The ARGO returned to La Paz, Mexico on September 18th. The sub is now covered in canvas and secure on ARGO's deck, the SCUBA gear is stored and our expedition members are all heading off, returning home, in different directions. Brian Skerry, Jamie Bechtel and I thank Jeff Gale for the ride home!


Jaime Bechtel and Brian Skerry

This was an enormously successful project and I thank everyone for their contributions. I want to extend a special thanks to the crew of ARGO from the Undersea Hunter Group who were absolutely fabulous is making this a successful project. Everyone on board was superlative in helping us with our every need and providing the highest level of professional service, collaboration and friendship. I would go anywhere with this team!


Shmulik, Wendy, Greg and Avi

We learned a great deal about the ocean life in the sea of Cortez. We were enchanted by pilot whales, intrigued by hydrothermal vents, and thrilled by the opportunity to explore deep within this sea. Sadly, we learned what has happened to the seamount El Bajo over the many years of over fishing.

We hope this work will inform and encourage restoration and conservation of seamounts globally. There is a proposal at the United Nations level aimed at protecting seamounts that are outside of the national boundaries of countries, on what is called the "high seas" from trawling. If these bans are put into place, it would go along way towards protecting remaining seamounts globally. And, then, of course, each country must protect, restore and conserve the seamounts in their waters, which in most cases extends 200 miles from the coastlines in what is called their Exclusive Economic Zones or EEZ.

We are now planning our next seamount expedition to follow up on from this exploration. We now want to find a seamount that is pristine to compare to El Bajo. Avi thinks he knows one about 40 miles from Cocos Island in Costa Rica. We may go there next year with Avi, his team, ARGO, DEEPSEE, and as many members of this expedition who may also be free next year.


Brian Skerry and Greg Stone plan their next move.

So stand by for the next installment ...

-Gregory Stone

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Labels: conclusions, future expeditions, Greg Stone, Return

We are having a very productive series of dives on the El Bajo Seamount, conducting surveys and acquiring video and still images. I remain stunned at the number of old ghost fishing nets, but I have gone into that before.

The sub takes two passengers at a time with one pilot. Those not diving in the sub are usually SCUBA diving while the sub is in the water. I have started using a new SCUBA diving air mixture on this trip called nitrox. Nitrox is a mixture that has more oxygen in it than regular air. Our atmosphere has about 20 percent oxygen, while this mixture has 32 percent oxygen.

The reason we use this mixture is that it has less nitrogen in it and when SCUBA diving it is the accumulated nitrogen in our body tissues that can cause sickness and the bends. Nitrox reduced the risk of the bends and allows you longer time diving. So my New England Aquarium dive officer, John Hanzl, will be pleased to know that I became nitrox certified on this trip. Even though I am a SCUBA instructor I have been a little old fashioned in that I have not used nitrox until now, It is a great mixture though. So Larry Madin, Alan Dynner and I are all now nitrox certified.


Wendy Benchley and Greg Stone emerge from the submarine after a dive.

Wendy Benchley and I made a dive in the sub yesterday and found hundreds of trigger fish down deep and were happy to see a small school of what I think was yellow fin tuna, though I could not get close enough to be for sure what species of tuna it was.

We are working very hard now these last few days, regretting that we do not have more time. I have had an infection caused by an insect bite on the side of my head, which I have treated with antibiotics, but the swelling can easily be seen around my left eye.

As I am writing this, we all saw a school of dolphins and a large whale (probably a sperm whale) in the distance.

Another great day on the Sea Of Cortez.

-Gregory Stone

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Labels: dolphins, Greg Stone, nitrox, SCUBA, sperm whales

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

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

We flew in from Los Angeles to La Paz, Mexico yesterday. I had a rather extraordinary experience before boarding the aircraft in Los Angeles, California. My undergraduate alma mater, College of the Atlantic (COA), asked that I make the convocation address this year. I explained that could not do that as I would be en route for this expedition. COA was not deterred and asked that I give it by telephone from the airport prior to boarding the flight yesterday. That I did, and it was interesting speaking to an auditorium full of eager students in a the coastal town of Bar Harbor, Maine, while cupping the telephone mouthpiece and covering my ears so that I would not hear all the flight announcements echoing through the LA terminal.

Anyhow, my remarks over the telephone were geared toward emphasizing the importance of the oceans for life on Earth and I placed a special emphasis on seamounts, which are the subject of this expedition. Good luck and best wishes to COA's 2008 entering class!

After months of planning, the team is now converging here in La Paz over the next few days before boarding ARGOS and diving in the submersible DEEPSEE. Alan Dynner and I have come a few days early in order to SCUBA dive in the surrounding area and get the lay of the "land" before the whole team arrives.


Greg Stone prepares for the expedition with Larry Madin, Director of Research at WHOI.

On the flight down to La Paz, the plane was full of sport fisherman, all wearing t-shirts with big game fish on them and expensive sunglasses pushed up on top of their heads. The attraction of La Paz to these sport fisherman, who hope to catch yellow fin tuna and marlin among other fish, is further testament to the ocean life that exists here and it makes me all the more eager to get into the water and see these fish alive and swimming around.

As the wheels on the Horizon Air plane skidded onto the wet runway in La Paz, I could see wind blowing and wonder what the diving conditions will be like. Soon after arriving at our hotel I was informed that a storm would cancel our dives for the first day. So Alan and I are working at the hotel going over underwater cameras and diving gear in preparation for diving tomorrow.

-Gregory Stone

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Labels: ARGOS, College of the Atlantic, DEEPSEE, Greg Stone, La Paz

On May 16, 2005, the 6,600-ton nuclear submarine U.S.S. San Francisco entered a poorly charted area 400 miles southwest of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. While traveling at 38 miles per hour at 500 feet the colossal submarine suddenly buckled into the side of an uncharted seamount, killing one sailor and injuring 75. Fortunately, the thick inner hull protecting the nuclear reactor and crew held. Amidst the pandemonium that ensued, the sub and all but the one crew member survived.

The San Francisco slammed into one of the estimated sixty thousand seamounts that rise from the seafloor in all oceans of the Earth. Most are uncharted, only a few hundred have ever been visited, less than 1000 have names and only a handful have been intensively studied.


Map of documented seamounts (pdf)

Seamounts are a combination of extinct and active underwater volcanoes. On July 3, 2005, a seamount erupted off the coast of Japan, spewing smoke into the air and clouds of mud into the water, first noticed by airline pilots flying in the region. In 1952, another seamount off the cost of Japan erupted, releasing city-sized clouds of CO2 gas that rose to the surface and enveloped a 200-foot ship, sinking the vessel in the foam that formed on the sea surface like a giant glass of beer.

Seamounts, the hidden mountains of the sea, rival the Rocky Mountains in size and challenge coral reefs for the high levels of biodiversity. Seamounts contain many new and endemic species and are now recognized as the last frontier in earth geography, ocean science and conservation.

Complex networks of deep and shallow currents swirling around, up and over these giant seamounts enriches the water, increasing ocean productivity and encouraging concentrations of ocean life. While it is very hard to save many areas of coastal ocean life, where over fishing is decades old, there is still time to save the biodiversity of seamounts, many of which are still pristine. International initiatives to save the unique life living on seamounts are critical for ocean conservation.

We are exploring the seamounts of the Sea of Cortez in the hope that understanding these underwater mountains will help build the awareness to protect them and seamounts everywhere.

-Gregory Stone

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Labels: biodiversity, exploration, Greg Stone, seamounts, U.S.S. San Francisco