Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 – sub log
Diving with Myndee McNeill (Millicoma Middle School)
Mud volcano surrounded by mussels
I was already super-excited to ride in the submarine, but when we were told to look for mud volcanoes and radioactive towers of barite (which is a special kind of salt), I got even more excited! There are few things on earth as exciting as submarines, volcanoes, and radioactivity, but this trip put them all together!
The sub was moved quickly and smoothly from the deck into the water. I didn’t even notice when we entered the water, because I was paying too much attention to the pilot telling me about all of the scary things that might happen to us underwater. As we started dropping down through the water, it changed from a blue-green color to total darkness. That’s when the light show started: we could see little pops and flashes of light from the bioluminescent animals! There were some large bioluminescent jellyfish, and siphonophores that looked like intricate necklaces with a few glowing beads. They moved from the bottom to the top of the window, so it looked like we were flying through outer space, with stars and strange-shaped UFOs speeding past us. My very favorite experience was when we reached the bottom. It was so awesome to be on the sea floor, with the whole ocean on top of us! On this dive we were over 2000 feet down! Once we were close to the bottom, the pilot turned the lights on, and we were able to see fish (hagfish are SO gross-looking), and a lot of ophioroids (brittle stars) wrapped around gorgonians (sea fans). We saw a giant isopod and a white lobster, and we collected a lot of starfish, crabs, and mussels. And we found a mud volcano! It was so beautiful! It was all different colors, with a lot of different animals all around it, and methane bubbling from the top. We collected some water samples and then headed back to the surface. We turned off all of the lights inside and outside of the sub. It was nighttime, so for a half-hour, we were able to watch the bioluminescent animals. There seemed to be millions of them! We turned on the lights just before we surfaced, and in no time at all, I was back on the deck. Nothing could ever top this experience. I can’t wait to go down again!