Few people make this journey. Take a dive narrated by Dr. Bradley Stevens, formerly of the Kodiak Laboratory, to a depth of 2700 meters on the Murray Seamount on Thursday, June 20, 2002, and share some sensory impressions.

" Perhaps the most mystical part of such a journey is the descent. The term conjures up many images: descent into madness, into the netherworld, into the unknown. Sinking through the ocean seems like all those things. At first, the light outside is azure, the color of the ocean surface. As we sink, it turns to purple, then cobalt, then midnight blue, and finally to deep, dark, blackness. After leaving the surface there is no motion, no sensation of movement at all. Waves don’t penetrate this deep. We feel as if we are suspended in space.

But the way down is lighted. A million points of light appear as we descend, the product of bioluminescence, fluorescence, phosphorescence. I could describe how it works, the meeting of enzymes in the flesh of gelatinous plankton, but that would not give you the impression I have in my mind, of seeing the lights come on. They don’t come on slowly, like approaching far off stars. Rather they appear suddenly; as our little capsule bumps against them, suddenly they wake and signal us. Flashes, sparks, streaks, and blobs appear in the dark. Some have shapes: round, oval, elongate, chains; others are just amorphous bits of brightness in the dark. Each is communicating to us: “Hey, I’m here, this is my space, watch out.” The show goes on from the cobalt depths at 150 m, to the deep black at 750 m. And slowly they fade, no longer in our presence.

The rest of the descent is humdrum; it is too dark to see anything, so we sit, talk quietly but expectantly, listening to the clicks, whirrs, bleeps, and hums of the machinery. I watch the depth sounder clicking off the meters: 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500. The altimeter says 150 m (its maximum reading) most of the way down. Then I notice the altimeter decreasing: 120; 100; 70 m. At 50 m off bottom, Pat Hickey turns on the outside lights. I peer through the porthole, but can see nothing. A few shrimp, now a fish, just shadows below.

This is perhaps the most exciting part of the dive; wondering what lies below. What will the bottom look like? Will it be rock, sand, cobble? What animals will we see? Will there be crabs? Coral? Maybe a whale or a giant squid waiting for us (not yet, but someday). Slowly the shadows develop texture, shape, form. I can see a cobble bottom with a rock wall not too far away. A few feet off bottom things come into focus; there are crabs, seastars, corals. It’s just as I imagined, yet different, new. A totally unexplored topography, and I’m the first person to ever see it. We settle gently to the bottom, without a sound. The anticipation and excitement are palpable.

Looking around, there is snow. Giant flakes falling from the aqueous heavens. Big, feathery wisps, like an explosion in a chicken coop. So similar to real snow it is scary. But this snow is biological in origin; the leftover remains of dead and decaying matter that once lived in the surface waters. A rain of not-so-nutritious anymore, but still the only source of food for most of the life forms down here. They reach up to it, with spread arms, tentacles, or mouths, collecting as much as they can. Humans worship the sun and sky-gods, from whence our life-force comes; so it makes sense that down here, the denizens worship dead plankton. It takes a lot of marine snow to feed the deep ocean.

During one dive, the sub was “attacked” by a squad of squid. It wasn’t my dive, but I watched the resultant video in awe along with a dozen other fascinated spectators. The squid weren’t large, maybe 16-18 inches in length, but they moved with incredible speed and grace. Bodies flew past the video camera, streaking out of nowhere, brown jets flying in formation. Watching it, I felt like Luke Skywalker, threading my ancient spaceship among the swooping invertebrate X-wing fighters. “Use the force!” someone yelled.

Some of the squid stopped and hovered, their tentacles drooping, then jetted off in another direction. Some accidentally hit the sub or the camera, indignantly squirting blobs of ink in our direction. One followed Alvin’s manipulator as a crab was collected and put in the basket; was it debating whether it should steal our sample for it’s meal, or wondering if this metal contraption was some long-lost evolutionary relative? One even put its arms and suckers on the porthole and peered in at the strange invaders inside the sub. We hoped it wasn’t thinking about calling it’s giant cousin to come show us who ran the neighborhood.

The ascent back to the surface is never as exhilarating as the descent. I sit, write notes in the dim light, trade jokes with the other occupants. I listlessly look outside for bioluminescence, but turn away shortly; I’ve seen it before, and it isn’t nearly as mystical going up as it is going down. It almost seems comical now. The country bumpkins of the ocean, too slow or stupid to get out of the way. We hardly notice the light returning.

As we near the surface we begin to feel the gentle rocking of the swells about 20 m down. Then suddenly we pop up like a cork and start to bounce around. We have no power now, having used it all up in service to science. Way off in the distance is the ship; it will take half an hour or more to reach us. We sink into a glum, it’s-all-over-already mood. We try not to notice our bulging bladders.

Then with a jerk we are lifted up, freed from the water, suspended by a thick noose from the A-frame on the back of our Mother-ship, Atlantis. We sway a bit, then feel the clunk as Alvin is dropped into its cradle. Now the only motion is the slow roll of the ship. The pilot stands up, unbolts the hatch. A swoosh of fresh air, and our ears pop as the slight pressure differential equalizes. I stand up, stretch, and climb the ladder back out into sunlight. Once again, I am back in my world. Immersed in questions; what did I see, what did we catch. I go inside, get a drink. Soon I feel really tired, wiped out. I go up to my room for a pre-dinner nap, and wake up many hours later.

Later, only impressions remain. But they’ll return, in my dreams, late at night, when I have no distractions. I’ll remember the view through the porthole, the sparkling lights, the snow-covered rocks. What an incredible place. I could never imagine it if I hadn’t seen it first hand.

Do I want to go back? I'm not sure.  It’s difficult work, frustrating, tiring. Most of the work is topside, the dive is just a brief interlude among a myriad of tedious duties; formulating dive plans, reviewing videotapes, editing data, writing reports. But I would never have missed it. It has expanded my mind as no drug could ever do. Who needs fantasy planets? The reality of seeing the deep sea is stranger than any fiction could ever be. I can’t wait to go back."