It's a place so extraordinary that it may truly answer how life on our planet actually began. So unique, it whispers of the possibility of life on other planets. A world teeming with life, yet so difficult to reach that we have only just begun to explore it. Welcome to the Nine North hydrothermal vent site, one of the most beautiful and most extreme environments on Earth.

Nine North is a vent site located 500 miles off the coast of Mexico at nine degrees North latitude in the Pacific Ocean, 8,600 feet below the surface. Along with a team of deep-ocean ecologists and other scientists, you can travel to these immense hydrothermal chimneys, some reaching five stories tall, where you find yourself in a wonderland of alien marine life.

Where is Nine North?

• Nine degrees North latitude in the Pacific Ocean.
• 500 miles off the coast of Mexico
• 8,600 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Now 90 years later her mystique and grandeur still captivates people around the world.

Today, the Titanic is reachable only via deep-diving vessels capable of reaching ocean depths of 20,000 feet. Housed aboard the mothership Akademik Keldysh, the two MIR submersibles used in the movie "Titanic" are part of a group of only five deep-diving vessels available to the world's scientific community and are the only two that are used for commercial diving trips to the Titanic.

What's down there?

• Chimneys, up to 5 stories tall
• 400 degree centigrade mineral-rich water, shooting up several hundred feet up into the ice-cold deep waters
• 4,000 lbs of pressure per square inch
• A vast array of spectacular animals
• Ancient microbes that might tell us how life on Earth began
• And maybe even the key to life on other planets...

What exotic marine life can you see at Nine North?

As you explore the vents from the MIR submersible, you'll see that every inch of these amazing structures are covered with life. On your dive you'll:

• Glide over fields of tubeworms, six-to-14-foot-long creatures living in alabaster tubes. They're the fastest-growing invertebrates in the ocean.
• Marvel at the hordes of shrimp, mussels, white crabs, sea stars, ribbony fish and impossibly long spaghetti worms that carpet the landscape.
• View transparent jellies, seemingly straight out of science fiction, as they put on spectacular bioluminous light shows.
• And keep an eye out for 'Dumbo', an octopod with giant 'ears' and beautiful blue eyes. He's just one of the many deep-sea predators inhabiting this site.

Without sunlight, these animals flourish because of a process known as chemosynthesis, which allows this food chain to thrive and sustains life in full darkness and under tremendous, crushing pressures. Chemosynthesis was not even dreamed of until 25 years ago.