Alvin, Exploration and the Deep Ocean’s Floor

A deep-ocean crewed manoeuvrable submersible that became the 9 meter long called Alvin. It turned out to be a vehicle for unexpected science, very much in the Al Vine mould. Though all its activities are now filtered and controlled by the dead hand of peer review, the unexpected still shows through. And the science needs engineers, technicians, submersible pilots and seaman, all working as a team, and all liable, through contact with this unusual vehicle, to be people of strong character. The story of Alvin, its science and its people had been told in Water Baby.

Water Baby moves in chronological fashion fromAlvin’s conception and construction, through its recovery of a sunken hydrogen bomb off the coast ofSpain, its first encounters with deep ocean animals, and the famous project and then to the amazing story of the hydrothermal vents of the mid-ocean ridges. The areas are: the appalling and grotesque Lulu,Alvin’s first mother ship, the problems of women scientists in oceanography, the near misses, narrow scrapes, and hairy moments one to two miles below the sea surface. These crucial moments of discovery have been made clear, of which the most important was the finding ofhot springson the ocean floor.

Thehot springson the sea floor were earlier expected and pretty hot too, to judge from ore deposits found in fragments of ocean floor thrust onto land. A fair amount ofAlvin’s time had already been given to searching forhot springsbefore the first active springs were found. But no one had expected the hot springs to be surrounded by dense clumps of animal life, the most productive square meters on the planet. The geologists looking for sulphide ores found a whole new realm of life, all depending on bacterial chemosynthesis fuelled by the chemical contrast between the vent waters rich in hydrogen sulphide, methane and hydrogen and the oxygen-bearing water of the deep ocean.

Here are giant tube worms which contain large organs full of bacteria, and exist by bacterial symbiosis. They have no means of feeding and other way. Clams, mussels and snails also contain symbiotic bacteria. Some species of shrimp, by contrast, eat bacteria-coated sulphides and have great eye-like organs with which to sense the hot water. And these have been studied so far in the few places on the ocean floor.

In Water Baby the excitement, the wonder of the science, comes through most clearly, even through the details of the science are not always exactly correct. The intensity of the struggle that kept Alvin going, through funding droughts, political cynicism, and technical improvisation was conveyed.

At sea, each morning just after breakfast a pilot and two observers slip in through the hatch, and the sub is lowered into the sea. Each afternoon at tea time, Alvin bobs to the surface and is hoisted back on board. It seems such an ordinary procedure and yet, in between, the three on board have visited the edge of human capability and the seeming ordinariness is only possible through the dedication of pilots and technicians to the highest standard.