Original subtitles

NARRATOR: They're watching you.

More than 5,000 satellites circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new, mysterious phenomena

that defy explanation.

Decoded from the skies.

The Roman chamber of secrets.

There are so many things that we just don't understand.

NARRATOR: The unstoppable toxic tsunami.

It's picking out any person and anything in its way.

NARRATOR: And tomb of Frankenstein.

KOUROUNIS: We've got multiple bodies

brought together to create these composite mummies.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

Yorkshire, Northern England,

a region first occupied 10,000 years ago,

a land of warring tribes, Vikings, even vampires.

This area has a lot of history attached to it.

Nearby is the town of Whitby,

where Dracula supposedly terrorized the population.

NARRATOR: As well as bloody literature,

this county's history is written

in the ruins littering its landscape,

ones that can be decoded from the skies,

including a site only recently discovered.

There are so many mysteries on this site.

There's just so many things that we just don't understand.

NARRATOR: During construction of a housing complex,

excavators have uncovered a vast

array of structures lost to history,

structures built, according to lead archaeologist

Paula Ware, more than 1,500 years ago.

What we've actually got is

an incredibly sophisticated complex of Roman buildings.

And they're the most impressive that

I've ever seen in my career.

NARRATOR: Thousands of Roman ruins litter

Europe and Britain, relics of the greatest empire

of antiquity.

But there is no record of these massive structures,

and their layout is highly unusual.

This is a massive discovery, and archaeologists

are even calling it a world first.

HORTON: There's no parallel for it anywhere else in the world,

and there's no clear explanation

as to what its function was.

NARRATOR: To solve the mystery,

Ware's team is turning to the skies.

A drone captures hundreds of aerial photographs.

These images are processed to produce a detailed 3D model

of the structures.

WARE: The model that's being produced is just amazing.

It's absolutely incredible in giving us so much

detail that we can't even see on the ground.

NARRATOR: The drone reveals a sophisticated array of

buildings, likely built around the 3rd century A.D.

The preservation is quite remarkable.

But what were these buildings used for?

We have no idea, and it's got Roman specialists stumped.

NARRATOR: Historians turn to the Romans'

conquest of Britain for clues,

a conquest that begins when Julius Caesar invades

the island 55 years before the birth of Christ.

It takes more than a century of slaughter

and subjugation before Rome's legions reach Yorkshire.

This part of North Yorkshire was actually

at the extreme limit of the Roman empire.

This is where Rome ended and the wilderness,

from their perspective, began.

NARRATOR: The wilderness is what we now call Scotland,

territory of fearsome warriors,

the Picts.

The Picts are a mysterious set of Scottish tribes.

They're known as the painted people

because of their body art and tattoos.

This was the only group of people in this area who

were able to stand their ground successfully against

the advancing Roman legions.

They must have been quite astonishing.

NARRATOR: The Picts' ferocity forces

the Romans to construct a giant

barrier between their empire and Scotland,

the 73-mile-long Hadrian's Wall.

Over the following decades, Rome launches

several attempts to subdue the wild Scots.

This culminates in

a Roman invasion of unparalleled brutality,

one that some speculate could help explain

the ruins being studied from the skies.

The site might be connected to the emperor Septimus Severus,

who moved to this area of North Yorkshire

for three years, from A.D. 208 to 211.

He was annoyed that there was this anomalous boundary at

Hadrian's Wall.

He wanted to capture the whole of Scotland.

NARRATOR: To quash the Picts, Severus unleashes the fury of

some 57,000 elite Roman troops.

Septimus Severus planned a conquest of

extraordinary violence.

The Roman army basically killed everything that was in

its way -- women, children, dogs, cattle, sheep.

It was a very brutal campaign into the heart of Scotland.

[man grunts]

SILBEY: But what he discovered was that they were simply

too wild, too resistant to live loyally as subjects of Rome.

So after signing the peace treaty with the Scots,

Severus retreated back behind Hadrian's Wall.

NARRATOR: Near the mystery structures are the remains of

military camps used during Rome's wars with the Picts.

But Ware doubts this complex served a similar purpose.

At the present time, we have absolutely no

evidence to support a military occupation of this site.

It's the level of sophistication

and detail that makes this so different.

NARRATOR: Unlike military fortifications,

some of the structures

here are formed from ornate decorated limestone,

a sign that whoever once lived here had amassed huge wealth.

The amount of capital that's gone

into these buildings is just incredible.

It would have been a real showpiece.

NARRATOR: During the Romans' occupation of England,

they create vast farms, turning it into a grain basket

for the empire's 500,000 soldiers.

Landowners use their riches to construct massive,

ornate villas, which partially resemble

the mystery structures.

But key aspects differ.

WARE: The villas that we have in

the area conform to standard villa plans.

What we're looking at here does not conform to

those plans, and that really is the big mystery.

NARRATOR: The answer to the riddle

could lie in the chambers at the center of the complex.

Experts speculate their shape and arrangement suggests

they were a place of secretive rituals.

Roman temples will often have a central tower,

a circular tower, but the fact

it's got these projecting wings is a completely

unique feature.

It's the three rooms that have got most Roman

specialists intrigued as to the function of these buildings.

One of the theories is maybe we're

looking at some form of cult activity.

NARRATOR: Rome was a hotbed of religious cults,

and one infamous for its gruesome practices is

known to have flourished near the mystery structures.

Even the Romans, who would gather in stadiums to watch

people fed to animals, found this cult too barbaric

for them.

The question is, is the structure associated with that?

NARRATOR: Coming up, blood orgies of ancient Rome.

They would pass their sexual powers over

to the goddess.

NARRATOR: And Hitler's secret super gun.

We're talking about a gun barrel the length

of the height of the Statue of Liberty.

NARRATOR: In Yorkshire, Northern England, archaeologist

Paula Ware is decoding newly discovered ancient ruins.

What we've actually got is

an incredibly sophisticated complex of Roman buildings.

NARRATOR: Aerial modeling has revealed a strange

cross-shaped array of chambers, possibly ritualistic,

but unlike anything discovered before.

We don't know the actual function of this complex

of buildings.

Are we looking at a religious or cult site?

SILBEY: The Romans had an enormous number of different

cults -- that would explain why this is not

the kind of design we've seen from any other

Roman architecture.

NARRATOR: Pagan Romans had 12 gods and goddesses, which

they believed ruled heaven, the earth, and the underworld.

Yet as their empire grows, some adopt new deities,

ones worshipped in secret,

away from the prying eyes of religious authorities.

We tend to think of the pantheon of Roman gods --

Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus --

being the only gods Romans worshiped.

But that is entirely not the case.

NARRATOR: Followers of these new gods

formed so-called mystery cults --

sects renowned for their secrecy, symbols,

and harrowing initiation ceremonies.

They attract landowners and soldiers seeking good

fortune in times of hardship and war.

The Roman army was notorious for the variety

of cults that were followed by the soldiers.

HUNT: One of the cults that was extremely popular

with the Roman legions was the cult of Mithras.

NARRATOR: Mithras, a god believed to be able

to control the cosmos and fight evil,

once rivaled Christianity and popularity among Romans.

[animal groaning]

Cult members undergo seven stages of initiation,

culminating in the ritual slaughter of a bull.

[animal groaning loudly]

HUNT: The bull's blood was said to balance out

good and evil, and if you bathed in bull's blood,

your sins could be washed away.

NARRATOR: Mithras is known to have been

worshipped in Roman England.

However, another discovery in Yorkshire could suggest these

chambers were used by an even bloodier cult.

HYMEL: Nearby, archaeologists discovered a skeleton

wearing a lot of jewelry.

So the archaeologists at first believed that this was a woman

of power and authority in the society,

but on further examination, they realized it's a eunuch.

NARRATOR: The castrated cadaver is believed to have been

a follower of Cybele,

a goddess of war and protector against disease.

Her cult takes hold when soldiers credit her powers

for their victory over General Hannibal during the Punic Wars.

One of her functions was the protector of cities,

the protector of walls, and that's one of

the reasons Rome imported her to protect their walls

against Hannibal.

NARRATOR: Cybele is also a goddess of fertility,

and her followers worship her with orgiastic abandon.

The priests had to castrate themselves while in a state of

sexual arousal -- this was

particularly important so that they would then pass

their sexual powers over to the goddess.

They often cut themselves a little

too badly and bled to death

right in the middle of their frenzy.

NARRATOR: As the cult's members swell in numbers,

its rituals draw the anger of officials back in Rome.

There were so many families who were deprived of sons

who essentially cut off the lineage

and so much bloodletting that the cult was

ultimately banned.

I don't know what the punishment was for

worshiping, but it couldn't be any worse

than what those priests were doing to themselves.

NARRATOR: Despite being forbidden,

the cult carries on in secret for many decades

in far-flung regions of the empire.

HUNT: Is this building

a worship site far on the remote frontiers,

away from the watchful eye of Rome?

NARRATOR: The mysteries of this complex extend

beyond the strange chambers at its center.

Around it, Ware and her team have

found elaborate plunge pools and heating systems,

but for some reason, they were never used.

They've gone to all the expense

of fitting them out, and then suddenly,

it's abandoned.

Once the Romans completed building it,

they just packed up their bags and left.

Why would they do that?

WARE: Is it part of a religious cult that

is no longer fashionable and falls out of favor?

It's clearly a mystery.

NARRATOR: The strange structures modeled from

the air continue to confound experts on the ground.

WARE: The discovery of these buildings is really making us

reassess our knowledge of the Roman Empire in the north.

Whoever built it is not clear,

but it was clearly a site of huge importance.

NARRATOR: Coming up, jungle Armageddon.

Everything in its way was literally wiped out.

NARRATOR: And the tomb of horrors.

NELSON: They found bones that were gnawed on,

which suggests there was cannibalism.

NARRATOR: January 2019.

A NASA Earth observation satellite

scans the 225,000-square-mile state

of Minas Gerais in Southeastern Brazil

and captures an unfolding disaster.

At one point, there was villages and jungle,

but then in the next image,

there's this red smear across the landscape.

HORTON: This is the most eerie picture.

There's a great blob of red, with tentacles

extending out into the valleys on either side.

RUBEN: This covers a massive area.

So whatever happened here,

it is tremendous in scale, and it is not good.

NARRATOR: The weird mass has engulfed

an area equivalent to 470 football fields.

Typically, when I've seen images like this before,

it's been as a result of a flood.

The thing is, there's no big bodies of water here, no lakes,

no big rivers, and no evidence of an extraordinary rainfall

that has recently come down.

And also, why is it red?

Analysts turned to Maxar's SecureWatch

technology for answers. -Looking at clues from

the satellite images,

there's a large open pit mine right next to the disaster site.

And what it looks like happened is

the dam that formed the tailings pond

collapsed dramatically.

NARRATOR: Security footage captures the 280-foot-high

tailing dam's catastrophic collapse.

Three billion gallons of noxious sludge,

a mix of mining waste, muck,

and mud, cascades across the landscape.

It was like a tsunami, and everything

in its wake was literally wiped out.

NARRATOR: Moments later, the giant, unstoppable wave

of muck sweeps into the mine.

It is now around 40 feet high

and traveling at 100 feet per second.

Security cameras have picked up people running for

their lives,

cars being enveloped in this wall of mud,

knowing that there will actually be no escape.

NARRATOR: The wall of death then flows

into the valley below, engulfing entire communities.

RUBEN: It's taking out cars, houses,

any person and anything in its way.

KOUROUNIS: It basically kills everything in its path

and leaves that area pretty much

uninhabitable afterwards.

NARRATOR: Aerial images reveal that within 10 minutes,

four billion cubic feet of contaminated waste has swamped

the land and flowed into nearby rivers.

The tragedy claims more than 250 lives.

The aftermath is absolutely apocalyptic --

rescue workers digging through

this toxic mud, trying to find any sign of survivors.

There were still people unaccounted for.

So probably, we will never know

the exact number killed in this disaster.

NARRATOR: Authorities deployed 2,500 people to

help with cleanup and rescue operations,

painstakingly searching through mud up to 45 feet thick.

With bereaved families demanding answers,

investigators turn their attention to

the cause of the dam's sudden calamitous failure.

This type of dam failure is particularly

awful in that there were no foreboding signs.

There's no slow-moving destruction that

you can watch and prepare for.

It happens all at once.

NARRATOR: This mine, called Corrego do Feijao,

is one of over 300 in Brazil.

Together, they produce more than 450

million tons of iron ore a year,

enough to build 3,000 Golden Gate Bridges.

At the site in the image, waste from the extraction

process is pumped into a walled pond higher up the valley.

The method is what's known as upstream tailing,

which effectively means you use the tailings themselves

to create the dam.

The tailings are kind of piled on top of each other

in a way that they deform and harden to make the wall.

NARRATOR: Authorities discover that the tailings dam

suffered from several design defects,

including poor water management and drainage.

Once it became too saturated and unstable,

all hell broke loose.

KOUROUNIS: Hundreds of people died in this disaster

that could have been absolutely prevented

had the dam been designed properly in the first place.

NARRATOR: What's more, analysts learn that six similar dams

in Brazil have failed in the past few years.

And the situation is getting worse.

What's really scary is that this flawed

type of construction is not limited to Brazil.

So it's entirely possible to see one of

these dam failures happen a lot closer to home.

RUBEN: This was horrible and tragic.

But there are dams like this all around

the world, and the same thing could happen to them.

NARRATOR: In the U.S. alone, over 40 such dams

are considered high risk.

It fuels fears that this will not be

the last time such devastation is captured from the skies.

And it's not just the short-term disastrous effects.

There's also the long-term ecological effects

of this toxic sludge

that will be around for decades or maybe even

generations to come.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the mysterious curse of

the Kennedys.

What we're seeing here changed the course of history itself.

NARRATOR: And lair of the bog bodies.

We're looking at a real-life Frankenstein here.

NARRATOR: Spring 2021.

Aerial archaeologists take to the skies over Northern Poland.

On-board lasers pierce the forest canopy below,

peeling back history,

and capture a puzzle hidden from human eyes.

It looks like something dragged

massive claws through the forest.

They're long. They're hundreds of feet long.

I don't know what caused this,

but it's very strange, very unusual.

NARRATOR: For centuries,

locals here have reported sightings of

a monstrous clawed creature called a basilisk.

Further aerial images suggest the giant gashes in

the woods may have a similarly disturbing origin.

These slashes in the forest actually remind me of

something else I've seen in Poland,

and that's long barrows, which are elongated tombs.

NARRATOR: Like the structures in the image,

the tombs are around 350 feet in length

and perfectly straight.

They are the resting place of people buried 5,000 years ago,

long before the construction of the great pyramids of Giza.

But it's not just the age of the cadavers discovered here

that intrigues experts.

NELSON: At one particular site,

they found bones that were not only charred, but gnawed on,

which suggests there was cannibalism.

HUNT: But this doesn't appear to

be haphazard cannibalism from starvation.

They're doing it ritually.

NARRATOR: Analysis suggests the tombs were

the site of some kind of cannibal feast,

where bones were cooked and broken

to consume the marrow concealed inside.

Often, cannibalism is a reflection of people

who want the power of their predecessors.

So if you have a chieftain

who is a mighty warrior,

if you eat part of that chieftain,

you assimilate that power.

Maybe what we're looking at here

are three long parallel tombs.

NARRATOR: Military historian Martin Morgan disagrees.

He's convinced the mystery structures are

the hidden remains of a cataclysmic weapon,

one that threatened to change the course of history.

MORGAN: There's nothing like it anywhere else on Earth.

We're talking about a gun barrel

the length of the height of the Statue of Liberty.

NARRATOR: The story of the massive super gun

begins in 1943.

In retaliation for devastating Allied

bombing campaigns,

Nazi Minister of War Albert Speer announces

the development of a series of so-called vengeance weapons.

The idea of these vengeance weapons was to chip away at

the morale of the people that were on the receiving end of

the attack,

that they would eventually become so dispirited,

that they wouldn't want to fight any longer.

In June 1944, German scientists in Poland

unleashed the V-1,

a flying bomb armed with a 2,000-pound warhead.

This is quickly followed by the V-2,

the first ballistic missile in history.

And the Nazis are just warming up.

What we're seeing are the remains of

the test platforms for the V-3.

The V-3 super gun was the most awesome of them all.

NARRATOR: The V-3 is the biggest gun the world had ever seen.

Over 400 feet long,

the massive cannon can propel a 310-pound shell

more than 100 miles.

MORGAN: You can't aim this gun barrel.

Cannoneers had to compensate for the rotation of

the Earth when they were firing

over such a great distance.

It's pretty amazing to think about the size of

that gun, that it required an entire hillside for support.

NARRATOR: After secret tests at the site

in the image, Hitler begins construction

of a V-3 battery in northern France.

His plan is to install 25 super guns,

each unleashing one bomb every 12 seconds

over the English Channel and on to London.

It's terrifying to think about that as

a possibility -- the blitz was bad enough.

This would be worse.

This would have devastated England, and it

would have turned the tide of the war.

NARRATOR: When Allied intelligence officers learn

of Hitler's new mega weapon,

they initiate a plan to destroy the French bunkers,

code-named Project Anvil.

The idea was, essentially, that they would pack a plane full of

bombs and then remotely crash into the bunker

and take care of business.

It had to take off with pilots aboard.

Then these two pilots would bail out of the aircraft, and it

would continue on under remote control all the way to

the target.

NARRATOR: The man charged with piloting the flying bomb

is Joseph Kennedy, Jr., brother to the future

U.S. President.

20 minutes after he begins the mission,

disaster strikes.

Something went wrong -- as they armed the explosives,

the entire package exploded,

killing both men inside the aircraft even before it flew

out over the English Channel.

Adding to the tragedy is that

it could have been avoided completely.

MORGAN: Unknown to Project Anvil and the people working in it,

the RAF dropped a series of Tallboy bombs

that destroyed the site

to the extent that it could not be used.

NARRATOR: In honor of Joseph Kennedy,

the U.S. Navy names a destroyer after him,

on which his brother serves.

75 years later,

the test site that led to his death and threatened to kill

millions of others is revealed from the skies.

CHAMBERLAIN: What we're seeing here are the remnants

of a Nazi weapon that could have

changed the course of history itself.

NARRATOR: Coming up -- the human jigsaw.

JANULIS: Somebody has gone through bones from different

people, putting them together into one composite body.

And attack of the 5,000-mile-long blob.

Is it something alive?

Is it a lot of somethings alive?

NARRATOR: May 5th, 2017.

A satellite scan the Outer Hebrides,

off the northwestern coast of great Britain.

In this image, we're seeing what looks to be some strange

structure on the island of North Uist,

off the coast of Scotland.

KAYS: It's not clear exactly what kind of structure it is,

but it is striking in that it is in the middle of what's

otherwise just very sort of barren-looking land.

NARRATOR: Drone footage reveals further

details about the mystery structure.

KAYS: You can see that this is actually pretty big.

It's about 80 feet wide.

And it looks like, from this angle,

it's basically a giant mound of rocks.

KOUROUNIS: To me, this looks a bit like a burial mound,

and there might be some type of an actual entrance.

NARRATOR: The satellite image has captured a chambered cairn,

a kind of tomb built thousands of years ago.

Its scale and remote location intrigue archaeologists.

HUNT: Its size

could suggest that it's the burial site

of a very important person

who is surrounded by a pretty big array of grave goods.

NARRATOR: Excavations on burial sites

on a neighboring island could shed light

on who is interred in the massive tomb.

What we found were skeletons

that were incredibly well preserved.

But there was something a little bit strange

about those skeletons.

YORK: It appears that they had been preserved in some kind of

an acidic condition, likely a peat bog.

NARRATOR: The cadavers are examples

of what are known as bog bodies,

corpses preserved for millennia

after falling into peat marshes.

JANULIS: Peat bogs are very dense, they're very low oxygen,

and they have a lot of acid.

So what that means is if a body falls into a peat bog,

it might be found thousands of years later in a relatively

intact condition.

NARRATOR: Weirder still, these corpses had been

intentionally submerged in the bog and then exhumed,

the first examples of

deliberate mummification discovered in Europe.

To add another layer of strangeness

to this whole thing,

research reveals somebody has gone through carefully, taking

bones from different people

and putting them together into one composite body.

We're looking at a real-life Frankenstein here.

NARRATOR: The bodies found near the tomb

in the image are Bronze Age chimeras,

Franken-mummies

fashioned from several different generations

of ancestors.

Further radiocarbon examination shows that these

actual bones span hundreds of years.

We've got multiple bodies brought together over who knows

what period of time to create these composite mummies.

JANULIS: These were found not very far

from where our image sits.

So is it possible that our

structure has a Franken-mummy inside it?

NARRATOR: Yet when experts turn to the archaeological record,

the mystery deepens.

YORK: The structure that we're seeing in these images is

actually thousands of years older than these mummies.

It was likely built by their ancestors.

NARRATOR: The tomb appears to have been constructed during

an intriguing period in human evolution -- the Neolithic.

This is a time when mankind move from hunting

and gathering to a life of agriculture and settlement.

Giant mysterious stone structures also

begin appearing across the land.

CAVELL: All over, there are Neolithic sites that

ancient Britons constructed as temples or observatories.

NELSON: We know very little about Neolithic structures

but the ones that exist

today seem to be used for some sort of religious

or ceremonial purpose.

NARRATOR: Scotland's islands are among the first places

to witness the arrival of these strange monuments,

coded legacies of history's first

true civilizations wrought in stone.

CAVELL: Some of these settlements go back

to 3,000 B.C.E.,

and clearly, it's been a place

of great importance for a lot of those ancient people,

because there are so many of these

stone circles and ritual sites.

NARRATOR: The giant tomb revealed from the skies

may have been built to honor

one of the leaders of these ancient peoples

who transformed the world.

But with much of it now collapsed,

their identity will likely remain a mystery.

This is a really enigmatic monument, attesting to

the longevity of their culture in such a barren,

remote place.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the 22-million-ton sea monster.

Once it starts hitting the shoreline, that's

when all the problems really start to begin.

NARRATOR: June 26th, 2018.

Satellites capture something massive

lurking off the Florida coast.

There's something unusual going on in the Atlantic.

There's some orange-brownish

substance that's enveloping the coastline.

It looks like the whole coastline is full of goo.

RUBEN: Whatever this substance is,

there's just tons and tons of it.

Is it something that spilled?

Is it something alive?

Is it a lot of somethings alive?

NARRATOR: Additional satellite data reveals something bizarre,

blobs of the mystery goop span more than 5,000 miles of ocean.

This is not just some local phenomenon.

This thing is stretching across

the Atlantic Ocean, like literally all the way.

KOUROUNIS: From the west coast of Africa to Florida,

it's just one big mass of orange.

NARRATOR: Analysts track the weird mass to its source.

This thing seems to be coming from

a part of the Atlantic called the Sargasso Sea.

And the Sargasso Sea is named after sargassum.

I think maybe that's what we're seeing here.

NARRATOR: Sargassum is a type of floating seaweed

carried over vast distances by the ocean currents.

Freak conditions have created

the biggest bloom of it on record --

22 million tons,

equivalent to more than 200 fully loaded aircraft carriers.

We think of sea monsters as being

these animals coming up from the depths.

But in this particular case, our sea monster is a plant

that has grown to the point

where it's taking over an ocean.

Even though this sargassum bloom happens every single year,

we had never seen it at this size before.

NARRATOR: In the vast open ocean,

the seaweed islands provide food, shelter,

and breeding grounds for a host of animals.

When they head towards land in big numbers,

it's a whole other story.

It's one thing to have all this seaweed far out to sea,

but once it starts hitting the shoreline,

that's when all the problems really start.

NARRATOR: Seaweed tsunamis 30 feet deep

strip the ocean of oxygen,

block out sunlight, and turn the entire coast

into a dead zone.

A little bit of sargassum is normal and healthy,

but sargassum on this scale can smother and suffocate corals

and sea grasses and lead to

the declining of fish population.

NARRATOR: What's more,

alien species can use the mats

as mother ships to invade Florida's waters.

Organisms and other animals can ride on these

rafts of seaweed, traveling from one place to another,

which unleashes a whole other environmental problem.

NARRATOR: Waves and tides force the sargassum onto beaches,

creating slimy mounds stretching along hundreds of

miles of coastline,

and the sweet tropical air soon turns fetid with

the scent of millions of tons of rotting seaweed.

When this sargassum actually starts to decompose,

the bacteria release hydrogen sulfide.

So basically, it smells like rotten eggs.

Hydrogen sulfide doesn't just smell bad.

It's also been linked to neurological,

digestive, and respiratory symptoms in humans.

NARRATOR: Across Florida and the Caribbean,

authorities spend tens of millions of dollars

and deploy hundreds of machines to clean up the mess.

It's possible to clean up this algae,

but it's not easy, and it's expensive.

You basically load it onto trucks and drive it away,

and then after the truck is gone, more of it washes up.

It's like that endless loop of Sisyphus pushing that rock up

the hill, only to have it tumble back down again

over and over and over again.

NARRATOR: Scientists fear this won't be the last time

this mega weed plagues our shores,

creating the putrid waters and beaches revealed from space.

These blooms have gotten bigger and bigger for

the past decade, and there's no sign of it slowing down.

FANARA: Deforestation, use of fertilizer,

and changes in climate are

causing algae blooms to occur more frequently

and more intensely.

This is something that can happen over and over again,

and this may be our future.