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BY PENNY COLTON, P.GEOPH.
Manager of Geoscience
Affairs
Emory Kristof, National Geographic's underwater photographer
extraordinaire for over four decades, related the highlights of his career to
a general and family audience, Nov. 9 in Calgary. About 1,900 people took in
the 2004 Honorary Address, Volcanoes of the Deep Sea.
Representatives were there from the three sponsoring groups — the Canadian
Society of Petroleum Geologists Educational Trust Fund, the Canadian Society
of Exploration Geophysicists and APEGGA. A lunchtime presentation attracted 2,300
of Calgary's students, from kindergarten to Grade 12.
At depths of 2,000 to 4,000 metres, magma from the Earth's interior heats
water to 404 C — without boiling, due to the extreme pressure. The temperature
and rising minerals create an environment where chemosynthesis sustains life
forms — life forms that wouldn't survive elsewhere.
Seeing, “capturing” and sharing the mysteries of these creatures
with a world audience required submersibles, robots, and innovations in underwater
and digital photography. High intensity lighting and HDTV cameras now provide
a microscope on a place almost as strange as another planet.
Mr. Kristof's photos told the story of the adventure and of the innovation
in cutting edge technology required to bring the deep sea to life for the rest
of us. He was in a submersible at the camera controls for the famous shot of
the Titanic projected beside him in the photo accompanying this story. Taken
at 3,800 metres, it was used in National Geographic specials about the creatures
around deep sea vents.
Students, fascinated by the lifetime of adventures and the remaining mysteries
of the deep, made good use of the question period. “How old were you when
you started diving?” they asked. “Where was your first assignment?”
And on it went. “How many oceans have you dived in?” “What's
the deepest you've been?” “Do you still dive?” “What's
it like in a submersible?” “What does it sound like down there?”
Mr. Kristof's answers told of a world and a history that remains for the next
generation to explore.
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