) carried out by those countries, as well as France and Germany
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