I was hired a few years ago to write a series of four books about scientists and their work and I wanted to write about one of my stepfather’s ex-graduate students, whose name was Dr. Edith Whitter. She studies marine bioluminescence — these animals that make their own light — and she uses deep-sea submersibles to observe them and to learn about them in their natural habitats.
When I decided to write about her, I called her up and I said, “Well, can I go down in one of these submersibles with you?” She said, “Well, do you have $23,000? Because that’s how much it costs to rent one of these things for a single day.” Well, of course, I didn’t have that kind of funds and my publishers weren’t going to pay for it. I thought, “Okay. I’ll just have to research this by reading her scientific articles and calling her on the phone — things like that.” But about a month after that, I got a call from Edie and she said, “Sneed, you won’t believe this! I just got three extra days of submersible time I don’t know what to do with. How would you like to go out on a cruise with me?” I said, “Are you kidding? Just tell me when and where.”
I flew down to the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, Florida, where she worked, and she gave me bad news. She said, “There’s a big storm off the coast. It’s way too rough to go out. But if you can hang out for a few days, the storm may get better.”
I decided, “Okay. I’d better hang out here.” Fortunately, the storm cleared off and I and several other students and writers went out on this amazing ship out to the Bahamas. We spent three days diving in this deep-sea submersible down to 3,000 feet deep. Going down in the submersible is just unlike anything in our normal day-to-day experiences.
We as humans think, “We go outside and there are trees and grass and blue sky, but most of the planet is not like that. Most of the planet is this very dark, cold world.” I mean, even from the moment you start descending in this submersible — and it’s that little cramped submersible; you’re in a very tight space — but from the moment you start doing that, things change, and they change dramatically.
The light just starts getting filtered out of the water. By 400 feet deep it’s kind of this eerie dusky blue. By a thousand feet deep, it’s pitch black. You see all this marine snow, which is this kind of combination of mucous and bacteria just kind of floating down into the deep sea and that’s the major food source for deep sea animals.
You go deeper and you start seeing these amazing fish go by the porthole as you go down. I distinctly remember this fish about this long called a viper fish with these incredible sharp teeth and these big eyes and this little bioluminescent thing that waved in front of it to attract prey to come close to it. Suddenly you’re at the bottom 3,000 feet down and you look out and it really looks like a lunar landscape.
You see just this white — almost ash or mud — everywhere. You think, “Oh, my gosh! It’s just desolate.” You start looking closer and you see tracks of animals everywhere. You might notice a brittle star over here sitting here. This tripod fish sitting over here. Maybe little comb jellies or ctenophore — these jelly animals are kind of bobbing around outside the submersible. Or fish that are attracted to the lights of the submersible.
One interesting thing about it is that these animals are so different than animals up to the surface. For instance, you might see a lot of starfish, but they’re kind of adapted. Some of them are kind of adapted to catch this marine snow coming down because that’s what they eat or the fish have really big eyes so they can see any bioluminescence that happens to go off.
Bioluminescence is a real key to how these animals survive — a lot of them. They use it to lure prey, to attract mates, to avoid being eaten; but they only use it when they have to because any time you light up you risk getting eaten by a predator. One of the fun things we did coming up on one of the dives is they turned out all the lights of the submersible; and we went through a layer of bioluminescent jelly animals.
Whenever they’d hit the submersible they’d light up; and so it looked like this glowing blue snow going by the portholes or the bell on the front. It was just spectacular, and I wish everyone could do it because it just changes your view of what the earth is like. You’re down there and you think, “Oh, this is what most of the world is like; not where we live.” For me it just reinforced the urgency for taking care of the places that we do have to live.