Aboard ship in the Gulf of Mexico, ecologist and author Carl Safina of Stony Brook University’s Blue Ocean Institute talks with Sylvia Earle about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its aftermath. “It was a wake-up call,” says Carl, “and I hope we don’t hit the snooze button because it will happen again. There are thousands of rigs. There is pipe all over the seafloor carrying oil and gas all the time. There’s a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong.”

By SYLVIA EARLE and CARL SAFINA
Earle: I’m really glad you could come on board and join this expedition, Carl.
Safina: I’m honored to be invited here. Thank you.
Earle: We’ve had some good news and bad news so far.…

Though foiled by weather mere seconds before a planned sub launch on their morning attempt to dive together, executive director of the Harte Research Institute Larry McKinney and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle persevere, and the effort pays off: They complete a successful shallow-water dive off the Florida coast in the dual Deepworker sub–the second of the expedition.
Joseph Lepore lowers the transparent dome on Deepworker pilot Sylvia Earle.

By LARRY McKINNEY and SYLVIA EARLE
McKinney: What did we see? A lot of green “sea snot”–that’s what we used to call it. To be more polite about it, it was the bay getting ready to bloom. It’s over the winter, and that’s what’s happening out there right now. There’s a lot of winter plankton in the water and a lot of nutrients.…

After two journeys to the bottom of the sea and back, a grim marine weather forecast–60-knot winds and 12- to 16-foot seas–for target deepwater drop sites forces the Medusa back to shore.
The Medusa, back on deck after its second and final descent of the expedition.

By EDIE WIDDER
We’ve been WOW: Waiting On Weather. So much of what we do at sea is dependent on the weather, or more specifically the sea state. We have three- to four-foot seas at the moment, which is smooth sailing by some standards, but too bumpy for submersible operations.
A submersible is fine strapped to the deck or tooling around beneath the waves. It’s just that transition through the air-water interface that’s the problem.…

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle and Harte Research Institute Executive Director Larry McKinney prepare for Mission Blue’s second Gulf dive in the Deepworker submarine, but rising winds and seas put the mission on hold mere moments from deployment. The duo shares their frustration with the uncooperative weather, and their determination to try again.
Larry McKinney and Sylvia Earle pose together before the day’s first dive attempt.

By SYLVIA EARLE and LARRY McKINNEY
Earle: The ocean does not yield her secrets easily. We do everything we can to accommodate what you know is going to happen: wind, waves. We have a deployment system that is appropriate for whatever weather comes along. In the end, it’s the judgment call of the dive supervisor to say “I don’t want to risk either equipment or the people involved.”…

A few days into the Mission Blue expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle sends a video invitation: “Let us take you along as we venture into the deep, and come back with reasons for hope.”

By SYLVIA EARLE
Pensacola, Florida, with the research vessel Brooks McCall. I’m Sylvia Earle, about to launch the Mission Blue expedition to the Gulf of Mexico. We have a great sendoff. We’re going to go explore and try to determine, if we can, some of the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.
We’ve got a little submarine, the Deepworker, that takes two of us. There’s Tom Shirley and myself going through the preparation to make a dive.…

On the Survivors of the Spill expedition’s second attempt, we successfully deploy the Waitt Institute’s dual Deepworker sub in relatively shallow waters near the Florida coast. Moments after their safe return to the research vessel Brooks McCall, oceanographer and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle and ecologist Thomas Shirley describe the green “blizzard of life” that enveloped them.
Sylvia Earle and Tom Shirley prepare to dive in the Deepworker sub.

By SYLVIA EARLE and THOMAS SHIRLEY
Earle: We saw lots of jelly: Jellyfish and jelly goo! It’s like marine snow. It really was like driving through a snowstorm.
Shirley: It was like driving through Jello!
Earle: A blizzard. A blizzard of life. Like minestrone.
Shirley: We turned off the lights on the bottom, and it didn’t make much of a difference, so we decided to leave the lights off to save power.…

On our second full day at sea, the Mission Blue: Survivors of the Spill team departs Roughtongue Reef for quieter waters near the head of the submerged Desoto Canyon. We drop the marine observatory Medusa to the bottom for the second time. Edie Widder of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association discusses what Medusa sees in the sea, and how.
On the first attempt to retrieve the lander, the Medusa slips past tethering hooks, just out of reach.

By EDIE WIDDER
After the first dive yesterday, we were thrilled that Medusa came back, and it’s generally working. There are the usual little tweaks that need to be made, and that was the point of this first deployment. But we can see stuff in the video Medusa captured: fish, a lobster, angelfish…
I always get a big kick out of observing the animal life down there unobtrusively.…

On the Survivors of the Spill expedition’s first full day at sea, wind and waves conspired to keep the Deepworker sub out of the ocean–but the Medusa marine lander made a successful first drop onto Roughtongue Reef. National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle and Harte Research Institute ecologist Thomas Shirley recount the day.
After long minutes scanning the water, the team spots the Medusa bobbing at the surface and prepares to retrieve it.

BY SYLVIA EARLE and TOM SHIRLEY
Earle: We had a rough time at Roughtongue Reef, but a good success story, too. Edie Widder’s wonderful machine, Medusa, went over the side at 7 o’clock this morning and we picked it up at about 5 o’clock this afternoon. It’s loaded with images of what was going on at the bottom of the sea.…

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle and Harte Research Institute ecologist Thomas Shirley describe plans for their first dive of the expedition in the Waitt Institute’s two-person Deepworker sub at Roughtongue Reef, part of the “string of pearls in the top of the northern Gulf.”
The two-person Waitt Institute’s Deepworker sub with hatches up before departing from Pensacola.
BY SYLVIA EARLE and THOMAS SHIRLEY
SHIRLEY: When we descend in the Deepworker, we hope to find ourselves near the Medusa lander–Edie Widder and ORCA’s photographic landing module–and then to swing by and take videos of that. We’ll keep our video cameras running, and hope to run one or two transects across the top of Roughtongue Reef, then go over the southwest edge downslope to the bottom, which is not a lot of vertical relief–probably ten meters max.…

At Roughtongue Reef in the Gulf of Mexico, some 80 miles east of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill site, Dr. Edie Widder of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association (ORCA) deploys the Medusa–a sophisticated deep sea observatory that can film and test seawater conditions–for the first time in the open ocean.
At dock in Pensacola, Florida, a crane hoists ORCA’s Medusa deep sea observatory onto the research vessel Brooks McCall.
By Edith “Edie” Widder
I’ve brought the Medusa deep sea observatory. It’s a lander system that you can just throw off the back of the ship. It floats down to the bottom and settles there, and then it can record for two to three days. It uses the same principle as the Eye in the Sea camera system that I developed.…