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Sea Hero Asha de Vos to Star in James Cameron’s Ocean Exploration Docuseries

“We will combine science and storytelling to make you fall in love with our watery world,” de Vos says of the upcoming show.

By Alexandra Gillespie | Published On February 13, 2021
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Sea Hero Asha de Vos to Star in James Cameron’s Ocean Exploration Docuseries

Asha de Vos

Marine scientist Asha de Vos is recognized around the globe for her work on Sri Lanka’s resident blue whales.

Courtesy Asha de Vos/Oceanswell

Sri Lankan marine biologist Asha de Vos will unwind some of the ocean’s great mysteries in the recently announced National Geographic docuseries OceanXplorers.

The 2020 Scuba Diving Sea Hero of the Year will be joined in the six-part series by offshore ecologist Zoleka Filander, ROV innovator and engineer Eric Stackpole, and survival expert Aldo Kane.

“These experts will uncover the ocean’s greatest secrets—diving deeper, getting closer and venturing into the darkest recesses of the seas, many inaccessible until now,” says National Geographic in a press release.

“It’s been quite a journey to get here, over a year in the making (for me) but decades in the making for others,” de Vos says in her Instagram announcement. “But here I am, stoked as heck to announce that I'm in the Atlantic Ocean to work on an upcoming season of OceanXplorers.”

Filming begins this month in the West Indies, where the group will study great hammerheads’ hunting behaviors to figure out why the critically endangered predator is disappearing so quickly. Explorers will also delve into the depths of the Dominican Republic, the Azores and the Arctic. Along the way, the “first-ever all-night deep-sea stakeout of the greatest migration on Earth will show the extraordinary lengths some creatures will go to find something to eat from the bottom of the ocean,” says National Geographic.

The team will use ROVs, conductivity, temperature, and depth sensors, and a helicopter to unravel the marine enigmas, according to de Vos, as well as develop new technology along the way. Home base for the explorations is OceanXplorer, a research vessel tricked out with a helipad, dive center, four deep-sea vehicles capable of a maximum depth of 6,000 meters, and four onboard labs. Lab “capabilities include microscopy, aquarium tanks, genetic sequencing, biofluorescent imaging, and visualization of samples from the ship’s various sensors,” according to the company website. The ship also has a media center, “including the only housing in the world capable of shooting 8K resolution at nearly 20,000 feet below the sea surface.”

“We will take you from the shallows to the depths from the Bahamas to the Arctic," says de Vos. “We will combine science and storytelling to make you fall in love with our watery world.”

OceanXplorer is owned by OceanX, an exploratory venture of hedge fund manager Ray Dalio, a project co-producer. BBC Studio’s Natural History Unit, the studio behind Blue Planet II, is also a co-producer, and Hollywood’s James Cameron, the Mariana Trench explorer of Avatar and Titanic fame, is the docuseries’ executive producer.

National Geographic will stream the docuseries in 172 countries and 43 languages on a yet-to-be-announced date, according to a company press release.