Life Below The Galapagos, Part 3

The following is part three of

R/V Atlantis

A few days ago, the Atlantis left the dingy harbor of Puntarenas, Costa Rica, to make a 500-mile cruise south to an astonishing spot in the eastern Pacific. This is the Galapagos Rift, a rise about 8,500 feet down, the site of "Rosebud." Here, in impenetrable dark and near frozen water, an active geothermal vent in the Earth's crust pumps up super-heated water rich with minerals and toxic chemicals. It was precisely here, 48 miles north of the equator, 200 miles east of the Galapagos Islands, that the most remarkable collection of undersea creatures was first discovered living amidst this forbidding brine. In 1977, geologists in the deep-submersible Alvin first penetrated the depths to discover these creatures, and in so doing, uncovered a deeper understanding of the conditions in which life could thrive in the Universe.

The deep submersible Alvin is an astonishing vessel and it lives aboard the Atlantis in a private hangar. It is tended to lovingly by a remarkably dedicated, experienced, and ingenious crew. Chief Alvin pilot Pat Hickey has gone on so many dives, he's spent a total of two years on the ocean floor. The other pilots so respect Pat's expertise commanding Alvin they speak of his feats in mythic terms. "Once he spent three days down there to let a hurricane go by!" "He is so good with the manipulator arms, he collects samples without even slowing Alvin down." So I feel pretty fortunate that tomorrow, when I'm scheduled to go down to the "Rosebud" vent site in Alvin, Pat is scheduled to be at the helm.

More than 40 years ago, Alvin was commissioned by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to explore the deep sea. Most military submarines are not designed to submerge much below 1,000 feet. Alvin, now completely rebuilt at least three times, can explore well below 10,000 feet! The current Alvin submersible can reach about 60 percent of the areas on the ocean floor. (A new Alvin is being designed that, when christened two years from now, will be able to reach close to 95 percent of the ocean's surface.)

At the heart of Alvin is a six-foot titanium sphere two inches thick and capable of housing three explorers. The sphere is encased in a white and orange shell made of special expanding foam and fiberglass. Two huge robotic arms, three big cameras and scads of little cameras poke out like tentacles. Lights, temperature sensors, and jet thrusters surround the craft. Electric wires are housed in plastic tubes filled with oil so they can resist the crushing pressure at the ocean bottom. The science basket is a huge square tray that juts out under the arms, overfilled with strange housings and boxes and a vacuum-cleaner type hose designed to secure samples from the deep. There's even a long titanium sensor called the "Ghostbuster" that analyzes something, but I'm not sure exactly what.

With great trepidation, I crossed over the bridge and ladder in the hangar to get my first peek inside Alvin. The orange coning tower is remarkably flimsy... indeed, not a confidence builder for the "lucky" few of us scheduled to dive. Inside the tower, above the hatch, an old-style handset looking as if it came from the Second World War. (Another confidence booster!) And as you nervously gaze down the hatch inside the sub for the first time you think everyone here is nuts. There's no way that three people can even fit in the darn thing, let alone navigate the ocean deep for an eight-hour dive.

The R/V Atlantis ("R/V" is for "Research Vessel") is run by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, based in (no surprise here) Woods Hole, Mass. But WHOI (pronounced "Hoo-ey") doesn't see much of Atlantis in port as science expeditions are continuously underway. Once a year, the Alvin is completely disassembled and maintained so it's usually then that the crew on Atlantis gets a break and goes home. There are 53 people on board: half scientists and half crew, plus Alvin's team of six submariners. Atlantis is 274 feet long and six or seven stories high: filled with chemistry and biology labs, radar rooms, and crammed with scientific gear researchers must stow on board months before their project begins.

It goes without saying that for the first three days at sea, as we steam aggressively to the Galapagos Rift, more than a few newbies on the ship are a tad green at the gills. Ten-foot swells are a little less "swell" when you're riding on 'em. Yet even the "sea-challenged" have come to appreciate (even worship) the magic of the kitchen here. U.S. Navy ships today boast great galleys, I suppose, to keep mutinies at bay. The Atlantis goes the extra mile: the chef here once worked at the White House. Steward Carl Wood and cook Al Dalomba seem to have more fun overfeeding scientists. Maintaining quality of life at sea, where expeditions can last months at a time, is a high priority for the crew. Some folks go jogging around the ship up and down the stairs or use the "gym" (kind of a wild hyperbolic overstatement, but that's what they call it) to ride the stationary bike or punch the bag to keep fit. Far more interesting, from a physics standpoint, is the high-speed ping pong games that occasionally break out in the main science lab: where balance, wave prediction, and backwash matter more than good backspin.

Sleeping quarters for the guest scientists (including little ole' me) is on the upper deck. Only the bridge, where Captain George Silva commands the ship, and the communications room for Alvin are higher. Below are the crew quarters, the mess deck, meeting rooms, and labs. Even further below are ship stores, a laundry room, and a massive engine room and power plant. This amazing vessel, powered by three huge engines, sports "z-drive" plus bow and side thrusters to provide excellent maneuverability and stability needed for precise scientific work. The first day at sea, Captain Silva subjected us to a battery of safety drills and exercises intended to prepare us for the worst: fire at sea, man overboard, use of life rafts, safety equipment, and even the "Gumby." For some reason, I was the lucky goat that got to demonstrate the proper way to put on this bright orange thick polyester foam suit. It is designed to either protect us from the elements at sea or to make us look really, really foolish.

And there are more drills, exercises, and lessons to be learned. Lab safety, chemical safety, environmental responsibility at sea, etc. This is all before the battery of daily science briefings, discussions, and tutorials on the expedition, forms of life below, and, best of all, lessons on how to dive and survive in Alvin.

I remember the instant the sea-sickness went away: when I was taken inside the tiny Alvin compartment. Just entering the sphere is very tricky: a false toe-tap could turn off some switch attached to a life-critical system. The hatch is narrow, with a delicate o-ring, and the extra-extra large scientists will simply not fit through. Three oxygen bottles are to the my left. The pilot gets the best view (thank goodness) and that's through a single, six-inch viewport made of glass inches thick. My window is on the side, and I have controls for the cameras and the lights and, God forbid, the emergency oxygen masks should there be a fire. Before you can dive, the two passengers accompanying the pilot must learn what to do if the pilot is incapacitated. The floor is open, during the orientation, so you can learn about the key and pin method as a last resort that would separate our titanium sphere from the rest of the Alvin. In 40 years, this system has never been needed.

Usually, and let's all cross our fingers for my dive tomorrow, the crew of the Atlantis launches Alvin each morning at 8 a.m. Because pure oxygen is used, the threat of fire aboard the sub means that the percentage of oxygen used is kept at about 17 percent compared to the usual 23 percent found in our natural environment. That leads to a few headaches and grogginess in some. Divers from Atlantis detach cables and ropes connecting Alvin to the mother ship. They talk with the crew in the sphere below, using the ancient phone handset, and when all is secured, the divers jump into the sea, to be picked up by the Zodiac launch. This morning, I had a rare treat to go on the launch boat, a pleasant battering by the ocean, as I held on to the high-definition video camera and boat for dear life. Just as I had succeeded capturing the most nauseating seasick view of the launch of the Alvin, Pat Hickey, who was steering the dive boat, called out "Shark!" (These guys are such kidders!) But there it was, circling the waters, a four-foot black tip shark, quite interested in the Alvin, especially when the divers entered the water. Pat brought the Zodiac between the shark and divers, who clambered aboard.

It takes an hour and a half for Alvin to descend the more than 8,500 feet to the vent site at the Galapgos Ridge. The scientists on Alvin then have at most five hours to perform dozens of planned tasks on the bottom: conducting experiments for scientists who have waited sometimes years for the chemical, biological, and geological materials to be collected or to have their carefully crafted instruments deployed. Yet even after years of planning, invariably some sensor or gyro or camera system or battery breaks.

Up in the Alvin control room area, other Alvin pilots take notes and communicate with the submersed research vessel. As I was recording video in the control room, a pilot down below casually pops up on the sea radio: "Can you get the power schematics? ... It seems that there is a power fault ... so I've turned off the computers, the electronics, the navigation systems, the gyros ..." and this went on for a hair-raising 45 minutes as pilots and engineers topside tried to assist and troubleshoot the crisis down at the bottom of the sea. If the problem could not be solved quickly, the dive would be aborted, and the scientists who have waited years for their samples, observations, and sensor-deployments would be back to the drawing board. I was feeling a little anxious, to say the least, as the computer expert kept looking at the electrical schematic of Alvin saying, "Makes no sense to me." Not what you want to hear if you have friends on board and know how much they want their experiments to proceed. Especially not what you want to hear when you will be going down in the darn thing a few hours later.

Fortunately, the pilot down below eventually yanks a camera cable and, next thing we know, everything seems ok. So they're off again, underwater, probing the fields of tubeworms at the geothermal vents, sucking up samples of tiny crabs and bacteria and critters in between all in the name of science. One of the experiments on board captures ounces of the extremely hot water spewing from the vents. The water, mixing in vents full of magma, brings up a rich chemical broth: toxic to us but ambrosia to breeds of white bacteria that are the source of life at the Rosebud site.

Strange tubeworms, called Riftia, stick out their bloody red snouts from white stalks made of the similar hard stuff we have in our fingernails, and collect the bacteria in their stomachs, where they nourish the bacteria with oxygen and hydrogen sulfide to produce the foods that keep them alive. It is a world without photosynthesis here: absolutely no light to convert into energy. These creatures convert the bacteria into food and live "chemosynthetically." The discovery here of "chemosynthesis" has revolutionized thinking of how life on earth must have evolved. These discoveries also are influencing new theories on how life may one day be found in outer space.

After five hours of exploration, the pilot on Alvin insists the dive must end. (This over the whines and pleas of scientists who have just "one more thing" to be done in the name of saving mankind.) But the pilot jettisons the side-weights and the sub begins its ascent topside. The weights left behind on the ocean floor are simple pieces of iron slag, which eventually rust away, disappearing from the bottom. On deck, divers of the Atlantis prepare the Zodiac and maneuver the craft toward the Alvin, which finally bobs to the surface. It is in the last few minutes of the dive (the bobbing to the surface part) that folks on board the Alvin suddenly go from joy to unhappiness. (There are airsickness bags, swiped from planes, in the ready for this last bumpy phase as Alvin lingers and lurches on the ocean surface.) But the explorers are soon hoisted up on the deck of Atlantis again and, even jostled, bumped, chilled, and tired, emerge grinning broadly. They have seen something most of us can only dream about: the underwater Garden of Eden where life on Earth could have begun.

Scientists on deck gather around to unload samples: wearing gloves to protect the specimens, carefully placing Riftia and clams and tiny critters and bacteria in jars, dishes, bowls, and tubes. Samples are sped into a huge refrigerator, where two geneticists carefully scrape away bacteria for further testing. In another lab room, chemists from Wisconsin happily suction out stinky sulfide-rich fluid from the vents. "A great success," one fellow beams happily. He's been waiting for these samples for years. Biologists are sorting by hand, with tweezers, tiny worms, shells, and critters, speaking of odd "taxonomies." The team glows happily as they pick and poke to discover the undiscovered amidst the samples.

Before I go to sleep, biologist Dr. Stace Beaulieu, who wants the world to share her excitement for science, gives me the honor of dropping a special loudspeaker into the water. It trails along as our ship gently rocks about. We input special codes on a display which generates a distinct audio cue to a sensor on the ocean floor. The code we send signals a tiny explosive release, and one hour later, the delivery package emerges from the deep. We've succeeded placing an important collection device on the sea-floor. In addition to Alvin, there are dozens of other devices, including camera-laden robotic sleds and collection units and time-lapse camera devices that scientists deploy throughout the night to study this special place.

Still, we seem in the middle of nowhere. It is night now and I'm thinking about my dive in a few hours. Even at night, frigate birds are on the starboard side of the ship, swooping over the biomass below. Catching squid? Flying-fish? It is moonless-dark so we cannot tell. Tomorrow, I'll be down at the bottom of the rift, catching another kind of biomass that few people on Earth have seen with their own eyes.