Most people visit Nusa Penida for its turquoise waters and dramatic clifftop views, but YouTuber Barny Dillarstone had something far more ambitious in mind. He submerged a specially equipped camera hundreds of feet below the surface near this Indonesian island, and what he captured may represent a genuine milestone in underwater documentation. Dillarstone claims the footage contains the first known recordings of at least two large deep-sea species observed in their natural wild environment. The recordings were made at depths that most divers would never be able to reach on their own.
Nusa Penida, which locals refer to as the “Island of Black Magic” due to the many legends tied to it, is where Dillarstone first learned to dive and eventually became obsessed with what lay far beneath the surface. Over time, he began sending cameras down to increasingly extreme depths, hoping to document species that science had never observed alive in the open ocean. As he described his own process, “It turned out I was crazy enough to lower a camera hundreds of meters deep,” adding that the gamble paid off when he succeeded in capturing “the first ever footage of at least two large deep-sea species swimming in the wild.”
One of the creatures caught on camera was a dogfish shark, a member of a shark family recognizable by its slender frame, oversized eyes, and distinctive spines positioned just in front of its dorsal fins. Unlike larger, more commonly known shark species, dogfish have teeth designed not for slicing through flesh but for gripping and restraining prey. The individual appeared on camera at a depth of nearly 650 feet, cautiously approaching a bait station that had been attached near the camera housing. Dillarstone noted that additional individuals could also be seen moving around the periphery of the camera’s field of view, suggesting the area supported a small population at that depth. You can watch YouTube here.
The second remarkable sighting came later in the footage, when a large, flattened creature drifted into frame. Dillarstone identified it as a deep-sea ray, describing its coloring as a uniform brownish-purple tone across its entire body. The animal carried venomous spines running along the length of its tail and demonstrated a surprising capacity for sudden, rapid acceleration when it chose to move. According to Dillarstone, this sighting may also represent the first time such a species has been recorded going about its life in a completely natural setting, unprompted by human divers or submersibles disturbing the environment around it.
Perhaps most intriguing was his observation about nighttime behavior in the deep. “The small sharks we filmed during the day are just a small snack for the predators that truly dominate,” he said, hinting that the most formidable creatures of the deep remain largely unseen and unfilmed, active only once the sun goes down. This suggests that the daytime recordings, as remarkable as they already are, may only represent a fraction of what lives beneath those dark waters.
Nusa Penida is a small island situated southeast of Bali, Indonesia, part of the Klungkung Regency. It sits within the Coral Triangle, one of the most biodiverse marine regions on Earth, which spans parts of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste. The waters around it are renowned among divers for their strong currents, which bring nutrient-rich cold water upwelling from the deep, making it a hotspot for large marine life including manta rays and ocean sunfish.
Deep-sea exploration remains one of the most challenging frontiers in science. It is estimated that more than 80 percent of the world’s oceans have never been mapped, explored, or even observed by humans, meaning vast numbers of species almost certainly exist that have never been catalogued. Dogfish sharks belong to the order Squaliformes and are found in oceans worldwide, typically at depths ranging from shallow coastal waters down to over 3,000 feet. They are among the most commercially fished sharks on the planet, used in fish and chips dishes across Europe under the name “rock salmon.” Rays, meanwhile, are cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks, and deep-water ray species are notoriously difficult to study because of the extreme conditions required to observe them in their natural habitat. Traditional research methods involving trawl nets often bring specimens to the surface already dead, making behavioral observations essentially impossible without equipment exactly like what Dillarstone used.
The kind of footage Dillarstone produced, if verified by marine biologists, could offer researchers invaluable insight into how these animals behave, feed, and interact with their environment under genuine deep-sea conditions, something that laboratory or trawl-based studies simply cannot replicate. If you find deep-sea discoveries like this fascinating, share what you think about it in the comments.
