by Edith Widder
The BBC Natural History Unit has one of the best reputations for honesty of any of the major documentary producers, but even they have crossed the line from time to time. Their Frozen Planet documentary series contained some wonderful shots of polar bear cubs in an ice den, which it turned out were actually filmed in a German zoo’s polar bear enclosure. There’s no question that the viewers were given the misleading impression that the scene had been filmed in the wild, but, in point of fact, BBC did have a video posted on its website detailing how they got the shot. Given that this is a scene that could probably never be filmed in the wild without endangering the lives of the filmographers and/or the cubs, I think some leniency is in order. There are two ways that natural history documentaries can lose their audience: by being boring and by being dishonest. Unfortunately, data shows the former is far more deadly for programming than the latter, which means that producers are under extreme pressure to get the most dramatic shots possible.
Television and movies often give their audience a distorted sense of reality. How many people who watched the movie Speed actually believed a bus going seventy miles per hour can sail over a fifty-foot gap in the freeway? Some distortions are so pervasive that they are practically an industry standard, like visible laser beams,*2 bright red bloodstains that are supposedly days old,*3 audible explosions in the vacuum of space,*4 and the savage nature of sharks. In the latter case, the incredible commercial success of Jaws, first as a book and then as a film, played a major role in the vilification of sharks, culminating in Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, which has demonstrated many extreme examples of distorting events. Titles such as “Great White Serial Killer Lives,” “Australia’s Deadliest Shark Attacks,” Tiger Shark Terror, and Voodoo Shark give a chilling impression of these magnificent animals, belying the fact that while sharks are generally responsible for about six human fatalities worldwide each year—often as a result of mistaken identity—humans are responsible for the deaths of approximately one hundred million sharks per year! Yet attempts to institute policies for the protection of sharks are often met with lukewarm enthusiasm from people who have bought into the hype that sharks are bloodthirsty killers.
The most extreme example of Discovery Channel crossing the line is its fake documentary Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, which it used to kick off Shark Week 2013. It was billed as “the rediscovery of a giant prehistoric predator thought to have been extinct for more than thirty-five million years.” The whole mess deserves a pants-on-fire rating of 11, since they used actors to portray scientists, fabricated computer-generated imagery (CGI) that they claimed was video evidence, and showed fictional scenes overlaid with the declaration that “what you are witnessing are the actual events as they unfolded.” Only in the final seconds of the “documentary” did a series of mealymouthed disclaimers appear, flashing across the screen at a rate that would have left an Evelyn Wood speed reader spluttering:
None of the institutions or agencies that appear in the film are affiliated with it in any way, nor have approved its contents. Though certain events and characters in this film have been dramatized, sightings of “Submarine” continue to this day. Megalodon was a real shark. Legends of giant sharks persist all over the world. There is still debate about what they might be.
Although there was an outcry when the ruse was revealed, the show broke records, drawing 4.8 million viewers, which made it an outrageous success as far as the producers were concerned.
Another egregious example of fakery was Mermaids: The Body Found, which aired on Animal Planet. A work of complete science fiction, it purported to uncover a plot by the government to conceal evidence of mermaids. It was done in documentary style, with fake “reenactments,” lots of CGI, actors playing scientists, and a too brief disclaimer at the end that most viewers missed. They even took the stunt so far as to have a fake web page pop up if you tried to look up the supposed former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist whistleblower. The page displayed a Department of Justice logo and a Homeland Security Investigations special agent’s badge shown above the declaration “This domain name has been seized by DOJ–Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C. §§ 286, §§ 287 and §§ 371.” This was a total fabrication posted by Animal Planet’s parent company, Discovery Communications, and clear evidence of just how far over the line they were willing to go in a craven grab for ratings.
As with Megalodon, there was backlash, but given that this show and its sequel, Mermaids: The New Evidence, were the most watched programs in Animal Planet’s history, Discovery Communications—which also operates Discovery Channel, TLC, and more than 150 other worldwide cable TV networks—was unmoved. They set out to fool their audience and, unfortunately, in far too many cases they succeeded. So many people believed that the whistleblower NOAA scientist, played by actor Andre Weideman, was real and the victim of a plot by NOAA to cover up evidence of mermaids that NOAA felt compelled to take the very unusual and slightly surreal step of posting a statement on its website that “no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.” The whole thing would be funny except that, like Shark Week, it resulted in chilling collateral damage: the undermining of the public’s trust in science. The impact is best encapsulated by this statement by a fifth-grade schoolteacher who watched the program: “If NOAA is lying to us about the existence of mermaids then they’re definitely lying to us about climate change.”*5
How can the public be expected to make sound decisions about important issues like climate change and shark preservation when a major cable network like Discovery Communications, which actually bills itself as “the world’s #1 nonfiction media company,” is peddling programming like Mermaids and Megalodon? It is a dangerous gambit—one that not only negatively impacts important policy decisions but has also tarnished Discovery’s reputation and led many scientists to refuse to work with them. It’s a downward spiral with grim portents for life in a post-truth world, but fortunately, someone in corporate who had actually heard and understood the children’s story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” declared that, beginning in 2015, Discovery was turning over a new leaf and would produce no more fake documentaries. It’s a start, but once you’ve betrayed trust, it’s difficult to earn it back. I hope they do, because Discovery Communications has a great big megaphone that could go a long way toward raising the level of the public’s understanding of science.
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During the Cuba expedition, we encountered a classic example of the difficulties associated with packaging science for public consumption when filmmakers faced an unexpected setback: Unlike on most deep-sea expeditions, during which you can pretty much count on encountering some new animal or behavior, we were seeing little to get excited about. The JSL submersible depth rating had been downgraded from three thousand to two thousand feet just before the expedition. Because the water was so clear, this meant we weren’t able to get below the edge of darkness during daytime dives, and the only animals we were seeing were small fish hiding among the rocks along the island’s steep underwater slopes and small, transparent creatures in the midwater. As a result, in what I suspect was a slightly desperate attempt to insert story where there was none, Lipscomb started asking each of us to describe our worst experience in a submersible—while on camera. He also wanted us to discuss safety issues and explain what had gone wrong with the sub, that it needed its depth limit adjusted. I demurred and later found out that the other scientists had also. Even though I liked Lipscomb, I simply didn’t trust that anything I said wouldn’t be sensationalized.
The Johnson-Sea-Links had many noteworthy distinctions that set them apart as research tools. Unfortunately, in addition to their numerous achievements, they were known for “the accident.” Being involved in the only fatalities ever to occur with a research submersible was not a point of pride.
The story was legendary to divers. It was Father’s Day, June 17, 1973, two years after Edwin Link invented and launched the first Johnson-Sea-Link submersible. Link and his team, which included his thirty-one-year-old son, Clayton Link, were on an expedition in Key West. It was the sub’s 130th descent, and there was, in retrospect, possibly an overly relaxed attitude to the dangers involved. It was supposed to be a short and relatively shallow dive to a sunken ship—a retired Navy destroyer that had been purposely sunk to create an artificial reef. Just fifteen miles offshore, in only 360 feet of water, the mission was seemingly simple—to retrieve a fish trap from the deck of the destroyer. The sub had a crew of four. Up front in the observation sphere was the pilot, Archibald “Jock” Menzies, with about a hundred JSL dives under his belt, and sitting next to him was fish biologist Robert Meek. In the separate rear dive chamber were Clayton Link and submersible crew member Albert “Smoky” Stover.
As accidents go, it didn’t seem all that dramatic—at least at the start. As they moved in on the trap, a current pushed the sub into a snarl of cables on the wreck from which it couldn’t break free. As one attempt after another to liberate the entangled sub failed, the carbon dioxide levels in both chambers were climbing. In those days, the chemical used to scrub the air was Baralyme, which did not work well at cold temperatures. Because the surrounding water temperature was a chilly forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, both chambers were cooling, but the rear aluminum chamber much more so than the acrylic sphere. This was making things uncomfortable for Link and Stover, who had not bothered to bring any warm clothing for what was supposed to be a short dive; they were wearing only T-shirts and shorts.
Besides the penetrating cold, they were also suffering from the pounding headaches and labored breathing characteristic of CO2 poisoning. When they eventually realized that the low temperature was why the carbon dioxide levels were getting so much higher for them than for Menzies and Meek, they tried rubbing the Baralyme on their bodies to raise the chemical’s temperature. It was no use. Approximately twenty hours after the sub became trapped, the pilot, Menzies, called up to the surface to report that he could hear Link and Stover suffering convulsions in the dive chamber. By the time the sub was retrieved, more than eleven hours later, using a grappling hook deployed from a commercial salvage vessel, it was too late. Link and Stover had died from carbon dioxide poisoning.
For Edwin Link to lose his son in the submersible he had designed, and on Father’s Day no less, seemed the cruelest imaginable twist of fate. Since first learning the particulars of the accident, I had tried not to imagine what it must have been like for Edwin up on the deck of his ship, desperately trying to make all the right moves to free his trapped son and crewmates below. I remember thinking that at least he was spared the excruciating agony of hearing what Menzies heard. Which is why my worst moment in a submersible was not the time I found seawater streaming in through the inlet valve on Deep Rover. It was the time water came into the JSL while I was in the acrylic sphere and my husband was in the rear dive chamber, where the water was coming in.
How did my husband come to be diving in a submersible with me? Well, after David graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography, he worked for a while in video production and became interested in the engineering side of the industry. I was still at UCSB, so he decided to go back to school and get a master’s degree in physics instrumentation—ironically, the same program I had been discouraged from completing. He graduated with the equivalent of a degree in computer engineering, which made him highly employable—so much so that several months after I started at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in its marine science division, he was hired on in its engineering division, which allowed us the opportunity to work together on certain projects.
In 1991, I was chief scientist on a JSL expedition to the Bahamas and I had talked David into coming along by promising him his first-ever dive in a submersible. I delivered on that promise on the opening day of the expedition. Pilot Phil Santos and I sat up front in the acrylic sphere, while David and crewman Kruno Rehak rode in the dive chamber. It was a beautiful warm Bahamian day in February, but since we were going to three thousand feet, where the temperature can drop below forty degrees Fahrenheit, I had cautioned David to bring a jacket.
I was elated to share the thrill of exploring the deep sea with him and anxious that he enjoy it. With that in mind, I had also warned him about Kruno’s warped sense of humor. On one expedition, Kruno had startled one of my British colleagues when, on his first dive in the dive chamber, after giving the safety briefing, Kruno had flipped open a switchblade and said, “Know what this is? An oxygen doubler.” Fortunately, David seemed well liked by the sub crew and was not subjected to any of their usual hazing.*6
David and I couldn’t see each other, but we could talk through our headsets. The protocol was for the science observer in the back to take notes for the scientist in the front, writing down key sightings, along with depth, time, and temperatures at which organisms were collected. As we descended, David was looking out the small porthole on the starboard side of the dive chamber while I enjoyed the far more expansive view afforded by the acrylic sphere.
I took on the role of tour guide, pointing out the dramatic color changes, from crystalline turquoise at the surface through the gradual shifts to muted azure and then smoky navy and charcoal Prussian blues and finally fading to gray and black, interrupted by streaks and flashes of electric blue as we began to see bioluminescence at around twelve hundred feet. After watching the bioluminescence for a while, Phil turned on the lights so that we could spot animals in the water column, but I was disappointed to see little life. As we approached the bottom, I was on the lookout for the pelagic sea cucumber Enypniastes, which we wanted to both film and collect, when Kruno delivered the alarming news that the seawater inlet valve*7 was leaking.
Kruno’s revelation of the leak triggered a blast of adrenaline through my body. Stories of the infamous “accident” came rushing back to me, and I was suddenly absolutely certain that my husband was going to die a horrible death in the dive chamber while I could do nothing but listen. The fear was so intense that, for the first and only time in my life, I experienced synesthesia—my senses momentarily interlinked and I simultaneously felt and saw the fear as a blinding blue light.
Kruno said it was a drip, not a flood, but it was increasing—not a good sign. “Phil, we need to ascend now,” I barked, but he shook his head, saying, “That could take too long.” Once a leak starts, it can accelerate rapidly. The metal high-pressure tubing for the inlet passed through the bottom of the acrylic sphere, and there was a backup valve that could be shut off, if only he could reach it. Straightaway, Phil began ripping out all the electronic gear between our two seats, piling the video recorders and camera controllers in a teetering stack on my lap as he attempted to clear a path to the valve. Would it turn off or behave like the one I had dealt with in Deep Rover and refuse to budge?
When the last piece of gear was cleared away, Phil stretched down as far as he could, past the various flanges and tube fittings, to reach the valve. When he got a grip, he cranked on it hard. The handle turned, and almost immediately Kruno reported that the water had stopped. I have no sense of how long it was between when Kruno first reported the leak and when he declared it had stopped, but it unquestionably represented my worst stretch ever in a submersible. Phil didn’t say much about it at the time, but as we reassembled the electronics in order to continue the dive, I noted that the backs of his hands and forearms were dotted with bleeding scratches from his attempts to reach the valve. Evidently it had been a bad moment for him, too.
I wouldn’t know how bad until six years later, while watching the broadcast of our Cuba trip. When Lipscomb asked him about his worst experience in a submersible, he described that leak. Phil admitted, “No matter how well prepared you think you are, the first reaction is panic…That could have been my last
dive. And that’s something you hate to think about, but you have to.” Only in hearing Phil’s account on the documentary did it occur to me that Phil and I might have died, too, albeit long after David and Kruno.
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Although the chances are infinitesimal,*8 entrapment is the most likely cause of death in a submersible. Catastrophic implosion of the acrylic sphere is far less likely. Still, concern about that possibility had caused the JSL’s depth limit to be downgraded from three thousand feet to two thousand feet.
Making a submersible out of acrylic was a novel concept when Ed Link took it on in 1971. In 1970, the Navy had just completed construction of the first transparent-hull submersible, the NEMO (Naval Experimental Manned Observatory), which had a depth limit of six hundred feet. The JSL 1, which Link launched in 1971, greatly pushed the depth envelope by increasing the limit to two thousand feet. In fact, the engineering specs indicated that the hull design could withstand even deeper dives, which is why, in an effort to push the frontiers of deep-sea exploration, HBOI eventually started diving the subs to 2,640 feet. However, when cracks began to appear in the acrylic, new spheres were constructed that increased the hull-wall thickness from 4 inches to 5.25 inches. These came online before I arrived at HBOI, in 1989, so when I started using them, the subs were routinely making dives to three thousand feet.
