Into the Deep

This plunge into the deep began twenty years earlier when I was thirteen. I was one of those kids who wanted to grow up to be a marine biologist. The challenge: I was a child of immigrant parents who weren’t college-educated. I grew up in the inner city of Chicago and didn’t meet a marine biologist until I was an undergraduate. In short, I had no idea what it meant to be a marine biologist. I was inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s specials on WTTW, Channel 11, Chicago’s PBS station. Those shows transported me to the tropics and captivated me with images of colorful coral reefs and fish. In addition to those shows, I spent my summers in Miami, staying with my Cuban relatives, fishing with my Tío Manolín, and spending weekends at the beach making sand castles and playing in the waves. The moment I knew I wanted to become a marine biologist, though, came while I stood on the deck of a cruise ship when I was fifteen. I was cruising the Caribbean with my mother to celebrate my quinceañera (in reality, it was to celebrate my mother’s graduation from nursing school and mine from eighth grade, but it took two years to make the trip happen). On that deck, I stared across the vast Caribbean Sea and was struck by something akin to Cupid’s dart to the heart. I was in love. I pledged to be close to, study, and do whatever it took to help the ocean. The trouble was I had no idea how to achieve my promise.

The pilot flicked on the running lights. The darkness around us illuminated, and the beams reflected off particles drifting lazily in the water—marine snow. It reminded me of my childhood winters in Chicago, watching evening snowfalls illuminated by the streetlights outside my bedroom window. These tiny bits of organic debris provide food and nourishment to the inhabitants of the deep seafloor. I was mesmerized and disoriented. Were we going up? Down? Sideways? I took a deep breath to calm my anxiety. The pilot’s steady hand on the controls and calming voice assured me. I got this.

“Two hundred meters,” the pilot announced as the thrusters hummed to life. The submersible pushed forward.

The pilot inched the sub forward. Out of the darkness, a wall of boulders covered in coral and sponges emerged. This dive took us along the side of a submarine canyon. The rock walls of this underwater Grand Canyon were encrusted with life never seen on a TV show.

“Let me know when to start the transect,” the pilot said.

I sat cross-legged in the cramped space, wearing sweatpants over long johns, a thick fleece pullover, and a hat. There was no heat. Our only warmth came from the breath we exhaled, which cooled quickly. I had purposely skipped coffee that morning, as no bathroom was onboard. My six-foot frame folded into a yoga-like cross-legged pose so I could peer through the small, plate-sized porthole to watch data go by for two hours. This didn’t match the glamourous fantasy of swimming in warm, turquoise blue waters with technicolor coral reef fishes.

When I was fifteen, all I knew was that I needed to do more things associated with the water, so I trained to be a lifeguard on the beaches of Lake Michigan and a certified open-water SCUBA diver. Although it was in the Caribbean Sea where I received Cupid’s dart, my true love was the Pacific Ocean, fueled by my desire to live closer to my Abuela and Tío Danny, who lived in California. It is an ocean untouched by my ancestors, unlike the Atlantic Ocean, where ancestors from multiple branches of my family tree crossed to a new life: my African ancestors to slavery, my Spanish ancestors in search of riches, and most recently, my German father, who crossed the Atlantic on the Holland America ship M/S Maasdam in 1961 in search of better economic opportunities. Here, along the Aleutian Island archipelago of Alaska, I was in search of my scientific career, in search of rockfish.

“Start transect,” I said, and the pilot repeated the command to the surface support team.

For the next two hours, I sat hunched over, peering through the porthole as the submersible followed an imaginary line as I gathered data. I squeezed further down into a half-pigeon pose to try to look up, down, and out from the porthole. The rock wall in front of us was likely an old lava flow that, over time, became encrusted with various cold-water corals and sponges.

Blind faith in my love for the ocean pushed me forward in my quest to become a marine biologist. I didn’t know how much they made. I didn’t know who employed them. I didn’t understand why I loved the ocean; I just did. At one point, I wanted to study sea turtles because I had read about a scientist in Florida studying sea turtles in Cuba. Was my love for the ocean meant to bring me closer to my mother’s Cuban heritage?

In college, on the south side of Chicago, my biology 101 instructor discovered I wanted to be a marine biologist. She looked at me like an adult wanting to help a lost child, her eyes asking, “What are you doing here if you want to be a marine biologist?” She told me about a new marine biologist in the Anatomy and Physiology department who was studying the physiology of billfish, such as Blue Marlin, to understand human physiology better. My naivete tempered any nervousness I had during my first meeting with her. She needed help preparing frozen tissue samples for microscopic analysis and developing photographs taken of the thin sections under a microscope. I learned quickly and felt proud of my accomplishments despite being so far away from the ocean. I placed a photo of my hero, Jacques Cousteau, at my desk in her lab. When she saw it, she told me to take it down. I refused. “He isn’t a scientist,” she said. “He has done more to make people aware of the ocean world than any scientist,” I defended. His picture stayed on the wall.

“Rougheye rockfish, one at 50 centimeters, 10 meters away. Two at 40 centimeters, 20 meters away,” I announced, logging the first data points. The submersible’s lasers, set 20 centimeters apart, helped me gauge the fish’s size.

My job onboard the submersible was to announce when a fish species, especially rockfish, was seen and estimate its distance from the vessel. Video cameras were positioned along the starboard side and front of the submersible to confirm our observations. Our methodology of conducting line transects along the bottom was borrowed from studies along the West Coast, from California to southeast Alaska. A methodology I was familiar with because of where I went to graduate school along the Monterey Bay. The submersible work was used to study the submarine canyon, whose depths rival those of the Grand Canyon. My co-chief scientist had no field biology experience, having studied numbers in a computer rather than specimens in their natural habitat. He was certain we could conduct the survey alone by following the published methodology. I wasn’t as sure, so as a precaution, I invited two friends from my alma mater who had done several dives in the Delta submersible off California to help.

Our team of four was challenged to determine if rockfish densities varied by habitat type. The trouble was there were no maps of habitat types in this little-explored area, unlike a well-studied area like Monterey Bay. The only information we had were maps of where our agency’s bottom trawl research surveys caught the rougheye or shortraker rockfish, the rockfish we were interested in. We only had funding for four days of dives, and each day had a different location and habitat type. Most of the 60 species of fish from the genus Sebastes, whose collective name is “rockfish,” are slow-growing, live extraordinarily long (some, like shortraker rockfish, can reach over 200 years old), and reproduce only under ideal conditions. These fish can be caught as bycatch in Alaskan commercial fisheries, which, coupled with their life-history strategy, creates a conservation concern. This survey was the first step toward documenting which habitat these fish preferred. Our results would aid in their conservation by understanding how many or how much of their population is associated with these different habitat types.

“Stop transect,” I said. The pilot relayed the message.

Nestled behind several tiny sponges and coral was a massive shortraker rockfish. An 80-centimeter, bubblegum-pink fish, whose nose was hidden behind a sponge that reminded me of a Dr. Seuss book, floated alongside the rock wall, unbothered by the submersible or the bright halogen lights. I was awestruck. I snapped photos not only for documentation but also to capture the sheer beauty of this hidden world. For a moment, science gave way to wonder.

“Start transect,” I said. The pilot moved the submersible forward. I started collecting data once again. I quelled the desire to stop the transect whenever I saw something that took my breath away: a deep crevasse, a lone Pacific cod at a depth it wasn’t typically found, or a recent cascade of black volcanic boulders with no corals or sponges.

A gelatinous pink creature with black-edged fins came into view—a snailfish. “Stop transect,” I said. These fragile fish are usually misshapen blobs when brought to the surface in a net. I had to document the beauty of how its fins flowed gracefully like a ball gown and how its little black eyes were unfazed by the sub’s bright lights.

Back on the ship, my co-chief scientist didn’t share my enthusiasm about seeing the shortraker, snailfish, corals, and sponges after the transect. His silence had me wondering if I had done something wrong. Suppose I didn’t collect the data correctly. If my graduate advisor was right, I didn’t have what it takes to be a scientist. I loved the idea of contributing to conservation, but I didn’t yet understand the full scope of what that entailed. Unlike Jacques Cousteau, who used beautiful imagery for conservation, I needed complex data. Yet, I couldn’t help but be captivated by the splendor around me.

My last dive before the end of the survey was in an area off Kanaga, an island next to Adak, which last erupted less than ten years before the survey. The cascade of black boulders I watched for two hours was devoid of corals and sponges; few fish swam into view, and none were rockfish. In the four days of diving we covered three types of habitat, muddy bottom, rocky canyon wall, and a rockslide of boulders from the last eruption. Despite our few data points, I thought we would have enough information to publish our findings. Little did I know my co-chief scientist didn’t feel the same way.

When the submersible survey ended, we waited two days for the next plane out of Adak Island. I explored the former military base with others from the scientific crew. We ate breakfast in a building that used to be the most remote McDonald’s in the world. I spent time alone, wandering the empty streets and searching for seashells along the shoreline. The excitement of publishing our findings, documenting being the first Latina to dive off the Aleutian Islands, and witnessing what no other people have ever seen was colored by self-doubt. I questioned my ability as a scientist. Was my graduate professor right? Did I not have what it took to be a scientist?

The data we collected were processed over the next few months at our office in Seattle. Eventually, my co-chief scientist would say there wasn’t enough data for a quantitative assessment to publish our study in an academic journal. I suggested writing a qualitative study to describe what we saw or making a video to place on the agency’s website. Each idea was dismissed not only by my co-chief scientist but also by our supervisor, another mathematician, and the webmaster. In 2002, our agency had no policy on sharing science with the public, only as academic papers. There was no communications team to help tell the story of what we saw or to highlight that I was the first Latina scientist to dive in a submersible off the Aleutian Islands. Still, my passion for these fish and their habitats drove me to push for change. With the help of colleagues in the habitat group of my agency, we eventually used the information collected from the submarine canyon to designate the area as a Marine Protected Area. My photos helped make that happen.

Feeling alone in my efforts to share the science I had conducted, I sought new ways to convey my passion for the ocean. Was it a PhD under a geological oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks to map the habitat types in the Aleutian Islands? No, my supervisor said, despite male colleagues who studied remotely for their PhDs. I would have to quit my job in Seattle and move to Alaska. This was something my then-husband and I weren’t willing to do. I didn’t want to lose my job, so I had to figure out how to do what I loved.

Once again, I found myself on my journey to becoming a marine biologist without any clear direction. While I now realize that following one’s passion can feel like traversing a complicated maze, back then, I didn’t understand that yet. I discovered my limitations with lab work and realized that conducting scientific research wasn’t my strongest suit—another dead end in my path. Nevertheless, I persevered in sharing my enthusiasm for science. I delivered public lectures and volunteered as a guest speaker at various high schools and colleges. Furthermore, I initiated outreach programs that allowed our scientists to participate in public events, schools, and aquariums to showcase their work and educate the community. I pushed the agency’s management to redirect our website’s mission towards educating and inspiring the public rather than solely focusing on academic interests. I launched an internship program and a summer science camp for middle school students, aiming to inspire the next generation to explore careers in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math. In the eager faces of the students I mentored—kids from underserved communities facing their own challenges—I saw reflections of my own journey. Each time one of them chose a career in STEM, it felt as though I was paying tribute to the part of me that once questioned my place in this profession. I realized that my strength lay in my passion for the ocean and recognized there were numerous ways to educate others about it. I finally found my path.