Aquanauts in Action

Paulo was a marine biologist with a thirst for adventure. He’d accrued a team of ten specialist scientists, all willing to remotely accompany him into the abyss. He’d done marine adventuring for thirty years, and he was ready to go to the place that sunlight had never touched. It looked like a huge act of bravery; to be bolder than the sun. But scientific curiosity is hard to squash, whatever risk it entails.

Paulo’s best friend was Henry, a subaquatic archaeologist. He wanted to plumb the deepest depths of the sea too, to see what there was to find there. It was largely unknown, but he was certain there was treasure they couldn’t imagine. They had the highest tech submarine in existence. It had been adapted under conditions of the utmost secrecy. They didn’t want any other researchers to jump ahead of them in the game. They were protective of their sea, and the unexplored regions that awaited them. They knew there was life there, even though the odds were against it. There was no heat, or light and the pressure was immense.

“I hope this machine can withstand the pressure,” said Henry.

“I’ve no doubt it will. Did you know the pressure in the depths of the sea is equal to 50 jumbo jets stacked on top of a human body?”

“I love when you talk dirty to me,” laughed Henry.

“Am I putting you off?” smirked Paulo.

“Just a tad… no… if I could be put off it would have happened long before now. We’ve always known we could die down there. That’s the least of it.”

They got set up. It was a weeks-long process. The machine they were in was remotely operated, and they had the top scientists in charge of it. They were the two lone scientists that were willing to go down to the depths. Bravery didn’t even come into it. It was madness; a curious madness only possessed by the most ground-breaking innovators.

The day finally came.

“D day's here.”

“Dive day?”

“Sure, let’s call it that.”

“It’s just another dive.”

“Yeah, to 3200 metres.”

“That’s trivial.”

“You’re always so cocky, man,” said Henry. “Don’t know how I put up with you.”

“You want to be alone in the deepest part of the earth with me,” laughed Paulo. “That’s romantic if you think about it.”

Henry knew it was all in jest. Paulo was a sarcastic fucker. You needed that when you were going beyond the edges of human fear: someone to lighten the mood.

Henry was worried, but his curiosity was stronger than his concerns were. He didn’t have a whole lot to lose. Outside of his career, he didn’t have much of a life. He was completely focused on his undersea activities. It wasn’t a job; it was a lifelong passion. Whenever he spoke about it to someone, he did so with something that went millennia beyond religious devotion. He was enamoured with the quirks of the sea. Their camera was the highest tech one in existence. It had to be, to penetrate that pitch blackness. There wasn’t a pinhead of light anywhere in the immense depths of the dark ocean. It was cold, beyond any notion of coldness humanity had. The artic was like a desert delight in comparison to the temperatures beneath. It was unfathomable, just how freezing it was. The pressure was their main concern. They’d built a structure designed to withstand it, but there was always a margin for error. Paulo never entertained a negative thought about what might happen to them. It was all a big expedition to him; one that he’d been created to carry out. He thought of the research they’d publish after the event and his mouth watered like most hungry mouths do at the scent of a cooking meal. He couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into it.

“Proceed to dive,” he instructed.

They were in communication with scientists back on land that monitored their every movement. They manipulated the submarine, to make sure it stayed on the right path, to measure all the vitals, to keep them alive.

That first dive was forty minutes long. It wasn’t long enough for Paulo, but Henry was happy to dip his toe in the water on the first try. The seabed was vast, and he wanted to drink in as much of it as he could, appreciating the smallest scenes before him, taking his time to do so. He wanted to return to the surface afterwards, feeling a desire to learn more: the motivation to go back for another dive.

Down below, they could sense the coldness, the darkness, the lifelessness in terms of humanity, or animal life as they knew it. They looked out the porthole and saw marine life around them: unnamed creatures they were the very first to see. They saw a fish with the body of a dolphin, the head of an elephant. There were huge prawn-like creatures scuttling along, a huge dark shark-like creature seven metres in length, swimming with quiet purposefulness, so slowly it made the monster look gentle. Its eyes were as deep as the ocean’s reaches.

Paulo and Henry came upon a sunken submarine: one they knew was from World War One. It had been colonised by sea life. It no longer looked like a human-created instrument. It looked like a coral reef. There were organisms living all over it. It was beautiful in a strange way: a site of human death turned into a site for so much aquatic life. The little faces of the creatures they came upon had such character.

“We should name them,” said Paulo.

“There are so many. I don’t know where we’d even start.”

“We have all the time in the world. We can name them as we go, getting images of them to bring back. I don’t think anyone will ever feel like this though,” said Paulo, with uncharacteristic emotion in his voice.

“This must be how they felt when the Apollo 11 landed.”

“I remember watching it on a grainy TV. It was pretty hard to make out.”

“Me too. It doesn’t come close to capturing that first feeling - does it – technology?”

“No, nothing tops getting there first.”

“We’re pioneers,” said Paulo, returning to his usual tone. But there was something in him that was slightly changed; it was only perceptible to Henry, who had spent hundreds of diving hours in his company.

They saw the hot springs on the sea floor and all the life thriving around it. There were rare mineral elements no one had ever seen before. It was a floor filled with fortune fetching wonder.

“I wish we could keep this a secret to ourselves forever,” said Henry, wistfully.

Paulo flicked his eyes skywards.

“Time to report back,” he said.

It was their moment to return to the surface. They thought it must have been like getting back on that spaceship back in 1969. It was hard to return to a limited human existence with knowledge of the sights they’d seen.

“Ok,” said Paulo.

“Yeah,” said Henry.

Words failed them in the wondrous ocean.