Posted by Barbara Campbell, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Delaware College of Marine Studies.

Today the sun glistened across the gray decks at 06:50. With the sun’s welcoming rays, the electricians and pilots of Alvin bustled around the sub, readying it for the day’s dive. I’m glad that they were all prepared yesterday when I ventured into the deep waters of the Guaymas Basin. This was my first dive in Alvin, but has not been my first in a deep-submergence vehicle. I dove in the DSV Nautile, on a French-sponsored cruise to 13° N last summer. Although that was very interesting, I felt much more involved on the Alvin. I’d like to share some of my experiences from yesterday’s dive.

As I walked up the steps to Alvin’s hatch, I felt a sense of adventure and apprehension. I wasn’t at all worried about changing the surface-to-dive ratio (it should, if everything goes correctly, stay at a constant 1:1), but in accomplishing all that I and the rest of the scientists wanted to do. We had a lot on our schedule, with two chimney samples to take, five sediment cores, and a variety of macrofauna (clams and crabs), as well as chemical surveys of Rifta tubeworms, chimneys, and cores. As I and my fellow first-timer, Brian Glazer, settled into the sphere, checking out the limited space, the pilot, Bruce Strickrott, only on his second solo dive, was busy doing all the pre-dive checks.

We encountered darkness at ~150 meters and were able to easily observe the bioluminescent microfauna flowing upwards in the water column. Once we arrived at the bottom, work started. We immediately encountered a large clump of tubeworms and did our surveys and collected a small round chimney structure, where the hydrothermal vent fluid flowed and shimmered around it. The tubeworms were beautiful with their red, velvety gills extending from their tubes. They would respond to the mechanical arm of Alvin by hiding in their tubes when the pilot moved the arm by them. They’d pop right back out after a few seconds. We finished up at this unnamed structure, and headed out to the next collection site.

At this point, I realized that we had at least five more hours of dive time and took advantage of the restroom facilities, which consisted of a bottle. The guys were good about it and looked out the windows for interesting features. We were on our next collection series at K2, a large, flattened hydrothermal structure, when we encountered a problem in the sub. Our CO2 levels were rising to levels which would certainly have given us headaches and may have gone into the danger zone. A faulty canister of CO2 absorbent was at fault, and the pilot, with the help of the surface crew, used some ingenuity to fix the problem.

Back to work, we finished at K2 and started out to find live clams. Brian and I had our lunch, leftover filet mignon sandwiches. Nothing to drink, we still had 2 – 3 hours before surfacing. As we were searching for areas to take core samples, the pilot noticed we were low on power and made the call to clear us for surfacing. I was a bit disappointed that we had to leave the ocean bottom where life is so different than anything I had encountered before.

But at 500 meters from the surface, the ship radioed that there were pilot whales above us. We started hearing their calls just after that, with clicking and squeaking noises interspersed with Alvin’s sonar pings. We discussed what the whales might think the Alvin was. Certainly not another whale. An intelligent life form, maybe?

I then started to wonder what the other scientists had in store for Brian and me since it was our first Alvin dive. I knew it would consist of a bucket of ice-cold seawater over our heads after we emerged from Alvin. Well, they didn’t disappoint me — I had three buckets dumped over me. Brian had all that and whipped cream in his shoes as well. After our hot showers, we were back to work processing the samples, performing chemical analyses, culturing the microorganisms, and detailing the work we performed on bottom. A successful first dive for both of us. I’m now ready for my next one!