"Mission Control. Mission Control. Mir 1--Beginning our descent. Over."
"Roger that, Mir 1."
The date is August 7, 2003, and I am inside the Russian Mir 1 submersible in the Atlantic Ocean. With me are cameraman Vince Pace and pilot Anatoly Sagalevitch, and our bodies rapidly heat up the two-meter-wide sphere to 30 degrees Celsius. Fortunately, the sub quickly cools in the 30 minutes it takes to reach our destination: the "Lost City of Atlantis," where geologic formations resemble ancient ruins.
Lost City was one of 10 hydrothermal vent sites that became filming locations for James Cameron's 3-D IMAX movie Aliens of the Deep, released January 28. The project involved two month-long expeditions, two oceans, two ships, two Russian Mir submersibles capable of 6,000-meter depths, two acrylic-domed Deep Rover submersibles capable of 1,000-meter depths, 14 scientists (a.k.a. "the talent"), 40 dives, and a slew of crew members for both ships and the production itself.
As the science coordinator, I worked as the liaison between the production crew and the scientists. For every researcher we brought out to sea, a team of scientists waited back on shore for samples, pictures and data. In a way, this was similar to other expeditions I have worked on, both as an oceanographer and as a journalist. Only this time, the ship had been converted into a floating movie set, complete with lights, camera, sound and action.
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Integrating production needs with scientific ones provided a challenging dynamic. Unlike research expeditions, where investigators have upward of a year to prepare, with the film expedition I was calling scientists in June to see if they could join us in July. Over time, the scientific agenda grew to match the production agenda. I could tell because the researchers had almost as much equipment as the production crew itself.
The National Science Foundation provided Maya Tolstoy of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory with 12 ocean-bottom seismometers that were heavy enough to require a forklift to move. Dijanna Figueroa, a graduate student at the University of California at Santa Barbara, brought her adviser, Jim Childress, an assistant, and the pressure housing, computers and two-meter-tall gas canisters needed to establish a biological lab at sea. They want to understand the metabolic processes of organisms around vents. Space scientists came along, too: Pamela ("Pan") Conrad and Lonne Lane of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., want to perfect instruments that can detect organic chemicals and so potentially identify alien life on other worlds. They had a chance to test them on the mysterious creatures of the deep.
The life in these extreme environments is thriving because of the geology. In Mir 1, we traverse the bottom until we approach a cliff's edge and find a fragile outgrowth of yellowish-white carbonate minerals: examples of hydrothermal venting on 1.5-million-year-old oceanic crust. Unlike hydrothermal vents at spreading ridges, where the seawater spews to the surface heated by a magma chamber below the crust, Lost City seeps its vent fluid because of a chemical reaction occurring between the mineral olivine in the mantle rock and the seawater.
As the first sub in the water, we pick a rendezvous site and relay our x, y coordinates based on acoustic signals from transponders positioned earlier on the seafloor--no GPS down here. One by one, the other subs appear--first Mir 2 and then Deep Rover 1 and 2. With their acrylic domes, the rovers look like aquariums for people.
All too quickly, five hours go by--about when our 16-volt battery dies: "Deep Rover2. Mir 1. Jim, we have to leave. Our 16-volt is out. Call Mission Control. Let them know we're ascending. Over."
"Roger that. See you at the surface."