What I saw from Alvin
Well, this post has been a long time coming. Mainly because it's a daunting task to describe what diving in Alvin was like, so I kept putting it off. I've decided that a sub-par description is better than none at all, so here goes.
For three weeks in August I went to sea on the research vessel Atlantis with a team of fellow MBARI engineers as well as scientists from Dr. Ken Smith's lab. My team was there to test the autonomous vehicle we've been building, hopefully I'll talk more about that some other time. The special thing about Atlantis is that it is home to the deep sea research submarine Alvin, one of the few deep sea manned submersibles in the world. Because Ken Smith, the chief scientist of the cruise, is such a great guy, he tried his best to get as many people down in Alvin as the schedule permitted. Luckily, I was one of those lucky people.
Diving in Alvin was amazing. On my dive we went to 4100 meters deep and I seem to remember the rate of decent being around 25 meters a minute. So, that means for the first two hours and forty minutes we were descending. Not a minute of that time was boring though. There was a ton of stuff to see out of the small window next to where I was sitting, what I was struck by throughout the dive was how much biomass there actually is in the ocean. From about 250 meters deep until about 2000 meters there was a ton of bioluminesence. As the sub descended, it created turbulence in the water and this caused creatures affected by that turbulence to bioluminesce, a really amazing sight. When we eventually got to the bottom we quickly navigated to where our rover was parked and waited for it's mission script to begin. The evening before the dive I had been making code changes to the Rover, trying to work around a hardware bug that had only been uncovered after implementing some new behaviours. So, I was really interested (ahem, nervous) in how the Rover would perform. Luckily, the Rover did a pretty good job. It moved in the right direction, and at the right speeds (we were testing different speeds) right up until it got to the new moves we wanted it to make (turning to various compass points), then it made what right turn and quit. Great, nothing like seeing your bugs manifest themselves at 4100 meters. Luckily I was more worried about the 9000 pounds per square inch of water pressure we were under then what my colleagues would say about the bug, so I kept enjoying myself ;-)
So, with the Rover finished with it's mission we had other science objectives to complete. I'm not going to get into those, because this has already gone on longer than I'd planned. But the whole reason I wanted to make this post was to show the following video. We saw this little Isopod swimming by near the Rover and we were so intrigued by it that we followed it for several minutes. This kind of crazy creature is right at home in the deep ocean, where everything was a bit crazy.
Update: This isopod is from the family munnopsid and is a bathyopsurine, possibly a Bathopsurus or Paropsurus (see the comments section for how I found this out).
I felt like I was inside one of Salvador Dali's surreal landscapes...
For three weeks in August I went to sea on the research vessel Atlantis with a team of fellow MBARI engineers as well as scientists from Dr. Ken Smith's lab. My team was there to test the autonomous vehicle we've been building, hopefully I'll talk more about that some other time. The special thing about Atlantis is that it is home to the deep sea research submarine Alvin, one of the few deep sea manned submersibles in the world. Because Ken Smith, the chief scientist of the cruise, is such a great guy, he tried his best to get as many people down in Alvin as the schedule permitted. Luckily, I was one of those lucky people.
Diving in Alvin was amazing. On my dive we went to 4100 meters deep and I seem to remember the rate of decent being around 25 meters a minute. So, that means for the first two hours and forty minutes we were descending. Not a minute of that time was boring though. There was a ton of stuff to see out of the small window next to where I was sitting, what I was struck by throughout the dive was how much biomass there actually is in the ocean. From about 250 meters deep until about 2000 meters there was a ton of bioluminesence. As the sub descended, it created turbulence in the water and this caused creatures affected by that turbulence to bioluminesce, a really amazing sight. When we eventually got to the bottom we quickly navigated to where our rover was parked and waited for it's mission script to begin. The evening before the dive I had been making code changes to the Rover, trying to work around a hardware bug that had only been uncovered after implementing some new behaviours. So, I was really interested (ahem, nervous) in how the Rover would perform. Luckily, the Rover did a pretty good job. It moved in the right direction, and at the right speeds (we were testing different speeds) right up until it got to the new moves we wanted it to make (turning to various compass points), then it made what right turn and quit. Great, nothing like seeing your bugs manifest themselves at 4100 meters. Luckily I was more worried about the 9000 pounds per square inch of water pressure we were under then what my colleagues would say about the bug, so I kept enjoying myself ;-)
So, with the Rover finished with it's mission we had other science objectives to complete. I'm not going to get into those, because this has already gone on longer than I'd planned. But the whole reason I wanted to make this post was to show the following video. We saw this little Isopod swimming by near the Rover and we were so intrigued by it that we followed it for several minutes. This kind of crazy creature is right at home in the deep ocean, where everything was a bit crazy.
Update: This isopod is from the family munnopsid and is a bathyopsurine, possibly a Bathopsurus or Paropsurus (see the comments section for how I found this out).
I felt like I was inside one of Salvador Dali's surreal landscapes...
posted by acechase at 4:22 PM
4 Comments:
great video of fairy-like sea creature. thanks for taking the time to post your experience.
Thanks for sharing. Very cool stuff! Maybe I'll start my own blog about the amazing creatures I see behind my cubicle. -bcioffi
My scientist friend, Karen Osborne, tells me "That is a bathyopsurine, possibly Bathopsurus or Paropsurus. They are really rare - I've only seen 3 in my 5 years here working on munnopsids, the isopod family they belong too."
Hey, I am a marine biologist working on munnopsid isopods. Is it possible to show this video on a conference?Thanks a lot, Sarah
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