monoceros blogsOther things I'd like to encounter on this journey: the rise and fall of mountains under the ocean, sunken ships, golden lights in a yawning abyss, sea plants that seem to be dancing in a current, the echo of a whale, deep silence, a face in the sand.
Of course, it's unlikely that a person would see very much that far down in the ocean. The bottom of the ocean's most defining feature is the absolute blackness, broken only by the occasional luminous torches of fish who turn them on when they need to hunt their prey or by the spurt of fluid ejected by deep-sea squids that become a cloud of light, the opposite of the inky cloud created by shallow-water squids. Light vanishes swiftly as you descend deeper into the ocean. According to Rachel Carson in her book, The sea around us, "the red rays are gone at the end of the first 200 or 300 feet, and with them all the orange and yellow warmth of the sun. Then the greens fade out, and at 1000 feet only a deep, dark, brilliant blue is left. In very clear waters the violet rays of the spectrum may penetrate another thousand feet. Beyond this is only the blackness of the deep sea."
Creatures of the deep may have become blind, but the loss of sight is compensated with sensitive feelers and long fins to feel their way around, groping for texture, shape, movement, changes in temperature. If a human were able to reach the bottom of the ocean alive, he wouldn't be able to touch or sense very much with his body, which would probably be encased in some thick and complicated machine or suit to protect him from the immense pressure at such depths. Perhaps he would barely be able to move.
Because so little is known about the lightless depths of the sea, few people believed that living creatures could survive or even exist there. In the early twentieth century, research ships used echo sounding instruments to send sound waves downward from the ship. These were reflected back from any object they encountered. Answering echoes were returned from the intermediate depths, as expected; and then a second echo was received from the bottom.
What the scientists discovered was a living cloud of some unknown creatures spread over much of the ocean at a depth of several hundred fathoms below the surface. There are three theories about that cloud: these living creatures are either shrimps, fishes, or squids. I like the squid theory best. Squids seem more magical, otherworldly, like alien beings. A Norwegian, Johan Hjort once wrote: "In October 1902 we were one night steaming outside the slopes of the coast banks of Norway, and for many miles we could see the squids moving in the surface waters like luminous bubbles, resembling large milky white electric lamps being constantly lit and extinguished."
What would the creatures down below think of me, I wonder. If I let them twine their feelers around my torso, arms, and legs, what would they imagine? A bony being without fins or tail? Prey or predator? Would they remain curious or retreat from me eventually, deeming me harmless and inconsequential? The only certain thing is that, for a while, I would be as strange to them as they would be to me. And it's just occurred to me that this happens on dry land too.
In the deep, by Bird York
Posted by Monoceros at February 19, 2008 11:35 PM