As professor Paul Tyler says, it was “another baking hot day in Paradise!” The R/V Seward Johnson stayed close to New Providence Island today. While the sub was down in the morning, the rest of us worked feverishly on our research projects. Miss K and I have been studying the tiny animals like worms and anemones and snails that live on the spines of deep sea urchins. Some of the spines are literally covered with little animals. It makes us wonder how these little animals ever find their moving urchin homes in the first place. Life is amazing, isn’t it?
I was just thinking today that I had no idea what day of the week it is anymore. Here at sea, far away from clocks and schedules and calendars, the days seem to run together into one. Now, don’t get me wrong. Every day is different and interesting. We’re doing amazing things and seeing things that few people (if anyone) have ever seen before! But the routine of ship life makes it very hard to not find yourself suddenly unaware of what the date is or even what day of the week it is. If I didn’t have my watch, I’d have no idea what time of day it was, except for where the sun is in the sky. It’s a different sort of life here, and I really like it. I’ll miss these sunny, timeless days in baking hot paradise.
Mr. Dunn
Dive blog for May 22, 2008
The afternoon dive started out wonderfully. I climbed into the back through the hatch underneath the submarine. The sub technician, Frank, climbed in after me. Soon the gigantic A-frame had lifted us up off the deck of ship and had set us down into the crystal clear water of the Bahamas. I took off my shoes and sat back to look out the porthole and enjoy the journey to the bottom of the sea. As we slowly sank deeper, the water through the porthole became less and less blue and more and more black. I could hear over my head-set that we were now 500 feet below the surface of the ocean. I began to see small flashes of light and began to get myself situated for watching the magnificent show of bioluminescence. And that’s when I heard a loud “POP!” just above my head.
I glanced at Frank to see if he was worried at all, but it didn’t seem to have bothered him. Then the lights went out…but only for a second. Frank again seemed completely unfazed. I figured that this sort of thing was normal. After all, I’d only been on one dive before. But then it happened again. The lights flickered out, and the fans and monitors went off and came back on. This time Frank picked up the phone and asked Phil, the sub driver in the front if the power was flickering on and off there too. It was. Frank and Phil radioed to the surface, and after a brief conversation, they decided that they would continue the dive but keep an eye on things. We were around 650 feet deep when the lights first flickered. By the time we were 850 feet deep, the power glitches were happening more frequently. I was beginning to get nervous. Phil decided to abort the dive and head back up for the surface.
A few minutes later, the power went out completely. We were now in the dark. Phil switched to emergency power and continued to move us slowly to the surface. My heart was beating a little harder now. The water didn’t seem to be getting lighter fast enough. I was so glad that Frank was back there with me. I asked him about different adventures he had been a part of in the sub. He told me about the time he was in the sub when the battery that powers the sub literally exploded beneath them and they had made it to the surface on the buoyancy of the sub alone. I appreciated these stories. If they had made it through all these other things alright, we would make it out of our current problem alright, too. But Frank’s stories served another purpose besides just calming my troubled mind. They had also distracted me. Before I knew it, the water outside the porthole window was a bright blue. I saw a beautiful jellyfish swim past, followed by a little yellow fish. We reached the surface around 4:45 PM and were brought back on board the Seward Johnson. As I write this, the sub technicians are working to discover the electrical problem with the submarine so that they can fix it and be ready for tomorrow’s dives. If there’s one thing I learned today from my adventure in the deep, it’s that despite all of our technology and progress, the study of the deep sea is still a thrilling and sometimes dangerous field.
Mr. Dunn