♪ ♪ well, i'm numb yeah, woman i can't feel a thing ♪ ♪ well, i'm numb yeah, woman i can't feel a thing ♪ tonight on "nightline," pump yourself thin? a shocking weight loss device that removes calories from your body minutes after you've eaten. is this method the new frontier

in losing big? from the biggest games to the hottest concerts, it's the $5 billion industry built on fans buying and selling their own tickets online. how stubhub is bringing tickets to the people. and an underwater journey into the deep frontier. we take the plunge with the legendary explorer battling to defend a beautiful paradise. >> keep it right here, america. "nightline" is back in just

from new york city, this is "nightline" with terry moran. >> hello, everyone. thanks for joining us tonight. so, could you really eat your favorite fattening foods and still lose weight? well, a radical new device, really a shocking new device, could hold the key to consequence-free indulgence, but

it is not for the faint of heart. it's a weight loss stomach pump that removes some of the food you put into your body until it turns to fat. as cringe-inducing as that may seem, does it work, is it safe, is it even right? here's abc's juju chang. >> reporter: in the battle against obesity, it seems people will try just about anything, from soup to nuts. there's the caveman diet. >> you can't eat like a hunter and gatherer if you're sitting on the couch. >> reporter: the stomach turning road kill diet. >> i mostly find pheasants and rabbits and badgers, hedgehogs, of course. occasionally sea gulls. >> reporter: you get the idea. but while pre-aged meals or portion-controlled regimens are good at helping people lose weight -- >> i lost over 50 pounds on weight watchers. >> reporter: most dieters overall gain it all back. it's that yo-yo effect that's

driving those who suffer from morbid obesity to more radical options that often involve a scalpel. a scalpel assist creates an opening that requires an inpatient procedure. lotta says she's tried and failed at seemingly every diet. >> i ate the wrong things. i ate a lot of cookies, bread, and fat stuff. candy. i ate fat food. >> reporter: so she took a radical step and joined a clinical trial in sweden for the shocking new weight loss device that's now being tested in the u.s. the feeding tube in reverse basically pumps a third of the food you've eaten right out of your stomach, about 20 minutes after every meal, so fewer calories are absorbed. in six months, lotta has lost 76 pounds. >> it's a big help.

and a boost. >> reporter: but we have to warn you, how it works may be hard for some to stomach. >> in this procedure, a tube is placed into the stomach and food is drained out of the stomach once the food is eaten. >> reporter: so like 20 minutes after, right? >> yes, 20 minutes after someone eats, about 1/3 of the food is drained out. and as a result, it appears as though people feel full. they wind up eating less food. >> reporter: dr. lewis zironi says that although device is still in early testing, it seems to have long-lasting effects. >> if we look at the pilot studies, the average weight loss was about 20% of total body weight. that's equivalent to lap-band surgery. >> reporter: mind you, the lap-band surgery squeezes the stomach with a silicone band, which is not to be confused with gastric bypass, which reroutes

your small intestine to a smaller stomach pouch. and of course, there's the slee sleeve, which basically removed 85% of her stomach. >> i've lost 83 pounds. >> reporter: compared to those other forms of bar yacht risurg less costly and not permit innocent. but that doesn't make it less controversial. >> we want people to be normal. we want them to enjoy the quality of their life. we don't want them attached to a bathroom or a syringe. >> reporter: this doctor doesn't think feeding tube option will be as effective in quieting the brain's hunger signals to the stomach. he doubts the device will work long-term, like surgical methods do, in changing patients' eating habits. >> reporter: the researchers say the initial data suggests that when you get this, people eat less. >> if you continue to siphon 30% of what you eat, you will

maintain the weight loss. when you stop doing it, i would bet my bottom dollar that your eating is actually going to increase and go beyond what you used to eat and you're going to gain every last pound back. >> reporter: but dr. eroni respectfully disagrees. are patients able to change their lifestyle when they're able to have their cake and eat it to? >> one of the most interesting things about the pilot studies has been that people appear to reduce their food intake. and this needs further study, but it seems to help people to comply with a better diet. >> reporter: so it's not like they're cheating with a feeding tube. >> it's not like they're eating a tremendous amount of food and just draining it out. >> reporter: and, of course, there's the added ick factor of what you need to do after every meal. >> it's sometimes a little yucky, a little smelly, but it's nothing to -- i don't think it's a big problem at all.

i just feel relieved to lose that food. >> you know, one of the things with weight loss, what has surprised me, and it's really, really problematic, it's what people will sustain in order to lose weight. >> reporter: what surprised researchers the most is that one year into the u.s. study, 70% of the patients were pleased enough with the results that they asked to keep the tube in indefinitely. patients like lotta are required to have counselling to learn to chew more, eat slower and fill up on water, which may prevent them from gorging. >> i think it's wonderful. it's easy. and it's no problem to flush. >> reporter: so much for the ick factor. for "nightline," i'm juju chang in new york. >> the latest in weigh loss strategies. thanks to juju. next up, from tonight's big basketball game to "the lion king," the place where the hottest tickets are up for grabs. inside the stubhub box office

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from playoff games to sold out concerts, it's the online ticket marketplace cutting price gouging scalpers right out of the game, connecting those who want tickets with those who have them without the middle men, and when buyers and sellers set their own price for the hottest events, well, it's free market capitalism at its most entertaining, so here is abc

bringing us a look inside. >> reporter: beyonce in full effect, the flames, the dancers, all of it wrapped up in a world class super bowl spectacular. but gobbling up a precious seat inside was no small feat either. heading in to one of the biggest shows on earth is a task worthy of its own super bowl. >> energy is palpable. the folks coming in here, everybody has a smile on their face. >> reporter: 73,000 screaming fans, and everyone wants a seat. before the game, we watched as a rarely seen and equally competitive big event ritual was going on. >> people literally belting, screaming out. this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. >> reporter: wall street has its trading floor, but concerts and sporting events have stubhub, where tickets are bought and sold for whatever the market will bear. >> we get to see the happy faces of every fan who comes through. so this is a bucket list type of

an event. >> go ravens. >> reporter: stubhub has become the ultimate middle man, revolutionizing the way people get tingt tickets from the miam, to lady gaga singing "poker face" on her monster ball tour. you name it. >> are you hibernating? >> i'm not a bear, ben. >> reporter: if the viral ad with the talking tree didn't talk your attention -- >> what? i love you, ticket oak. >> reporter: you may have heard from a friend. missed a ticket to the sold out snow go to stubhub, it's almost certainly available there from people reselling theirs for whatever price they can get. >> taylor swift in atlanta. >> reporter: the lowest price for floor. this is in the floor section here. it is row l. and it's $177. >> reporter: the ceo showed us how it works from his standup desk at the company's trendy san

francisco headquarters. he's been around long enough to remember how the same thing was done in the not so olden days. when ticket buyers faced getting ripped off or worse, buying tickets from shady so called scalpers on the street outside the stadium. >> i use e are you scalpers or facilitators of scalpers? >> stubhub is a marketplace where buyers and sellers can interact and buy tickets. >> reporter: his belief is that the world of ticket sales is horribly broken, backwards, even fixed. he says before a ticket goes on sale, promoters have already sold a huge chunk of the seats to everyone from fan club members, american express card holders, and even ticket brokers. you're saying that basically it's not fair, it's not a level playing field for the average person. >> no, it's not at all. even if it were, it doesn't make any sense. why do you have to do anything at 10:00 a.m. on a saturday at a

pre-subscribed time? why do you have to very quickly buy a ticket? why do things even sell out like that? but there's this whole mentality within -- especially within concerts that if it doesn't sell out right away, it's not a hit. it doesn't make sense. >> reporter: stubhub, now owned by e-bay, isn't just a random place for secondhand ticket sales. it now has official partnerships with 28 of major league baseball's 30 teams. one holdout, the new york yankees, which doesn't like the fact that its seats are often on sale on stubhub for below face value. you've seen some incredible tickets for like five bucks? >> yes. less. >> reporter: how cheap? >> almost giving it away. >> reporter: this philadelphia 76 fan was able to purchase 18 tickets to tonight's game against the indiana pacers for less than a dollar. on the other end of the spectrum, supply and demand is tested in a very big way. what's the most you've ever seen a ticket go for? >> well, there's a lot of

irrational stuff that happens. i think some of the boxing ev t events have been pretty high when you think about ringside seats. $100,000? >> reporter: stubhub takes its money taking a cut of the action, a big cut, 15% of the price from sellers, 10% from buyers. what they offer in return is security. security from that shady guy selling a ticket on the sidewalk. security from fraud because they ensure that the tickets you are buying from that online stranger are real and really will show up on time. super bowl ticket buyers told us that's exactly what convinced them to go with stubhub. >> we almost got into a craigslist thing that we almost got scammed on. knowing it was reputable. >> reporter: if i work here, do you encourage me to go out and see sporting events and concerts? >> absolutely. >> reporter: at stubhub, the show always goes on. this is the place where what used to be called scalping is

now part of a thriving $5 billion industry. >> another american business success story there. just ahead, we're going to take you on an underwater adventure. our own bill weir suits up to discover a hidden world deep below the surface. but after one day's use, dishcloths can redeposit millions of germs. so ditch your dishcloth and switch to a fresh sheet of new bounty duratowel. look! a fresh sheet of bounty duratowel leaves this surface cleaner than a germy dishcloth, as this black light reveals. it's durable, cloth-like and it's 3 times cleaner. so ditch your dishcloth and switch to new bounty duratowel. the durable, cloth-like picker-upper.

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now to a place so eerily beautiful, it looks like something out of another world. deep in the waters off the florida keys, one famous explorer has spent nearly a year of her life under water studying the wonder of the coral reeves there. my co-anchor bill weir met her 60 feet under water to see for himself the paradise that we all stand to lose. >> reporter: she's out there somewhere.

under there somewhere. a woman known as "her deepness." when one of the most respected ocean scientists alive arranges for an urgent meeting at the bottom of the caribbean, you go. with pounding pulse, we drop beneath the surface chop into that serene blue, flipper past the fish, to our interview spot 62 feet below the surface. for 20 years, the reef base known as aquarius has bubbled off the florida keys housing scientists of every stripe. last time i was down here, nasa astronauts were using it to simulate life on the moon, but this one-of-a-kind place is endangered now, doomed by the federal budget acts, and here to try to save it is the former head of noaa, and unofficial sturgeon general, silvia earl. >> great to see you.

>> reporter: thank you for having me in. >> welcome aboard. >> reporter: do you ever forget that you're 60 feet deep? >> it's easy to forget that you're not a sea creature. it's just so peaceful. >> reporter: yeah. >> until somebody makes a meal of somebody else. >> reporter: right. she has spent almost an entire year of her storied life underwater. over 6,000 hours climbing into massive suits, piloting tiny subs, diving deeper and longer than any woman and most men ever. she took her first breath of compressed air 60 years ago. and when harvard launched a two-week underwater project in the '60s, she was among the first in line. >> the head of the program, he said well, half the fish are female, i guess we can put a few women in, and they couldn't just leave it alone. we have the alpha babes. we were the alpha chicks.

and even this great name, the aqua naughties! >> reporter: she is 77 now, thirty for understanding, giddy that the aquarius lets her stay out for five, eight hours a day without worrying about compression sickness. she originally fell in love with ocean plant life, the microscopic algae responsible for every fifth breath you take. but over the years, her wonder has been steadily replaced with worry. once vast pockets of thriving teeming life are getting increasingly hard to find. a warming planet is changing the acid levels in the sea, killing coral reefs, pesticides, and the deep water horizon measure have pressed the gulf of mexico in unprecedented ways. >> i haven't seen even one

lobster. i've been here almost a week and not one lobster. >> reporter: and earl is determined to sound the alarm on the rampant overfishing that has driven some species to the brink. >> whole ecosystems. i can't imagine the farmer takingmowing down the apple orchard. >> reporter: this is like asking a cat lover do you eat cat. but do you eat fish? have you ever eaten fish? >> yes, i've done more than my share. i grew up, i love seafood. but i can't do it anymore because of what i know. >> reporter: she's concerned about all the pesticides and mercury floating out here. one reason she says ocean study is more vital than ever. but research money is drying up. florida international university scraped together enough to save

aquarius for now, but there are no long-term guarantees. >> every minute, the federal government spends between $6 million and $8 million, so a half a minute on the federal budget. >> i can't wait to tell my kids that i actually went diving with silvia earl. take care. god speed. >> what a beautiful lady, and thanks to bill for that. now it's time for our closing argument. the mail. today the u.s. postal service announced it will stop delivering mail on saturdays, beginning this august. the move could save the struggling service over $2 billion a year. what do you think, is this the beginning of the end for the postal service or simply a smart cost cutting measure? you can weigh in on "nightline's" facebook page or tweet us