Not Quite A League Under the Sea

reprinted by permission of The Chesapeake Bay Magazine
So you think it's all just crabs and mud under your boat's keel? A team of aquanauts living on the Bay floor is out to show you otherwise.	by Blanche Herring Scharf
Sun glints from behind the clouds overhead and glistens on the yellow tanks of two black-suited divers. One of the divers, Charlie Depping, takes a good long look around, fixing the scene in his mind. He won't see it again for two days. He adjusts his mask and puts his mouthpiece in place. Morgan Wells, the other diver, gives a signal and one after the other they roll off the side of the open boat and splash into the cold, dark water off Gwynn's Island, just below the mouth of the Rappahannock River. They grab a twisted line hanging beneath the boat and follow it down into the murk. At first it's dark and visibility is difficult. But soon, as their eyes adjust, they can see their destination-a giant, cylindrical tank sitting in the mud below them in 16 feet of water. It is BAYLAB, an undersea habitat where the two men will spend the next two days observing the flora and fauna of the Bay bottom. Here they will film and study sea squirts, sponges, crabs and anything else that wanders by or lives in the muddy floor of these waters. After 22 years with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Morgan Wells retired from his position as director of the Experimental Diving Unit, but he wasn't ready to give up doing what he loved most. With help from two other NOAA scientists, he developed the Undersea Research Foundation.
After six years of planning and about a year-and-a-half of construction, Wells and recent foundation members Depping and Jim Devereux at last have BAYLAB up and running. "It's been fun," says Devereux, a retired orthopedic surgeon. "This is a unique homemade project that can compete with the best of them." For this mission, the third dive since BAYLAB's deployment in October, Devereux remains topside in Leprechaun, a very old and rugged 26-foot Navy launch.
	He communicates with the divers through a radio that transmits from a tiny in-water transponder. During these two days, he spends his time between Leprechaun and a camper parked near the dock, exercising patience and waiting for word from down below.
	Wells designed BAYLAB to educate people about the life under the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. He states his philosophy with clarity and optimism. "If we show people what interesting and beautiful things are down there, they'll take care of them." By working freelance, unconnected to any government or academic institution, Wells can stick to the clarity of this goal. He and the others are doing this for a simple reason-they want to. Depping, retired from a chemical fibers company, agrees with this premise and is pleased to see the excitement of children at the nearby Mathews Library and Visitor's Center when they view the films from BAYLAB. "They don't realize the wonderful critters that are living beneath that dark, murky water," he says.
Wells is funding the project by depositing his consulting and teaching fees into the Undersea Research Foundation. An authority on underwater breathing apparatus, he tests and evaluates new equipment. He also teaches physicians about the effects of pressure on the human body, and he's done underwater photography for technical magazines. Other funds and help for the project come from a variety of sources. Wells received a grant from the Virginia Environmental Endowment to develop the Chesapeake Bay Underwater Video Library, and another grant from the Mathews Market Days to buy a digital video camera. Continued on Page 2