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By Cindy Lee Van Dover

Addison-Wesley, Massachusetts 1996

Price $12.00 Pages 172
 

Kristen M. Fletcher, J.D., LL.M.

Elizabeth B. Speaker, 3L
 

"It is said that the seafloor is a desert, a vast and uniform wasteland, all but devoid of life.

Textbooks on the shelf in my laboratory say so. But I know that is not true."
 

With these words, author Cindy Lee Van Dover leads readers of Deep Ocean Journeys into just that -- a journey through her life as a scientist, a pilot who maneuvered a submersible across the seafloor, a woman who found inspiration as well as science at the bottom of the ocean.

As the first female pilot of Alvin, the submersible used to conduct research at great ocean depths, Van Dover ventured miles below the surface of the sea study the vast array of marine species and ecosystems found in the deep sea, especially at recently-discovered volcanic vents. Alvin and the Woods Hole Oceano-graphic Institution were the keys to unlocking the mysteries about these new communities because "[a]ll of the ecological rules were undefined." Van Dover ex-plains, "For those of us lucky enough to be involved in this research, it is like discovering life on another planet and having the privilege of being among the first to study that life."

Van Dover eradicates the myth that the deep ocean floor is flat, dark and uninhabited. Rather, from the pilot's seat, Van Dover found that the "seafloor can be surprisingly rich in visual textures" with mountains, valleys, rifts, and vents which are akin to volcanoes on land. "Exploring the summits of submarine mountains, I have encountered inverse 'timberlines' -- only the peaks were populated by stands of shrub like coral." Species include sea cucumbers, corals, sea pins, spiders, and various species of crabs, tubeworms, mollusks and shrimp along with organisms never before viewed by humans. Interestingly, some of the species survived the trip back to the surface through the vast changes in pressure, light and temperature. "I have seen knots of sea spiders come back alive and squirming in the bottom of the collection box; I have reached for slimy sea anemones that slipped out of my hand like soap; I have felt sorry for the captured ugly fish, all wrinkled and squinty-eyed and dead."

When Van Dover reaches the deep sea vents, she notes that the temperature can vary tremendously. The vents bring water and sulfur up from the bowels of the earth. "These hot springs easily rival their terrestrial analogs in power and spectacle. Pressure keeps the hot water from steaming or boiling; it becomes superheated, reaching temperature of 350 degrees Celsius and more. Venting water, emerging clear from the sea floor, quickly turns into turbulent plumes of 'black smoke' as dissolved minerals form particles on mixing with seawater." After describing the types of bacteria and rich chemical compounds that exist at sea vents, Van Dover theorizes that "[d]eep sea vents may have been the site where life originated on this planet." Her audience is sometimes interested in other aspects: she is asked "But do they turn pink when they're cooked?" as she attempts to describe the gray-beige shrimp living at hot springs deep in the Atlantic Ocean, a reasonable enough question since they crowd around plumes of black, with 350º C water pouring out of sulfide chimneys of the sea floor. (The answer is no.)

Van Dover's technical yet captivating descriptions of the seafloor communities she found culminate in her warning of the need for responsible stewardship. She worries that "we could screw it up badly. . . we will turn vents into tourist attractions until we kill off all the tubeworms. In their place, [tourists] will see purple placards with a raised impression of a tubeworm. Simple text written at a third-grade level will tell of what wonders used to be present and reminisce about the past. . . ."
 
 

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