To me, one of the most important things is when we look
at these rapids, I want to know how deep all of that goes
because, you know, it's possible that that could
be a surface phenomenon, and it may well be that for
the fishes here, they can swim underneath that.
I don't know, and that's exactly what
we're going to find out with this equipment.
>> What's going on?
>> We're setting up the instruments to start recording data.
>> Everything's on, we're just setting a filename for the echo sounder.
It's all powered, all running, it's a, we
got about 20 seconds and we're, have liftoff.
[SOUND]
[SOUND]
It's huge, and it feels like when you paddle up to just
the beach right here, it feels like an ocean, because the
waves are just crashing in and breaking like an ocean.
>> We want to get it out and make sure things are on and running.
[NOISE]
This is the depth data from the echo sounder,
and as we were strolling across, it was pretty shallow.
And all of a sudden the depth line just dropped off the screen.
Obviously he went over some major hole. So it's a, but it's, it's beautiful.
[SOUND]
[FOREIGN]
>> This is what the local people here call mondelli bureau.
It's a completely blind de-pigmented cyclid fish.
We only ever find them dead, we've never caught one, they just wash up dead.
Because we think they're living very, very deep down
in the canyon that's out there in the river.
That Ned and John are going to be mapping for us,
they're going to be able to tell us exactly how big the
canyon is, and how deep it is. >>
[FOREIGN]
>> John, what'd you get? >> 495 feet.
[SOUND]
545. 520.
510.
>> So John just tells me that we're sitting over a 530 foot hole, right here.