Welcome aboard: Alvin is hoisted onto the R/V Atlantis after a deep sea exploration. Photo: Jeffrey Pollack

It is 7:53 a.m., and Peter Etnoyer '88, M.E.M '01 is just moments away from his first dive in the deep-sea submersible Alvin. The sun--long up but only partially piercing the thin morning fog--promises another brilliant day on the Gulf of Alaska. With only a light breeze and little swell, it is a peaceful morning. Sleepy scientists mill around the deck of the R/V Atlantis, talking in small groups over muted clanks as the Alvin team adds steel weight stacks to the base of the sub.

Near the starboard railing, Etnoyer is doing his Elvis impersonation, popping onto his toes and flashing a bright-eyed, dimpled smile. His dance routine is meant to show off the strength of the shiny white, steel-toed, Wrangler tennis shoes that gleam below his rolled-up, gray jeans. Steel-toed shoes are the only kind of footwear allowed on the fantail (rear work deck) of the Atlantis during Alvin operations. By the afternoon, Etnoyer's shoes would be scribbled over in brightly colored permanent marker, part of his initiation as a first-time diver that also involved buckets of icy water and assorted food products.

"Here we go, down to zee bot-tem. We are in search of zee beeg bamboo coh-ral," Etnoyer says in his best Pep? Le Pew imitation, brandishing a piece of bamboo coral skeleton that he is carrying for luck.

The ship's horn sounds--the cue for the divers to enter the Alvin. Etnoyer follows the pilot up the narrow metal staircase on the side of the massive hydraulic A-frame that will hoist the Alvin off the deck of the Atlantis. On the platform at the top of the stairs, Etnoyer removes his dancing shoes (socks only in the Alvin). He turns just before entering the sub, flashes his Hollywood smile at the collection of scientists and crew on the deck below, and intones in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, "We'll be back!"

Etnoyer is one of four main scientists--principal investigators (P.I.'s)--awarded grants by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Ocean Exploration that enabled them to participate in a twenty-five-day research expedition aboard the research vessel Atlantis last summer. (Created in 2001, the Office of Ocean Exploration is the hub of NOAA's activities to explore and map the farthest reaches of the world's oceans.)

The Atlantis, the 274-foot floating home of the DSV Alvin (deep submergence vehicle)--best known for its role in the exploration of Titanic--is one of the premier vessels operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Etnoyer and the other scientists aboard the Atlantis are using the Alvin to study five unexplored seamounts--underwater volcanoes that are part of the Kodiak-Bowie Chain. This seamount chain stretches across a 400-mile section of the Northeast Pacific, from the Aleutian Trench off Kodiak Island to an area just west of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Some of the scientists on this mission are studying the origin and age of the seamounts while others, like Etnoyer, are concentrating on the deep-sea corals and other marine life that are found on the seamounts. I am aboard as the expedition's Web coordinator, documenting the mission through daily science logs, photographs, and video posted on the Web.

The largest seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska rise over 3,000 meters--almost two miles--above the sea floor and act as islands for marine life in an otherwise barren deep-sea desert. Despite freezing temperatures, a total lack of light, and low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water around them, many seamounts support veritable forests of deep-sea corals and sponges. Each of the coral colonies--the individual trees in the coral forests--are in turn home to an entire community of invertebrates, such as shrimp, sea stars, polychaete worms, and crabs. Today, diving to 450 meters on Dickins Seamount, Etnoyer hopes to find an abundance of bamboo corals.

In the lab later that afternoon, after he has recovered from his icy initiation and changed out of his sopping clothes, and after the scientists' excitement over the day's samples has subsided, Etnoyer and his assistant Aur?lie Shapiro M.E.M. '01 struggle to move a bamboo coral that is more than two-feet wide and dripping clear mucous. In her life as a landlubber, Shapiro works for NOAA in the Special Projects Office of the National Ocean Service, where she specializes in satellite mapping of shallow-water coral reefs and other marine habitats.

"Okay, grab your toothbrushes and start scrubbing!" Etnoyer is much more excited about the task at hand than Shapiro and Shinobu Okano, a NOAA student intern who is working with Shapiro as Etnoyer's second assistant. These two will have the pleasure of scrubbing the fleshy tissue and mucous (nicknamed ectoplasm after the goo in Ghostbusters, which had been screened in the Atlantis' movie lounge the night before) from the bamboo coral's calcareous skeleton.

When I join Shapiro and Okano outside on the deck twenty minutes later to document their work, both have abandoned their meager tools and are up to their elbows in brown coral goo. I watch from a safe distance as their efforts reveal the beautiful ivory skeletal structure of the coral. Bony calcareous segments, each a few inches long, are connected by dark, gorgonin disks--similar in composition to deer hooves--to create what appear to be the branches of an eerie skeleton tree. This specimen, Isadella n.sp, is the most ubiquitous genera of bamboo coral at shallow depths in the Gulf of Alaska.

Deep-sea bamboo corals are from the subclass Octocorallia, a collection of soft corals, sea fans, and other similar colonial animals that are distinguished by the eight feather-like (pinnate), nonretractile tentacles that surround the mouth of each polyp. Each individual coral colony (tree) comprises thousands of individual coral polyps; these polyps form the fleshy, living sheath that covers the bony coral skeleton.

Elongated polyps up to several inches long form a hula skirt around the base (trunk) of each bamboo coral colony. Underwater video from Alvin shows these "sweeper tentacles" billowing in the currents. Etnoyer says he suspects that these polyps may be packed with harpoon-like stinging cells called nematocysts, similar to those found in jelly fish.

Once Shapiro and Okano have cleaned the Isadella skeleton, it will be dried, photographed, and scrutinized in the lab. After the cruise, this and other prime specimens from the expedition will be shipped to the Smithsonian Institution, where Etnoyer has been studying deep-sea corals for the last two years.

At breakfast time, the Atlantis' mess is an intersection of smells: freshly baked muffins and eggs from the kitchen, sweat and grease from the engineers just coming off their shifts, the clean smell of Irish Spring from those who have started their day with the bars of soap that are standard issue in each cabin of the ship.

From my over-the-pancake vantage on one of our first mornings out of Seattle, Etnoyer and Shapiro strike me as poster children for a new school of applied marine science. Bright, creative, and keeping the rest of us at the table in stitches, this dynamic duo turns the old stereotype of nerdy, introverted scientists on its head. Etnoyer is a master of comical accents and facial expressions and has a charisma that he can turn on like a light. Fueled by fresh fruit, pancakes, and the excitement of a new adventure, he is in rare form this morning.

"Dohh... I just keep thinking of more things that I forgot. Tick, tick, tick," says Etnoyer, extending a finger for each forgotten item.

"Like what?" Shapiro asks, with a mouthful of eggs. She's already in the habit of late nights at the computer and last-minute breakfast appearances. This morning, she displays a prominent set of bed lines on her left cheek.

"Shampoo, for one. I guess it's Irrrish Sprrring for me," Etnoyer trills. His hair looks like he might have washed it with Irish Spring this morning, or not at all. The blond ponytail that I remember from our time together in graduate school is long gone; in its place is a mussy, almost spiky bed head. But it fits--with his black, polyester, Adidas warm-up pants, and his square, brown GQ glasses, it's easy to imagine Etnoyer as comfortable at some trendy caf? near his home in L.A. as he is on this ship. (He lost his glasses two days later over the starboard side of the ship. His comment: "Oh well, now I have eyes at the bottom of the sea.")