“Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head,
But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turnin’ red,
Cryin’s not for me …
’Cause I’m never gonna stop the rain by complainin’
Because I’m free… nothin’s worryin’ me.”
It began as scattered droplets and progressed steadily as we advanced on our northeasterly course. The rain, of course, was coming from the ice sheet above our heads. The question was: why was it melting?
“Surface water temperature is forty-nine degrees,” Ming called out. “We must be passing over a geothermal vent field. Captain, take us back down to the bottom. If the vents are there, then we must be in the wrong area.”
Ben dove the sub, and we officially entered the Miocene.
Before I could react to the blizzard of objects appearing on my sonar screen, a swarm of anchovies glittered silver in our lights, whipping themselves into a frenzied six-story tornado.
My heart palpitated a moment later when sonar detected a massive object rising at us from two hundred feet below the surface. Before Ben could swerve out of the way the water was teeming with salmon. Thousands of seven- to eight-foot-long scaly missiles pounded the sub like hail as they raced to dine at the all-you-can-eat anchovy buffet, their upturned mouths widening to reveal gruesome needle-sharp teeth.
We waited until the deluge of fish passed before continuing our descent. The deeper we ventured, the larger the species seemed to be. Albino sunfish reflected our lights like miniature moons, and tarpon as large as groupers swerved around our craft. A toadfish pressed against the acrylic glass, blocking my forward view. Its large, flat head was as big as a basketball, its wide mouth filled with blunt teeth, its slime-covered body tapering back to a plump belly and fan-like pectoral fins.
Dozens of blips appeared on my sonar screen and in our lights giant stingrays flew past us on majestic twenty-foot wings, the magnificent albino creatures swarming to feed upon a wounded sunfish. One of these not-so-gentle giants swooped in and snatched the toadfish in its vicious bat-like mouth, its pale body pressing against the pod as its sharp triangular teeth skewered its meal. For a nerve-racking moment, the stingray’s wingspan enveloped the Barracuda, pitching us hard to port before it swam off.
Ming delighted as she documented our descent. Ben swore. As for me, I could only gaze in wonderment at this preserved time capsule from the past, the marine biologist in me questioning whether these animals represented true Miocene species that existed in Antarctica fifteen million years ago or whether we were looking at anatomical variations that were a direct result of adapting to the extreme conditions of this uniquely isolated environment.
The creative right side of my brain told my left, logical side to shut up and enjoy the show.
The enjoyment, however, turned to trepidation when the first sharks appeared. Using my night-vision glasses, I identified two different species of requiem predators. The first Carcharhinid was a twelve-foot oceanic whitetip. The second brute was a bull shark that was twice the size and girth of the Barracuda.
While both of these species had a reputation for following freshwater rivers inland to inhabit lakes, it was still shocking to find these ocean dwellers thriving in Vostok.
Ming called out the temperature as we passed twelve hundred feet. “Fifty-three degrees.”
That settled my shark dilemma. It was not just Antarctica, after all, that had frozen millions of years ago; the oceans surrounding the continent had also incurred a precarious drop in temperature. A river bleeding a warm-water current into coastal waters would have lured many ocean species.
I shuddered to think what else might be down here.
I got an answer as we passed sixteen hundred feet. A thousand shadows materialized all around us in every direction, becoming bulbous eyes and jaws that unhinged, and bizarre fish with needle-sharp teeth, many of which cast bioluminescent lanterns that dangled before their open mouths like bait. These were Vostok’s deepwater creatures, Miocene mutations forced to adapt to the darkness and cold.
But not cold, for the water temperature was fifty-seven degrees and still rising.
As we descended to twenty-two hundred feet, a gray haze began to appear, chasing away Vostok’s denizens of the deep.
At twenty-four hundred feet, the water temperature had risen to sixty-three degrees.
Forty more feet and I saw the first black smoker.
Hydrothermal vents were first discovered in the Pacific Ocean back in 1977. Since then, they had been found in every ocean as well as in certain rift lakes.
Vostok was just such a lake, formed when East Antarctica’s crustal plates had separated, creating a valley that became the waterway’s basin. The geothermal vents were switched on when cold water began seeping into cracks along the forming lake’s floor. Heated by molten rock in the earth’s mantle, the water mixed with oxygen, magnesium, potassium, and other minerals before being forcibly ejected back into the lake. Once this hot mineral soup met Vostok’s cold, oxygen-rich water, it generated hydrogen sulfide, which in turn fueled bacteria — the foundation of the lake’s chemosynthetic food chain.
Avoiding direct contact with the superheated discharges, Ben gave us a tour of the vent field, a petrified forest of volcanic chimneys that spewed billowing dark clouds of mineral-laden water, which spawned a thriving subglacial ecosystem. Piled along the base of these vents was a mosh-pit of life — crustaceans and shrimp, clams and anemone — everything white and twice the size of similar species outside of Vostok. Our sub rocked in eighty-nine-degree water as we passed over miles of vent fields, small fish feeding off the spaghetti-like clusters of tubeworms that grew in acre-size clusters.
“All right, Zach, Ming — we’ve taken a look. What say we move on before this mineral water clogs one of the engine’s intake valves?”
Not waiting for our reply, Ben began our ascent as we continued our trek to the northeast.
We had journeyed another three nautical miles when we discovered another missing cog in Vostok’s thriving ecosystem.
Upon reaching a depth of 420 feet, we discovered strands of what appeared to be kelp dangling across our cockpit glass. The higher we rose, the denser the growth, until we were surrounded by thick strands of algae.
As we continued our ascent, sonar revealed the lake’s surface had been replaced by a thick algae mat that carpeted Vostok’s lake for miles.
“This is bizarre,” I said. “A kelp forest is usually rooted to the bottom. This forest is upside down. Its holdfast is growing out of the geothermal soil and algae that has accumulated along the surface.”
Ben kept the Barracuda eighty feet beneath the mineralized surface, fearful of the Valkyrie units becoming entwined in long strands of kelp.
Everywhere we looked, there were fish.
Hundreds of Miocene rockfish dominated the shallows, their six-foot-long frames carrying a good hundred pounds. They must have been blind, for they remained unaffected by our exterior lights. Their thick hides were a bright orange, rendering the inverted vines a Miocene pumpkin patch.
“This is incredible. Ming, I hope you’re getting this. Ming?”
I turned to find her chair spun around as she hovered over the rear instrument panel. “It was recording perfectly until a few moments ago, but now the image is pixelating.”
“It must be that magnetic interference. We’re probably close to the plateau.”
“Good,” Ben said. “Once we cross the plateau we’ll be in the northern basin, and the magnetic interference should pass. Looks like we won’t be getting there along the surface, though. Guess it’s back down to the basement.”