CREATURES OF THE DEEP
The first major scientific collecting cruise of marine life in the diverse Sea of Cortez was organized by Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck in 1940. During the expedition, their crew made most of their collections at low tides. With their bent-over posture and slow head-scanning movements, they would inevitably draw questions from the locals:
“What did you lose?”
“Nothing.”
“Then what do you search for?”
This line has always made me laugh, not least because I’ve been asked this question or something close to it many times in my 40-year career of exploring the ocean. And the truth is, I’ve asked it of myself more than a few times.
Encounters with bioluminescence can make that question seem quaint. The open ocean is a fantastically strange and wonderful place. In this world without apparent hiding places, the game of hide-and-seek is played out on a daily basis with life-and-death consequences. One successful survival strategy is to hide in the depths during the day, below what we call the edge of darkness, and come up to feed in food-rich waters only at night, as the edge of darkness makes its way toward the surface. This is such a common solution to the problem of no hiding places that it is responsible for the most massive animal migration pattern
