Science Friday - The Leap: And Then The Sub Went Silent

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Oceanographer Victoria Orphan’s dream was coming true. She was sitting in the Alvin submersible, on one of its deepest science dives ever. But the trip was anything but smooth sailing. Victoria takes us inside the sub, where her dream turns nightmarish as things start to go wrong, and Alvin pilot Nick O’Sadcia works frantically to troubleshoot. Oceanographer Shana Goffredi, who’s also Victoria’s wife, tells us about the tense scene unfolding on the ship miles above, as they wait for word from the sub. “The Leap” is a 10-episode audio series that profiles scientists willing to take big risks to push the boundaries of discovery. It has premiered on Science Friday’s podcast feed every Monday since May 12. This is the final episode of the 2025 season.“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Rachel Boyd out of hatches sealed. awaiting permission to watch on your word. This is Alvin Dive 5268. Victoria Orphan is a Caltech professor and a deep sea explorer, which means that a few times a year, if she's lucky, she climbs down a ladder into a seven-foot-wide titanium globe that serves as the cockpit of the submersible Alvin. And then with a pilot and another scientist,

she sinks miles into the sea. Can't wait to see that. what the seafloor looks like here. To places no human has ever been. To collect creatures no one has ever known. To study some of the most alien ecosystems on Earth. When I mentioned to other scientists that I was interviewing oceanographer Victoria Orphan, they all basically said the same thing.

Oh, yeah, she's a badass. So I had this idea in my mind of what to expect. I've interviewed a number of explorers, And I found that it is a profession that sometimes attracts big personalities. People who seem energized to risk life in limb to find something new. People who are always ready to tell you a swashbuckling tail, you know, exaggerated or not. And so when I sat down for my first interview with Victoria, I was a little surprised. What is your personal relationship to risk?

I'm definitely not a risk taker. I am not somebody who wants to, you know, jumps at the chance of bungee jumping or paragliding or any of those sort of like adrenaline junkie sports. No, no thanks. I wasn't getting a hint of swagger. It would scare the pants off of me. And the more I talked to Victoria, the more it became clear that her reputation for badassery was definitely not thanks to self-promotion. In fact, it was so buried under layers of human. humility and understatedness, that to find that part of her personality, I had to follow her to the bottom of the sea.

On her deepest dive yet, a dive that did not go as planned. I don't know. Should I be concerned about that? This is The Leap, a series about scientists who are risking their careers, reputations, and even their lives to discover something new. We're now slowly making our way out of the harbor. Victoria is sailing on the RV Atlantis, a huge science research vessel with cranes, a library, labs, a machine shop. It'll carry the scientists, the crew, the Alvin submersible, and all their equipment to see. I don't know. It brings this inner joy of being able to be part of this great science.

adventure. They're zigzagging around Alaska's Aleutian Islands. There's all sorts of snow-capped mountains around us. We saw a pot of orcas go by. I mean, it's just about as epic as you can get. The seafloor is epic, too. Here, two continental plates are ramming into each other, creating a deep trench. And that trench is exactly where Victoria is headed. The water down there is just above freezing. There's no light. And the creatures that live there have found unusual. ways to survive, some of them living off of methane that bubbles out of the trench. It's about as remote as it gets, and yet we're deeply connected to these ecosystems and the creatures that live there. By eating methane, these deep-sea microbes trap a powerful greenhouse

gas at the bottom of the sea, rather than letting it bubble up into the atmosphere. But to understand how that works, you need to go there, which means diving to depths few people have ever visited. For me, it's the deepest dive I've ever done. Yeah, almost 5,000 meters. Three miles down. A little over three miles down. You're grinning ear to ear right now. It's pretty exciting. You know, a lot of times we live vicariously through our students and they get to do all the fun things in the lab. And so I'm happy. I love, you know, if I've got mud under my nails, I'm happy camper. This isn't just Victoria's deepest dive in the Alvin submersible.

It's also one of the Alvin's submersibles deepest dives. Alvin's been in operation for decades, but it was just retrofitted so it could go deeper than it ever has before. But so far in this cruise, the sub hasn't gotten much time in the water. I was supposed to be diving in the Alvin submersible today, but sadly, we are are dealing with 30-knott winds and lots of white caps. You can hear the thud of the waves on the ship. Boy, the whole ship vibrates when the waves hit it.

It's a full body experience out here. It's been stormy, and when it's too wavy, it's not safe to put the sub in the water. It took years to plan the cruise. It's rare to get access to the sub, so it sucks to be benched. And you can hear the disappointment in Victoria's voice. Can't do much of anything right now because the weather is kind of crappy out. So when the weather finally breaks, Victoria is pumped. All right, it's Monday morning.

It's a beautiful day for diving. I'm happy to report. They're rolling Alvin out of the hangar as we speak. Everybody is on the back deck. waiting with anticipation. This cruise has four principal investigators, all women, which is unusual, and even more unusual, two of them are married to each other,

Victoria and her partner, Shauna Goughredi, another oceanographer. She'll see Victoria off today, and you can hear her in the background. It's getting real now. The weights loaded up on... The weights that will sink them to the bottom of the ocean, and the weights that they'll drop

when they're ready to come back up. There's another storm that's going to be rolling in soon, so I'm feeling a little bit of extra pressure to try to get as many of our samples as possible. One of the big reasons to actually go to the bottom of the sea is so you can bring stuff back. Animals, microorganisms, mud samples, water samples, bits of slimy rocks, anything that can be looked at, researched, studied to help us understand this mysterious ecosystem. Visits to these deep sea sites are so rare that if you make it all the way down there, you better not come back empty-handed. There's no worse feeling of disappointment

coming up to the surface and having to tell people that you didn't bring any samples back. All right, they just called Nick Up, our pilot. Starting to get a little bit of that nervous energy and some butterflies. and I'm so, so excited to finally get back into the sub. Hard to believe that's going to be home for the next nine hours. Nine hours with two other people in a metal globe about the size of an SUV.

There are computer screens all around, five viewports to look out, and a hatch in the floor where you store your pee bottles. The sub is sitting on the back deck of the Atlantis under an A-frame that will hoist it into the water. Victoria walks up a ladder and over a little bridge to the sub. The team cheers as Victoria, her colleague Ekin Tillick and Alvin Pilot, Nick Ossetia, embark. Everybody has been waiting for this day. It's why they're all here. It's a buoyant moment.

So it's easy to forget that going over three miles down, way deeper than the Titanic's resting place, for example, to icy waters with skull-crushing pressures, comes with risks. I almost don't want to talk about it. Like, there's always a level of superstition with, you know, getting entangled is the biggest concern because a lot of these, you know, ghost nets and things like that are not mapped. What's a ghost net? It's like old fishing gear that has been lost and it's basically floating around. And we know there's a lot of fishing up in that area. If you did get entangled in a net, like what happens? Like, why is that so bad?

Two reasons. So it's bad anytime. But especially because we're in a remote part of the world and because we're really deep, it makes it very challenging to get any other vehicle there to rescue you. We sort of saw this play out in real time with the Titan. Titan, the sub that went missing for days in June, 23. Before it was found in pieces, there was this desperate race to get rescuers there. Trying to get vehicles there that can reach those depths. It's a concern.

And so the best thing is just not to have that happen. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, things also can break, like the batteries are shorting or something like that. Those kinds of things are not great. But Victoria doesn't sound nervous. All right, we're here in the Almond submersible with Ekin and Nick. He's just closing the hatch right now. Bridge, coordinator hatch is sealed, awaiting permission to lunch on your work.

This is one of the sounds of the sub, the messages back and forth with the top lab on the ship. Atlanta's Alvin, my three bent files are open, ID light is on, patches sealed. They're off, and at first, all is swell. I got a couple of playlists. They got a couple of podcasts for the way out. All right. The music's going, Nick queues up, That's Life by Sinatra. And they begin their descent.

It'll take them about two hours to get to the bottom. It's getting dark. The light dims as they sink, but the mood could not be brighter. You just never get tired of looking at the view. I know. The anticipation. Of course, the one day the freaking sun comes up. I know.

It's far away. They're slowly sinking down. The bioluminescent creatures are streaking by their windows. Deep sea fireflies. And then the trouble starts. Okay, top left nose. Both legs of that ground just drop. at the same time.

It's an electrical issue with the sub. I don't know. Should I be concerned about that? The engineers on the ship, they're not concerned. Well, I'd say just keep going. Keep an eye on it. And let me know if it changes. These things happen.

Everything looks fine now. Keep on keeping on, they say. All right, working through some initial pre-dive issues. They're about half a mile down. Victoria starts getting down a business. I'm going to start looking at my business. my clipboard and going through our checklist for the dive. They go over their route once they get to the bottom.

Yeah, I think our plan is to start at waypoint four and then work our way away at way point three. And they're sinking farther and farther away from the ship. Depth, 4013 meters. We're officially past the deepest depth I've ever been. Pretty exciting. The messages from TopLab start getting different. difficult to make out.

I can't really hear you on this thing. I'm going to switch back to the EEO and try a different mic. Meanwhile, they've almost made it to the seafloor. That's 4, 6, 8, 9, 200 meters off. We're getting close to the bottom here. Some little jellies in the water. Pretty amazing to think we're down here almost 5,000 meters. This is a huge moment for this whole,

expedition. It's very exciting. And the scientists on the ship are excited, too. So up in Top Lab, where they're radioing with Alvin, the scientists are gathering. Hi. That's Victoria's partner, Shauna. She's talking with one of the Alvin engineers up top. Hello. We're here to watch them hit the seafloor. They're not going to hit the seafloor. They're going to hover above it. So slowly. Slowly. Eat the seafloor. Yeah, they're not there yet. They're getting there. We know. We know. We can tell. But it's close. I must admit, I pay more attention to this commercial when Victoria is in it. Picture them huddled around this speaker at the top of the ship, listening to these dispatches from deep below.

About 10 meters off. All right. We should start to see it something. About 10 meters off the bottom. I can start to hear the thrusters go. Next, starting to navigate us. I think I see some muddy bottom down there. Okay. Yep.

There's a sea cucumber. Surprising a lot of life down here. Some beautiful little stocked-flowered crynoids. There are these deep-sea invertebrates with long, fluffy, pedally arms, kind of like miniature palm trees blowing in the breeze.

Oh, man, it's beautiful. It's a celebratory moment that does not last long. Because when Nick powers up the robotic arm that they'll use to collect creatures, something goes wrong. Bye.

Port manipulator power switch on the control bus, the breaker is breaking. I can't power on. This is a huge problem. The port manipulator is the sub's primary tool for collecting samples. Collecting samples is the primary objective of this trip. Yeah, Roger, understood. Stand by. That's not good, he says.

Okay. Victoria immediately goes into troubleshoot mode. push boring. And it's not just Victoria. More than three miles up on the top deck of the ship, Victoria's partner, Shana, is also brainstorming workarounds.

I mean, literally asking the exact same questions at the exact same moment. How about the Niskins? Can you reach the Niskin bottles? Biotubes. But we can't open the biobox. And they suck. And you can get the slurp?

I think I could do the slurp, yeah. So this sucks, but it's not the end of the world. Slurp is an option. They can still try to pick up some stuff. They can cruise around and survey the area. So Shauna goes to lunch and Alvin goes on to its destination. Okay, top lab, are they heading up to what we can with the Starver manipulator?

Well, we've got Alvin with a broken wing. Definitely disappointing. But the good news is we can still drive, and we are still in hot pursuit of some methane seeps. So they're looking for these spots where methane is bubbling out, and there are some telltale signs. Clam beds, that would be give us some indication that there's methane seeping. Tube worms or franulets also live in these methane seep spots. You can picture stalks with kind of swoops of red hair.

They were on the wish list to find and bring back, at least before Alvin's arm broke. That's 4900 heading to weight point three. So they're cruising along, scoping seep spots. when suddenly there's another problem with the sub. The lights go out, the computers go dark, the video system goes down. Nick, the pilot, is trying to figure out the issue. You can hear him furiously flipping switches. This is not normal.

Nick talks first. Victoria and Ekin stay quiet. They look at each other, their eyes wide. Nick tries to reassure them that everything is okay. Everything's good, he says. I promise. And then suddenly... The recording stops.

It's silent. Up on the boat, Shauna returns to the Top Lab. I came back after lunch, and no joke, every single Alvin ops person was in Top Lab. They had, like, the blueprints out for Alvin. Shana's heart starts speeding fast. She's pacing. She finds out that one of the subs, two batteries, has gone out. I've been using Alvin for 30 years.

Like, I've never had the power go out in Alvin. That would have been so scary. And on top of that, the communication system with the ship cut out. So you call regularly for depth and status update, especially when something like this has gone on. And there was no reply. It's a tense situation. The sub is down to one battery.

its power supply is cut in half. Now, even if that remaining battery went out, there are emergency batteries on board as a failsafe to get them back to the ship. But at this moment, no one's exactly sure why these problems are happening, so it's stressful. And for Shawna, the person in that sub

isn't just her colleague. It's her life partner. Of course, my blood pressure and my heart rate is racing. It's not like I thought I wouldn't see her again. I was just afraid that she would, was afraid, I guess. But if Victoria was afraid, that was not the feeling she was radiating.

A few minutes after the brownout, Victoria turned the recorder back on. She'd cut it off to let her submaids freak out privately. They were back in contact with the ship, too, and Nick calls up. Okay, I'm going to have a reason to continue, especially without a poor manipulator. Nick is ready to go back up. Honestly, I think we should just have a... The sub is having problems. He knows the only way to fix the...

them is to go to the surface. But then something happens that I really, really did not expect. Victoria pipes up. Obviously, safety is definitely what we are prioritizing here. And we'll follow your lead. But if we could get something to bring up from the deep sea before we return to the surface, that would be great. And to me, this is the most revealing part of the dive.

Victoria, a person who would never bungee jump, a person who says they do not like risk, starts to mount a quiet campaign to keep Alvin down at the bottom of the sea just a little longer. I mean, I'm all for it if you're for it. But it's totally a view. I mean, it would just be observation. Yes. Okay. Nick says, okay, sure, we can look around quickly, but I'm not going to try to grab anything.

That takes a long time. It takes power. So that's the plan. But listen to Victoria delicately and methodically lay the groundwork for bringing back samples. If I had my port manipulative, I would be all over. Think about, like, the pilot crud you'd get if you could gently pick a sea daisy with you. And in this moment, I got a window into Victoria into another way to be a badass explorer. This is confidence without swagger, cool-headed but warm to her colleagues,

and a willingness to push just a little bit on everyone's comfort zone, including her own, to make this trip worthwhile. And it's infectious. Like if we saw something that was like the most incredible thing ever, I would try. And then something incredible pops into the viewport. The two worms they've been looking for all along. Oh, there's some funnel. It's right in front of us. Oh, nice.

The one's a little redheads. Sampled one of those without being a hero. You would. Put it in a biotube. You sure can. You can put it wherever you want, Nick. It's easy to forget that mere minutes ago, this sub lost power, all the lights went off, all the computers went dark. All right. Nick's going to try for the Hail Mary, Pranulate grab.

I'm not going to hold it. They get in position. Nick reaches out with the little manipulator that's not designed to pick up tube worms. And he gets it. In a tube. Yeah. High five. Yeah. That was probably the most absurd way to camp about.

Excellent. But it worked. The worm is grabbed and bagged, and Victoria seems delighted. Good news is we're not coming up empty-handed, and hopefully we'll have an uneventful return to the ship. As Nicklapse. When they make it back to the boat, You can hear a relief in everyone's voices.

Shana's there to greet them. I was pretty happy to see her when she got back on board, I have to say. Definitely think we hugged a lot longer than we would normally. Never want to hear brownouts. Yeah. You can set all the lights. When I first listened to the recording of this dive, the question that kept sloshing around in my head was, what was this like for Victoria? I mean, she seemed so cool,

but the experience seemed so scary. I caught up with Victoria a few days after the dive. She was still on the ship, and she said, yeah, it was scary, particularly when communication got cut off with the ship. I had never really spent much time thinking about the importance of the noise in the sub. And when that went away,

it really did feel like we were alone. This is like the lifeline to the ship. But when it seemed like things were a little bit more stable and calm, I just asked whether or not it was possible to salvage anything from this dive before like immediately heading back to the surface. I heard that part. And I was pretty shocked. because I would have been like elevator up, please.

So I guess I can tell you my thinking at that point, and that is we had already been dealing with horrible weather. The rest of the week looked really sketchy for diving, and so this could be our shot. They're shot to understand this mysterious place, a place that has a rudder on our atmosphere, a place that Victoria has dedicated her life, life to studying.

I'm all about just the joy of observation and the opportunity to go to this very remote world. That has always been such an amazing thrill, you know, for me. And just my training from graduate school on is just don't ever leave the bottom without something, right? Because it's such an investment, you want to try to eke out every last possible sample. It makes sense in that context. It took four years to plan this expedition. Getting subtime is rare and expensive.

Who knows when another person might be back at this place. But at the same time, it's a rare trait to be able to hold on to the 20,000 league view, even when your sub is on the fritz at the bottom of the sea. And it's the kind of person you probably want in your vessel when things go wrong. She rarely gets ruffled. She's been that way the entire time I've known her. Here's Shana again. And so she's usually the one in the relationship that, you know,

diffuses everything that's stressful. So, you know, if you picked anyone to be in this situation, it should be Victoria. But we really made the most of that one tube worm. It does seem like it. Yeah. It turned out to be pretty cool. So this was a male tube worm.

And it had these cool, like, almost like, weed-like sperm that are shaped like little arrows. And they get jammed. I don't know. It was really cool. The Leap is a production of the Hypothesis Fund. Victoria Volunteers on the Hypothesis Fund's Scientific Advisory Board. This show is hosted by me, Flora Lickman, and produced by Annette Heist. Editing by Devin Taylor, Pajau Van Gaye, and David Samford,

backchecking by Nicole Fasolka, mixing and scoring by Emma Munger, music by Joshua Budo Karp. Special thanks to Dan Utter and Rebecca Wifler for the excellent additional recordings on the ship. And thanks to you for listening. This episode wraps up the debut of The Leap. I really hope you enjoyed these stories. we loved sharing them with you. And if you have feedback, we always want to hear from you.

You can email us at SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Thanks for listening.