Depth Perception

By amy e. nevala

Carl Wood (left), Atlantis' steward, and Ken Feldman, a shipboard computer technician, unhook the safety lines that provide support to the basket on the submersible Alvin as it enters the water. Both men are trained to help deploy and recover the sub, one of the world's deepest-diving research vehicles. Researchers and the pilot in Alvin use the basket to store animals, rocks and other samples collected from the sea floor. Photo courtesy of Mark Spear / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Tubeworms, seen through Alvin's viewport, are estimated to be 6 feet in length. They live at the boundary where hot hydrothermal fluid mixes with cold seawater, using their red plumes to absorb hydrogen sulfide from the hot water and oxygen from the cold water. Photo courtesy of Adam Soule / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The research vessel Atlantis, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, serves as the support vessel for Alvin operations. During each recovery, two certified swimmers bring Alvin back to the ship. Photo courtesy of Amy Nevala / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

After WHOI guest Vinod Khosla made his first Alvin dive on the Galapagos Rift, he was initiated with buckets of water, a long-standing tradition. Though shipboard pranksters also froze his shoes, Khosla said the dive "made it to the list of top 10 things I've done in my life." Photo courtesy of Amy Nevala / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Under a microscope, a deep-sea worm's tentacles — used for feeding — looked like cooked spaghetti. WHOI scientists found this worm, called a terebellid, living on hydrothermal vents. The research helps scientists learn why the larvae of deep-sea animals settle in certain places on the sea floor. Photo courtesy of Stace Beauliey / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Penn State ecologist Breea Govenar plucks tiny worms from the surface of a tubeworm collected from a hydrothermal vent field. Dissecting, labeling and storing carefully dozens of animals collected from the sea floor can take hours, starting at sundown and often extending well past midnight. Photo courtesy of Amy Nevala / Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Just more than a quarter of a century ago, a discovery on the bottom of the eastern Pacific Ocean forever changed our understanding of our planet and life on it. Thriving at deep-sea vents was a community of tubeworms, giant clams, white crabs and other species never before seen by humans.

This spring, I spent three weeks writing about and photographing scientists who returned to the Galápagos Rift, located on an undersea mountain chain about 250 miles from the Galápagos Islands. There, at hot springs called hydrothermal vents, exotic organisms were discovered in 1977.

Through ongoing efforts at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), scientists have visited the rift to learn more about life thriving there.

Using the submersible Alvin, two scientists and a pilot dove daily to the sea floor 2 miles under our research vessel, Atlantis, to see how these animal communities were developing and changing.

Fifty-three people — including scientists, the ship’s crew and Alvin pilots — were a part of the expedition. My job was to tell their stories, report their discoveries and even list what they ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner on a Web site called Dive and Discover. By the end of the expedition, nearly 20,600 visits to the site were made by readers worldwide.

Several months after returning, I am strangely nostalgic about life at sea. I miss the giddy laughter of caffeine-fueled graduate students who spent long nights sorting and labeling hundreds of microscopic sea floor animals. The galley’s weird rubber place mats that kept our plates from leaping from tables in high seas. The tangy smell of diesel fuel wafting from the engine room. And my cozy top berth, where each night — without fail — I would whack head, elbows and knees on the aluminum ceiling.

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Amy E. Nevala writes about science at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor's degree in advertising (1994) and a master's degree in fisheries and wildlife (1997). She reported for newspapers in Washington, D.C., Seattle and most recently Chicago, where she wrote for the Chicago Tribune. She now lives and works in Massachusetts. Read her stories at www.whoi.edu.

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