Contributed by expedition photographer Brian Skerry

I have spent the last three days living a boyhood dream--exploring the ocean in a submersible. I have been SCUBA diving for over thirty years and taking pictures underwater for nearly as long, but I have never been inside a true submersible until now. It is everything I thought it would be and more!

This trip is the beginning of the Seamounts story that Greg Stone and I are producing for National Geographic Magazine. My goal as the story photographer is to produce images of seamounts that illustrate the immense value these places have as biodiversity hotspots in the sea; some of the last remaining hotspots in our world's oceans.

The seamount we've been exploring here in the Sea of Cortez is El Bajo, once a lush and wild place, famous for massive schools of hammerhead sharks and a wealth of other marine life. Today however, it is a shadow of its former self due to decades of over fishing. I had hoped that with the deep submersible dives we would find that the devastation was limited to only shallow waters, but it does not appear to be the case.

While we have seen some beautiful animals, there are very few and the evidence of destruction is clearly present. I have shifted my photographic focus to using El Bajo as an example of what can go wrong without protection of these jewels of the sea. I have been photographing lost fishing gear, especially massive fishing nets that have been lost on the bottom here. These trawler and seiner nets are draped over the reef and boulders of the seamount, a testimony to the severe pressure this site has received over the years.

I have been shooting with a newly designed deep-sea camera system developed by National Geographic Magazine for this project. With the superb maneuvering by the sub pilots I have been able to get very close to my subjects and make pictures. I've also made a few dives and made pictures the old fashioned way too--with a camera and underwater housing.


Brian Skerry (right) emerges from the DEEPSEE submarine after a dive.
In the photo above left Skerry photographs the ship for National Geographic story about the expedition.

Diving in the sub is fantastic! Just the sensation of slowly descending below the waves, then seeing the colors of blue morph into darker shades, then into shades of green is mesmerizing. I find that I have to shake myself out of a sleepy trance-like feeling and concentrate on the job at hand. It feels strange to me, seeing fish and gliding over rocks without being wet.

Although this component is short, only four days, it has already been extremely valuable from several perspectives, especially in regards to the learning curve of such a complex project. The next trip for this project/story will show the other side, the magnificent wildlife that live around seamounts and will explore places never been seen. I simply cannot wait!

-Brian Skerry

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Labels: biodiversity, Brian Skerry, El Bajo Seamount, overfishing

This post was written by expedition team member Wendy Benchley.

The devastating reality of a depleted sea rocked my soul yesterday. The El Bajo seamount still rises with majesty from the sea bed, but it is fundamentally changed.


Moon rise over the Sea of Cortez

Twenty five years ago, I remember the thrill of swimming off the edge of the seamount into the open blue water to cruise with schools of jacks, tuna, grouper, hammerheads and, with luck, a manta ray of two. Now the only schools of fish were tiny chromis and on the top of the mount were small numbers of angel, butterfly, trigger, puffer and scorpion fishes. My heart leapt when off in the distance I saw a grouper. Imagine that, one grouper is now a treat in this depleted sea!

The data and images we are recording will be important to move ocean conversation issues forward. I keep hope alive by focusing on the work Greg Stone, the New England Aquarium and Conservation International did to create the California-sized Phoenix Islands marine protected area in the Pacific ocean. If we could create more of these areas there is a chance the ocean could regain enough health to provide the fish protein needed to feed the world.

Perhaps this afternoon I will see a different ocean. I'm in high anticipation--it's my turn to ride in the DEEPSEE. Claustrophobia was worrying me a couple days ago, but now that I've seen the superbly trained pilots put the expertly crafted sub through its paces, I feel not a twinge of anxiety. I hope to see a deeper ocean filled with life and perhaps a manta or two to make my heart sing.

- Wendy Benchley

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Labels: biodiversity, El Bajo Seamount, Manta Ray, Wendy Benchley

I had my first dive at El Bajo yesterday in DEEPSEE and what a dive it was. Brian Skerry, Avi Klapfer (the pilot) and I drifted down the south side of the seamount at 4:00 p.m., my favorite time of day in the ocean. Ocean life tends to come alive late in the day as the sun goes down. And DEEPSEE gives you a totally immersive view of the ocean through the plexiglas bubble.


Preparing for a submarine dive

First we drifted down to the summit of the seamount while filmmaker Adam Geiger SCUBA dived around the sub and filmed us. Then we headed into deeper water and saw schools of red fish, amber jacks, garden eels poking their serpent like necks from the sand and peering at us and finally we came upon a sad surprise. It was a giant "ghost net" wrapped around a rock, an old seine net. This was a reminder to us of why this seamount, while beautiful in its own way now, does not have the abundance of marine life that it once had.

Back in the 1980s, there was a time when hundreds of hammerhead sharks, dozens of manta rays and other large fishes swam and circled El Bajo. We spent a long time filming the net and Brian made photographs for our National Geographic magazine article. Avi expertly maneuvered the sub in away that amazed me. A six ton vehicle and he could slide it sideways, up and down to a tolerance of a 1/4 inch.

After leaving the net we continued on and were soon surrounded by spawning fish. Male and female fish swimming in tight circles and ejecting sperm and egg into the water column, hopefully a sign that this area is recovery from overfishing.


Brian Skerry, Avi Klapfer and Greg Stone

As we neared the end of our dive we saw one more encouraging sign that was a 12 foot hammerhead shark that swam by the bubble of our sub and off into the abyss.

This, for me, was a perfect, day.

-Gregory Stone

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Labels: El Bajo Seamount, Greg Stone, Manta Ray, overfishing

We have had a very good day. Our plans changed a little in that we learned that there was a newly discovered seamount 120 miles north of La Paz, near Puerta Escondido, with hot water (hydrothermal) vents!

Hot water vents are a remarkable deep sea ecological community that we could not resist surveying. The crew of ARGO are great and willing to accommodate the last minute change to the plan, but this kind of flexibility is key to successful research and exploration.


View of hydrothermic vents from the DEEPSEE submarine

So we boarded ARGO early, cruised all night, and then dove this spectacular seamount all day today. The ARGO is a wonderful boat and the DEEPSEE is a unique and fantastic submarine. All is going well and the weather improves every day making our research possible.


Photographer Brian Skerry in the DEEPSEE submarine


I have been impressed by the rugged coastlines here in this part of the Sea of Cortez and the ancient volcanic lava flows that are clearly seen on the hillsides, dating back many tens of millions of years. The hot water vents on the seafloor here are evidence of hot magma is not far away, close below the surface, so that it heats the sea water to make unusual marine ecosystems. So now head back to El Bajo and conduct surveys there.


-Gregory Stone

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Labels: ARGOS, DEEPSEE, El Bajo Seamount, hydrothermal vents

This post is by expedition team member Alan Dynner.

As the open boat zipped through the Sea of Cortez towards the El Bajo seamount, Greg Stone, Jeff Gale and I checked our dive gear with eager anticipation. Although I have made thousands of SCUBA dives all over the world since I started diving at age 16, each new dive is magical. When we dive we enter an alien world, with strange and beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) animals and plants, devoid of most sounds. And best of all, we are flying through the 3 dimensional space of the ocean. So as we splashed into the water and descended 80 feet to the summit of the seamount, we were again thrilled.
The seamount is totally different from the colorful coral reefs that divers usually frequent. It is volcanic rock, but not totally bare because some corals and other flora make their homes here. El Bajo is also an apartment house for green moray eels, with their beady eyes and vicious-looking teeth. Actually they are not aggressive and can be easily approached, but don't try to grab one. At certain spots where plankton was upwelling from deep currents, clouds of little anthius fish were feeding along with a school of lovely surgeon fish (so called because of the scalpel-like spike hidden in their dorsal fin). But there were no large fish around and no sharks at all. Commercial fishermen have taken most of the large fish.

Divers once traveled to the Sea of Cortez primarily to see sharks, and especially huge schools of hammerhead sharks. Our dive master, Alfredo, lamented at how fleets of Asian boats seeking shark fins for Chinese shark fin soup had over the years nearly extinguished the species. As Alfredo put it, "they have murdered the soul of the ocean." [Interestingly, Alfredo, who did not know about the New England Aquarium's role in helping to create the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, said, "I've heard of a marine protected park in the Phoenix Islands in the Pacific. I wish we could establish such a park in the Sea of Cortez to save our marine life."]

Our second dive was in the shallow waters surrounding a huge structure of rocks, looking like ruins of Classic Greece, but covered with birds up high and down low inhabited by dozens of sea lions. We entered their realm and were welcomed like old friends. The females and their pups soared playfully around us, up and down and staying just out of reach. They seemed intrigued by the red faceplate of my dive mask (a color correction device for diving, where the color red is lost first as one descends). They would come up within six inches and stare at me eye to eye. We moved over to a group of females in a rock cove, and suddenly out came the male "beachmaster," defending his harem. He swam up to us and grunted menacingly.


A playful sea lion

That evening we met with the owner of ARGOS, the ship that will be our home for the active expedition. With him were two of the pilots of the submarine that will take us down to 1,000 or more feet, well below the depth safe for SCUBA diving. Avi, the owner, has over 30 years experience with dive ship operations, and the two Israeli navy veterans who will pilot us to the depths inspired confidence. We are looking forward eagerly to our other expedition members joining us and to the ship getting under way.

-Alan Dynner

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Labels: Alan Dynner, anthius fish, ARGOS, El Bajo Seamount, moray eel, SCUBA, sea lion, seamounts, surgeon fish

The monsoon weather cleared magnificently on Friday, September 12, to open blue skies. Even though the wind was still up a bit we charted a small 24 foot "panga," which is an open skiff with an outboard and canvas cover, headed to sea for our first look at the marine life of the area and the El Bajo seamount. I went with expedition members Alan Dynner and Jeff Gale.

It took an hour and a half as we pounded our way on waves and wind 25 miles out to sea to the seamount and made our first SCUBA dives down to its submerged summit. Our guide was a Cuban born local expert diver named Alfredo Barroso. As the waves slapped against the side of our boat and the hot sun bore down from the sky, we hoisted our heavy SCUBA tanks on our backs, grabbed our cameras and splashed into the water.

The ocean was warm, 85 degrees, and I could see the rocky summit of El Bajo 90 feet below. We drifted down to the sea floor and saw patches of orange coral, several dozen green moray eels poking their open jaws from cracks in the rock and small schooling multicolored fish everywhere. I recommend this PDF report for more details about seamounts, corals and deep sea fishes.

The water was clear, I could easily see 70-80 feet, and above us the narrow outline of our boat. With SCUBA tanks, you can only dive safely to 100 feet or so. But the ocean is so much deeper. With the sun streaming down, I gently kicked and floated out over the sedge of the summit of El Bajo and looked down into the dark abyss, the area, up to 1500 feet down, that we would soon have access to with the DEEPSEE SUBMARINE.

As our tanks emptied of air, we had to surface all too soon. I wanted to stay underwater longer but at that depth, we could only stay about 40 minutes. Because this was a relatively deep dive, our next dive had to be shallow, so we zipped across the now calmer ocean to an island called Isla Espiritu Santo to study, film and photograph more of the marine life of the area.

On this dive we stayed shallower than 30 feet. We found lovely fishes here, but also a colony of sea lions. The large males kept their distance and I could hear the grunts underwater, which I took to mean stay away, which we did. But the smaller females and pups swam over to us, circling and blowing bubbles in what appeared to be a gesture of playful spirits and curiosity toward us divers.

ARGOS arrives today and we will begin submarine dives on Sunday. In the meantime, here's a slide show of what we've seen so far.




-Gregory Stone

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Labels: El Bajo Seamount, Greg Stone, moray eel, SCUBA, sea lion

This post is by expedition team member Alan Dynner.

Our flight to La Paz from LA was peaceful until we neared our destination. I had been anticipating bright sunshine and searing heat. Instead, a storm was raging and our little plane was bucking like a bronco. Greg Stone and I came down the stairs into a monsoon and were soaked during the walk-run to the arrival area.


The Sea of Cortez threw us a welcoming party.

We were met for the drive to our hotel by two representatives of our dive shop, one of whom was a Japanese woman. You should have seen her face when Greg started speaking to her in Japanese! And since the driver did not speak English, I got to practice my Spanish with him as we drove through the 6 inches of water flooding the streets.


Checking equipment for tomorrow's dive.

The storm finally subsided but we learned last night that the ocean is too rough and our diving today was cancelled. We are busy fiddling with equipment and preparing for what we hope is our exploratory dive on the El Bajo seamount tomorrow.

-Alan Dynner

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Labels: Alan Dynner, El Bajo Seamount, Equipment, Sea of Cortez