Océanite cul-blanc • Oceanodroma leucorhoa • Storm Petrel
I will start with the storm petrel, flying at night beside a ship in the open Ocean. A black shape barely discernable against the waves, ducking and weaving beyond the yellow floodlights on the deck. Quiet snarls of waves break the surface above the hum of diesel. And beyond, this tiny messenger dives between air and water, down and out, through the tops of the swell and back through the sky smooth as a piston.
Five meters above the sea surface I lean on a cold railing and hear the clatter of sampling gear coming back on board after a cast that took three hours and sent probes and samplers down to 2000 meters. One more set of samples and I can sleep for the night. I am cold and tired and the sea looks colder still and more angry, the breeze scuffling it into sharp wind-waves above the steep swell that rises and rolls beneath the ship. I wander into the computer room off the back deck where three screens display the trace of the last cast, temperature, salinity, and plankton concentrations plotted against depth. This at least, is satisfying. The ocean sliced quickly open, right to the sea floor, displaying its secrets in wavering red and blue lines. There is some comforting conversion here, a wild grey pitching surface translated into rows of round numbers ; 2000 meters of icy, uneasy motion tamed into square plots from the current meters, like books with big letters simplified for a child.
Ron, the computer tech, looks irritable and tired. One of the connections in the salinity meter is giving uncertain readings and it means, for him, a sleepless night tracking down the problem. I have to wait for others to take samples from the deep bottles before I can do any of my own sampling, so I wander back to the back deck and out to the flying bridge to wait, looking out over the night sea. And as I turn I see the storm petrel sitting on the deck near me, with greyblack feathers flushed backwards in the wind. Its legs bend forward instead of back, and its beak has a round knob near the nose. I move towards it and it seems disoriented, uncertain in the bright deck lights. Drawn to the light from its sweet swoops and starry night swim, it crouches on this corrugated cold ship with its nervous pitching motion.
I hold the storm petrel in my hand in the night. It is unafraid, but as life from another planet would be, uncertain of its place, watchful. A little round heart beats outward under my fingers, its plumage softer than I could ever have imagined, silky on my hand.
As it sits in my hand I think how few animals work this interface between air and sea. It is this surface that is dangerous and edgy, the surface where motion sickens and the sandpaper scrape of air disturbs the deep sea. The surface like a hostile boarder crossing where energy leaps between phases, waves jump into moist air, and air, in secret packets, works its way down into the heart of the ocean. Here at the surface the trace sulphurs released from the burgeoning plankton waft upward into the sky and become the invisible nuclei of clouds. Here the air, burrowing downwards, gets caught in the great currents and courses of the open ocean, crawling through the deep sea for a 1000 years to emerge in another hemisphere, another ocean, molecules of gas in another sky.
As any diver can tell you, the ocean beneath has a breathing dark calm, a foreign peace below its hectic surface. Its movements are slow and immense. Here and there are smears of oil and radiowastes and plastics, patches aching with surface burdens. But these trails of the surface die slowly as you move deeper; they change, become older, more cold, more quiet. The water itself hugs the last light, which as you go down is more and more deeply blue. Soon you are below its last vestiges. You sink through pale layers of tiny crustaceans who love the darkness, and who wait for night to swim upwards to feed on the plant plankton forced to hang loosely in the frantic daylight to catch the sun.
To know more of this place, you would have to live for centuries. You would have to hang quietly, deep in the belly of the ocean. Sensing the flicker and murmur of currents in the darkness, the sweet numbing of the cold, the slowing of life to the pace of eons, to the point where life as we know it slowly mutates, flattens, expires.
In my hand the storm petrel shifts a bit uneasily on its little webbed feet, shuffling its bent-back knees, bracing for flight. Its first attempt lands it flat against a metal holding door, and it falls on the steel grating, fine feathers splaying against the corrugations. I pick it up again gently, smooth the feathers back into place and take it to the railing where it can look beyond the lights to the restless ocean. It settles down in my hand to wait, and this surprises me. The patience and trust of the little bird against the wild backdrop of sea.
I can hear Ron’s voice raised above the whine of the big winch, and hear the murmurs of the sea-floor team readying their sharp corers to go over the side. I know I am late for my sampling from the last cast, which has been on board for over an hour now. Life seeps quickly from deep water when it comes to the surface. Gases warm and escape, even the membranes of the plankton stretch and shrivel, losing their function. Yet I let the samples start to waste and stand here with the storm petrel, waiting for his time.
Long after my deep samples expire, the storm petrel launches back into the air, and curves a wide arc past the ship, darting skywards. I watch it until it folds its soft wings and dives swiftly into the sea.
by Anya Waite, Oceanographer from K'jipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Director of the Ocean Frontier Institute.
LEACH'S STORM PETREL
CONSERVATION STATUS: Vulnerable
THREATS: Human disturbance, diseases and pollution
WHAT CAN I DO?
- Support the creation of protected areas
- Promote awareness
- Fight to protect water and natural areas from industrial pollution
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