Panama Cruise

Oceanography has always been undertaken in harsh environments. To say accommodations aboard research vessels are Spartan gives the ancient Greeks too much credit for comfortable living. In years past even gentlemen oceanographers (read, those with both excess money and even more excess time) would typically subject themselves to the same shipboard living standards as the rest of the crew. The owner of the research vessel I found myself on last week decided he wanted the capabilities of a working boat without sacrificing the luxury of a yacht. Compromise always makes for poor design, and r/v Sentinel (I've changed her name since I value my job, and I suspect the owner has access to Google)  is no exception, but having now sailed with amenities such as stewards to clean my room and make my bunk, a ship’s laundry that picks up and delivers, and meals prepared by two French trained chefs, transitioning back to the average research vessel will be tough. To paraphrase Tennyson; Better to have traveled First Class and lost upgrade privileges then to have never been upgraded at all.

 The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was selected by the yacht’s owner to oversee Sentinel’s operation and science support. My role on this ship, as on WHOI’s other vessels, is to assure that the ship and her crew have the ability to meet her science mission requirements. One of these requirements and the most unique capability of Sentinel is her two manned submersibles. I suspect WHOI’s experience operating the manned deep submersible Alvin is one of the reasons we got the job, and why I’m off the coast of Panama with four of Woods Hole’s best Alvin pilots. Our goal is to characterize the ship’s SONARs and get one of the subs inspected by a representative from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS). Since we only need the ABS inspector here for one day we will fly him on a chartered plane to a remote airstrip near our dive site. Nobody ever said ocean science was cheap.

The cruise didn’t start well. Flight delays, missed connections, and logistical problems at the port of Balboa, Panama plagued us even before we got off the dock. A 12 foot low tide precluded the use of a gangway onto the ship, so we each had to be craned aboard in a boson’s chair. Being transferred to the deck like a pallet of provisions is an inauspicious way to start a cruise.

Departing Balboa to the South by ship means steaming past hundreds of anchored ships waiting for passage through the canal. Many are bulk carriers waiting for orders that will take them to the Pacific or Atlantic oceans, so hanging out by the canal entrance is a good place to wait while swatting malaria infected mosquitoes. Our objective was to find an area well away from shipping lanes that afforded a variety of depths close to an anchorage. This will allow a series of sub dives from 50 meters, to their maximum operating depth of 1000 meters (3300 ft) while not having to transit the ship very far. 

We found such a place at Puerto Piňa a remote village southeast of Panama City. At this point our luck wasn’t getting any better. Everything we touched turned to shit. Really, everything. The subs both had ground faults, bad thrusters, and poor underwater communications. Three of the four science instruments produced the digital equivalent of vomit all over the screen whenever we tried to run them, and Sentinel herself seemed determined to undermine any possibility of a successful cruise by losing steerage, or propulsion at the least opportune time. It got to the point that I was afraid to turn on a faucet for fear of sinking the ship.

 Things didn’t improve much after three days at sea, and the looming arrival of the ABS inspector only made for more lost sleep, frayed nerves, and a desire to be anyplace else but on this boat. If there is one quality that distinguishes someone capable of working under stress at sea from the rest of the masses, it is a biting sense of humor when things are at their worst. Fortunately this crew had humor in spades. If any of this team were lined up before a firing squad their last words would probably involve crude remarks about the shooter’s sister, or a request to purchase a life insurance annuity. This ability to see beyond the shit you’ve gotten yourself into is what separates good shipmates from dead shipmates and why these guys are the best in the world at what they do.

The ABS surveyor finally arrived just as the last bolt on the submersible Nadir was being tightened. The problems on the previous shallow dives seemed resolved and the surveyor climbed into the sphere with a gallon-size ziplock bag full of Jolly Ranchers. I can only guess that the rationale for his package is that if today was his time to die, it would be with a fist full of his favorite candy. Fortunately for him, and for us, he surfaced intact after three hours, with sweets to spare and pen in hand to sign the class certification. It wasn’t all without drama, as they experienced a cooling line leak at depth which sprayed sea water into the compartment. Surprisingly this was not sufficient to warrant a test failure, though I’m sure the surveyor was wishing he brought a change of underwear instead of the candy.

The following day I had the opportunity to participate in a pilot training dive. Sentinel has her own sub operations group and they needed to get in as much training of two new pilots as possible before a real science mission next week. The instructing pilot warned me that he would be putting the student though some scenario based training, so I should be prepared for anything. 

It didn’t take long, immediately following the pre-dive checks we had commenced lowering on sub into the water when the instructor took on the persona of a claustrophobic passenger, leaping up for the hatch wheel and trying to get out. The pilot did his best to offer a quick Transcendental Meditation fix with calming words and, had it been quickly available, a little Enya music, but it turns out TM and soft tunes are not the preferred solution. Stop the deployment. Get the sub on deck. Let the passenger out of the sub before you’re out of a job.

While all of this commotion had the desired training result the delay was unfortunate, for just as we swung back over the transom the largest pod of dolphins I have ever seen was roiling the water off Sentinel’s stern. The sea erupted as both the dolphin and tuna they chased leaped from the surface in an eat or be eaten dance. I wanted to slap my over-acting sub mate. If it wasn’t for the delay we could have been submerged in the middle of it all instead of watching the show from the deck.

Finally back in the water, both the hysterics and fish were absent. Our dive plan was to be on the bottom at a depth of almost 2000 feet. The trip down was slow and methodical. It’s peacefully calm as the wave action of the surface disappears within the first 10 meters. Schools of small fish circled the acrylic sphere. The refractive index of the plastic is identical to that of water, making it seem to disappear as soon as the surface gets wet. This creates an odd sensation, as if there is nothing between you and the sea.

Visibility sucks as we descended through a storm of fluffy marine snow, a mélange of oddly shaped ocean detritus composed of everything from inorganic dust and dead phytoplankton to whale poop. The snow is part of a food chain created in the light-rich photic zone where we were, that ultimately drifts down into the darkness of the aphotic region where we would soon end up.

As we pass 100 meter there is a noticeable change in the light. An eerie blue glow above transitions to blackness below. With no artificial light on in the sub and no red spectrum light filtering this deep, the three of us take on a grey, ghoulish pallor. The pilot switches on the exterior light and the snow that now appears to fall upward can be seen for what it is; stringy masses of clumping matter interspersed with a wide variety of tiny jellies of all shapes.

At 300 meters all natural light has disappeared. Our world exists only to the extent of illumination from the one spotlight. Turning the light off and covering the instrument panel creates total blackness. The pilot pushes the thruster lever forward and suddenly the void is broken up by flashes of blue bio-luminescence erupting on the front of the sphere and traveling around the sides. It reminds me of the Starship Enterprise entering warp speed as the stars fly by. The thrusters leave a blue exhaust as luminescent organisms react to the compression of their passage past the spinning blades.

After an hour we near our anticipated maximum depth and the instructor cautions the pilot to begin neutralizing trim to slow the descent, but before the words come out of his mouth mud seafloor fills our view and the sub noses into the soft bottom. Reversing thrusters raises a cloud of silt obscuring what little we could previously see. This little faux pas would be the equivalent of hitting the curb during the three-point turn portion of your driving test. Once a few feet off the bottom, moving forward clears the silt and we can see the sea floor sloping up before us. Worms protrude up from the mud and silver fish lay in small depressions seemingly ignorant of our presence. I can’t imagine the reaction of the fish we set down upon, a glowing alien craft falling from above into sediments undisturbed for millennia.

It was now that the instructor wanted to review various emergency plans. One of which, for reasons I still don’t comprehend, involved him spinning open the hatch dogs. Now intellectually I understand that being almost half a mile underwater, at pressures approaching 800 pounds per square inch, there are literally tons of water pushing the seal down tightly on that opening, but something inside me still wants to scream “Are you f*%#ing nuts?”, and punch him in the head. Of course, the sea doesn’t rush in. After a half hour reviewing contingencies for a number of unlikely, but potential emergencies we run the pumps that will force just enough water from the ballast tanks to make the sub positively buoyant. The marine snow which had seemed suspended only a few seconds before, now appeared to sink relative to the sphere indicating our initial ascent. 

Three hours later and eighty meters from the surface comes the final drill. “Fire in the sub! Fire in the sub!” I would like to say our reactions were like the movements of a Swiss clock, but a more realistic analogy would be to the timekeeping ability of Stonehenge. Slow, methodical, imprecise. We switched to alternate air masks and went through the checklist for shutting down the electrical system and then the oxygen. This was followed by blowing ballast for an express ride to the top floor which we punched through with a fair bit of inertia into sunshine and a cascade of water flowing off the sphere.

In a way, this cruise was like most others. Things go wrong, you fix them, and you adapt to an ever-changing plan. Oceanography isn’t accounting, or farming corn in neat, orderly rows. It is not for anyone who isn’t flexible or averse to stress. It is however a very unique way to earn a living, and as it was on the seafloor in Panama (With yet another plagiarized reference to Star Trek), to go where no man has gone before.

David