Life Below The Galapagos, Part 4

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

(CBS)  First, let me tell you a little about Riftia Pachyptiya, also known as the tubeworm. This has got to be the strangest animal on earth. Basically, this bacteria-loving red "planimal" is surrounded by a white hard surface, the "tube" made of chitin, a substance similar to fingernails. The fleshy, wavy, wing-like red worm has no eyes, no mouth, no digestive system. It does have rich hemoglobin that transports oxygen and hydrogen sulfide to the vent bacteria. The bacteria, harvested in the tube worms' belly pouch, provides Riftia with carbohydrates in this symbiotic relationship. Tubeworms are only found along the perilous edge of the geothermal vents. The white tube is rooted along the vent and the blood red tubeworm spreads out its tendril-like "wings" over the mineral-rich sulfurous water. See them once and it's easy to understand how "Rose Garden" and "Rosebud" got their name.

These colonies of Riftia dance to their own melody. They push their fat, eel-like bodies up nearly out of the tube until something approaches and they shoot back inside their tube for safety. Blind white crabs, the mortal enemy of Riftia, try to nibble at the tendrils but tubeworms retreat. The dance between stubborn crabs and pop-up-pop-down Riftia goes on 24-hours a day, without let up.

In the submarine, moisture fogs the viewport. The pilot begins the first task: moving a huge sediment trap into position. But we can't find it. Alvin has forward and downward-looking sonar. Above, on the Atlantis, a huge long acoustic beam, called the "Trackpoint," receives pinger information from Alvin and submerged buoys at fixed locations so the undersea position can be accurately computed. Every few minutes, a radio blast from the Atlantis queries the Alvin. The pilot responds with the latest position and heading. "You should see the first trap now," says one of the other Alvin pilots, up in the command center on the bridge of Atlantis. But we don't. "You're right on it ..." But we're not. So we circle awhile and rise and move. Eventually, finally, we find the huge collector. Pat grabs it with one of the large manipulator arms and we slowly spin around repositioning somebody's PhD thesis on the ideal vent site.