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Morning broke with bright sunshine streaming down over a placid Gulf of Mexico. It being the day of my first Alvin dive, I was unable to sleep in. Instead I happily watched the sun rise over the sapphire water as I talked myself out of having my customary cup of coffee in anticipation of being locked in a tube for eight hours. Even a brief delay due to a battery charging malfunction couldn’t dim my spirits. After waving cheerful goodbyes and navigating through a narrow hatch, we three aquanauts were lowered into the gentle waves. As the ballast was blown I gazed in wonder as the last beams of sunlight struggled to penetrate the ever-thickening layer of water above us.
On our way to the bottom I frantically tried to figure out the controls for the multiple cameras I was going to be using to capture our dive. The complex task was only compounded as I was frequently staring out the window in an attempt to soak in the majesty of the bioluminescence flitting around the sub and identify the strange shapes undulating past my portholes. Before seemingly any time had passed we had arrived at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on one of the trips shallower dives, a paltry 600m below the surface.
The site we arrived at was a methane cold seep named Bush Hill. With a full series of tasks to accomplish, we were dismayed to be greeted with electrical problems almost immediately. While slightly disconcerting, our pilot jumped into action to find a solution, allowing us to continue the dive. Although we had seven hours on the bottom, the time slipped by in an exhausting blur of planting experiments on the bottom, collecting samples, and capturing high resolution footage of everything that we could not fit in the “bio box” that we were bringing to the surface. Although the dive focused on a species of gutless tube worm, Lamellibranchia, and the communities of organisms associated with them, we were graced with the presence of many charismatic megafauna, including deep sea squids, giant isopods and multiple sharks. The work was conducted around the methane seeps themselves and Alvin was quickly covered by small bubbles of methane bubbling through the seabed, bringing with them tiny bits of oil. Based on the sheen coating my camera housing, I appreciate even more, and do not envy the crew that cleans Alvin every night. Too soon our bottom time was drawing to a close, and as we dropped our weights and began to rise toward the sun that was waiting for us, I took a long last glimpse of this alien world that sits so close yet remains out of reach. Tools like Alvin give us a chance to better understand the deep sea, giving us an invaluable window into the work we are engaged in and the astounding levels of biodiversity that exist even in places we cannot fathom.