Well, I started this message
early yesterday morning, but work intervened
and I am only now (Friday, 8:45am) sitting
down to finish it. For the previous three
days I had been grabbing sleep in 2-3
hour naps, and had my first full night's
sleep last night. I was completely wiped
out. But in some ways, the delay has been
good. It has allowed the details of the
dive to percolate up in my brain and infuse
that part that needs to write.
I think that so far in what
I consider a very fortunate life, I have
had
two supreme visual experiences. The first
was when I set foot in western
Kenya. Within 30 minutes of getting off
a small plane from Nairobi, my
retinas were bombarded with giraffes,
elephants, herds of wildebeest, and
an encounter with three brawling male
lions that left me quaking in my
boots. Nothing prepares you for the sheer
abundance of wildlife in the
Maasai Mara; I kept waiting for the whispering
voiceover of David
Attenborough.
I can now say that I have
witnessed something which matches that,
and is
heightened by the rarity of the experience.
On Wednesday, a kilometer
under the surface of the sea, we glided
over a Seussian landscape of
pocked manganese-covered boulders on which
corals and sponges had found a
foothold to grow. Many of the sponges
were towering white inverted cones,
slender at the bottom site of attachment,
and widening as they reached up
into the water column. Others were squat,
white and puffy, or bright
yellow and fabulously ruffled like a flamenco
dancer's skirt. And we had
reached a coral paradise, with delicate
filigreed white primnoids, the
bulbous pink paragorgias (bubblegum corals),
and both branched and
unbranched bamboo corals. The unbranched
ones were slender pale commas,
spirals, or question marks. The branched
bamboos were majestic
candelabras, many adorned with the sweeper
tentacles at the base. We
collected two whole large bamboo specimens,
carefully broken off at the
base using Alvin's manipulator claw, and
placed atop the basket. One of
them was huge, with a base that was a
couple of inches in diameter, and
was dying, with its black-and-white banded
skeleton clearly visible.
Sprinkled among this framework
of sponges and corals were red spider
crabs, little darting shrimp with demon-red
eyes that glowed in the
reflected light, fat white starfish that
looked like pin-cushions,
orange tufted anemones, and the sinuous
arms of sea stars. Often these
creatures were festooned over the larger
corals, perhaps using the elevation
to reach a more favourable spot in the
water column. The crabs were frequently
seen with their claws extended out into
the current, maybe waiting for a meal
to float by. The dominant fish seems to
be the rat-tail; we would see their long
dark shapes swishing over the sea floor.
One swam right under my viewport,
and Icould look down on its bony head
and enormous dark eyes.
Those are the images that
will stay with me, I hope, for a very
long time.
But the whole day is still bright in my
memory, so I will write about it
now. After my last nervous message to
you all, I was waiting out on deck
surrounded by the hardy remnants of the
science party that still bother to
show up for each launch. It always happens
that way, the gradual decline
in attendance, but this cruise more so
than I remember for the other
cruises.
Those last few minutes on
the surface had a feeling of unreality,
and
there is a blurry quality to how I remember
them. I guess I can put that
down to nerves. But as soon as I had climbed
into the sphere, after the
requisite wave to those below, everything
sharpened up immediately. As
observers, we had been well cared for.
Our precious pillowcases,
containing extra sweaters, socks, etc.,
had been vetted by the Alvin guys
for unwelcome flammable materials, and
stowed behind us. Beneath the
ladder were two Tupperware containers
with our lunch. We had a last
glimpse of the surface through the hatch
as the ladder was pulled up. A
little later we felt the A-frame clamp
on to Alvin's back, and we were
hoisted up. At the controls of the A-frame
(for the first time!) was Mike
Doherty, now a member of the Engineering
Department but when I first
sailed with him, he was working on deck.
As a new recruit to Engineering,
he was learning to operate the A-frame.
Mike also has a special place in
my store of first-cruise memories that
relates to the Equator Crossing,
but I unable to divulge that to all you
Pollywogs who have never been
introduced to King Neptune's Court.
As we made contact with
the water, there was a rush of bubbles
against my
viewport. One of Alvin's video cameras
was fixed on the orange sail, and I
could see Sean, one of the swimmers, hanging
on. He gave us a
cheery wave, and jumped off into the water.
I listened in as Bruce,
our pilot, communicated with the ship:
"Main line is off, pick it up...Tail
is off, pick it up...Bridge, sub is
clear of the ship"
Through the camera, we saw Sean clamber
back on to the sub. Something
looked wrong. He was holding his mouth
and looked stunned. But he kept
working and we saw him jump back in the
water and head for the Avon (small
boat). Soon after, we heard through the
radio that he had been injured. He
had been thrown against one of Alvin's
manipulator arms, which hit his
mouth with full force. His lip was clearly
badly cut, and some front teeth
chipped. They whisked him back to the
Atlantis, and meanwhile inside Alvin
we got ready to sink into deep water,
feeling awful for him, and hoping
that he was going to be OK. As far as
I have been able to tell, the swimmers
are the unsung heroes of each launch.
They have to deal with big swells, swinging
pieces of heavy metal equipment, and pesky
lines that don't always go
where they are intended to go. Oh, and
up here, very cold water. Sean got
patched up by Mitzi, the captain and our
main medical person, and was back
in the water as a swimmer yesterday. I
guess it was the "getting back on
the horse" phenomenon. We were pretty
impressed.
As Alvin started its descent,
Bruce asked the ship to standby for another
check:
"Hatch is shut, O2 is flowing, scrubbers
are scrubbing. Request launch
altitude and permission to dive."
The "scrubbers" are canisters
of calcium hydroxide that remove our exhaled
carbon dioxide and neatly convert it to
chalk and water. A sensor inside
the sphere constantly monitors the CO2
level and tells us when we need to
change a canister.
Top lab came back to us
with a launch altitude of 1022 meters,
and we
started to sink down. We lost light from
the surface at around 200 meters,
and everything went dark. Gradually, I
began to pick out streaks of
bioluminescence in the water. As we got
deeper, these increased, and began
to resolve themselves into shapes. Most
of them looked like tiny blobby
parachutes, so I guess they were some
sort of jellyfish. Every now and
then, a larger one drifted by, its luminescence
much more diffuse and
ghostly.It was a quick descent, because
it was a relative shallow dive. As we
neared the bottom, the seafloor emerged
into my viewport, indistinct at
first, but gradually sharpening up. I
was amazed by the clarity of what I
could see through the viewport, much better
than I had expected.
The bottom time went by
much too fast. It was several hours, but
felt so
brief. We were extremely busy collecting,
picking up corals and rocks,
slurping shrimp and crabs, firing off
the Niskin bottles. The large dead
bamboo was our greatest triumph though,
and we knew Peter was going to be
very happy to see it. We reached the end
of our battery power, dropped the
weights, and were on our way back up to
the surface. As we got closer, we
got radio communications that there were
"cetaceans everywhere".
Apparently, whales and doll porpoises
were circling the ship. Later they
told us we were surfacing right under
a whale. And then, right on cue, and
another one of those occurrences that
makes me think I am one of life's
downright lucky people, there was a flash
of black-and-white as a porpoise
zoomed by us. Our amazing and very successful
dive was going to be capped
off by a pod of dolphins escorting us
back to the surface. I squeezed as
close to my viewport as I could get, and
was rewarded by a spectacular
dolphin show. The doll porpoises are quite
portly in shape, and their
black-and-white livery makes them look
like tubby little waiters. But
they are very streamlined and very fast.
The perfect ending to a perfect
dive.
I wanted to write about
my welcoming reception, but I have a hunch
I am
nearing the size limit for this message,
so I will postpone.
Best wishes to all,
Starboard Observer for Alvin Dive 4035
