Deep secrets

• Recreational, technical divers explore deep sea
• Deep sea creatures (graphic)

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

Mutant orchid arrangement? No, just a random growth of purple soft coral and gold coral — with a galatheid crab (squat lobster). Max Cremer photo

Stored in dozens of folders on two powerful computers, Kelley keeps hundreds, perhaps thousands of otherworldly images — surrealist photos of blue palm trees frozen in mid-sway, fields of gray catcher's mitts growing like flowers on delicate stems, an octopus with elephant ears, a floating herringbone ladder that curves upward like a double helix.

Each image seems so unique, so beyond the scope of ordinary human imagination, that it's hard to accept that all are, in fact, quite real.

"There's a lot of bizarre stuff down there," says Kelley, a program biologist with the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory, or HURL.

Kelley is referring to the alien geography and myriad strange-looking (to above-surface eyes, at least) organisms that reside in our Hawaiian waters.

Understaffed, underfunded but never wanting for enthusiasm, Kelley and his colleagues at the undersea lab explore the deep ocean several times each year, bringing back images and information about a world few ever see up close.

The most intriguing things often exist furthest from the surface.

That surreal blue palm on Kelley's computer, for example, is a very real deep-sea crinoid. Those blossoming catcher's mitts are stalk sponges.

The spirally double helix? It's a gorgonian, or branching coral. And those aren't elephant ears on that octopus, they're fins.

Any environment that spawns finned octopuses deserves a closer look. But technological and financial limitations mean that only a tiny percentage — 5 percent is the most common estimate — of the world's sea floors have been mapped and studied.

In other words, much of our world is still a great mystery, hosting life forms about which we know precious little.

Descending stairs

Much of Hawai'i's sea life is concentrated in and around its coral reefs, and many recreational swimmers and divers come into contact with a broad array of fish, rays, sponges, cucumbers, eels and other organisms.

Kelley says live reef-building coral can exist as deep as 70 meters below the surface. Below that are a series of dead coral terraces, each corresponding to a glacial period.

"The islands are sinking at a certain rate," he said. "After a glacial period ... (the ice) starts melting and there's more water, which causes the island to sink faster. You get to a certain rate, and the reefs begin to drown because their growth can't keep up.

"You can have long terraces and big sand fields and — depending on the depths between the terraces and sediment flats — you can have different communities (of sea life) living in each."

One major terrace that extends along several of the major islands, about 120 to 150 meters deep, is inhabited by butterfly fish, long-nosed hawk fish, ornamental fish and other organisms.

Scot Cameron, a boat captain and technical diving instructor at Aaron's Dive Shop in Kailua, says many animals in deep underwater environments are similar to their shallow-water counterparts — except that they're larger and sometimes a little naive.

"In shallower water, you have 1- or 1 1/2-pound lobsters that run away as soon as they see you because they're used to being chased around," Cameron says. "At 150 to 200 feet, you'll see 15- to 20-pound lobsters, but they won't move because they have much less interaction with people. They've probably never even seen people before."

Bottom fish such as opakapaka and onaga live in depths between 100 meters and 400 meters, along with eels, shrimp, crabs, crinoids and anemones.

From about 350 meters to 500 meters, as light from the surface begins to taper off, a world of colorful, curiously formed corals reveals itself. Coveted pink and black corals exist here, as do red, gold and striped bamboo coral.

With little to disrupt them, many of these gorgonian trees of coral can grow to enormous size. "I've seen some of them this big," Kelley says, extending his arms the length of his office desk.

These corals, while not of the reef-building variety, do support communities of sea life. Eels, for one, commonly live in black coral.

The same depth holds creatures the likes of which are never seen in the shallows. Here you'll find, for example, the decidedly strange decorator crab, which has two legs that stick straight up at the back of its shell. Ever see a crab bench-press a sponge?

"They like to hold things up, for some bizarre reason," Kelley says.

Zone of unknown

Dead-coral terraces can be found as deep as 2,000 meters, about the maximum depth that HURL's two submersible submarines can reach. Below that, communities of sea life exist in bone-chilling darkness that scientists have only glimpsed.

Much of what researchers know about the deepest regions of undersea Hawai'i is observed from the cramped confines of HURL's two Pisces submersibles and one ROV (remotely operated vehicle). And while the availability of these vehicles (and others that visit periodically) has made Hawai'i one of the more studied areas in the United States, Kelley says what is known is nothing compared with what remains a mystery.

"We're still in the process of trying to document what's down there," Kelley says. "We still don't have a clue what a lot of these things do for a living."

Kelley can't say for certain why some crinoids have long stalks ("maybe to get them a little off the ground for better feeding?") or why one particular type of sponge looks like a skeleton ("We named it Skeletor") or whether one anecdotal report of a giant squid was legit ("It wouldn't surprise me if we had occasional visitors").

At these depths, shrimp look like lobsters, crabs look like BattleBots, and sponges look like sofas or gramophones or giant yellow lollipops. Cucumbers can swim, sea stars can feed upside down, and octopuses develop so much membrane between their legs that they look like runaway umbrellas.

Sometimes even Kelley has to chuckle at some of the images he's gathered, like the aforementioned deep-water finned octopus.

"It's a completely bizarre animal," he says. "It's as big as a cocker spaniel and it uses those big Dumbo ears to help it swim."

Depths below 1,000 meters are also home to some of the most primitive sea creatures around, including the chimaera, a cartilaginous fish related to sharks and rays, and a shark with a rounded dorsal fin and long scythe-like tail.

Of course, you don't have to be a scientist to observe the strange beauty of deep water environs — at least for a few hundred feet. Thousands of recreational divers every year glide through Hawaiian waters as deep as 100 feet. A select number of technical divers go further, to 400 or 500 feet, to see firsthand the curiosities Kelley described.

Reach Michael Tsai at 535-2461 or mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.

Recreational, technical divers explore deep sea

It's clear the first time we submerge our heads in the ocean that the water line is a border to a different kind of reality. The distortion of sound and light, the weightlessness and the compelling motion of waves and currents all cause us to experience our environment in a new way.

For recreational divers like Matthew Coleman, the experience is heightened by the ability to wander beyond the safety of the shoreline and explore reefs that support so much of Hawai'i's hidden life.

"It's a cliché, but it's very true that it's a completely different world down there," says Coleman, 45, of Kailua. "Only a handful of people will ever set foot on the moon, but pretty much anyone can dive down and see something just as unique and just as amazing."

Coleman started diving three years ago after his wife paid for him to attend a diving certification class as an anniversary gift. He goes out at least once a month with a group to get an up-close look at the coral reefs and the abundant life they contain.

"I've been a swimmer almost all my life," Coleman says. "Before I started diving, I saw maybe a couple of turtles, some fish, and a couple of rays, which is pretty good. But it's different ... (when) you go down 50 or 100 feet. The ocean is teeming with life."

Deep-diving gear

Recreational divers typically dive between 40 and 100 feet. To do this, they need a basic set of equipment, including a regulator, buoyancy compensator, tank, weights, wet suit, mask, fins and an octopus alternate breathing apparatus.

Recreational divers commonly use nitrox, a nitrogen-oxygen mix (with a higher ratio of oxygen to nitrogen than regular air) that allows them to remain under water longer.

Technical divers, those experienced divers who can descend to depths of about 500 feet, use heliox (a helium-oxygen mix), trimix (oxygen, helium and nitrogen) and other gas mixes to extend diving time, allowing them to achieve greater depths. Use of compressed gas requires a diver rise to the surface slowly to avoid the bends or other decompression complications. A 10-minute descent, for example, can require up to nine hours of slow surfacing.

(Free-divers, who descend on their own lung power, can descend and rise hundreds of feet in minutes using weights and relays. Pipin Ferreras set a world record last October by descending 170 meters — about 557 feet — on one breath of air. The feat took 2 minutes and 40 seconds.)

Technical divers carry much more equipment than recreational divers, including rebreathers, lights, a high-capacity buoyancy compensator and several tanks. The whole set of equipment can cost upward of $10,000.

"Technical diving is actually safer than recreational diving, because you have several tanks to fall back on in case one of them isn't functioning correctly," says Scot Cameron, a technical diving instructor at Aaron's Dive Shop in Kailua.

Deep-ocean science

Beyond 150 or 200 meters, you need a submarine, like those used by the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory, to safely view the deep sea environs.

Those are hard to come by. HURL gets an allocation of about $2.5 million each year to conduct its research. With the cost of operating a ship, two submersibles, and a remotely operated vehicle, that money is quickly spent. The program does contract work with other research and commercial organizations to supplement its income.

The total financing that the National Undersea Research Program gets is $14 million, a tiny fraction of what President Bush has proposed for our nation's space program.

"Personally, I love to see the planets and all that, so hooray for them (NASA)," says Christopher Kelley, a program biologist at HURL. "It would be nice if funding the space program leads to increased interest in deep-sea exploration, too.

"There are all types of bizarre animals and really interesting geo-thermal formations down there," he says. "There is so much work that could and should be done. We're just scratching the surface."