As the Endeavour continued her explorations of the western coast of Ireland today, calmer seas beckoned and it quickly became a long busy day for an Undersea Specialist. Shortly after breakfast, while our guests were ashore having tea and looking around the ruins of Grace O'Malley's castle on the island of Inishboffin, I struggled into my drysuit once again and dove along the open south side of the island. The low kelp forest of sea palm and furbellows here was typical of what I had seen on previous dives but particularly robust and healthy. I could barely force my way in, below the canopy among the stiff stipes, but when I did I was rewarded with a scene reminiscent of the shady forest floor in the great temperate rainforests of Alaska. The trunks of kelp, though only five or six feet tall, provided habitat for numerous other algae, invertebrates and fish, while the fronds overhead closed into a nearly complete canopy, effectively removing this quiet world from the open sea above. As I slowly pushed through I discovered sunny glades and dark hollows, prowling predatory starfish and shy scavenging crabs, all structures and ecological roles echoing the more familiar forests of the shore.

When I rose to swim over the canopy, like flying over a forest in a dream, I found another rich world, this one unique to the sea. Pulsing Aurelia sea-jellies and this exquisite siphonophore, cousin to the terrible Portuguese Man-o-War but smaller than my little finger, drifted by in the rich nutrient-laden currents brought across the Atlantic to these shores by the Gulf Stream.

Later in the day, while the group made a tour to the town of Clifden, I set out in a Zodiac on a long cruise out to the Kimmeen Rocks, off the west end of Inishshark Island. This is a point where the coast north of Galway Bay reaches far out into the North Atlantic and the depths of the sea fall away precipitously toward the nearby edge of the continental shelf. It was these depths I sought, to explore with our ROV, the little submersible which allows us to send a video camera far below the range of SCUBA divers. At about 190 feet below the big swells marching by on the surface I found a world locked in eternal twilight, just at the edge of darkness. Illuminated by the lights on the ROV, brittle stars crawled away over the surfaces of brightly colored sponges, fish swam boldly by, feeling no threat from this strange intruder, unfamiliar sea urchins perched on the boulder-strewn bottom and scallops swam from one spot to another, jetting along by clapping their shells together. It was a wondrous scene, full of life both familiar and unknown to me, made all the more exciting and poignant by the knowledge that no human eyes had ever seen it before this moment. Before returning to the Endeavour, just in time for dinner, I pulled a quick plankton tow to sample the tiniest creatures of this rich realm.

It was a very full day, stretching late into the night as I edited the footage I had taken in preparation for sharing it with the rest of the group in an upcoming presentation. As I did so, I reflected on what an exciting addition to our trips this kind of marine exploration makes; only a few months ago we would have passed within a few meters and a few minutes of these fascinating scenes and never known they were there.