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© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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February
18, 2005 – In
1869, Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" imagined
a fantastic submarine that would allow mankind to visit and
to study the deepest reaches of the sea. Just shy of one hundred
years later, in 1964, researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (WHOI) launched the Alvin, the U.S. Navy-owned
submersible that would make history more than once over the
course of its forty-year career.
Alvin's
missions have included locating and surveying lost air- and
seacraft, most famously the Titanic in 1986. It was with
Alvin that scientists first explored an entire new class
of life around deep sea vents, revolutionizing ocean biology;
and with Alvin that scientists found "black smokers"
— mineral chimneys spouting superheated water from the
sea floor. But while Verne's fictional 232-foot-long Nautilus
seems quite similar to today's submarines, Alvin —
maybe proving again that truth is stranger than fiction —
takes its crew down locked inside a six-foot metal sphere.
In
Going Deep, Alan Alda looks back over Alvin's
illustrious career, as well as forward to the design of the
little sub's replacement. What's it like diving deep aboard
Alvin, and what would the researchers who've used it change?
FRONTIERS caught up with some Alvin alumni to find
out.
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Hydrothermal vent animals: Vestimentiferan
tubeworms Riftia pachyptila and fish Thermarces
andersoni at a vent.
Credit: J. Childress.
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In
1977, scientists aboard Alvin were exploring the Galapagos
Rift in the Pacific Ocean when they made one of the most important
discoveries in modern biology. Hydrothermal vents are underwater
volcanoes erupting magma-heated, mineral-rich water out of
cracks on the seafloor thousands of feet beneath the surface.
Despite
the enormous pressure and total darkness, the vents were found
to support an astonishing array of animal life.
James
J. Childress, a physiologist in the department of ecology,
evolution and marine biology at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, has been studying the animals around hydrothermal
vents since 1979. He's made dives in Alvin, its sister
ships Turtle and Sea Cliff, the French submersible
Nautile and others. "It's been a phenomenally successful program
and it has set the standard for other submersible operations,"
he says of Alvin. "I certainly couldn't do any of
the work on hydrothermal vent animals without them."
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James
Childress working with tubeworms captured by Alvin being
maintained under pressure at UCSB. Credit: J. Childress
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As
a physiologist, the bulk of Childress' fieldwork consists
of collecting specimens for further study in the lab. Alvin,
weighing in around 35,000 pounds, might not at first seem
like the best tool with which to collect the delicate life
forms that populate the vent communities. But, as Childress
points out, it does beat the alternatives.
"With
the hydrothermal vents, you're dealing with areas which are
very limited in size, so it would be very hard to even hit
them with a net," he says. "And if you drag something down
there and it picks up rocks and rips things off that's going
to damage things. There are obviously problems inherent in
putting people down there, but the Alvin has been a really
effective tool over the years."
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