Life Below The Galapagos, Part 4

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

(CBS)  With no bathroom or seats or comforts aboard Alvin, you try to take care of "business" and get as comfortable as you can before it's time to climb down the ladder and get locked in for the next eight hours. "There's enough oxygen to keep us going in here for about three days," the pilot says. Great. Just what I needed to hear. But can any other sub come down and get us if there's a problem? "Nope. But there's plenty of ways to get straight up." Alvin's two titanium arms can be jettisoned; the science tray in front can be dropped; a number of other systems in the back could be tossed off before the "nuclear option." That final emergency measure, never tried in the ocean, is to open a panel in the sub's floor and take a large "t-wrench" and turn it, releasing the dive sphere from the rest of Alvin. "You'll blast up to the surface like a rocket," the pilot says. We don't want to do that.

Alvin is slowly tracked out from her hangar on a rail bed to the stern of the ship. There, a heavy "Spectra" fiber rope is looped around her lifting "T" just in the center of Alvin's deck. The tall crane lifter groans and raises Alvin gently up. Slowly swinging up there is a "special" feeling. Within moments, we're lowered into the sea, directly above the dive site, and swimmers outside Alvin, make last-minute checks and detach cables. Today, there's no shark in the water, but I'm still relieved when the divers return to the Zodiac. "Alvin to Atlantis, permission to dive?" "Granted" and water ballast is sucked into tanks. We are quickly descending. Within a few hundred feet, the water changes from sky blue to grape to dark to super black.