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DISPATCH 2 | 06.04.2007 | South to Tortugas Our group has done quite a bit of exploration off the coast of Florida. These explorations have led to a better understanding of the deep-water habitats around the State and to the recommendation that some of the most exceptional areas of biological diversity be designated as Habitats of Particular Concern and Marine Protected Areas. We have also collected a number of new species and have found at least one compound which we optimistically hope will be useful as a new cancer chemotherapeutic. 
One area we have never explored is the deep-water valleys called the Tortugas and Agassiz Valleys
off the southwestern tip of the US Continental Shelf. Forty miles off the Dry Tortugas and at the
deepest limits of the
Johnson-Sea-Link dive capabilities, these areas remain virtually unexplored.
Trawls and dredges conducted since the late 1800's suggest that at least some areas might have hard bottom (rock) communities- but the data is scarce. Hard bottom communities are more likely to have sponges and corals, the types of organisms we are seeking. The Alvin submersible conducted one dive in this area and found vertical rock walls but described very little about the biological diversity. Given how large this area is, questions as basic as "is the ocean floor made of rock or sediment?" remain unanswered. On the chance that we will also encounter the right kind of habitat for the organisms we seek, we have decided to conduct a few dives in this area. What's the old saying? "Nothing ventured, nothing gained"- we'll give it a shot.
Day 1: Newbie In The Back - By Alanna Mitchell Voyaging 3,000 feet to the bottom of the ocean is not for the faint of heart, even if you're going there in one of Harbor Branch's world-famous submersibles. Sure, the scientists, pilots and electrical engineers who have been down hundreds of times are blase about it. They go down, see things no human eyes have ever seen before, collect samples that may revolutionize medicine, and then they come back up. No sweat. 
But for me, a middle-aged Canadian journalist who is writing a book about the global ocean, it was scary. Okay. Maybe more than scary. Maybe a tad terrifying.
A dream? Yes. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to find out what it's like to be in the ocean's depths? Sure. A magical, life-bending experience I will remember to the end of my days? No question. Would I go back down tomorrow if I could? Absolutely. But let me put it this way: I didn't tell my mother, husband or kids that I was going down until it all over. And they were grateful. So here's what it's really like. Not from the glamorous acrylic sphere where the pilot and the scientists are calmly collecting their samples, but from the dark aluminum back chamber, where a newbie deep-sea voyager is along for the ride. Our target is an unexplored valley in the Tortugas Valley formation about 30 miles south of the Dry Tortugas and 80 miles west of Key West, Florida. John Reed, one of the chief scientists at Harbor Branch whose job is to find new drugs from creatures that live in the deep sea, has been poring over new maps and ancient written records to find out where the best site is. Reed has supplemented these records with his own findings from the past couple of days, gathered as Harbor Branch's ship, the Research Vessel Seward Johnson, has traveled over the proposed site bouncing sound off the sea floor to get a clearer picture of what's down there. This particular piece of the ocean floor is interesting to Reed, to Amy Wright, the other chief scientist on board, and to Shirley Pomponi, Harbor Branch's chief executive, because it looks like a deep valley with steep sides. Those sides could be hard rock, the sort that deep-sea sponges and corals like to fasten to. 
And Reed, Wright and Pomponi have found from earlier investigations that sponges and corals from the deep sea are extraordinary chemical factories. They manufacture all sorts of compounds otherwise unknown to humans and so complex that humans can't just dream them up. Many of these compounds are "active," meaning that they can affect cancer cells.
So finding the sponges and corals holds out the possibility that this team can find a cure for cancer. Several of us on this trip have never even seen the inside of a submersible. Possibly not surprising, since there are only a couple of dozen in existence. And, frankly, students and scientists all over the world would feel lucky to have a chance to go in one. For journalists, it's an even rarer gift: only a handful have been to the bottom of the sea in any craft, anywhere in the world. Even fewer have been to 3,000 feet, which is where I'm heading. Somehow, I've ended up on the first dive of the mission, the fourth of a four-member crew on the sub. Wright will be the scientist on board and Phil Santos, who's been down more than 2,000 times, will be our pilot. Frank Lombardo, an electrical engineer and a ringer for the actor George Clooney, is the third member of the crew. And then .there's me. So, shortly after 8.30 yesterday morning, after only 10 hours at sea, I climb aboard the Johnson-Sea-Link II. To be more accurate, I hoist myself up into a hatch door and into the sub's small, dark back chamber. It's lined with plastic pillows and cushions because it's going to be far more comfortable for us to lie down than sit up. I'm armed with my notebook, three pens and five layers of clothing, plus a blanket. I've been told it gets chilly in here. While the front chamber of the sub is made of wrap-around acrylic glass so Wright and Santos can see most of the way around, the back chamber features two small round portholes and a small video screen that will be linked to the video tape that the front investigators will be filming. Lombardo, who's been going down in the Johnson-Sea-Link submersibles (there are two) for 11 years and stopped counting his dives two years ago when the number hit 650, clambers in behind me a pulls up the door, sealing it against water and pressure. At 3,000 feet, we'll be at pressure that's 50 times that of the surface, a force that would crush us instantly if we were ever exposed to it. This submersible and its sister, the Johnson-Sea-Link I, are built to withstand that, and, Pomponi has told me, have done that successfully for more than 9,000 dives combined. 
It's 8.32. We hit the water. And we're off. Lombardo watches the hutch door for 100 feet to make sure the seal will hold, then we kick off our shoes and lie back.
As we settle in, Lombardo explains the machines built into the walls of the chamber. There's an oxygen monitor and tank to keep the oxygen level at less than 21 per cent. Behind me, whirring away, is a fan filled with soda lime to scrub the carbon dioxide we'll be breathing out and flush it outside the chamber. Carbon dioxide in the chamber has to stay at between .4 per cent and about .7 per cent for us to be safe and comfortable. At 1.5 per cent, we'll get headaches and at 2.3 per cent, we'll have really terrible headaches. Pomponi has also told me that the only time the subs hit real trouble, it was an issue of carbon dioxide build-up in the back chamber because the scrubbers weren't working. I begin to focus, with great intensity, on not blocking the fan, but then realize that Lombardo would just adjust things if there were ever a problem. The chamber is pressurized, Lombardo explains, so that we don't get nitrogen build-up in our blood and don't have to decompress as we come back to the surface. He points out the fire extinguisher, the scuba gear for emergencies, and then runs me through how to get the sub to the top if the other three people on the trip somehow fall unconscious. I take copious notes of these instruction, not sure I'm really getting it. What if nothing I've ever learned before in my life is this important, I ask myself. Lombardo is sanguine. Just as my anxiety levels peak, he settles into a comfortable recline, legs crossed, on the sub floor and pulls out a paperback novel. I decide anxiety is useless at this point, lie on my left side, and look out the porthole. I can see nothing. We're still on the way down and Wright and Santos haven't turned the big lights on yet. We descend at 100 feet a minute, so it's a 30-minute ride to the bottom. I'm marveling now, at the vastness of this ocean. A massive, interconnected global system, it contains 99 per cent of the living space on the planet. And we know so little about what's really in it. This is a first-hand look at the most mysterious, least explored part of the planet. At 2,000 feet, Lombardo puts on his hoodie, still reading. The temperature of the water at this depth is only 6.9 degrees Celsius. This chamber is made of aluminum, a good conductor for heat and cold. We're freezing. At 9:02, we breach 3,000 feet, which is the maximum this craft is able to go. The water temperature now is 5.9 degrees. The lights are on, and I can't see much out of the portholes except marine snow raining down, the detritus of decomposed animals and plants from further up. But the video that Wright and Santos are filming is on the tiny screen right in front of me. I can hear Wright's voice through my headphones as she tapes for the video. And there, in front of me, on both screen and through the porthole, is the bottom of the ocean. Further along, we spot the vertical cliff that Reed, Wright and Pomponi had suspected was there. It looms, like an iceberg covered with blobs of potters's clay or, as Wright puts it, Silly Putty. The blobs are filled with bore-holes and the holes are filled with creatures. I see a shrimp poking its head out of one. But the moving animals are not the ones we're after. We want samples of the sessiles, or the creatures that stay put. 
Wright spots a sea fan, an anemone, something that she jokes could be a whale bone. So far, none of the sponges she is here to find. Wright is keen to get to the cliff face. "We're going to find sponges, right Phil?" she says to Santos. "There are gonna be sponges here, I know it." She's right. A yellow sponge. Then some of the ancient brachiopods, a species that has been around for more than 3 billion years. Over there, a two-foot-high white tulip sponge on a reddish stalk. The sub has robotic arms that collect these samples, either sucking them up whole in a vacuum-like apparatus, or lifting them up by the roots with a robotic hand. Lombardo is impressed, the novel abandoned. "This is pretty cool. Very few people in the history of man have ever been this deep. And nobody has ever seen this before," he says. Over there, several big crabs and a giant squid. Off to one side, a black lobster-like creature with eyes that glow eerily white. A small fish swims by my porthole, no bigger than my fingernail, delicate pink. My fear is long since evaporated, overcome by the wonder of all of this. Wright decides she wants a few pieces of the Silly Putty cliff face and Santos collects them for her. It's grey, crumbly and sends off dust that seems to envelop our sub. Wright is hoping that it will be full of microbes that could have those cancer-fighting properties she's looking for. At 11:17, Santos tells Wright that it's time to end the journey. "Wrap it up? Wrap it up?" Wright says, her voice full of incredulity. She wants to stay down, to round another corner, get yet another chance to find an elusive compound that just might keep the critically ill alive. 
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