(courtesy Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez)

I am going to tell you a story—a love story. We are old friends, the kind who have known one another since childhood. Back then, we met only once per year during summer holidays, enough to forge a friendship that has lasted since then.

I have to admit that as I grew up and my interests turned around, our ties become looser and looser until few years ago, when my life made one of it periodic shifts. One of the implications of being a scientist is that you get to travel a lot and change the place you call home quite frequently. After my Ph.D., I moved to the U.S. to work at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, across the street from WHOI, where we reunited, as he was part of the research group I joined.

Although we never worked together then, we spent four summers and three winters side by side, time that allowed us to better know each other. We become close friends. As usually happens, I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed his company until it was too late. A year ago I had to move again, as I was starting a new position at Brown University. Although we are not so far away from each other, I missed our everyday encounters right away.

But who knows if destiny exists because even though now we seldom see each other, we interact indirectly during my work at Brown. This has allowed me to realize that he is full of surprises, and my enthusiasm about him and all his secrets has grown lately. However, it has been during this cruise that I finally have fallen in love with the Ocean.

This cruise is full of first-timers, but I beat them all. For me, this has been the first time I enrolled on a ship, slept on a ship, lost sight of land, and saw only water day after day for weeks. I had to learn how to defeat seasickness while working hard at the same time. I became familiar with the ship’s murmurs and terminology, which is English at Foreign Language level 10000. I have loved it all. But what makes a trip like this so unique is the people on it, from crewmembers to my already familiar colleges. An oceanographic cruise is only possible because of a huge team effort, and it has been great to become part of it.

Microbiologist KT Scott, pilot Bob Waters, and postdoctoral researcher Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez in Alvin

Being out here has been an incredible opportunity to better know the Ocean. And for that, there is nothing like a dive in Alvin. The inside of the sphere is quite similar to the Apollo spacecraft you can see in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, a tiny space full of buttons but without seats.

A ride in Alvin is actually quite peaceful, and the views are spectacular. At first, what shocked me most was how full of life the Ocean is regardless of what I have read about him being mostly a blue dessert. The dive started with an unexpected visit from a manta ray that hung out with us for a little bit. It was impressive to see her flying around the sub over and over with curiosity.

A garden of tube worms and mussels at a seafloor vent (courtesy Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

During the descent, the lights from bioluminescent organisms accompanied us all the way down except at the depths of the oxygen minimum zone, where we were completely surrounded by the dark. But even that cannot prepare you for the explosion of diversity in the vents. I felt like we were entering a subaquatic garden where the dominants colors were white, red and yellow. Later that day, once I was back on Atlantis, I looked at the Ocean with a new awareness of his enormousness and importance for the whole planet. In that very same moment I knew that this was my first but not last cruise, as now my heart has been stolen by the deep blue sea.

Avery Lee in the sphere during his Alvin dive

Since third grade, I aspired to be a geologist. In middle school, I was exposed to hydrothermal vents and the remarkable ecosystems they hosted. From then on I knew what I wanted to focus on. While it was a dream of mine, I never really knew when the time would come that I would have the opportunity study and research them. Fortunately for me I was attending a university with Professor Scott White who not only dedicates his research to marine geology but was willing to let me get in on the action as an undergraduate. Now, instead of going to the local library throughout middle and high school to learn about hydrothermal vents and dedicating every project possible to them, I was working on a research project to further our understanding of the distribution of hydrothermal chimneys. A couple of years later, I am aboard Atlantis on my first cruise, hearing the hatch shut on the Alvin submersible that I had read stories about as a teenager.

pillow basalt (image ©WHOI)

I did not have much idea of what to expect for my dive, with good reason. No one had ever been to where we were going, nearly 2,700 meters below the surface. This made me nervous, because to do my part I would have to describe things I had never seen or seen only in pictures. From various sources I knew I would see something reminiscent of volcanic activity, likely covered by sediment. As we approached the seafloor I saw pillow basalts (large round tubes of rock shaped like a dollop of toothpaste on a toothbrush) that looked as if they had just been snowed on with sediment. Just as with snow, you could see only what was poking out above the layer of sediment. But as we got closer I saw objects on the basalt and sediment, and some of them were moving! There was a community of organisms slowly going about their business in their surprising pink, orange, red, purple, and white colors.

As all these things sank in, I began to comprehend what I was seeing as time. Fresh basalt would not have had time to accumulate sediment or organisms. What I was seeing was time elapsed from when the lava erupted. In geologic time, eruptions are very brief events with destructive potential. I was seeing not only a snapshot of the aftermath of such an event but its transition to a remote habitat for life. Many features in geology have existed for tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of times the length of our life spans. In my short time as an undergrad, I have visited numerous sites of geologic features that formed millions of years ago. Despite holding rocks and fossils that represent them, time had never struck me the way it did in the first few moments of seeing the seafloor from Alvin. Maybe it was the mystery of not knowing the date of the flows and having no way of knowing how long it takes for sediment to accumulate.

Come time to start recording what I was seeing, I was at a loss for words and had no idea where to begin. There were all these animals I didn’t know the names for. Majoring in marine science and geology, I found everything about the dive fascinating. I had to remind myself that I was wearing my geology hat and had to focus on describing what I was seeing and any changes in terrain.

Avery (right) gets into Alvin before his launch, with his adviser Scott White close behind

Everything about my dive was spectacular and included all sorts of new experiences. From moving up steep hills of pillow basalts to investigating craters, stumbling upon a lava collapse, and passing over a fissure, too… It was a real adventure. Along with the sediment, the pale, ghost-like, slow moving fish with open-jaw expressions gave the dive a sunken-ship-turned-artificial-reef feel. There was more life than I expected; many of the animals I saw were doing the opposite of what I would anticipate. I saw polychaete worms swimming through the water, a motionless octopus perched in the open sediment, and mostly stationary brittle stars taking off with surprising speed as we took sediment cores. The whole dive was like visiting another world.

I’d like to thank the crew, the Alvin team, and the scientists for an eye-opening experience. A special thanks to Scott White for bringing me along for this unbelievable opportunity.

Scott White (left), pilot Bruce Strickrott (center), and Avery Lee during their Alvin dive

Sayaka Mino in the pilot seat of Alvin (with Stefan Sievert)

A few days ago, one of my dreams came true. Ever since I started studying microbes living in deep-sea hydrothermal environments, I have wished I could dive to the deep sea and see the vent communities with my own eyes. This desire became my motivation to push forward with my Ph.D. study. Before this cruise, I had opportunities to join the Japanese scientific cruises and see the deep-sea vents through video. But I have never had a dive in Shinkai 6500 (the Japanese sub), because students are not allowed to dive (in contrast to Alvin, there are two pilots and only one scientific observer in Shinkai 6500). So I was excited and could not sleep well the day before my Alvin dive.

After Alvin started descending, the motions I had felt at the surface stopped. It was completely dark when we passed a depth of around 300 meters. No motions, no lights, no sounds… we would not know where we were without the GPS, depth gauges, and some electronic devices. Also beautiful bioluminescent organisms reminded me that we were going down, because they appeared to be going up slowly.

A Riftia colony supported by hydrogen sulfide contained in the hydrothermal fluids emanating through cracks in the seafloor (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

The first view after we arrived at the bottom was the shiny black basalt. I saw delicate submarine formations; some parts were crumbled, and others were wall-like structures. We looked for the Vent-SID, which had been sent down earlier, and moved it to a site near thriving Riftia (giant tube worm) colonies. I could not believe their lives are completely supported by the activities of tiny microbes.

The pilot, Bob Waters, took us to a vent called P-vent and showed me more black smokers. I had tears in my eyes (though I was looking out through the small window, so I hope nobody saw…). The height of the chimney was over 10 meters. I have no idea how long it takes to grow such a huge structure, but I felt the beating of the earth with the continuous emitting of vent fluids, and that was the thing I really wanted to observe with my own eyes. We finished collecting high-temperature fluids and chimneys at P-vent, then headed to the Crab Spa, and successfully collected a couple of IGTs (vent fluid samples) and rock samples.

Collecting fluids from a black smoker at P-vent (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

The hydrothermal activity was never boring to watch. I wished I could have stayed there longer, but we had to leave the bottom of the ocean and go back to the real world. The dive was like a dream (of course there were tube worms in my dreams after the dive!). But I am sure we saw the energy-filled dark life, which we cannot feel from watching videos.

I would like to express great thanks to chief scientist Stefan Sievert, who provided me with this wonderful experience. Also I appreciate the Atlantis and Alvin crews for supporting safe cruises and dives, and the scientists for sharing the good times and preparing a great initiation for me. I’ve promised myself that I will work hard to hopefully get another opportunity to dive to the seafloor again someday.

Stefan Sievert, Bob Waters, and Sayaka Mino during their Alvin dive

The Vent-SID microbial incubation platform on the seafloor (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

Saturday was my first trip in Alvin, diving to the bottom of the ocean, one and a half miles below the surface. The dive to the bottom was not at all scary but was exhilarating, magical, and full of life. Even before we got to the vent fields, and turned on the lights while sinking, we could see many little creatures, some small jellyfish floating through the water. Upon arrival at the bottom, we gently slowed down, as Alvin dropped its descending weights, and we set down on basalt rock from a recent lava flow. Some of the flow was cracked and heaved up, showing many layers upon layers of lava, each layer about an inch or two thick. We then transited a short distance to find the Vent-SID, which was peacefully sitting upright on the lava flow. Alvin easily picked up the SID with one of its arms and we transited to the deployment site.

Tube worms, mussels, zoarcid fish, and crabs near a warm-water vent, seen through Alvin‘s viewport (photo by Jeremy Rich, ©WHOI)

As we went, we soon entered the hydrothermal vent field, with large spires and ridges of basalt rising above, like looking up the sides of a small canyon. The spires and cracks in ridges were bursting with life, with lush patches of Riftia tube worms, abundant zoarcid fish (long white fish), and large shrimp swimming towards the lights of Alvin. It was a bit like being in a dream-like aquarium. And then I noticed the shimmering water, the hot hydrothermal fluid flowing up through the Riftia beds, as we flew over one large bed looking for our study site. It gave me the feeling that there was much energy and heat flowing through these beds and the creatures were cheerfully sopping it up. This was probably the Riftia bed where we were supposed to deploy our instrument.

View of black smokers from Alvin (photo by Jeremy Rich, ©WHOI)

One thing I realized in Alvin is that it is hard to know where you are. We had to back up and try to get bird’s eye view of the Riftia patch through our portholes. This was the site. We deployed the instrument and then continued on to other sites rich in animal life, to collect various water samples and deploy collectors for other scientists on board the ship. Then we made our way to a black smoker field known as Bio9, which was 50 meters away. It was amazing for a moment how far away 50 meters felt in the dark bottom of the ocean. But the navigation systems do not lie and we quickly found ourselves at black smokers, which consist of white and black mineral structures towering a couple of stories high, with what literally looks like black smoke pouring out their chimneys due to sulfide and iron minerals precipitating out of the boiling hot fluid flowing out. I had to wonder what the people who discovered these not that long ago must have felt. How alien and wonderful these must have seemed. We collected a sample from the black smoker chimney and then we were finished and on our way up to the surface.

Jeremy Rich emerges from Alvin after his first dive in the sub. (courtesy Nuria Fernandez Gonzalez)

On our arrival, a crowd of happy people greeted us. We reported that we successfully deployed the SID and collected wonderful samples for other scientists; the chunk of black smoker chimney was a particularly good specimen.

We would have to wait until the SID surfaced the next day to see if it worked. It turned out our sampling bags were empty. Something went wrong with the SID. We later discovered that there were several “bugs” in the software that caused the SID to shut down prematurely. In some ways, it was a successful deployment, as the physical components of the SID seemed to withstand the trip, and we also obtained some initial filtered samples. We hope it is a matter of fixing the bugs in the program, and we can prove one encouraging scientist right, who said to us today, “It was good it didn’t work the first time, as it would have never worked again.” We plan to try again soon.

Stefan Sievert (left), Bob Waters (center), and Jesse McNichol (right) on Jesse’s first Alvin dive.

Three days ago, I saw a sight few ever see with their own eyes: deep sea geysers surrounded by weird and wonderful life. Animals, without eyes or arms, gently swaying in shimmering water, nurturing symbiotic bacteria with a witch’s brew of stinky sulfide, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. The water around these vents is thick clouds of sulfur, a by-product of bacterial metabolism, making it hard to see far, even in the bright lights of the submarine Alvin.

The area we visited is tiny, and there is absolutely no mark of it on the surface, so we rely on the incredible shipboard navigation systems to place us directly above a site we visited this January. After we dropped 2,500 meters to the bottom, we knew we were close to a hydrothermal vent, but we could only see bare volcanic rock. As Bob Waters, the pilot and expedition leader, moved close to the vent, it slowly materialized out of the cloudy water, and I was struck by the sheer bulk of the three chimneys looming in front of us. Although I’d seen them before on the live video feed on our last cruise, a video really cannot give one as good a sense of the dimensions of these structures as our eyes can.

One of the chimneys was spewing 325 degree hot ‘smoke’, and as we tried to take a sample for our colleagues back aboard the ship, it crumbled like cigarette ash in the hand of Alvin‘s manipulator arms. Although massive, these structures can be incredibly fragile, and it’s the Alvin pilot’s nightmare to have one fall on the submarine and pin it down at the bottom. We eventually used a giant scoop to collect some of the chimney, and ‘flew’ on to our main study site. Affectionately known as Crab Spa, it was given this name because local crabs enjoy sticking their rear ends into the warm geothermally-heated fluid.

Heat is unusual at this depth. At first I didn’t notice the cold, but after an hour or two on the bottom, I had to put on my sweater and wool socks. The water around us is only 2-3 degrees Celsius, and as it cools, Alvin‘s sphere becomes ice-cold and drips with condensation. It reminded me that most of the deep ocean is made up of such frigid water with very little life, making these deep sea hot springs with so many big animals so unusual and interesting. The cold also gives you a powerful hunger, and I ate two sandwiches, a pear, and a candy bar while observing.

Tube worms (red), mussels (yellow), and crabs surrounding the warm vent nicknamed Crab Spa. (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

Once you are there, Crab Spa is easy to spot—shimmering fluid with what looks like snow flows out into the surrounding seawater from a hole in the rock. Around it crowd animals, bathing in the warm water. For the first time, I could see up-close the site where the bacteria come from that I studied in January on another research cruise. Seeing it was great enough, but I also had the pleasure to take my very own bacterial samples for the first time. As Bob positioned the sampler in the warm fluid, I triggered the sampler and filled it with 150 milliliters of unique fluid filled with bacteria!

I was lucky to share the dive with Stefan, my PhD supervisor and chief scientist, and his enthusiasm before, throughout, and after gave a great energy to the experience. During the dive, I was very focused on our scientific objectives, and felt sometimes like I didn’t enjoy as much as I should have. But now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on the experience, I feel not only really lucky to have had the chance to dive, but also infected by Stefan’s enthusiasm for these otherworldly ecosystems. Although some might argue that robots can do the same job, there really isn’t anything quite like the excitement of seeing it yourself. Someday maybe I will have another chance to dive in Alvin, hopefully with another eager young student seeing it with their own eyes for the first time!

Back on deck, Jesse received the traditional welcome of a first-time Alvin diver. (courtesy Juliana Leonard)