"The Seas" Movie
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We move into the theater and
choose a seat on the long, blue bench-like seats. Once the group is
seated, a Cast Member introduces the next part of the attraction.
Cast Member:
Good (morning/afternoon/evening), everyone. My name is _________
and welcome to The Living Seas. Ocean exploration has come a long
way. We now have a better understanding of our involvement with
the sea. How did it form, when did it form, and what possibilities
lie ahead? Possible answers to these and many other questions are
about to surface in a dramatic film simply entitled "The Sea."
Please remain seated and refrain from smoking and flash photography
during the show. And now, the beauty and splendor of "The Sea."
The lights dim and on the screen a galaxy of stars appears. This
is followed by a closer look at planet Earth.
Female Narrator:
Try to imagine, just for a moment, that somewhere in the endless
reaches of the universe ... on the outer edge of a galaxy of a hundred
thousand million suns ... deep within a cluster of slowly forming
planets, a small sphere of just the right size lies just the right
distance from its mother star ... cooling in the coldness of space.
Try to imagine.
A volcano loudly erupts and the lava quickly flows down its sides.
Female Narrator:
Now that sphere's creation continues as countless volcanoes spew
clouds of gas and steam into the sky of melted mineral formations.
Steam rises from the hardened lava on the ground.
Female Narrator:
And then that cloud covered planet waits ... and waits .... and
waits ... until finally those clouds of gas and steam condense and
rain upon that planet.
Lightning strikes, thunder roars, and the rain pours. It hits the
hot ground and more steam rises.
Female Narrator:
Rain upon that planet Earth. And they rain ... and rain ... and
rain. The deluge.
Rain continues to pour and then we see large amounts of water falling
off a large waterfall (most likely Niagara Falls).
Female Narrator:
A deluge of such magnitude that the world's greatest waterfalls
flowing together for more than a million years would only just begin
to approach its results. For when it finally stopped, ... the seas
had been born.
The water stops, a few drips fall into a puddle, and then the camera
pans up to see the ocean with the sun setting in the background.
Female Narrator:
Seas that would make this planet unlike any other within the realm
of our knowledge. For it was there, sheltered from cosmic radiation
that the means to support life on Earth was able to emerge. Tiny
single celled plants - fidoplankton [pictures of the organisms appear
on-screen]. They capture the energy of the sun and convert it into
the most basic of life sustaining elements, oxygen, creating more
than half the Earth's supply. But more than that, those same seas
interact with that same solar energy and the Earth's rotation to
serve as the engine that drives all the world's weather.
We see a blue sky and a palm tree followed by a beachfront. Then,
using time-lapse photography, dark clouds quickly move into the beach
area and then disappear.
Female Narrator:
Yet these phenomenon occur at only the first few hundred feet of
seas that average greater than two miles in depth [shot of choppy
water]. And it is there in those depths in an endless night, darker
than the darkest light on land, that we are just now beginning to
explore an amazing world. There, amid raging underwater storms and
firey underwater volcanoes, mountain ranges that dwarf the Himalayas
and gorges four times deeper than the Grand Canyon. There two miles
deep in that darkness - an amazing world.
At this point, the screen goes completely black and every few seconds
it lights up showing a new shot of the deep ocean floor. Each time
it lights up, a sound similar to that heard on a submarine is heard.
We see strange organisms and plants, rocky formations, and vents that
erupt gas and steam.
Female Narrator:
A world where the cold sea pours deep into the mountains' warm core
through immense cracks in its surface and then rises back to the
ocean floor as a super-heated, mineral-laden fluid emitting what
to us would be lethal concentrations of poisonous chemicals. Yet,
incredibly, around these strange vents, exotic life forms flourish.
Life forms that have astonished biologists by finding
the needs for their survival, ... not in photosynthesis and the
sun, but in the chemicals of the earth itself. Chemosynthesis. An
ecosystem like none other on earth. Until now, scientifically inconceivable.
Yet there, nevertheless, deep beneath the sea waiting for our discovery.
Waiting in a world where we've spent less time than on the surface
of the moon. A world we've only just begun to explore with tools
we've only just begun to imagine.
A manned submersible glides through the water studying the depths
of the sea.
Female Narrator:
Tools with which we'll go where no one has gone before. Searching
these seas for the knowledge they conceal and the resources they
hold, for answers to our past, and keys to our future. What kind
of future will it be?
A computer generated "base" appears and the camera zooms
in closer and then through a door, into a large research room, down
a hallway, into another room where three video images of undersea
creatures appear on small screens. The camera zooms right to and through
the third one.
Female Narrator:
Try to imagine, just for a moment, a future of amazing technological
creativity ... a future of incredible adventure and discovery ...
a future of remarkable awareness of understanding.
We now see a computer generated view of three doors. The computer
graphics change to a shot of the real doors that are the entrance
to the Sea Base hydrolators.
Female Narrator:
Try to imagine. For we welcome you now to take the first steps into
that future. We welcome you to The Living Seas. We welcome you to
Sea Base Alpha.
The doors to the side of the theater automatically open. Signs above
the doors illuminate and read "Hydrolators to SeaBase Now Boarding."
Male Dispatch 1:
Sea Base Alpha to surface control. All hydrolators pressurized and
prepared for boarding.
Male Dispatch 2:
10-4, Sea Base. Hydrolators now boarding for departure to Visitor's
Center at sub-level 5. Control clear.
Male Dispatch 1:
10-4, Control. Sea Base Alpha clear.
Several dispatches between Sea Base crew are heard while guests proceed
into the Hydrolator boarding room.
The Living Seas
Introduction | Pre-show | The Seas Film | Hydrolators & Sea Cabs
Sea Base Alpha
| Exit Hydrolator | Coral Reef Restaurant
Concepts & Construction
| Fact Sheet
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© EPCOT Discovery Center
Created August 1, 1998 / Last modified
November 20, 2001
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