Guest journal: Parallels between the seafloor and—Arizona?

Gordon Hendler (in back) looks over recently retrieved specimens held by colleague Scott France August 2.

Location: Near Semisopochnoi Island

Posted 08.06.04 at 12:21 am

Guest journal by Gordon Hendler

Unexpected parallels:
How transiting the Aleutian seafloor is like driving through an Arizona desert

Submitted August 4

For the past several days, JASON II’s dives in the Aleutians have reminded me of the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. To explain why, I must mention that I have lived in Los Angeles and worked there at the Natural History Museum for nearly 20 years. After meeting my wife to be in LA, my vacations were spent in the Chiricahuas, helping her and her mycological colleagues to monitor interannual changes in mushroom populations.

I prefer underwater scenery, so the low point of our trip to the mountains for me has always been the haul across the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. To avoid the worst heat, we start out at night, and in the early morning light, the sculpted red rock monoliths outside Tucson, Arizona, help to break the sandy monotony. They signal that in several hours we will pass through the portal to a more beautiful world. There, beyond an undistinguished stretch of scrub, the vertical base of the mountains intersects the horizontal desert floor, and the road unexpectedly enters a highwalled pass.

The sycamore trees beside Turkey Creek and the call of the elegant trogon are a sign that we have reached the outskirts of a desert oasis. As the road climbs and winds along Cold Creek Canyon, we pass through stands of pinyon pine and juniper, then Ponderosa pines at higher altitude - all of which are in places a little too dry for my taste. Finally, we reach a Shangri-La on the upper slopes of Rustler Peak, where winter snow cover and summer monsoons irrigate the forest of Douglas fir and meadowlands near the mountain’s top. We can hike through blissfully green gardens of flowers (and mushrooms), on the alert for butterflies, warblers, and red cross-bills that live at 8,500 feet.

Here in the Aleutians, at precisely the same distance below the surface of the northernmost Pacific, the muddy seafloor eerily replicates the Sonoran desert, with scattered patches of sea pens and sponges, looking like Dr. Suess cacti sprouting on a seemingly lifeless plain. Of course, the seafloor (and the desert) are much more interesting and lively than they seem. Nevertheless, in both regions more attractive and obviously vibrant communities live upslope.

As Jason II ascends through the frigid waters that sweep by the Aleutian chain, scientists sitting in the warmth of the control van can see that oceanic life becomes increasingly more lush as Jason II climbs to shallow depth.

Where outcrops of rock break through the dark greenish-black sediment, spikes, bushes and plumes of sponge, coral, and sea anemones and other encrusting organisms cover the hard substrate. Although they have a plantlike appearance, all are animals that harvest waterborne nutritive particles and tiny sea creatures. On the deep reaches of the slope they form a stubble. But at depths where faint sunlight reaches the rock, corals and the creatures that live with them grow in profusion.

To my mind, of course, the coral bushes and the brittle stars, mini-crustaceans and seaworms that live on them— the very things that I and my colleagues, Les Watling and Scott France, traveled all this way to observe and study—are more exciting than their terrestrial counterparts. But, despite the absence of underwater trees, insects and birds, I do see intriguing parallels between the array of life at shallow depths and the high elevation meadows of the Chiracahuas.