Happy New Year! I hope everyone is starting the year with a new appreciation for the world around us and the science being conducted to understand it further. While the cruise is over, there are still some things I’d like to share with you all.

This post I want to introduce to you the abundance and diversity of worms at hydrothermal vents. In the deep-sea, worms rule. Filter feeding, recycling nutrients and sediment, grazing, parasitizing, and even ambushing prey; you can find worms in many roles and ecosystems with vents systems being no exception. I’ve already introduced a few of these worms, but first I’d like to delve further into the largest of them, Riftia pachyptila, the large red tube worm that dominates our study sites.

These worms are particularly interesting because they are chemosymbiotic, meaning they have a relationship with bacteria that use chemicals for energy, that live inside them. These bacteria consume the chemicals in hydrothermal vent fluid and create byproducts that the host worm can use. These worms have three main segments. The first is their large red plume. This allows the worm to take in the nutrients in the venting fluid, as well as their bacterial symbionts. This is the only part of the worm that sticks out of its tube, and it has mechanoreceptors that sense when it is touched, so the worm can retract to safety. Often, we see crabs and eelpouts eating the tubes and trying to nip the worms. The second segment is the vestimentum, a muscle that anchors the worm into its tube, and houses the animal’s heart, and reproductive organs. The third section is the trophosome, instead of having a stomach and gut like most animals, once their bacterial symbionts are acquired, they transition from a gut into having essentially a bag of bacteria, a powerhouse for turning sulfide into food. (I think it looks like a blood sausage.) The scientists on board received a private lesson from Dr. Stéphane Hourdez (CNRS) and Dr. Shawn Arellano (WWU) through a dissection of a Riftia we collected. Once we dissected it, we could see the white eggs located on the vestimentum, and Vanessa Jimenez (WWU) extracted them to look at them under the microscope. These worms are fascinating not just because they are uniquely adapted to hydrothermal vent habitats, but also uniquely adapted to the relationship with their specific bacterial symbionts.

There are two species at the East Pacific Rise; Alvinella pompejana, and Alvinella caudata. The most noticeable part of Alvinella are four petal-like gills that stick out of their tubes for gas exchange.  Unlike Riftia, they still have a functional gut, where they can consume bacteria that they grab with their feeding tentacles. Their symbiosis is a little different. Instead, the backs of these worms are covered in white hairs, which are actually bacteria, that eat a mucus the worms produce. It’s hypothesized that these bacteria could help insulate the worms against the hot temperatures. Alvinella are fascinating as one of the most thermally tolerant animals in the world, living on the edge of when the mitochondria in their cells begin to break down.

Along these sulfide spires, these worms are intermixed with other tube-dwelling worms called Paralvinella. As you can guess, both Paralvinella and Alvinella are named after the very Alvin submersible we’ve been using on this cruise! They look very similar to Alvinella, but to the trained eye (mostly Stéphane) there are noticeable differences. The major identifying difference is which segment their chaetae (crawling legs) begin.

Crawling amongst all these tube-dwelling worms are a type of polychaete worm called Polynoids, or scaleworms. These animals have scales covering their backside for protection from predation. They come in many colors, but the ones around here are a pink to purplish color. Dr. Stéphane Hourdez on board is particularly interested in these organisms, experimenting on the thermal tolerances of scaleworms, and other organisms collected opportunistically. The first challenge with this experiment is that he must keep these organisms at a pressure similar to their natural environment in order to ensure they are reacting properly to temperature changes without additional stress. To do this, he has a pressure chamber, that with using an HPLC (High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) pump, pressure can be set to 250 bar, equal to 2,500 meters deep. Once the pressure is set, he observes how the animals react to increasing temperatures. Since they live at these hotter than normal habitats, we’re curious about their thermal adaptations and the limitations.

There’s one more symbiotic polychaete that is commonly found at these sites, although very different from the previously introduced ones. These Polynoids, genus Branchipolynoe, are actually found inside another animal. The large mussels at the EPR called Bathymodiolus thermophilus, can often be found to host one of these large Polynoids. While the other symbiotic relationships both parties benefit, only the Polynoids are benefitting from this relationship. They receive a safe habitat to develop and reproduce and the mussels just have a roommate that pays no rent. Each mussel only has enough room for one large female though, while there could be multiple smaller males. These females are very fecund, meaning they have a lot of eggs. These eggs are also very large for a polychaete. With a quick cut on the underside, the eggs erupt out of the females. These worms are found in other deep-sea habitats as well, where we’ve found them in the Bathymodiolins at methane seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. I still remember how surprising it was to open a mussel and find a giant worm inside!

I hope this gives you a little more appreciation for worms. While these live in relatively extreme habitats, they are found all over the marine world, and can often be found if you just dig in the sand at your local beaches. They can be quite beautiful with iridescent scales reflecting rainbows back, or swirling feeding crowns of tubeworms. If anything, I hope you appreciate the diversity of these worms more. They come in all colors and sizes and can play many roles within an ecosystem. I want to leave you with a fantastic drawing that second mate Kenny Beaver of the R/V Atlantis drew about the Riftia tube worms we studied.

In most ecosystems, food starts with photosynthesis, when plants create biomass using energy from the sun. In hydrothermal vent habitats chemosynthesis occurs instead, where microbes use chemicals, like hydrogen sulfide and methane, instead of sunlight to create biomass. This allows the typically food poor deep-sea to become a high-density oasis of life around hydrothermal venting fluid, or methane seeps like our lab’s SALT project. Microbes play all sorts of roles in many ecosystems, and even in our own bodies. It’s been found that there is more microbe DNA in our body than our own human DNA, meaning we’re mainly microbes.

The main way we are collecting bacteria, however, are through our sandwich deployments that I keep talking about. Half of these deployments have been sitting on the seafloor for over a year in a mesh bag that allows bacteria to grow without letting animals colonize and settle on the plates. When we recover them, the larval lab sorts through them under the microscope, picking out any organisms that have attached to them so we can identify the animal communities and larvae, and then we pass them over to Costantino Vetriani’s lab.

While the sandwich plates are taken back home to study, we are still creating cultures on board through other methods. Throughout the Alvin dives, we have been collecting samples opportunistically that may have biofilms we can extract. We’ve collected mussels and pieces of rock or chimneys from our study sites that we can extract the bacteria from. This is a process that is needed to be done quickly, and using sterile protocols to avoid any contamination with bacteria we aren’t interested in. After a dive it’s typical to see members of Costa and Donato’s lab rush out to the basket with trays of aluminum foil and gloves, extracting the chimney pieces and rushing them to the analytical lab. Using highly sophisticated techniques of hammers and screwdrivers, the chimneys are broken into smaller pieces that can be added to a tube with seawater and shaken to separate the bacteria from the rocks. This new concoction is what we will add to our hydrogen tube that we can dilute to extinction later.

It’s no easy task to retrieve the sandwiches with biofilms from the seafloor either. To preserve these biofilms for analysis, we make use of a solution called RNA later. It’s a mixture of Ethylediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) (say that 10 times fast!), sodium citrate, and ammonium sulfate. It’s essentially a super salty mixture that prevents degradation of DNA and RNA, but kills the organisms. We’ve made nearly 80L of RNA later on this cruise to process these sandwiches.

When we recover these sandwiches, we place each into a separate container to keep samples isolated from each other. They are either placed in our color-coded “lunchbox”, or in Costa’s RNA later sampling tubes, that hold 2L of RNA later. The sandwiches not placed in these sampling tubes are transferred to RNA later as soon as possible after recovery.

A final way we’ve been collecting microbes on this cruise is through a round colonization device. This instrument has mesh on either side that allow bacteria to colonize material inside, similar to our sandwich bags. These were placed around Riftia tubeworms at our study site Tica, emulating rapper Flavor Flav, and recovered after a few weeks. This also allows us to assess a younger community of bacteria at these sites, compared to the chimneys and rocks that have developed them for longer, exploring the succession (order) bacteria colonize.

The crew on board has done an exceptional job decorating the ship and making food throughout the month to make us feel more at home this holiday season. In the galley tinsel and Christmas lights are strewn about the entryway and support poles. In the movie lounge what feels like a hundred snowflakes hang from the ceiling, with a Christmas tree and presents in the corner, and a small fireplace in front of the TV. In the main lab we created a festive scene with our own snowflakes, lights, and used red ribbon to make candy cane support poles. My favorite part is one of our SSSGs (Shipboard Science Support Group), Allison, had printed Santa hats in various sizes and placed them on all the pictures around the ship. In the galley a fish identification guide sports some very well-fitting hats.

This year is unique in that Christmas day also falls on the last day of Hannukah. One crew member, an Able-Bodied (AB) named Alex went out of her way to celebrate for those on board. As someone who celebrates both, I really appreciated her going out of the way to make sure I felt included. She made a variety of Jewish foods like matzah ball soup, latkes, and kugel. While she made enough for everyone to try, she made sure to set aside plates for the Jewish scientists. She even stopped me in the morning and had a request, that she paid for in gelt (chocolate coins).

Many of us began Christmas day calling our loved ones, opening presents, and participating in our \ traditions with our families from afar. Science operations were still happening, we still had a Christmas Alvin dive. Wyatt Heimbichner Goebel (WWU) and Susan Mills (WHOI) would finish up our recoveries at Tica and Riftia Mound. As the science team approached the aft deck where the launch occurs, we were welcomed by Alvin pilot Bruce Strickrott wearing a flashing Santa hat, SSSG Allison covered in tinsel, a manta ray hat with reindeer antlers, and ornaments, and AB Mike Sessa in a full elf costume. The Alvin swimmers were also adorning their own Santa hats. This had to be one of the most unique Alvin launches, although watching the Halloween Alvin recovery where the swimmers were dressed like hotdogs may have it beat. As Santa’s helpers descended into the water on top of Alvin, they began their journey down to the seafloor.

After dinner and our science meeting, the festivities began. The ugly sweater contest that Dr. Dykman (WHOI) had planned, was happening in the galley. While Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree played, each contest cat walked through the entrance, did a twirl in the middle of the room, and exited into the library. Targeting different predetermined categories, some put on a performance. Once all the contestants had walked, our judges discussed intensely. The categories were: most creative, most ocean-inspired, and ugliest. Our winners were clear. Matt Skorina (Alvin) won most creative with his sweater crocheted from climbing rope and ship line. Dr. Dykman won most ocean-inspired, with her sandwich sewn sweater, and Randy Holt (Alvin) won ugliest, with a bobblehead elf sweater.

To end our day, Matt and Benen from the Alvin team decided to whip up something special. Using liquid nitrogen, they made ice cream on the aft deck. In both vanilla and chocolate, it turned out more delicious than we had expected. As liquid nitrogen poured over the table, the creamy concoction quickly chilled into ice cream. Some Oreos were poured over that also turned them brittle and caused our mouths to erupt chilled air like breath on a cold day. As we enjoyed our tasty treats, we laughed and shared stories about Christmases past, a perfect end to another holiday at sea.

EPR Biofilms4Larvae project is a multi-institutional NSF grant: OCE-1948580 (Arellano), OCE-1947735 (Mullineaux), OCE-1948623 (Vetriani).

We are studying at the East Pacific Rise (EPR), a raised region of the seafloor formed by a spreading center, where tectonic plates are moving away from each other. As these plates are pulled apart, the Earth’s crust is fractured, and magma rises that cool into new seafloor. When this magma touches seawater, it creates hydrothermal fluid and is why hydrothermal vents are common around these spreading centers. This fluid is rich in minerals that precipitate out and are used by bacteria for chemosynthesis. The “black smoker” chimneys are from iron sulfides in the venting water. In the chimneys we’ve collected we’ve found these precipitates, one of them golden pyrite crystals, an iron sulfide mineral. Inactive vents are regions where hydrothermal fluid no longer flows, and what remains are spires and extinct chimneys made of sulfide rocks that were shaped by animals that used to live there. Because of these minerals, hydrothermal vents have been a target for deep-sea mining, a strategy to harvest these mineral-rich crusts. Seafloor mining is a destructive process and disrupts these communities, so many mining companies have shifted towards inactive vents, where animals are not thought to be found. However, I want to show you the work we’re doing at inactive sites at the EPR and how alive they truly are.

These two platforms we deployed are providing different methods of data collection on this dive. The large elevator has two instruments on it that Tanika Ladd (WWU) is using to compare food webs and the influence of primary production from active and inactive sites. The multicolored tubes are niskin bottles that collect water samples from the seafloor when triggered. Tanika Ladd will filter this water back on the ship to assess the “food pool”, essentially what organisms are living in the water that animals could be feeding on. On the other end of this elevator is a McLane plankton pump. This pump filters water at 30 L / min for up to 24 hours and collects swimming organisms onto a 60-micrometer mesh. When returned to the ship, we sorted through the contents, where Tanika is particularly looking for copepods, but we also found some of their larvae called nauplii, and polychaete worms. Copepods are holoplankton, organisms that spend their entire lives as plankton, and can act as a vector transferring this primary production outside of the vent community. With these copepods, Tanika will extract the DNA inside their guts to see what they are eating. Most marine scientists do not like copepods because they are extremely abundant, clogging samples, and for our lab, sometimes eating our precious larvae! Even still, they are very important members of the community.

The smaller lander is being used by Dr. Dykman to assess the grazing rates and behaviors of animals that live on inactive vents. Using a MISO camera mounted on a small tripod that faces downward, she will record 4K video of the grazers, mostly snails and amphipods, lit from a light on the lander. She hopes to explore how these animals move and interact with each other. If they remain in one place, or are very mobile, as well as if they react differently around transitions between substrate types. We only get snapshots of these animals and their behaviors when we dive and collect samples, so having a long video or time lapses will help us discover how these communities function over longer time scales.

This allows us to read the chemical conditions these animals experience in situ, how they might be manipulating the chemistry of the water and relate animal behaviors to chemical changes over time. Sometimes she attaches a camera that allows us to view exactly where the sensor is measuring and has even placed one inside of a tubeworm before! Using the spot-sensor at these inactive sites has shown us that there are no temperature anomalies near the chimneys and rocks compared to the surrounding seawater, sitting around 2C, when at active vents these temperatures have been measured up to 325C during this cruise. Interestingly, we did see a change in the pH of the water when collecting a rock sample, that the sulfides in the released sediment impacted the seawater and made it more acidic.

In the morning I went into the main lab, first needing to attach Dan Fornari’s MISO camera to the brow of the sub, as I’ve done for every dive. This camera allows us to take 5.3k images every 5 seconds during the entire dive. After fulfilling my duty, I went up to the galley and joined the rest of the science team in getting a full belly for the day ahead. While some try to limit the amount of food and water they consume before spending 8 hours in a 2-meter diameter sphere, fearful of needing to use the bathroom, it’s better to just be hydrated and full. If you need to use the pee bottles in the sub, that’s what they’re there for. We all moseyed to the aft deck where the Alvin team was finishing up preparations: removing the covers on the windows, securing the basket, and checking systems. I stand next to my science observer partner, Lauren Dykman (LD), and our pilot, Bruce Strickrott, and chat with our fellow scientists about the dive ahead, and our excitement. Alvin is wheeled out under the A-frame, a bridge swings out from the staircase and onto Alvin. The Alvin Launch Coordinator calls for the pilot, to begin checking the interior systems, and Lauren and I wait in anticipation, and of course taking a few pictures together in front of the sub. The call for observers signals us to make our way inside. We climb the staircase, turn around, give a wave, take off our shoes, and climb into the submersible.

              Inside, I move to the starboard (right) side, and LD to the port (left) side. Memory foam cushions with blankets on top welcome us, along with iPads for controlling the camera system, small handheld cameras, and our pillowcase day-bags. We exchange animated glances as Bruce finishes up the necessary checks, and the hatch seals shut. Here we go! Alvin is lifted into the air, gently shaking the sub, and is lifted over the water. A loose drawer swings open, and I hold it shut as Bruce yells at it to behave. The sub lowers into the water, feeling akin to the top of a rollercoaster, and bubbles fill our viewports as we make splashdown. As the bubbles clear, we see Alvin divers releasing the basket lines, and disconnecting the main and tow lines above. With the go ahead from the team, we begin our descent. Bruce starts a playlist, and we watch as the light blue ocean turns green, then a dark blue, into black. With a 2500m descent to the bottom, we’ve got nearly an hour and a half before we see the seafloor. LD and I go over the dive plan, familiarize ourselves with the camera and data logging system, while Bruce relays our depth and tells us stories of dives and adventures past. The ocean outside our viewports is not so dark though. Flashes of bioluminescent organisms shine blue and green. A firework show as they disappear out of view. We excitedly shout out the largest jellyfish and siphonophores we see and scan the darkness for new creatures.              

              Unlike Nancy, we were successful in our consumption, and it was time to do what we came down here to do, to deploy science equipment so we can study these bizarre habitats. Bruce flies the sub over to the first of our three biotic zones, the suspension zone, a cliff where we had deployed pursed “sandwiches” on a previous cruise, and tube traps on a previous dive. On the brink of this hydrothermal community, less impacted by the warm, nutrient rich hydrothermal fluid, there are fewer organisms. Serpulid tubeworms and squat lobsters litter the rocks and some jump away as we approach the cliff side. Our first objective was to open these purses and redeploy the sandwiches that are inside. Bruce picks them up to move them closer to the tube traps we want to deploy next to, but on the last one, it slips, and tumbles down the cliff. We’ll try to get it later. Bruce uses both arms to grab the purse handles and pull the Velcro apart, revealing a sandwich that’s hopefully developed a bacterial biofilm. He delicately grabs the loop, and places it next to a tube trap.

We decide to find the purse we dropped earlier before we move on. We have time, but it’s not going as we had hoped. We spot where the purse had fallen, down into a gorge. We circle around into the right position, where LD and I act as Bruce’s eyes out our side viewports, calling out the distance to rocks and animals, careful to not hit anything. As we descend, we realized that this is the heart of the East Pacific Rise. In the middle of two diverging tectonic plates, we are at the lowest part of Tica. Outside my viewport, I’m face to face with the seafloor, LD has a cliff face. We are barely able to fit in here. Towering above us is a pillar of sulfide rocks, with Alvinellid tubeworms popping in and out of their tubes. In the background are walls of Riftia and mussels, with eelpouts snaking in and out of view. I think about how much we can see from the submersible, but that this ecosystem is usually in complete darkness. I start to think about how different this ecosystem is from ours, how incredible it is that we can visit this harsh environment that humans were never adapted to see. Questions swirl in my mind. Why do these eelpouts even have eyes? Do they see differently? How do these animals interact with each other and what do their lives look like?

This area was more challenging to get into. On the port side, LD faced a large wall of Riftia tubeworms, actually where our third biotic zone is, and on the starboard side I had a sulfide spire, which we nicknamed “Hobo Spire” for Dan Fornari’s HOBO data logger measuring it. It’s nearly 4 meters tall, but very narrow so we don’t want to hit it and knock it over. There was one set of sandwiches and tube trap already deployed here, and two purses that had previously had their handles fall off, hence why we had the knives originally, and one purse that had gone missing from when we had deployed them in 2021. We nestled next to the spire where I scanned it up and down, mesmerized by the Tevnia tubeworms at the base, and the shimmering diffuse hydrothermal fluid, aware of the heat of the water. As Bruce opened the purses with the same T-rod method, LD and I traded using a handheld camera to take photos of each other and the habitat we were within. I captured a moment where an Alvinellid worm was attacked by a Paralvinellid tubeworm, perhaps a territorial display, or perhaps something more sexual. These animals are thought to be the most thermally resistant animal on the planet, existing at the heat limit of when the mitochondria starts to break down.

Reluctant to leave this bizarre and beautiful world we were exploring; we began heading west. When Alvin ascends, stacks of weights must be dropped, so we always try to leave the study site and avoid impacting the community when doing so. As we leave Tica, Bruce exclaims and points out the window. There we see a giant sea anemone called Boloceroides daphnae, that can have a diameter up to 2 meters. These are rarely seen, and this large purple one had tentacles that trailed in the current for many more meters. We admired it but quickly changed focus when we saw a large, coiled line that was unmarked. If we hadn’t seen it, future dives could be at risk of entanglement, so we called up to top lab (the Alvin team on the ship end of the communications), and marked down the coordinates.

Alvin is an iconic human-occupied, Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) operated out of Woods Hole Institute of Oceanography (WHOI) and travels with the R/V Atlantis. This 23-foot submersible powered by two 60-cell lead acid batteries is able to take a pilot and two science observers up to 6,500 meters deep, a recent upgrade made in 2021, surpassing the previous limit of 4,500 meters. The outer shell is made of syntactic foam, a buoyant, yet sturdy material, and the scientists dive within a 2.815 inch thick, 2-meter diameter titanium sphere that resists the 10,000 lbs/in² pressure at 6,500 m and the corrosiveness of seawater. The sphere has five portholes with thick acrylic windows and a top plug shaped like cones that seal better with higher pressure. With 7 thrusters and 2 ballast systems, the submersible is able to move in any direction and control its buoyancy, how it floats in water, along with a mercury trim system that allows the sub to pitch back and forth. Alvin also has 3 sets of weights (~350lbs each) that can be dropped on either side that control descent and ascent rates.

              What most of you are wondering is probably the safety of the submersible. There are rigorous checks before and after each dive, and many safety measures in place in case of an emergency. With 12 tanks of pure oxygen inside, and CO₂ scrubbers, 3 people could survive 3 days at the seafloor, but operations are limited to daylight, so dives do not typically last longer than 9 hours (8-5pm). Inside the sphere are oxygen sensors and leak detectors that would catch any causes for concern. The position of the sub is tracked from the ship, and multiple communications systems allow the pilot to relay information to another member of the team throughout the entire dive. In cases of emergency, whether Alvin gets stuck, or needs to emergency ascent, extra weight stacks can be dropped, but most of the pieces of Alvin that stick out can be dropped, including the basket, 5 of the 7 thrusters, and the arms. The extensive training pilots go through before they can solo dive and the above measures made me feel completely safe within the submersible.

Benen Elshakhs – Mechanical Technician. The newest member of the Alvin team, Benen from Storrs, Connecticut, joined the team in June of 2022 after working as an integration engineer for an aerospace company in California. He received a B.S. In Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Nick Osadcia – Mechanical Section Lead / Pilot in Training (PIT). From Plymouth, Massachusetts, joined the team in August of 2018 after volunteering with Alvin since 2016. He first received an Associate’s in Environmental Studies from Cape Cod Community College, and then a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Massachusetts. He met the team when he was working with Julie Huber at the Marine Biological Laboratory. He’s currently finishing his PIT training and will be the next Alvin pilot.

Nick Ellis – Mechanical Technician. Nick has been involved with Alvin since 2018, with a history of robotics in high school, he interned with Alvin under the MATE program and joined the team during the overhaul in 2020 assisting in the new design work. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Santa Clara.

John Dymek – Mechanical Technician. Joining the team in March of 2021, John came from working with warehouse robots in Boston, Massachusetts. While receiving his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University, he participated in coop programs focused on hands-on learning with hydro-electric vehicles and biomed applications. Joining the team after a friend at WHOI recommended it to him, he says it would be difficult to return to a desk job.

Kaitlyn Beardshear – Electrical Technician / Pilot in Training (PIT). From Monterey Bay, California, Kaitlyn was introduced to working with Alvin through the MATE program. Fun fact, the Arellano Lab went to sea with Kaitlyn as an intern and has now seen her graduate to the newest Alvin PIT on our last cruise. She received a B.S. in marine science from California State University Monterey Bay and afterwards began working with marine robotics, autonomous and remote operated vehicles, then returned to pursue an Associate’s in Mechanical Engineering. She is currently studying for a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State while she works at sea.

Rick Sanger – Electrical Section Lead / Alvin Pilot. Rick joined the Alvin team in 2011 but worked with WHOI for 25 years before as an engineer helping biologists designing instruments. Rick is the most knowledgeable about the systems of Alvin, having helped develop most of them! As the newest pilot, Rick now works with the scientists on board to conduct research safely and efficiently in the deep sea. He has currently done around 15 solo pilot dives and has a new-pilot party on the way.

Matt Skorina – Electrical Technician. A local Washingtonian from Walla Walla, WA, Matt joined the Alvin team in April of 2022. After graduating with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, he met a WHOI graduate student that inspired him to apply to work with Alvin and get involved with science support. Matt can often be seen sporting a fantastic galaxy romper when taking on the swimmer role for deployments and recoveries.

Bruce Strickrott – Alvin Program Manager / Senior Pilot. A member of the Alvin team since 1996, Bruce has been instrumental to Alvin’s success and the success of science in the deep-sea for decades. With over 380 solo dives, Bruce is in the running for the most Alvin dives of any pilot. Graduating from Florida Atlantic University with a degree in Ocean Engineering, he enjoys using technology to alter people’s perceptions of the world. As a pilot he cracks jokes, tells entertaining stories, and a phenomenal playlist to make every dive memorable, whether a scientist’s first, or one of many. Most importantly, he also exhibits a mastery of the submersible, knowledgeable about the exact size to get into the smallest of spaces and makes using the manipulator arms look like extensions of himself.

Randy Holt – Expedition Leader. Joining the team in January of 2021, Randy acts as the coordinator between the ship, the scientists, and the Alvin crew to complete the objectives of the research cruise. A Western Washington University alumnus, Randy received a B.S. in Industrial Technology where he worked on an engineering project designing a human-powered wet submersible. Randy has extensive experience with submersibles from working with Ocean Gate in Seattle, and as a contractor sub pilot.

              There are a few rituals that our scientists participate, voluntarily, in during a dive. After you walk up the A-frame to the bridge leading you to the sub, our scientists give a wave to the rest of the group, take of their shoes, and enter the sub. After 8 hours crammed in the small sphere, they give another wave as they stretch their legs once climbed out of the sub to our cheers. The most fun comes once the scientist returns to the group. We listen to them recount their dive, the new experiences they’ve had, and then we ask them to sit down. Then, with consent, usually a fellow lab member or advisor who has dived before, will dump a bucket of the coldest water they could make on them, welcoming the newest Alvin aquanauts. It’s always important to remove your shoes and glasses before this! We share laughs and congratulations and then urge them to dry off before our science meeting.

Visiting the seafloor is a life-changing experience for anyone, but especially to us that have dedicated ourselves to studying and protecting the ocean. We want to share these experiences with our friends and family but wish you could all go down with us. Follow along as we continue to explore these exciting vent habitats on this cruise, and the science behind our research.

Bottom: Biofilm sliders.

After four days transiting across the Pacific, we’ve finally reached the East Pacific Rise. While the 80°F weather and open ocean call for sunbathing all day, the science began before we even reached our study sites. In the main lab the workshop was up and running, with many experiments to build that were to be deployed soon after arriving. The elves were hard at work on these seafloor gifts for the holiday season, creating settlement “sandwiches”, biofilm “sliders”, and larval traps. These will be left on the seafloor to develop bacterial biofilms and assess the larval supply at these hydrothermal vents. Don’t worry, we will be bringing all these back on board before we leave (or picking them up on the next cruise). In total we made nearly 100 sandwiches, and 24 sliders and larval traps.

When working on the seafloor and with submersibles, we must account for buoyancy, ease of deployment, and ease of identification underwater. We have to make sure our experiments don’t float away, tangle together, and are easy to pick up with a robotic claw. To do this, many of these instruments have loops of polypropylene rope that suspend a large circle above them, with bright colored duct tape, and weights on the bottom. Then, we have to make sure that they can all fit on the submersible and actually be deployed. In addition to these deployments, we have a multitude of instruments that we will be using on these dives to sample water, bacteria, temperature, among other things. As these posts continue, I’ll try to highlight the different techniques and tools we are using on this project.

Since we have so many objectives and limited space on the submersible that meant we had a lot of planning to do. In the library, the chief scientist (Shawn Arellano), hosts science meetings where we’ve been having these discussions. In the beginning we introduced our projects to each other, familiarizing ourselves and reminding the teams of the goals for the cruise and for the individual teams. We discussed dive plans, who was diving, the objectives of the early dives, what instruments were to be on the submersible, and the various teams for recovery and deployment of the submersible. We were also joined by the Alvin team for logistics of how to use each of our instruments, where our study sites were, how to organize the submersible basket, and schedule trainings for the sub operations. Importantly we also talked about contingency plans for a potential eruption at the East Pacific Rise. This hydrothermal vent site is volatile, and an eruption could even occur while we are out here, so we need to be prepared incase our study site has completely changed.

It all came down to today. This morning Shawn went with Alvin pilots Bruce Strickrott and Rick Sanger on an exploration dive across our sites. At 0800 the submersible lifted off the deck, swung out with the A-frame, dipped into the water, and started the hour and a half descent to the vents 2,500m below. In the main lab we have limited communications with the sub, so we all waited in suspense of what was being seen below. Alvin operations occur during daylight hours, coming up around dinner time, so we wouldn’t know until 1700 (5pm), unless the dive was aborted early. We held our breath, but went about our days as normal, and getting ready to deploy another of our instruments, a McLane pump for collecting larvae. The dive seemed to go well, with the sub recovery planned as usual. After retrieving Alvin from the surface, we huddled on the aft deck, watching the aquanauts climb out of the vehicle and down the stairs. Shawn approached the group and began recounting her dive.

On this cruise we will be studying the role bacterial biofilms play in larval settlement at hydrothermal vents along the East Pacific Rise (EPR) at 9°50’N. On board the R/V Atlantis, we will work closely with the human occupied submersible, Alvin, to travel to depths around 2,500 meters and deploy experiments, recover past deployments and collect samples. In hydrothermal vent communities, bacteria are the basis of life, converting hydrothermal vent fluid into biomass that can be utilized by animals living near these ecosystems through symbiosis or direct consumption. These bacteria can exist as free-living cells in the water column or attached to surfaces as biofilms. Bacterial biofilms incorporate the chemistry and temperature variability of the environment that could predict habitat suitability for settling larvae. Essentially these bacterial communities might communicate to larvae that this is the right place for them to land and develop.

(Right) Scientists from WWU. Left to right: Vanessa Jimenez, Wyatt Heimbichner-Goebel, Dexter Davis, Tanika Ladd, Shawn Arellano. Photo taken by JP Isaacs.

(Left) Scientists from WHOI, SU, and CNRS.  Left to right: Stephane Hourdez, Michael Meneses, Ayinde Best, Lauren Mullineaux, Nadine LeBris, Susan Mills, Lauren Dykman. Photo taken by JP Isaacs.

(Right) Scientists from RU and UN. Left to right: Matteo Selci, Martina Cascone, Donato Giovanelli, Costantino Vetriani, Olivia Cannon, Ian Schlegel, Avanthika Bharath. Photo taken by JP Isaacs.

The teams on board come from institutions all over the world with scientists from Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (Falmouth, MS), Sorbonne University (Paris, France), CNRS (France), Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ), and the University of Naples (Naples, Italy). We will also be working closely with JP Isaacs, and Dena Siedel from the Documentary Film Lab at Rutgers to create a science-in-action documentary film to share the excitement and effort for deep sea research. Coming from all these places meant we had a long journey getting to Puntarenas, with many of these groups having multiple travel days. Once we all arrived in San Jose, we had to take a shuttle an hour and a half through the country until we reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean. For many of us it’s our first time in Costa Rica, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, so the shuttle ride was filled with excitement scanning the forests for rare, and new animals. Some of us were lucky enough to see a toucan in a tree right off the main road! When we reached Puntarenas, the ship was not docked in port, so we had to take a water taxi to get on the Atlantis. Having to pack for a month at sea, and some vacationing in Costa Rica, we had a lot of bags. Our bags were filled with science equipment, clothes for conducting science comfortably in tropical heat and in the cold rooms on the ship, plus some holiday cheer. Thankfully both the shuttle and the water taxi were able to accommodate our large amount of luggage.