#10. It’s snowing at the bottom of the ocean
In which the E@L recalls impressions from a deep ocean submersible dive
Sinking through space in a six-foot steel sphere Descending from day into watery night Blue turns to purple turns to black turns to . . . light! Fireworks! Flashes, and sparks zip by as Bioluminescent plankton, disturbed by our descent Say “Lookout, there; get out of my space” And so we keep falling freely for hours While I drift into insensibility As blinking lights and whirring motors Create a deep ocean lullaby “Bottom coming up!” the pilot announces Jarring me back to consciousness Although it’s really us coming down We spellbound aquanauts can hardly contain Our excitement at seeing the bottom again What will we find? Volcanic extrusions? Leviathan bones? Gigantic crustaceans? All of the above, over the next few days But today it’s snowing at the bottom of the ocean! Flurries of fluffy, fluttering, flakes falling down Reflect our searchlights and obscure our view. I’m looking for Christmas trees and little Santas on skis But it’s marine snow, an aggregation of pelagic excrement and organic debris The pilot says “I have to pee, Who wants to drive?” Me me me me! We trade positions. This must be a dream I’m driving a five-ton, multi-million-dollar, One-of-a-kind submarine Ten thousand feet beneath the waves And I am terrified I will crash it But it’s surprisingly easy Push the stick forward, we float ahead Lift it up and we gently rise Turn it sideways and the world outside Revolves around us (as it should) We’re flying in slow-mo at the bottom of the sea Suddenly the bottom is covered with poppies Where is Dorothy, I think, and the cowardly lion? But these are not flowers, and this is not OZ They are crinoids, reaching upward with multiple arms to pluck precious nutrition from life-giving snow. Finally, it’s time to go home To leave this world, and go back to our own We drop our weights, and begin to ascend Upwards out of the deep ocean night Black becomes purple becomes blue becomes light Clunk! The ship’s crane lifts us onto the deck We climb out, stretching stiff knees and necks Other scientists and crew gather around Asking: What did you see? What have you found? What did you bring us, to study and learn? Of all the things I have seen in the ocean The thing I remember is this simple notion; Because all energy comes from above, For earthbound humans, it’s sky gods we love, But deep-sea creatures in the primordial soup Spend their lives worshiping plankton poop.
Notes: During two research cruises to Patton Seamount in the Gulf of Alaska in 1999 and 2002 I made five dives to depths of over 3700 m in the Submersible Alvin to study the the ecology of seamounts - extinct underwater volcanos. In a future series of articles, I will describe these investigations in detail.
Mega-💙