Teacher in the Sea
July 6, 2000

	Deepworker Launch Photograph by Chris Allen

Gray skies have been welcomed on this mission, accompanied as they often are by calmer wind and sea conditions. But arriving on station in Carmel Bay on Thursday, we found the rugged coastline of Point Lobos State Reserve bathed in brilliant sunshine. Dr. Steve Webster, marine scientist from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Mike Guardino, Carmel High School’s famed “Teacher in the Sea,” are at last embarking on dive they have been planning for more than a year. Using DeepWorker, they will start their observations at about 80 feet in a place where Mike and his students have made repeated scuba dives documenting the nature of the habitat and carefully counting what kinds of fish and other creatures live there. The same methods will now be used to evaluate the nature of the deep communities beyond.

	Basket Sea Star Photograph by Mike Guardino

Mike is first to dive, descending amid long strands of salps and gelatinous comb jellies. At 250 feet [76 meters], he calls to the surface, exuberant over an encounter with a giant basking shark! Kip Evans, hearing this, yells the news then asks Mike for more information. “It’s beautiful—the largest basket star I’ve ever seen!” So much for the great shark story we were waiting for, but hey, basket stars have their place in our SSE hall of wonders. They are utterly improbable-looking relatives of starfish with the basic five-part symmetry common to echinoderms, a psychedelic sculpture with elegantly coiling legs that branch and branch and branch again, like a great lace doily. Nearby, a lost baseball cap provides shelter for small creatures who seemed not to care at all that the source for their house and home had magically descended from the sky above their patch of ocean.

	Spot Prawns Photograph by Steve Webster

Later, with Steve Webster piloting, there is another dramatic sighting: battalions of marching spot prawns, their eyes shining in the sub’s high-intensity lights. Many people know these jewel-like creatures best as morsels of meat to be dipped and gulped with cocktail sauce. Elsewhere in the bay, commercial trawlers scrape spot prawns from the sea floor, together with basket stars, sponges, jellies and whatever else may be in the path. But here in the Point Lobos Ecological Reserve, commercial fishing is prohibited and life goes on in the depths much as it has for millennia.

	Close-up of Spot Prawn Photograph by Sylvia Earle

As Steve emerged from the sub, he handed his several precious videotapes to Jennifer Makowka, a many-talented young woman on loan to SSE from the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Her dual degrees in English and Public Relations coupled with a lifelong passion for marine biology were perfect preparation for some of her assignments, but other things—help with sub maintenance, ROV repairs and operations, net tows, krill pickling, video duplication—reflected a wondrous willingness to pitch in and help, no matter what needed to be done, and not to leave something unfinished just because it happened to be after midnight.

	Kelp Rockfish Photograph by Steve Webster

There is always more to do to than there are hours to do justice to maintaining complete records, reviewing and logging videos, working on the subs and otherwise keeping ahead of the avalanche of things to do, so when teenager Chris Allen came aboard to help with SSE operations, he was swiftly swept into action learning the ins and outs of sub pre- and post-dive work, video editing, and taking digital photos for posting on the SSE Web site. It took ten minutes flat for him to be regarded as an indispensable part of the team.

	Chris Allen in DeepWorker Submersible Photograph by Kip Evans

Read Chris Allen’s dispatch.

— Sylvia A. Earle
Project Director
Sustainable Seas Expeditions

[Note: nationalgeographic.com does not research or copyedit dispatches.]