by Steve Alten
“As in devil, I get it. But the term purgatory makes it sound as if the sharks had been stuck down there.”
Jonas pointed to the temperature gauge, the ocean now registering an icy 42-degrees. “Seventy degree temperatures along the bottom, separated from sun and shallows by six miles of cold. If you lived in an oasis with plenty of food, would you risk crossing the desert to reach another oasis you had no clue even existed?”
Shaffer smiled. “Only if it was Vegas. I’m a bit of a shark myself. Card shark. Plus I love stalking the ladies. Grrowl.”
Aboard the Tallman
17 miles north-northeast of Guam
Lucas Heitman unfurled the bathymetric map across the fluorescent table top. “We’re here, about fifteen miles northeast of Guam. Your monster’s about a half mile ahead of us, cruising in 33,000 feet of water at a steady five knots. We’re pinging at 16 kHz, which is low enough to maintain a read but high enough not to piss it off—at this range.”
“What if I want to tag him?”
“Tag him?”
“Him. Her. It. All I know is that it was sheer luck detecting this shark. I don’t want to risk losing it because of some damn typhoon. Therefore we need to tag it.”
“Okay, it’s time for a reality check: these fifteen-foot seas from that damn typhoon? By tonight they’ll become small mountains. If we don’t head south soon we’ll be caught in its eye, and that’s the last thing we want, trust me. Next reality check: your monster won’t abandon the warmth beneath the hydrothermal plume. That’s a major problem, Paul. The plume is like a raging river of minerals. It will tear the transmitter dart’s assembly from any launch platform you send down there, eliminating any possibility of tagging your shark.”
“Okay, Lucas, so maybe it won’t abandon the warm layer for good, but I bet we could lure it up for a quick shot. Rig the Sea Bat-II with the transmitter gun and the remains of the tuna we netted yesterday morning. We bring the Meg up with Sea Bat-I, then lure it in real close to Sea Bat-II and blam—right in the mouth!”
The intensity in Paul’s eyes bordered on manic.
Lucas stared at his friend. “Shoot it in the mouth? Dude, what are we doing? We’re messing with a shark that’s the size of the Tallman’s beam. What happens if we lure it away from its habitat and it surfaces? What’s to stop it from following the ROV straight up into the shallows?”
“Can you imagine those headlines? It’d be bigger than the Alvin discovering the Titanic.”
“Paul, be serious.”
“I’m being serious. And if you had any idea how difficult it’s been to convince my father to keep this little venture of ours going, then you’d be serious about this too. Decent paying jobs outside of inspecting oil pipelines are few and far between, and most of them are going to the more established boats. We need something big like this to put Tallman on the map.”
“All I’m asking is that you think this through. You bring this monster up from the depths, pal, and you own it.”
“Don’t tease me.”
“I’m talking about liabilities, Paul.”
“First we tag it, then we figure out the next step. Fair enough?”
“Fine. You have until six tonight to play tag, then we’re heading south.”
“Make it eight.”
“Paul, ever see the movie, The Poseidon Adventure?”
“Okay, okay, six o’clock. Just have both Sea Bats rigged and ready to launch within the hour.”
5
Mariana Trench
THE MARIANA TRENCH WAS birthed along the subduction zone where the massive Pacific Plate descends under the leading edge of the Eurasian Plate. For billions of years, hydrothermal vent fields have been delivering super-heated 700-degree Fahrenheit water into this 1,550-mile-long, forty-mile-wide gorge. Laden with minerals, the volcanic discharge from these “black smokers” has coalesced about a mile off the bottom, forming a ceiling of soot which effectively insulates and seals off the frigid waters of the abyss. More than sixty feet thick, this hydrothermal plume is further stabilized by the steep walls of a submarine canyon, creating a temperate zone in an unexplored realm located at the bottom of the western Pacific Ocean.
Prior to 1977, scientists were convinced life could not exist in the depths without sunlight. Once they actually investigated their claims aboard the Alvin submersible, they were shocked to find a vast food chain, all originating from tube worms—eight-to-ten-foot-long invertebrates that seemed to be feeding off the hydrothermal vents. In fact, the Riftia pachyptila actually existed on the bacteria living inside their own bright red nutritional organs. In a symbiotic relationship, the tube worms’ bacteria were feeding off the toxic chemicals spewed into the sea by the hydrothermal vents—a process that became known as chemosynthesis.
In the depths of the Mariana Trench, giant albino crabs and shrimp fed off the tube worms; small fish fed off the crabs and shrimp, and larger fish fed off the smaller fish. Feeding off the larger fish were an exotic array of sea creatures, both modern and prehistoric, that had existed in this isolated temperate zone for hundreds of millions of years. While there were no whales or sea elephants in the Mariana Trench, there was still plenty of prey, all stemming from this ecosystem that flourished in the absence of light.
At the top of this food chain was Carcharodon megalodon.
· · ·
The albino shark moved slowly through the pitch-dark canyon. At forty-eight feet and twenty-seven tons, the juvenile female Megalodon was already equal to her adult male counterparts—all of whom continued to avoid a confrontation with the female, at least until her first fertility cycle.
Warm water streamed into her slack-jawed mouth, held open in a cruel, jagged smile. Just visible above the lower gum line were the twenty-two razor-sharp teeth she used for gripping prey. The upper jaw held twenty-four—far larger, wider weapons designed by nature to puncture bone, sinew and blubber. Behind these front rows of teeth were four or five additional rows, folded back into the gum line like a conveyor belt. Composed of calcified cartilage, these serrated teeth—three to six inches long—were set within a ten-foot jaw that, instead of being fused to the skull, hung loosely beneath the brain case. This adaptation enabled the upper jaw to actually push forward and hyperextend in a gargantuan bite, wide enough to engulf a mini-van from the back end all the way up to the front windshield.
For most of the last 30 million years, Megalodon had dominated every ocean, feeding on the high-fat, high-energy yielding content of whales. Everything had changed two million years ago with the arrival of the last Ice Age. Warm water currents had been cut off, creating land bridges which altered whale migration patterns. While thee factors did not significantly affect the Megalodon population, the rise of another species caused the giant sharks’ numbers to plummet
Orca.
Hunting in pods of thirty to fifty individuals, the Killer Whales decimated Meg nurseries. Within the span of a hundred thousand years, very few of the Mother Nature’s apex predators remained.
It would be the nurseries located along the coastline of the Mariana Island chain that prevented the species from going extinct. Driven from the shallows of the archipelago by Orca, the surviving Meg pups went deep, escaping the mammals and, in the process, discovering a warm habitat in the deepest canyon on the planet.
· · ·
The juvenile female continued on her southwesterly course, navigating around skyscraper-tall black smokers on a swiftly moving current that allowed her to expend little effort. Although there was no visible light in the trench, the Meg could still see. Adaptation and evolution equipped the shark’s eyes with a reflective layer behind the retina that offered wisps of nocturnal vision. Normally black, the Megalodon of the Mariana Trench had developed blue-gray eyes, a common trait found among albinos. The loss of the species’ lead-gray dorsal pigment had occurred over eons—an adaptation to an existence quarantined in perpetual darkness.
The female glided effortlessly through the tropical
void, her massive torpedo-shaped body undulating in slow snake-like movements. As her flank muscles contracted, the Megalodon’s caudal fin and aft portion pulled in a powerful rhythmic motion, propelling the shark forward. The immense half-moon shaped tail provided maximum thrust with minimal drag, while the fin’s caudal notch, located in the upper lobe, further streamlined the water flow.
Stabilizing the Megalodon’s forward thrust were her broad pectoral fins, which provided lift and balance like the wings of a passenger airliner. Her dorsal fin rose atop her back like a six-foot sail, acting as a rudder. A smaller pair of pelvic fins, a second dorsal, and a tiny anal fin rounded out the complement, everything synchronized and perfected over 400 million years of evolution.
The female inhaled her environment through two grapefruit-size directional nostrils, her brain processing an elixir of chemicals and excretions as traceable as smoke in a kitchen.
Ahead, moving through the canyon as one, were thousands of giant cuttlefish.
While the Meg had been tracking the school for weeks, there had been no urgency to feed. Feeding required hunting, and hunting expended energy. With her core temperature approximating that of her environment, the huntress could go weeks without feeding—provided she remained in the balmy depths in a non-predatory state.
The Sea Bat’s sonic acoustics had disrupted the female’s sensory organs, forcing her to attack. A dozen successive rushes had sent the shark up through the hydrothermal ceiling—the sudden shock of 33-degree water chasing her back before she could kill the source of the disturbance.
Energy had been expended, her reserves were running on low.
Now she had to feed.
With a flick of her massive caudal fin, the hungry female accelerated through the darkness, closing fast on her quarry.
· · ·
In the ocean’s pecking order it is size that matters. The cuttlefish of the Mariana Trench had adapted to their environment by growing large—eighteen to twenty feet from their finned heads to the tips of their eight sucker-covered arms and two feeding tentacles. Three hearts were required to pump their blue-green blood to these ten extremities while fueling a camouflage technique that allowed the squid to alter its skin color. Brilliant neon lights could lure prey or stun an enemy.
Intelligent creatures, the cuttlefish had learned to travel in schools, their perceived size scaring off potential enemies. Upwards of ten thousand cephalopods moved as one through the canyon, the school undulating like a quarter-mile-long sea serpent.
The cuttlefish tactic was clever, but it could not fool a Megalodon’s senses. Located along the top and underside of the female’s snout were sensitive receptor cells collectively known as the ampullae of Lorenzini. These deep jelly-filled pores connected to the shark’s brain by a vast tributary of cranial nerves, allowing it to detect the faint voltage gradients and bio-electric fields produced by the cuttlefish as their skin moved through the water. So sensitive were the ampullae of Lorenzini that the Megalodon could distinguish an individual cuttlefish from the moving pack of thousands by the distinctive rhythm of its beating hearts.
· · ·
The Megalodon stalked its quarry, moving parallel to the swarm.
Sensing the predator, the cuttlefish increased their speed while simultaneously illuminating their hides in phosphorescent greens and blues. The color pattern was a method of communication among the school as well as a warning to stay away.
The Meg’s spine arched, forcing her pectoral fins to curl downward. Flushed in full attack mode, the juvenile killer was about to swoop in upon the moving mass of squid when she detected another presence lurking close by—a challenger.
· · ·
At thirty-three feet and eighteen tons, the pliosaur was nearly as large as the megalodon, though it lacked the species’ girth. The creature’s head, nearly a third its length, resembled a crocodilian jaw overloaded with ten-inch dagger sharp teeth. Its skull sat atop a thick neck and stocky trunk, tapering back to a short tail. Snakelike movements were powered by four oversized flippers that propelled its streamlined body through the water.
A survivor of the Middle Cretaceous, Kronosaurus began its existence as a reptile. For more than 50 million years its ancestors dominated the seas—until 65 million years ago when an asteroid struck the Earth. The celestial impact filled the planet’s atmosphere with debris which blocked out the sun, causing an Ice Age.
Reptiles are cold blooded animals, their body temperatures dependent on the warmth generated by their environment. As the oceans rapidly cooled, the plesiosaur order quickly died off, unable to generate enough body heat to survive. Inhabiting the seas off Australia, Kronosaurus were the only species of plesiosaur in proximity to one of the few warm spots on the planet that remained unaffected by the glaciation period.
Much as an alligator spends its days basking in the sun, members of the Kronosaurus species took to diving down to the hydrothermally heated depths of the Mariana Trench in order to survive. Over thousands of generations, this particular pliosaur group adapted to these extended dives by developing gills—an evolutionary feature that allowed them to permanently inhabit the warm abyss.
· · ·
The male Kronosaurus glided silently through a vent field that spewed pockets of clear near-boiling water, the brackish sulfuric backwash causing acres of tube worms to dance. If Megalodon was the lion of this deepwater Serengeti then the Kronosaurus was its leopard. Though wary of the presence of a superior hunter, it too had to feed.
Pumping its powerful fore-fins, the pliosaur banked sharply around a black smoker, placing it on a direct intercept course with the river of cephalopods racing through the canyon like a six-story-high train more than three football fields long.
Detecting the charging Kronosaurus, the cuttlefish engaged their photochromic skin, igniting green and blue neon sparks of light in both directions in a flashing fast-changing pattern that appeared like the denticles of a massive sea snake.
The intimidated Kronosaurus veered away, its survival instincts momentarily overriding the need to feed.
And then, without warning, the formation suddenly burst—ten thousand phosphorescent bodies flushing red as they dispersed in a cascading explosion of brilliant blinding color—
—the stampede ignited by 54,000 pounds of rampaging shark. The Megalodon bulldozed its way through the center of the herd, the female’s hyperextended jaws clamping down upon a mouthful of squirming cephalopod, its serrated teeth shredding tentacles into ribbons as its senses searched the chaos for the Kronosaurus.
The startled challenger darted away, twisting and turning, scorching its belly in the super-heated outflow of a vent as it was swept away in a frenzy of fleeing squid.
The Meg swallowed a succulent thousand-pound bite of cuttlefish as the squid circled back into formation, their skin flashing in rapid sequences as they twisted and looped again as one. The reforming mass of glowing bodies raced north through the submarine canyon, igniting the darkness like a slithering green-blue luminescent serpent.
The Meg circled the scraps twice, its senses searching the area for its challenger. The female detected the Kronosaurus several hundred yards away, moving along the sea floor as it followed the reorganizing school of cuttlefish.
Her appetite stimulated, the shark altered its course, homing in on both the cuttlefish and her fleeing nemesis.
6
Challenger Deep
JONAS’S EYES DARTED from the depth gauge to the viewport, the last five hours of fatigue disappearing in the adrenaline rush accompanying the extreme depths.
31,500 feet…
31,775 feet…
Debris rattled across the Sea Cliff’s outer hull like hail on a tin roof. He eased up on the foot pedals, adjusting the submersible’s rate of descent.
31,850 feet.
An object bloomed into view in the small reinforced porthole by his stockinged feet, the DSV’s lights illuminating a swirling river of brown water. Jonas hovered the s
ubmersible fifty feet above the hydrothermal plume, fighting to adjust the trim against the rippling surge of the raging current.
“Wake up, gentlemen, we’ve arrived at the gates of hell.”
Michael Shaffer shook Dr. Prestis awake. “You need to get a new tagline, Jonas. How about, ‘Hey, Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’”
Richard Prestis rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “That’s not new, every lame movie uses that line. How about, ‘Of all the deep water trenches in the world, she swam into mine.’”
“Can you imagine looking out the viewport and seeing a mermaid?” Shaffer said, readying the ROV for deployment.
“I prefer my mermaids with a D-cup or better,” Prestis joked. “Any mermaids surviving down here would be flat-chested from all the pressure. Stand by, I'm powering up the Flying Squirrel.”
Jonas smiled. “I meant to ask you guys—whose idea was it to name the ROV the Flying Squirrel?”
“Dr. Shaffer gets the credit on that one.”
“What can I say, I’m an old Rocky and Bullwinkle fan.”
Jonas struggled to control the DSV’s pitch and yaw as the Sea Cliff tossed above rolling wakes of cold water hitting warm. “Maybe we should call Danielson and Heller, Boris and Natasha.”
Prestis grabbed for a handle bar, closing his eyes against the turbulence. “Which one’s Boris and which one’s Natasha?”
Shaffer ignored him, reciting a quick prayer.
“Heller should be Natasha,” Jonas responded, “he has nicer legs. Mike, you okay?”
The submersible’s bow and tail teetered as if on a slow-moving see-saw. “Let’s just finish this damn mission and get the hell out of Dodge. Deploying Flying Squirrel.”
Roughly the size of a go-cart, the rectangular, canary-yellow ROV decoupled from the DSV’s sled, its twin propellers rapidly moving it away from the submersible, while its docking berth fed out piano wire from the motorized spool, keeping the drone tethered to the Sea Cliff.
