I was changed forever by a journey to the bottom of the sea

Boston Globe

18-06-2025

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Just before my 2023 dive, Karl Stanley, the captain who took me down off the Honduran coast, told me that he had eschewed communication systems for his sub, believing that if something went wrong at the depths to which we were to dive, no one would be able to find and get to us, let alone save us. Stanley operates out of Honduras in part because his sub doesn't have to undergo a rigorous licensing and insuring process there. At the powerful whimsy of the encompassing brine, the best-case scenario if something went wrong would be for the sub to quickly tumble to its crush point — the depth at which the pressure crumples the craft.
Where does wonder — if excessively chased — bump up against tragedy, or atrocity? Years ago, Stanley tested his own limits, pushing his first sub, C-Bug, beyond its operating depth rating, risking implosion, permanently deforming its hull. He narrowly escaped with his life.
I've spoken to many in the amateur submersible community. Some admit to actually
enduring
time on the surface, as if it's painful for them — a too-bright way station. To some, the underwater realm serves as a convent or monastery. A place to be human away from the rhythms and strictures of the human world. A place where our sense of control is tenuous and often illusory. A place where we may feel that we don't have to comport with the rules of the surface. It's also a place where we shouldn't be, a place our bodies weren't made for, wherein we require machines in order to respire.
'It's really hard when you're down there to want to come back to the surface,' says the amateur submersible builder Shanee Stopnitzky, who has spent over a year of her life in aggregate underwater. 'This [the deep sea] is my place.'
'Definitely, in the beginning, it was almost like an addiction,' Tonni Andersen, a scuba and submersible diver, told me. 'I almost need to dive.'
Many in the community seem to downplay the dangers of their avocation. They often get lost in the exhaustive safety precautions they must take to mitigate — but never eradicate — the danger. Because they're taking these precautions and lending their minds and bodies to inventing and engineering and then physically welding and sealing and gluing and fire-treating the parts for these safety measures, that's what many of them fixate on. The safety precautions are what take up their time and energy, and sometimes, if only rhetorically, many seem to confuse that for actual encompassing safety, actual encompassing security, when, in reality, the encompassing thing is the danger — the fickleness and power of the deep sea.
I've probably watched too many Bond movies and can't help thinking of the dark side of chasing this exploratory impulse. It feels short-sighted and sometimes villainous. Could this be another version of misguided human stewardship and manifest destiny, akin perhaps to colonizing Mars? Should we occupy this space just because our technology and desires tell us that we can? What might be the consequences of such projects, and who may use underwater technology in the future for less benign and whimsical means?
'The future of mankind is under water,' Stockton Rush, OceanGate's late CEO (and one of the five who perished onboard Titan), once said. 'We will have a base under water…. If we trash this planet, the best lifeboat for mankind is under water.' One may wonder if by 'we,' he meant the uber-wealthy, and if by 'mankind,' he also meant the uber-wealthy.
I do not regret having dived to 2,000 feet in Stanley's home-built submersible. What I beheld was indeed wondrous, but in a torturing kind of way. I think about it every day, and so, from time to time, I get lost, foggy, as if still down there with the bioluminescence. Though I will never do that again, I can see how it could become an addiction. I will attempt to satisfy the urge instead by putting on my shoes and going for a walk on the good, hard surface of the earth, watching the birds, praying that all who need to be rescued will be. I will do this, until it becomes enough.