The search for the last natural resources has reached a new frontier: the seabed – the largest and least explored habitat on earth. For a long time, the deep-sea plain was considered a dead wasteland. Nowadays, however, researchers are discovering landscapes of breathtaking beauty thousands of metres below the surface, along with countless new life forms and huge deposits of raw materials – gold, copper, oil and gas. This elaborately produced documentary highlights, for the first time, the most important projects in the world; projects which aim to exploit the treasures of the deep. Such as, for example, an international research group searching for minerals on the seabed off New Zealand. The French company Total, on the other hand, is banking on the oil reserves of Angola, which are being pumped by floating factories from depths of more than 1500 metres. The film reveals that while the opportunities for these hugely ambitious projects are immense, the risks posed by them are equally great. Often it is unclear who actually owns the natural resources being brought up from the deep. There are no borderlines on the high seas and even near coasts the borders are often disputed. The threat of political conflict, international power shifts and environmental damage is real and imminent. The push into the oceans is reminiscent of mankind’s journey into space. It is a technically complex manoeuvre into a territory that is totally foreign to us, for which there are thus far no rules. Yet in the face of ever dwindling resources on land, precedents are already being set far from our coasts. The underwater gold rush has begun – it is an adventure with an uncertain outcome.