Scott White (left), Bruce Strickrott (center), and Florian Goetz during their Alvin dive

I am a master’s student from Germany and have been working on my thesis in the laboratory of Stefan Sievert since the beginning of April 2014. Together with Jesse McNichol, I worked on a model microorganism called Sulfurimonas denitrificans to aid in the understanding of a bacterial group that appears in high numbers in hydrothermal vent fluids.

If anyone had told me at the beginning of April that I would go diving with the Alvin submarine to an unknown place at the bottom of the ocean at 2700 meters, I would have never believed it. But on Wednesday, November 20, 2014, I did it. Together with Scott White, a professor from the University of South Carolina, and Bruce Strickrott, an experienced Alvin pilot, I went down to the bottom of the ocean with the aim of finding new hydrothermal vent sites off-axis to the East Pacific Rise.

Florian gets a chance to drive Alvin

I have done a lot of recreational diving, and the first thing I noticed when the Alvin dive started was that the light reached down to a depth of almost 200 meters. There were stripes of weak green; it was not fully dark. But afterwards our surroundings turned deep black. We shut down the lights to save energy during the descent, and when you looked out one of the five windows you could see little organisms passing by creating a green light through the process of bioluminescence. For me it looked like flying through the galaxy.

After more than an hour, we came close to the bottom and turned on the lights. I could not believe my eyes when the bottom appeared out of the deep blue and came closer and closer. We landed on a flat sediment area and it was amazing to see so much life in this habitat in the first glimpse I had. Big fish were hovering head down in the dark. They had a big white head and a thin long tail. Others looked like white eels. The whole surface of the seafloor seemed to move: sea stars of all kinds, shrimps, and crabs were moving in every direction trying to hide from the light. For them it probably was the first light they have ever seen.

We started towards an area 1 to 2 kilometers above a magma chamber to look for hydrothermal vent activity. For the first few minutes we were flying over the sediment bottom and took also a sediment core sample. After a short time, the first structures appeared out of the sediment. Rocks covered in sediment became numerous. Some of these rocks were home to deep purple anemones, white sponges, white corals, and sea cucumbers in many different forms and colors.

A dumbo octopus (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

We flew over a more rocky area. Suddenly a big white shadow appeared to the left of the submarine that nobody else could see. When it came closer to the sub the  shape looked like a white turtle swimming slowly away. I said to the  pilot: “There is a white turtle swimming away on the left side of the sub.” We turned and drove closer to it. The “white turtle” was a huge dumbo octopus. On its body two white wings (shaped like shark fins) enabled the octopus to swim calmly through the water. An hour later as we were sampling a rock and two sediment cores, another white shadow was laying in the sand in front of us. We sneaked towards it and saw a big white sting ray lying in the sand. When we came too close, it swam towards the sub and passed underneath.

A deep-sea ray (courtesy chief scientist Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

We continued to sample rocks and sediment cores along the dive route. We flew back towards the East Pacific Rise axis. We flew over old pillow lava, sheet lava, and lava channels. These formations looked a bit like the fingers of a giant coming out of the sand. We approached the edges and dove down steps several meters tall. Finally we moved upslope toward the East Pacific Rise axis where we also took some samples until we had to finish the dive.

We did not find new hydrothermal vents or diffuse flows, although we explored many rocks and many cracks in the seafloor. We brought up nice rock samples, whose age still has to be determined, and sediment cores that will be investigated for microbial diversity. We drove a distance of more than 3 kilometers at depths from more than 2700 meters up to 2500 meters. When we ascended, the bioluminescence looked like green rain pouring onto the sub.

It was an adventure I will never forget in my entire life. I want to thank Stefan Sievert, Scott White, and Bruce Strickrott for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime experience!

Editor’s note: Among his lab-mates in Woods Hole, Florian is famous for his spirited karaoke performances. When he returned from his dive, he was handed his favorite neon green safety goggles and a prop mike. With fabulous backup from Fengping Wang and Camila Negrão Signori, he treated us to a modified rendition of his favorite song, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge,” before being doused with iced seawater for his Alvin initiation.

Stefan Sievert (left), Phil Forte (center), and Camila Negrão Signori in Alvin’s sphere.

Being on the Atlantis/Alvin cruise itself is such an experience. Since the beginning, everything is different compared to other traditional oceanographic cruises.

Instead of navigating to distinct sampling stations, we stay at the same area (9° North) for almost a month. Besides the Niskin bottles coupled with the CTD-Rosette system [for collecting water samples from different depths], we have the famous sub Alvin diving to 2,500 meters almost every day to collect our samples (fluids from the vents, plenty of microbes, chimneys, tube worms, colonizers, etc).

An IGT sampler collects vent fluids at Crab Spa, a vent site at 2,500 m water depth. The sampler maintains the seafloor pressure when coming back to the surface. (courtesy Stefan Sievert, ©WHOI)

Instead of taking water samples from the bottles, we take samples from special pieces of equipment called “IGTs” (Isobaric Gas Tight samplers) that can maintain the in situ pressure and other environmental conditions from the deep sea vents.

Dealing with the samples is not easy, at least for me! Besides all the protocols normally followed in the lab, we have to control the pressure, be careful when opening and closing the system, work with tools (whose names I don’t even know in Portuguese!), and we have a lot of engineering.

Towering vents on the ocean floor as seen out of Alvin‘s view port. (photo by Camila Negrão Signori, ©WHOI)

Having the chance to dive deep was one of my (almost impossible) dreams as an oceanographer that came true on Nov. 14, 2014. The first 100 meters of the water column are beautifully turquoise. Then it becomes more and more dark, and after 300 meters it is completely dark and calm, and some bioluminescent organisms appear floating sometimes. After a very smooth 1.5 hour descent, the pilot Phil Forte turns on the lights of Alvin and we land on the basaltic rock that makes up the seafloor at this location and start exploring the area. We saw a lot of life…several crabs, many tube worms, some fishes, shrimps, octopus, lobster, microbial mats. But what most impressed me was the geological structure, which seemed to be artistically sculptured, surrounded by the black smokers with plenty of activity. It was simply unbelievable, like those scenes that you only watch in movies. But luckily for me, it was real.

Reflecting on my dive, I feel grateful, amazed, and blessed. I also feel so small…like a drop of water in the ocean or a tiny microbial cell shining in the microscope.

Dive 4769: An experience that I will never forget. I am fondly thankful to Stefan Sievert, who gave me this chance to be on this cruise, as well as all the scientists and the Atlantis/Alvin crew, for sharing this experience with me and for all their efforts to make things happen. Muito obrigada!

Camila Negrão Signori looking outside the pilot’s view port. (photo by Stefan Sievert)