Life Below The Galapagos, Part 4

Digital Dan Dubno Ships Out And Prepares For His Deep-Sea Dive

(CBS)  Inside the Alvin, they have several canisters of pure oxygen but only a single tank is used on a normal dive. Oxygen, a highly explosive gas, is kept at the lowest possible concentration in Alvin's internal atmosphere: around 17 percent, to decrease the chance of fire. Because of the fire risk, anyone traveling on the sub must wear layers of natural fibers: cotton or wool. No more-flammable plastic or synthetic material gets on board. The temperature inside Alvin goes from hot at the surface to very cold within moments of submerging: so layers, including a wool cap, are preferred.

A few hours before I tried to go to bed, Dr. Tim Shank, chief scientist, tells me I'll dive with two most experienced comrades: Dr. Daniel Fornari, another lead scientist with dozens of trips down below, and the dean of the Alvin pilots, Pat Hickey. They are all business and darn great at it.

At 5 in the morning, I finally gave up hope of trying to fall asleep and wandered the ship. Scientists, many of whom haven't slept for 36 hours, were continuing to process biological and chemical samples gathered several hours earlier from the ocean floor. Some were testing sulfide levels in vent water; others dissecting tube worms; still others studying scrapings of bacteria from vent rocks. Tim, who also never seems to sleep, happily hands me two sheets of single-spaced dive objectives: "Alvin Dive 4117." It listed pretty much every possible scientific challenge: gathering, testing, repositioning, sampling, photographing, measuring. It was pretty horrifying: no way could we accomplish all these objectives in the mere 5 hours we'd be down on the bottom. "You don't know Pat," Tim laughed. "Sometimes we just add tasks just because he zips through the list so fast."