Run Silent, Run Deep--Exploring the Underwater Depths in a Minisub : Offshore Canyon Is Yielding Its Secrets to Research Scientists

Imagine for a moment that someone proposes a daring exploration of the Grand Canyon that will rely entirely on a small, one-person helicopter, operating in a blizzard at night with lights that penetrate only 15 to 20 feet, hovering in the darkness for three or four hours at a time.

Crude though that might seem, though, the imaginary scientists behind this project quickly point out that the tentative helicopter descents are far superior to the only previously known--if fictitious--means of exploring the reaches of the canyon. For years, scientists have relied on flying above it in a small plane that tows a butterfly net on a long cable to collect whatever may be flying in the canyon air at the moment.

Ridiculous? Improbable?

Bigger and Deeper

Aboard the Research Vessel Wecoma at sea 7.4 miles off Monterey, precisely the equivalent of the blizzard penetration by helicopter is occurring. Using the Deep Rover, a small, one-person submarine, members of a team of researchers are descending, for the first time, 2,000 feet into the middle of the Monterey Canyon--essentially the underwater equivalent of the Grand Canyon, except that this one is bigger, deeper and far more mysterious.

The dives began two weeks ago and will conclude in mid-September--marking the first attempt ever made to explore on scene the life forms that inhabit the canyon, whose walls begin their sheer drop less than a mile off Moss Landing on Monterey Bay and continue, sweeping into the ocean in a huge sort of S-curve, 60 miles out to sea, reaching a depth of as much as 14,000 feet.

A small deep-diving submarine piloted by geologists of the U.S. Geological Survey made, in two brief attempts, a tentative exploration of the rock formations at the very head of the canyon off Moss Landing a decade ago. But the Deep Rover project now under way represents the first time biologists have had access to the canyon to try to determine what life forms live in it and how they survive.

Deep Rover is diving with a sophisticated television camera aboard that will produce more than 100 hours of videotape footage eventually to be turned into an educational exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium here and a documentary to be aired initially by the British Broadcasting Corp. and perhaps later on network American television.

Among the discoveries that have already emerged is confirmation of a theory first espoused by UC Santa Barbara marine biologist Bruce Robison--project director of the canyon exploration here--that the amount and diversity of ocean life throughout the world may far exceed what scientists have heretofore believed.

Undercount of species

The vast undercount of both species and the sheer volume in which they exist has occurred, according to Robison, because marine biologist have based previous projections on net-dragging techniques--the equivalent to dragging the butterfly net behind a plane through the Grand Canyon. In these experiments, scientists tow nets 1,500 feet or more below the surface of the bay in hopes of sampling life there.

But Robison has long contended that the netting technique destroys creatures that are caught and, more important, that the denizens of the oceans are smart and alert enough to largely avoid being caught, anyway. Robison got initial confirmation of that, he said, in a series of more primitive deep dives off Santa Barbara in the last two years.

In the canyon, however, Robison said in an interview aboard the Wecoma between dives this week, what has been encountered so far is enough to make it seem increasingly probable that existing estimates of the volume of marine life in the seas may be a tenth or less than what actually exists there. If what he believes proves to be true on any scale throughout the world, there is at least the potential that Robison’s findings could have significant implications for the ability of marine food sources to satisfy the needs of mankind.

For the moment, though, this direct application of the theory to feeding people remains tentative and unestablished--pending many more years of research in places far afield of the canyon here.

An illustration of the theory, though, sits in a plastic pail aboard the Wecoma. Researchers have unceremoniously placed in storage for eventual display in the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Cannery Row, several tiny, 3-inch octopuses of a species seldom seen in deep netting exploration of the canyon. But on several of Deep Rover’s dives so far, Robison and researcher Jose Torres, of the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, have each encountered huge numbers of the little creatures, tentatively identified as a species called Oxythoe tuberculata .

The octopuses have found Deep Rover irresistible, clinging to the submarine in deep water so that when the craft is pulled out by the Wecoma’s crane after a dive, many of the little creatures have been hanging on. Recovery of the heretofore rare octopuses has involved nothing more than plucking them from Deep Rover’s hull and dropping them into the bucket on deck.

“This is a very exciting discovery,” noted Chuck Baxter, a Stanford University marine biologist working at the nearby Hopkins Marine Station and a specialist in Monterey Bay life forms. For Baxter, who is not directly involved in the Deep Rover project, watching its progress from shore is still a highlight, he said, of a professional lifetime.

Reviewing tape from Deep Rover that showed many of the little octopuses jetting back and forth in front of the camera, Baxter noted with a chuckle that Oxythoe tuberculata has been known to exist since 1840 when a biologist discovered it and, having classified it and given it a species name, promptly boiled it up and ate it.

Psychedelic Light Shows

While Deep Rover’s dives and the taping are far from complete, enough videocassettes have been brought to the surface to begin to unravel at least some of the other mysteries of life in the canyon. It is a place so alien that it may as well be outer space and the Deep Rover a satellite on interplanetary assignment.

“You can’t help but realize that you are exploring a frontier that is (as) inaccessible to the rest of the world (as outer space),” said Edie Widder, a UC Santa Barbara marine biologist who is using Deep Rover for study of the unique abilities of deep-water creatures to create their own light. “Occasionally, you see things that you don’t have a clue what they are.”

And as for her exploration of what is called bioluminescence, Widder said she was prepared for almost psychedelic light shows as she maneuvered Deep Rover at 2 knots in the total darkness of the depths, but that what she has found has exceeded her expectations. “It’s like the Fourth of July down there,” she observed.

For television audiences conditioned to expect great white sharks glowering menacingly in every documentary about the oceans, the tape coming up from the canyon could seem tame. There are few fish of any size--other than an occasional and uninspiring hake. While some whales dive to 2,000 feet and beyond, Deep Rover is unlikely to encounter them. And the reality of life in the depths is simply far different from what occurs closer to the surface.

But what is emerging is a picture of a subtle yet incredibly intricate world whose residents are comparatively small in size (though one type of luminescent invertebrate grows, rope-like, to more than 30 feet long) yet amazingly diverse. The rope-like creatures are called syphonophores, animals that are actually colonies of organisms divided up so that parts of the rope are responsible for food and protection while others provide digestive function and, still others, reproductive capability.

Though what might be called big ticket creatures--except for occasional giant squid--are essentially unknown, in their own way, the canyon dives are encountering a complex of life fare more exciting than anything discovered so far in the space program.

In a sequence shot two days ago at 1,800 to 2,000 feet below the surface, for instance, Robison, who is project director for the dives (financed by a $240,000 grant from the National Science Foundation), cruised in Deep Rover through a virtual blizzard of what biologists call “marine snow.”

It’s Snowing Sediment

Not unique to the Monterey Canyon, marine snow actually is a phenomenon created by small bits of sediment, decaying marine organisms and some small living invertebrates that dominates the undersea landscape from just below the surface to the bottom--much farther than Deep Rover is now diving. Marine snow was first identified by graduate students at UC Santa Cruz eight to nine years ago, said Hopkins Marine Station’s Baxter. In the years since, snow has been found to be biologically important because of its role in development of ocean bacteria and its influence on photo synthesis for marine plants.

The density of the snow varies, but at the depths at which Deep Rover is operating, it seems almost blizzard-like. It moves in the natural up and down draft action of the deep water, gently rising and falling, looking like the sky at night in cloudless weather in a place without lights.

As the deep diver moves along, the sensation the camera records suggests a toy glass diorama sphere filled with oil which, when shaken, unleashes a torrent of little white particles that settle to the bottom, again looking like a driving snowfall. With Deep Rover’s powerful lights played on it, marine snow becomes a stupefying visual effect, complete with the occasional exotic white, blue and red flashes of luminescent creatures. In all, it makes the most expensive special effects that can be produced by Hollywood movie studios seem inept.

It is the ideal environment for Deep Rover, a 6,800-pound craft built jointly by American and Canadian designers and owned by Can-Dive Services, a Vancouver-based marine service firm that does most of its business with oil companies working on undersea projects. Priced at about $700,000--or rentable at $4,000 a day, complete with a three-man support crew--the Deep Rover is only about a quarter the price of other, better known research submarines, including the famed Alvin craft. Its tender vessel this trip, the 9-year-old, 158-foot Wecoma, is owned by Oregon State University and based in Newport, Ore.

Deep Rover is capable of operating as deep as 3,000 feet, but because a smaller rescue sub aboard the Wecoma, called a WASP, can dive only to 2,000 feet, the Monterey Canyon project is keeping to that depth for safety reasons. Caution is appropriate because the canyon walls are only crudely defined in existing marine charts--Robison and other researchers have routinely found bottom measurements to be inaccurate--and the area represents, in many ways, a vast unknown.

For the canyon program, Deep Rover represents an ideal tool--both in terms of cost and because of what it is specialized to do. Unlike deeper-diving small subs--Deep Rover could never be used to find the wreck of the Titanic, for instance, which lies in water 14,000 feet deep--the sub being used in the Canyon can hover off the bottom, maneuvering readily in any direction. Craft capable of going deeper are generally most at home on the bottom and have limited maneuverability in so-called mid-waters.

Deep Rover consists of a clear plastic sphere about five feet in diameter and five inches thick. The sphere is strapped to battery packs, air tanks, motors and other propulsion gear. The net effect for the single passenger, however, is almost unlimited visibility in any direction. It brings literally the ability to hang motionless or move in any direction, suspended in a totally transparent viewing bubble, as much as a half-mile down or more.

Deep Rover is vastly superior to an unmanned camera because it can be maneuvered precisely by the on-board scientist to capture specimen creatures with a suction device, reach out to sample items with a remote-controlled lobster claw on a hydraulic arm and see what is going on around him with far greater clarity than it can be viewed even on the high-resolution videotape Deep Rover is shooting.

In the midst of the marine snow Wednesday, Robison encountered a creature--a variety of the Medusa jellyfish called Colobonema sericeum that, he conceded chatting later aboard the Wecoma, he has always felt to be the most beautiful in the sea. It has long been known, said Robison, that the Medusa, which is perhaps a foot to 18 inches long at the depth at which Deep Rover was operating, is capable of discarding its tentacles as part of its evasive action to avoid predators.

But cruising through the marine snow Wednesday, Robision captured on videotape a bizarre sequence that demonstrates the intricacies of the Medusa’s flight. The creature first turns on white flashing lights in the tentacles, alternating that bioluminescence with a neon blue shade for the main part of its body as it continues to flee.

Then, just when it senses it is about to be devoured, the Medusa discharges the tentacles, giving them one last skyrocket-like white flash before the main body darts away, having neatly darkened itself, leaving the would-be predator with the lifeless tentacles, still glimmering.

Theory Confirmed

Elsewhere in the snow, Robison said he had confirmed a theory to which he has subscribed for several years to explain what would otherwise seem bizarre behavior by a little pencil-like fish called the eel pout. The eel pout--specimens of which Robison recovered at about 1,800 feet--is otherwise known as the zoarcid . It is semi-transparent, with most of its body crystal clear and only the head distinctly colored in black and red. When threatened, the eel pout--eight inches to a foot long--coils itself snake-like and hangs dead in the water, making no attempt to flee.

Robison knew of the behavior, but he couldn’t figure it out until this week when he saw the eel pout go into its coiling routine in deep water and not in a tank someplace. Coiled and hanging motionless, Robison realized that the eel pout had changed its appearance from fish to jellyfish, mimicking a jelly species in which predators are not interested because it lacks significant nutritional value.

For Robison, Widder and Torres, working in Deep Rover has engendered a child-like enthusiasm and a sense of excitement that, they say, they have seldom--if ever--experienced before. “We have never been able to see how (many of) these animals behave ,” Robison explained.

Though the biology on which the Deep Rover is focusing is vitally important of itself, what all of the new research is doing is shedding important new light on the totality of the Monterey Canyon, agreed Robison, Hopkins’ Baxter and Robin Burnett, a bay and canyon scientist who helps run Sea Studios, Inc., which is co-producing the video documentary with the BBC.

Although there are other marine canyons on the West Coast and elsewhere in the world, the Monterey Canyon is both the biggest of all on this continent and the only one that exists where two distinct parts of the ocean--colder waters of the north and warmer seas of the south--sort of commingle. So it is in the canyon that many forms of life are found to coexist that, otherwise, are not necessarily associated with one another.

The canyon is also unique in that its steep drop-off begins literally within easy reach of the shore. One can stand anywhere on the Monterey Bay--from Santa Cruz to Monterey or Pacific Grove--and easily see waters above the canyon itself. The drops into the abyss below are sudden. Depths of more than 6,000 feet are commonplace within 10 miles of the coast and, the head of the canyon, literally just off the beach in the shadow of the smokestacks at the Pacific Gas & Electric generating station at Moss Landing, are 600 feet.

Strikingly Similar Shapes

The comparisons to the Grand Canyon are natural. Seen in geological cross section, the Monterey and Grand Canyons have strikingly similar shapes. They are about the same depth, with the Monterey Canyon running deeper than the Grand Canyon. In one cross-sectional comparison prepared by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a typical section of the Monterey Canyon is overlaid on top of a similar image of the Grand Canyon, yielding an image of almost identical topography--with the Monterey Canyon close in to cities on the bay averaging about 6,300 feet deep and the Grand Canyon, 5,450. The Grand Canyon, at 277 miles, is longer than the ocean cavity, but the two canyons are about the same width--five to eight miles.

There is even a geological theory--though aquarium education director Steven Webster emphasized it is nothing more than that--that at one time 20 or 30 million years ago, what is now known as the Colorado River emptied into the sea somewhere around what is now Bakersfield. It is the Colorado that has carved the Grand Canyon and, so this theory goes, the Grand and Monterey Canyons may at one time in the dimmest recesses of history been a single geological entity.

For all its closeness to human civilization, though, the colossus just under Monterey Bay may as well be in another solar system in terms of what is known about it with certainty. While primitive measurements have been taken and the canyon has fascinated a few scientists for many decades, Baxter noted that it has not been until recently that the technology--i.e. deep-diving research submarines--has existed to explore this portion of inner space.

Still, lamented Baxter and Burnett, research money is scarce for exploration of the canyon and, though the Deep Rover program represents a welcome step, even the month-long project will only scratch the surface compared to what will remain unknown about the canyon. Baxter noted that while Robison wrote his doctoral thesis based on canyon research several years ago, today there are no doctoral students working on the Monterey Bay. The doctoral program at Hopkins was discontinued several years ago and Stanford has looked elsewhere at the frontiers of medicine and molecular biology for new research fields.

But perhaps, speculated Burnett and Baxter, Deep Rover and its adventures this summer will change that and prompt a new focus on the vast array of things that will remain unknown about the canyon.

Steve Webster looked out at the Bay waters where Deep Rover and the Wecoma were working, pondering the quirks of geological and historical fate that saw the levels of the ocean rise several million years ago, assuring that the Monterey Canyon would remain a deep, wet mystery and the Grand Canyon would become a tourist attraction.

“If the bay weren’t full of sea water,” he said with a grin, “people would come here for mule rides, too.”