When I used to teach marine science at Seacamp, a wonderful marine science camp in the Florida Keys, I always tried to impress upon my students (especially the ones reluctant to get into the water) that I always saw something new every time I went diving or snorkeling. This axiom has held true my entire life, but with a submarine and the deep waters it reaches, it seems that I see something new every 5 minutes.
On Saturday, thanks to my uncharacteristic good luck in a random drawing with my fellow pilots, my name came out of the coffee mug first, meaning I had the honor of piloting the first dive of the expedition. I later found out from my peers that this also meant being the first human being to descend in a sub into Pribilof Canyon.
I was surprised to still see light above as I descended past 600 feet…a beautiful disc of deep aqua floating high above the dark blue. Shortly thereafter, it was completely dark, my HMI lights providing the sole illumination for the journey. I anticipated bottom at 1,150 feet, but as I descended past 900 feet, I suddenly saw what appeared to be a thick cloud of brown sediment at eye level. Thinking I was kicking up sediment from the approaching bottom, I quickly slowed my descent, but the bottom didn't come. I then realized I was not seeing bottom sediment at all. Hundreds of pencil-sized squid were inking me! Attracted by the light, these squid would rocket toward the lights, pause for a moment, appear to freak out, then squirt their ink and dash away into the black. The ink appears reddish brown under the bright lights.
I touched down at 1,003 feet, excited to be glimpsing a tiny portion of this huge underwater canyon. I encountered numerous cod, perch, along with small sole, halibut and skates as I proceeded with my transect. As a scientist who has spent most of his years in the subtropics and tropics of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, my worst enemy was the microphone hanging below my mouth, into which I
was supposed to utter brilliant annotation to go with the video we were shooting. I knew some local species, but many others were a mystery to me, so I resorted to comedy. The beautiful and enormous anenome Liponema brevicornis appears on my recording as the Hostess Snowball. NOAA scientist Bob Stone was forgiving. He encouraged such names as long as we were consistent. And so I was. Like with the "mystery pink thing," etc.
I returned to Esperanza elated to have brought back our first glimpses of this magnificent canyon and lost track of the number of new things I saw on that dive. I feel like I'm at Seacamp again…seeing things I've never seen before, learning things I've never known before, and feeling young…like a wide-eyed child.
We departed Dutch Harbor at 4pm Alaska Time today. It's after 11pm now, still plenty of daylight, as we head north to Pribolof Canyon for our first dive in the morning. I'll be one of the pilots, so I hope to get some sleep soon. As we headed north away from the Aleutians, there was a steady stream of announcements from the bridge over the intercom: "Whales, port side. Whales, starboard side. Whales, off the bow." Humpback whales in groups of ten. We also saw fin whales. We have flat seas, mild temperatures in the fifties, and we're all very excited to finally be at sea following many weeks of preparation. I've spent much of the day preparing a boatload (get it?) of hard disks for the fire hose of data to be stored on them coming from the high definition video cameras on each sub. Now off to get some sleep...zzzzzzz
At 5:15 am, the rear suspension of the taxi to Washington, DC's National Airport groaned alarmingly under the weight of my five heavy pieces of luggage: A duffel of dive gear, a pelican case with an underwater video housing, a duffel of warm clothing, a backpack of video and camera gear, and a roll-aboard full of hard disks, cables and other geeky accessories. Alaska Airlines Flight #1 took me west across the country to Seattle, then north to Anchorage. As we pierced the clouds on our descent, the youngster seated behind me shrieked to his parents, "It looks like a big park!" Alaska was as I had remembered it: Big, wild, and beyond beautiful.
I made my way to the Peninsula Airways departures and rendezvoused with expedition photographer Todd Warshaw, who was traveling from San Diego. We later ran into Michelle Ridgway, an Alaskan marine ecological consultant and fellow sub pilot, along with Bob Stone, a NOAA scientist specializing in the cold water corals we hoped to study on the expedition. But we weren't supposed to see Michelle and Bob -- they were supposed to be in Dutch Harbor already. Their earlier flight had been cancelled, due to the notorious thick fog that occurs this time of year in Dutch Harbor. The earliest flight for which they could be confirmed was August 1 -- more than a week away. They discussed the possibility of missing the first week of the expedition and rendezvousing with us in St. George in the Pribilof islands, certainly less than an ideal situation.
Thankfully, Michelle returned from the podium with a grin -- they were on our flight…which was now delayed…and delayed… Finally, we were called and on our way. A three-hour flight along the Aleutian Island chain in a small Saab propeller plane, with a stop for fuel at aptly-named Cold Bay. We arrived at last to Dutch Harbor, met by Timo Marshall, retrieved (thankfully) all our bags, and drove a mile or so to the triple-parked M/V Esperanza. You couldn't have designed a more bizarre obstacle course for those carrying luggage. First, cross the gangway to the large barge, walk through the TV room where one of the crew was oblivious to our delegation, out the back door of the barge, down an external corridor, up a ladder, and around a huge dry dock structure, more twists, turns, chutes and ladders. Finally, Esperanza's gang way was in sight, only angled down to the deck from the dry dock structure with a sign indicating "Only One Person at a Time." Our heavy bags were roped and hauled up to the deck. My first hour in Dutch Harbor and I was overheated, sweaty and out of breath.
A nice reunion with the captain, crew, fellow sub pilots, and the incredible Nuytco crew who oversee all sub operations, and my 16 hours of travel had finally come to an end. Another 16 hours of travel from Dutch Harbor to Pribilof Canyon would begin the next day, but I'd sleep through most of it.
As a young teenager, I finally got my wish: Scuba lessons for my 15th birthday! My lessons were in a moldy YMCA pool in suburban Philadelphia, and my first open water dive -- my checkout dive -- was in a quarry in Reading, Pennsylvania in the balmy month of December. Air temperature 36 degrees F, water temperature 40 degrees. My wetsuit was too big, was full of holes, and to this day I don't think I've ever been so cold. In those primitive days of the early 70s, we didn't use buoyancy compensators (BCs), vests that you can fill with air from your tank to keep you afloat at the surface or keep you neutrally buoyant at depth. Rather, we used "horse collar" safety vests -- virtually identical to what the flight attendant demonstrates the use of for the "unlikely event of a water landing." To put air into your vest, you had to grip the tip of the inflator tube with your teeth, push it in and blow until it was full. There were also two CO2 cartridges which would inflate the vest as a backup, but we were warned not to use them unless it was an absolute emergency since replacing the cartridges was expensive.
After surfacing following a visit to the highlight of the dive -- an overturned milk truck -- I realized I had too much weight on my weight belt and could barely tread water. So, I went to blow some air into my vest, but after so much time in the water, my lips were frozen and couldn't make a seal on the little inflator tube. Try as I did, the air simply escaped through my lips, making a horrific version of the sound children make to imitate propeller airplanes, so loud that it got the attention of some curious onlookers on shore. The combination of this ridiculous exercise, coupled with trying to tread water in an overweighted condition, exhausted me in no time. I feared the wrath of my instructor for my next decision, but I chose to live and "popped" my CO2 cartridges. In an instant was floating comfortably in a full vest, cold and exhausted, but euphoric. I remember the feeling finally coming back to my feet in a McDonald's nearly two hours after we left the quarry.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that, with the exception of the years I lived in California, I've been almost exclusively a warm water diver in the nearly 35 years that have passed since that cold day at the quarry, spending 90 percent of my underwater moments in the tropics. But in preparation for this week's Bering Sea Expedition led by Greenpeace, the cold water -- really cold water -- awaits us, and while our expedition plan has us exploring from the comfortable, dry helm of small submarines, we will also be scuba diving during part of the trip at some of the shallower sites, and I will be serving as underwater videographer. This means wearing a drysuit, and for that I needed specialized training and a certification. Unlike a wetsuit, which does allow some water to come between you and your suit, a drysuit is completely sealed, keeping you warm and dry inside. The suit itself has little or no thermal properties -- you're kept warm by the thermal underwear you wear underneath. I was excited about finally getting my drysuit certification, but it meant two open water dives in my first quarry dive in nearly 35 years. The first of those dives was a humbling flashback to 1973.
Following the lecture by Technical Instructor, Brian E. McMillan from the top-notch dive shop, Adventure Scuba Company in Chantilly, Virginia, we suited up and walked down the ramp into the waters of Millbrook Quarry in Haymarket, Virginia, along with NAUI Dive Master Jeff McManus and two other students. As I entered the water, I was concerned to feel what felt like water rushing into my drysuit. Brian suggested that I might be feeling my sweat being chilled by the cool water, but it ultimately became clear that something was amiss. Now, if you find yourself putting on a drysuit, it's important to remember one minor detail: There are TWO zippers, and only the inner zipper seals the water out. In my haste to get into my suit, I had only zipped the outer zipper, so in the first minute of my dive, I managed to convert my drysuit into a very wet wetsuit, proving that even experienced divers are capable of really stupid acts. Jeff patiently zipped me up and we continued...for about 20 seconds. I was flashing back to 1973, unable to stay afloat on the surface. Air was screaming out of one of my BC valves, and even using the auto-inflator to pump air in resulted in nothing more than a geyser of bubbles. Yes, another self-inflicted act of stupidity. I had forgotten to replace an o-ring in my BC after cleaning it recently and hadn't fully tested it before leaving for the quarry. My BC was useless. Fortunately, since drysuits have some air in them, they can help you maintain buoyancy. Like a BC, they have an inflator hose, so at the push of a button, you can puff air into your suit. Brian and Jeff, ever patient (though I'm sure by now were really having some doubts about their problem student) suggested that I continue the dive using the drysuit to control my buoyancy.
So down we went to the underwater platform, where we worked on several drills, including buoyancy control, connecting and disconnecting the inflator hose (an important skill should the valve become stuck). We also practiced recovering from an inverted position where air in the feet of your suit causes you to hang upside down. All was fine, except that as the dive progressed, my weightbelt -- which, in keeping with tradition, was overweighted -- kept sliding further and further down, ending up at my knees. Try as I did, I couldn't secure it properly atop my bulky drysuit. It was about then that I noticed that my expensive dive computer had flooded. When the dive finally ended, walking back to the cars was slow as I was probably carrying an additional 50 pounds -- of water -- in my suit. My integrated booties looked like clown shoes, ballooning with water with each step.
After our surface interval, a burger, another lecture, and some sunshine to partially dry out my thermals, it was time for dive number two. The training of my first dive prepared me well: TWO ZIPPERS! I lightened my weightbelt, and Jeff outfitted my BC with a spare o-ring. I found the "sweet spot" for my weightbelt and it didn't budge. Everything worked perfectly. I was warm, dry, perfectly trimmed, and beyond happy. Now I understood the appeal of drysuit diving -- amazing how much different the experience is when everything works. The water at the bottom of the quarry was very chilly, but I stayed warm.
I expressed my gratitude to Brian and Jeff for their patience and assistance. These are two terrific and highly professional instructors. Both humbly replied, "that's what we're here for" and emphasized how important it is to learn to deal with these problems, and to do so in a quarry, not the Bering Sea. They're absolutely right, and on the drive home from the quarry yesterday, I caught myself thinking what for nearly 35 years would have been unthinkable. "I'd like to dive here again."
Last week, Mirriam-Webster' announced that it was adding the word, "ginormous," to its 2007 update of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition. This is great news and comes as a great relief, just in time for next week's kickoff of the Bering Sea Expedition. For ever since I first visited Alaska, I have found an utter deficit of adjectives to adequately convey the state's enormity -- er, ginormity.
In 1991, I traveled to Glacier Bay with three friends from Southern California for a one-week sea kayaking trip among the glaciers. Though I had spent much of my life outdoors and on the water, I found myself fooled time and time again by the sheer scale of what I was seeing...I was comically inept at judging distance. From the stern of the kayak, I suggested to my friend, Jack, in the bow, "Why don't we stop for lunch at that next point? Looks like about a 45 minute paddle?" Three hours of paddling later, the point that seemed so close hadn't changed in size. The bigger-than-life landscape, combined with clear, dry air has played havoc with many a sailor to Alaska's shores.
Big, right? Sure, but now it's time to talk ginormous. Poke your head below Alaska's icy seas, and you're in for an even greater mind-bending exercise in scale. In 1983, President Ronald Regan extended the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to 200 nautical miles, more than doubling the size of the United States. In fact, the ocean part of the U.S. is larger than the dry part.
Our expedition plans call for us to visit two of the largest underwater features in the Bering Sea where we will work to document deepwater corals: Pribilof Canyon and Zhemchug Canyon. The latter is a long trip, a 670 kilometer (km) journey to the northwest from our starting point at Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, which will put us only about 440 km from Russian waters and the International Date Line. Indeed, Zhemchug Canyon is far west. Head due south and you'll brush by Midway Island then pass far to the west of Honolulu which will lie 1,600 km to your east. Further south, with strong binoculars, you might make out the coast of Savai'i, the larger main island in the State of Samoa, which will be to your east around 45 km away. You'll cross the Tonga Trench, 35,702 feet at its deepest point, before coming within 135 km of New Zealand's Chatham Islands to the west.
Alaska's enormous seascape is full of mountains and canyons that continue underwater the great drama of those hugging its shores and nestled in its heartland. Our starting point, Dutch Harbor, is a point along the huge Aleutian Island arc, a chain of volcanoes, enormous seamounts rising up from thousands of feet below. Zhemchug Canyon is a massive underwater canyon, considered the largest canyon in the ocean, plunging to 2,600 meters (8,530 feet), making it much deeper than the Grand Canyon.
In our tiny submarines, we can only hope to glimpse a tiny fraction of these vibrant canyons, and I already imagine how the scale will be overwhelming to us. I hope the folks at Mirriam-Webster's get a chance to read this. I'm already thinking that "ginormous" might not cut it. With apologies to "Jaws" star Roy Scheider, "You're gonna need a bigger word."
In the 100-degree heat here in Washington, DC, the daily weather reports from Dutch Harbor, Alaska showing highs of 50 degrees seem surreal, yet in just over two weeks, that's where I'll be as we kick off the Bering Sea Expedition aboard Greenpeace's magnificent ship, M/V Esperanza. In recent years, virtually all of my time aboard ships on research expeditions has been in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, so my wardrobe consisted of little more than a couple pairs of shorts and some thoughtfully-selected marine-themed T-shirts. But Alaska is different, and the Bering Sea is different still. The cool temperatures, wind, and damp chill of the fog combine to mean only one thing: Shopping. Since returning from our preparations aboard Esperanza near Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, I've given the plastic quite a workout and have a whole new waterproof, thermal wardrobe that might even be convincing enough for "Deadliest Catch." I've also had to purchase more than a terabyte of hard drive storage for the high-definition video we hope to capture during the 3-week expedition, along with a myriad of cables and assorted gadgets. Axiom: One can never have enough gadgets.
This past weekend, I decided that I needed to ramp up my sub pilot training. So journeyed to Wonderland with my daughter and rode the roller coaster -- twice.
