That’s the Way It Was : Underwater on a Soviet Miniature Sub

Soviet Union oceanographers, in the latest manifestation of glasnost, are showing off their newest state-of-the-art mini-submarines to a select group of American scientists this week.

The Russians seem to be sparing no secrets from the Americans and even talk freely and with pride of their tiny subs’ part last May in locating the Soviet nuclear submarine that sank off Norway with the loss of 42 lives.

They said that they got a good look at the sub where it lies more than a mile deep, at 6,500 feet, and that it appears intact with no leakage of radioactivity--a matter of overriding concern to these scientists.

The large, well-appointed mother ship, the Academician Alexander Mstislav Keldysh, is now cruising eight miles off this island while the two subs dive on the great extinct volcano called the Bermuda Sea Mount.

Several years of informal talks between American and Soviet ocean scientists and a year of intense negotiations brought about this first joint oceanographic venture. The Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oceanology and a group of American scientists brought together by the National Geographic are the co-sponsors of this phase.

The U.S. Geological Survey co-sponsored the first stage, a dive a month ago on the Palmer Ridge midway between the Azores and Spain. The subs dove three miles below to study the geology of this 25-million-year-old escarpment, an almost unexplored region of the ocean depths.

This week I was invited to participate in the first dive of a week-long series designed to further acquaint the Americans with the Soviet submarines, crews and systems and to test an American theory on how to better photograph and study the large sea creatures which live at extreme depths--maybe even (this is always the hope of explorers) to find new beasts down there.

The idea seems simple enough. The men who thought it up are Dr. Joe MacInnis, a 52-year-old physician from Toronto, who has spent a lifetime diving to study human performance in the ocean’s hostile environment, and Emory Kristof, a 48-year-old bearded figure MacInnis calls the world’s greatest underwater photographer.

Lure Giant Sharks

They call it megabaiting and its purpose is to more efficiently lure into range of the submarine cameras those wily giant sharks and other predators cruising the Atlantic deep. By taking down more bait they hope to be able to hover for hours, silent and dark nearby, to get pictures of more animals over a longer period of time.

On my mission I dove to 3,600 feet to place the bait along the slope of the old volcano that rises 16,000 feet and whose 200-square-mile peak is today’s Bermuda.

“We” were my co-observer, Wilbur Garrett, editor of the National Geographic, our Soviet pilot, Evgeny Chezniaev (Genya), and I. We were in Mir II--Mir, the Russian word for “peace.”

There are two Mirs, designed by the Russians and built on contract by Finland. Launched two years ago, they joined one of the smallest fleets in the world and certainly the most exotic--the mini-submarines capable of carrying two or three persons to almost four miles below the surface.

There are only three others--the French Nautile, which was used to reach the Titanic; a Japanese entry and the U.S. Navy’s Alvin, the pioneer deep submersible now 25 years old.

Experts say the twin Mirs are faster and more comfortable than their rivals. All are about the same size--the cabins are roughly six by six feet square and five feet high, but the Mirs, thanks to newer, miniaturized equipment, have been able to leave more room for the occupants.

Confined Four Hours

And comfort can mean efficiency when one is confined to such a tiny box for more than four hours on a simple dive. A 20-hour dive planned later would provide an ultimate test of the Mirs’ comfort quotient.

In Mir, in contrast to at least Alvin, one can stand almost fully erect to stretch one’s cold-cramped legs.

And another important factor is that the Mirs are built so that storage and equipment bins are fitted along the hull, providing some insulation between the crew and the cold, damp bulkhead against which one is forced on the Alvin.

Two leather couches almost six feet long line two sides of Mir, and from a prone position on his stomach an observer can peer out of a six-inch wide porthole. The pilot from his chair, which also can be collapsed to form a couch for better viewing, looks out a one-foot wide porthole.

These, the only windows, must be small and strong to withstand the 1,800-pounds-per-square-inch pressure at 3,600 feet or 10,000 psi at maximum depth of 20,000 feet.

Our dive went like this:

9:45 a.m. A cloudy day, the sea comparatively calm, the white tile roofs of Bermuda barely visible on the horizon. We climb a ladder up the curving side of Mir II, resting in her cradle on the Keldysh’s deck. We are dressed in jump suits with virtually nothing underneath. We’ve been warned that the heat will be intense until we get to some depth, an hour or an hour and a half from now, and then there will be thermal outer garments aboard if we need them. How wise this bit of information.

We balance precariously at the edge of the hatch on top of the sub to take off our shoes, which we drop in a cardboard box held by one of the ship’s crew. Then through the narrow hatch and down the four rungs of steel ladder into the sub.

It is already intensely hot inside. With the humidity it seems much hotter than the 89 degrees the gauge shows. Perspiration actually bursts out. Genya passes out the towels.

9:53 a.m. We have been swung outboard from Keldysh by a large derrick and now we are dropped gently into the water. The submarine, not meant to be stable in this unnatural surface environment, bobs like a cork.

9:58 a.m. We are waiting for divers to attach onto Mir’s maneuverable claw the yard-square, open-weave, wire-reinforced plastic basket holding our “megabait”--1,000 pounds of fresh tuna--a lot of fish food and a fortune in sushi. The temperature is up to 95.

10:09 a.m. The bait is affixed and the divers give us thumbs up.

10:11 a.m. We are on the way down, a free fall with the sub upright and no sense of motion except for occasional bits of white debris of some sort that give the illusion of ascending around us.

10:13 a.m. We are descending at the rate of about 70 feet a minute. The sea has darkened gradually, and, now at almost 300 feet, it is almost black outside. We won’t see the natural light again for hours.

I notice a little pool of water on the sill of the porthole. A leak! I hope I don’t look as alarmed as I feel as I point it out to Genya. He shrugs and shakes his head. I take that--hopefully--to mean no problem.

10:21 a.m. Genya leans forward. He is frowning as he studies the instruments.

“Anything wrong?” I ask.

“Not. Not nothing,” he answers.

I am not assured.

10:23 a.m. We are 900 feet down, a fourth of the way. The temperature is not dropping yet. Rivers of sweat are pouring down my back, a tickling trickle. Genya has dropped his jump suit to the waist.

10:30 a.m. Genya tries to contact the surface by radio--our only lifeline. If we had to summon help, the other Mir might be able to render some assistance. The crew cannot transfer from one sub to the other, but a second sub might be able to disentangle the stricken sub.

His first couple of calls go unanswered. Perhaps it is only 10 or 15 seconds before he gets a response, but it seems a lot longer to this novice.

Readouts on the communications equipment and instrument panels are all in English. Genya can’t explain why.

10:35 a.m. We are at 1,800 feet, one-half the way down. Temperature holding high.

Genya is fiddling with the computer which reads “TOC Error.” I hope it is minor. Could it mean: “Take Off Cronkite?” Or “Tell Off Cronkite.” These computers are getting pretty smart, I realize.

10:37 a.m. Instrument showed our heading 15 minutes ago as 101 degrees--roughly southeast. Now it reads 127 degrees. We are slowly revolving due south, toward Bermuda, but this, like our descent, is unnoticeable.

10:43 a.m. 2,500 feet. I feel some tilting, nose up, but Bill doesn’t. No instrument that I can find shows that attitude. The temperature has dropped a couple of degrees but not much help.

10:46 a.m. 2,700 feet. Action! A huge shark hits our bait box suspended out there on the grappler arm. The sub rocks almost imperceptibly. He hits it again in a quick pass, his body blocking the porthole as he darts past. And then he is gone. He doesn’t like the wire-enmeshed plastic despite the tuna inside.

10:52 a.m. I notice the smell of something like hydraulic fluid--another fire hazard, like the explosive pure oxygen I assume we are breathing. Any short in the sub’s electrical equipment could touch us off like a bomb, I reason. Bill says he smells it too. From Genya: “No problem.” (I learned later that the atmosphere in the sub is ambient air from the surface, just touched up with a little oxygen. Nothing explosive about it. Now they tell me!)

Temperature has dropped another couple of degrees--not much but it feels more comfortable.

11:03 a.m. 3,475 feet. We see the bottom--or what will have to stand in for it. Actually there is no “bottom” here. This extinct volcano rises at an average of about 60 degrees and what we are seeing now is the side of a mountain, great outcroppings of rocks covered with what looks like snow. It is fine coral sand that over the centuries has piled onto these rocks to give them an appearance of an Alpine mountain.

We are moving down the mountainside. There are little, almost level patches and suddenly it drops straight down and we are looking at the side of a rugged cliff. Here now the cliff actually becomes an overhang. The mountainside drops away underneath into the dark beyond the range of our lights, which is only a dozen feet or so.

The first living thing floats by--a twig-like being that looks like a seaborne giant praying mantis. There is life in the cliffside--beautiful young coral, fan coral and something I have never seen before--a coral that grows straight out from the cliff on a long, corkscrew stem before blossoming into an umbrella-shaped lacy bush.

11:05 a.m. 3,600 feet. Our basket touches the cliff and Genya opens the grapple to place it on the slope. It sets off an avalanche, a snowstorm of the fine coral sand. We are caught in the blizzard. Visibility zero.

11:12 a.m. We are waiting for the snowstorm to subside so Genya can see how the bait basket is situated. I wonder if we will see it again. It seems to me that it must have tumbled down this steep mountainside.

Temperature down to 87 and time to zip up the jump suit. Genya is still bare-chested.

11:20 a.m. Sand storm has subsided but no bait box in sight. Keldysh is asking us to start back. They want to get other dives in today. Genya asks what we want to do. Bill and I want to try to find the lost bait box and see if it has attracted any hungry sharks.

Our color television monitor that gives a great picture of the scene immediately outside the sub has gone out.

We bump the bottom, and another snowstorm. Another wait for visibility to return.

11:33 a.m. Finally we find the bait box just below where we left it. A couple of eels and small fish are picking at it.

The box is perched precariously on the cliff side and the scientists on Keldysh fear that any attacking sharks would knock it off, never to be found again. So Genya picks it up again with the grappling arm and we’ll take it back to the surface. We won’t be permitted to try again. The Keldysh wants us back. We have failed our one task on this dive.

11:40 a.m. We are climbing the cliff face like an elevator and at about that speed. The temperature has dropped to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

12:07 p.m. Genya breaks out our Russian lunch from under the seat--a three-layered dagwood. The first level bologna, the second cheese and the third various vegetables including tomato and lettuce.

The most annoying problem now is condensation, which drips from the overhead on my notes and camera and inside my glasses.

12:40 p.m. Genya lights the after-burners. Up to now we have been rising on the natural buoyancy from having pumped water from our ballast tanks. Now he starts the small maneuvering engines and tilts the nose up a bit. It gives us some small additional speed. We are now rising almost 60 feet a minute.

12:56 p.m. We are 180 feet from the surface and the sea is brightening.

1 p.m. We are bobbing again on the surface in the sea of beautiful bubbles from our venting tanks.

1:30 p.m. The divers have recovered the bait box and we are being lifted toward the Keldysh.

1:37 p.m. Back in our cradle. The Mir has landed and I take one giant step back aboard the Keldysh.