A Tale of Some Tentative Submariners
"So," my friend said. "When are you going to write up that polar submarine cruise? Your readers are waiting...
Perhaps, but the subseafaring scientists are waiting too---for the U.S. Navy to release the data collected on SCICEX-93, a pioneering project in which civilian researchers were able to work aboard an American nuclear attack submarine voyaging under the Arctic Ocean pack ice. Reasonably enough, the military sponsors of this first voyage need to check the scientists' photos, numbers, and notes to be sure no secret insights into the U.S. submarine operations make their way into print with the data.
They have a lot to check, because the cruise of the USS Pargo amassed an enormous amount of information. During the six weeks between departure from Groton, Connecticut, and landfall in Norway, the half-dozen scientists aboard the submarine employed their instruments to garner continuous information for 4900 miles on the contours and depths of the Arctic Ocean bottom, on the salinity and temperature of the water, on the shape and thickness of the ice flees clogging the sea surface, and even of subtle alterations in gravity along the traverse.
That, mind, was the only continuous record. The Pargo also paused to make a variety of measurements at 21 locations on the surface (which tied the record for surfacings in the Arctic). Surfacing often meant ascending right through ice; luckily, the vessel had a hardened sail, a term borrowed from the days of cloth-powered voyages for the prominent flattened cylinder rising from the submarine's deck. The scientists set out automated data-gathering buoys; they launched underwater probes. They were busy as cats caught in revolving doors.
Among the civilian scientists aboard the Pargo were two from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Peter McRoy (biological oceanographer and, incidentally, my spouse) and Ted DeLaca (director of the UAF Arctic Research Office and a specialist in benthic foraminifera, which are very small but very important bottom-dwelling sea critters).
DeLaca, who has served as head of the U.S. Palmer Peninsula research station in Antarctica, was chief scientist for the research cruise. That title sounds good, but it was a mixed honor. According to Peter, "Making Ted the chief scientist worked out beautifully for the rest of us. When a difficulty arose with navy procedures, we'd look serious and say, that sounds like something that will have to be taken up with Dr. DeLaca. Then when we saw him it was, "Hey, Ted---the captain wants to see you right away."
A submarine has been described as a can of people immersed in an ocean, and it's true that personnel and equipment are packed aboard about as snugly as sardines in a can. The oceanographers coped with cramped quarters quite well; it was a reasonably familiar state of affairs to them, because no research vessel has excess space. The lone geophysicist aboard, Bernie Coakley from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, said he thought of small tents on long field trips, an image that helped him deal with sleeping quarters housing 22 people in only 11 bunks. Less familiar to the scientists was their laboratory bench, which doubled as a covering for some major weaponry: "We were told, That's a missile, that's a torpedo, your equipment goes between them, and whatever you do, don't push that red button."
The researchers expected to be the butts of many such jokes, but found that their navy shipmates were both tolerant and helpful: "As good a crew as I've ever worked with in my 30 years of going to sea," according to my closest source.
The Pargo collected samples in every basin of the Arctic Ocean---a first. Though these unique data remain to be analyzed and synthesized, the experimental portion of the voyage answered a crucial question: can civilian scientists and the U.S. Navy cooperate in using a submarine for polar studies? Yes, indeed.
