Every large landmass in the world was bounded by a relatively shallow strip of water, no more than two hundred metres deep, known as the continental shelf. Technically, it was the underwater continuation of the continental plate. In some parts of the world it extended only a short way into the sea, but in others it continued for hundreds of kilometres until it dipped towards the ocean’s floor, either falling away sharply or inclining gently in a terraced slope. The depths beyond the shelf were an unknown universe, more mysterious to science than outer space.
The shelf regions, however, had long been conquered by mankind. Humans were land animals, but needed water to survive, which was why two-thirds of the world’s population could be found within sixty kilometres of the shore.
While oceanographic charts showed the shelf around Portugal and northern Spain as a narrow strip of seabed, the perimeter of the British Isles and Scandinavia extended into the water for some distance, so that the two regions merged together to form the North Sea, a relatively shallow expanse of water that averaged between twenty and 150 metres in depth. In its present form it dated back barely ten thousand years, and at first glance there was nothing remarkable about it, with its complex currents and fluctuating water temperatures. In the world economy, though, it played a central role. The North Sea was one of the busiest areas in the world, lined by industrial nations, and home to Rotterdam, the biggest port in history. Although the English Channel was only thirty kilometres wide at its narrowest point, it was one of the world’s most travelled waterways: freighters, tankers, ferries and smaller craft jostled for space within its narrow confines.
Three hundred million years ago, vast swamps connected Britain to the continent in an unbroken chain of land. From time to time the area flooded as the waters advanced, then retreated. Gradually, mighty rivers swept into the basin, laying down mud, plant and animal remains that built up into a deposit many hundreds of metres thick. Seams of coal formed, while the land continued to sink. New deposits accumulated, compacting the sediment into sandstone and lime, and trapping organic debris underground. At the same time the temperature in the rock rose. Exposed to the combined effects of heat and pressure, the organic matter underwent complex chemical changes, eventually forming oil and gas, some of which leached out of the porous rock and permeated upwards into the water. The rest remained buried.
For millions of years the shelf had lain untouched.
Then oil was discovered, and Norway joined Britain, Holland and Denmark in a race to exploit the underwater riches. In thirty years, it had become the world’s second largest exporter of petroleum. The Norwegian continental shelf contained the bulk of the deposits - roughly half of Europe’s oil reserves - and its store of natural gas was equally impressive. The drilling extended ever deeper, and simple scaffold constructions gave way to oil platforms the size of the Empire State Building. It wasn’t long before plans to build autonomous subsea processors became reality. It seemed as though the party would last for ever.
However, as fishing yields declined, so did the supply of petroleum. Many subsea oil fields had already been drained, and Europe was faced with the spectre of an enormous scrapyard full of disused platforms. There was only one way out of the plight that the oil nations had brought upon themselves. On the other side of the continental shelf untapped reserves of petroleum were stored beneath the surface of the deep-sea basins and in the continental slopes. Conventional platforms were useless in such conditions, so Lund and her team were developing a different kind of technology. The continental slope wasn’t uniformly steep, and in places it sloped down to form terraces - the ideal terrain for a subsea facility. The risks involved in working at depth meant that human labour had to be avoided. With the fall in oil production, the oil workers’ fortunes had waned. In the 1970s and 1980s they had been well paid and in demand, but now there were plans to reduce the workforce on Gullfaks C to two dozen. Even an enormous construction like the Troll A platform practically ran itself.
The fact of the matter was that the North Sea oil industry was no longer profitable. But closing it down would be even more costly.
Johanson emerged from his cabin. The atmosphere on board the Thorvaldson was one of quiet routine. The boat wasn’t especially big. Some of the giant research vessels, like the Polarstern from Bremerhaven, had space for helicopters to land on board, but the Thorvaldson needed every spare metre for equipment. He strolled over to the railings and gazed out to sea. They had been sailing for almost two hours, passing through conurbations of platforms and oil rigs. Now they were north of the Shetland Islands, beyond the continental shelf, and the view had opened out. Nearly seven hundred metres of water lay between the seabed and the ship’s keel. The continental slope had been charted and surveyed, but the zone of eternal darkness still retained its mystery. Powerful floodlights enabled scientists to illuminate small sections, but it was like exploring an entire country by night with a streetlamp.
Johanson remembered the bottle of Bordeaux and the French and Italian cheeses in his suitcase. He went to look for Lund and found her conducting a pre-dive check on the robot. The three-metre-high open-sided box was suspended from the hydraulic boom. The outer casing of its lid bore the name ‘Victor’. Cameras and an articulated arm were mounted on the front.
Lund beamed at him. ‘Impressed?’
Johanson dutifully looped back around Victor.
‘It’s a great big yellow vacuum cleaner,’ he said.
‘Spoilsport.’
‘How much does it weigh?’
‘Four tonnes. Hey Jean!’ A thin man with red hair peered out from behind a cable drum. Lund beckoned him over. ‘Jean-Jacques Alban is first officer. He keeps the Thorvaldson afloat,’ said Lund. ‘Jean, I’ve got stuff to get on with. You’ll look after Sigur for me, won’t you?’ She hurried off. The two men watched her go.
‘I expect you’ve got more important things to do than explain Victor to me,’ said Johanson.
‘Oh, it’s no problem. You’re from the NTNU, right? I gather you’ve been examining the worms.’
‘Why’s Statoil so interested in them?’
Alban made a dismissive gesture. ‘It’s the characteristics of the slope that we care about, really. We found the worms by accident. I reckon the problem’s all in Tina’s mind.’
‘But isn’t that why you’re here? I mean because of the worms,’ said Johanson, surprised.
‘Is that what she told you?’ Alban shook his head. ‘No, that’s only part of the mission. We’ll follow it up, of course, as we always do, but our main task is to clear the way for an underwater monitoring station. The idea is to build it on top of the oilfield, so if the site seems safe, we can install a subsea unit.’
‘Tina mentioned something about a SWOP.’
Alban looked at him uneasily. ‘Er, no. As far as I’m aware, the subsea processor is a done deal. I don’t think there’s been a change of plan.’
So, no floating platforms, then. Johanson decided to quiz him about the robot.
‘It’s a Victor 6000, a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV,’ Alban explained. ‘It’s got a working depth of six thousand metres and can stay under water for days at a time. We guide its movements from the boat - a cable leading up to the control room delivers its data simultaneously. The next trip is a forty-eight-hour recce. We’ll get it to fetch you a handful of worms - Statoil prides itself on preserving biodiversity.’ He paused. ‘What do you make of the creatures?’
‘It’s too early to say,’ said Johanson.
There was a clunk and Johanson watched as the boom hoisted Victor off the deck.
‘Follow me,’ said Alban. They headed amidships towards five shed-sized containers. ‘Most vessels aren’t equipped for using Victor, but since we could accommodate it, we borrowed it from the Polarstern.’
‘What’s in the containers?’
‘The hydraulic unit for the winch, plus some other bits of machinery. The one at the front is home to the ROV control room. Mind your
head.’
They stepped through a low door. Inside, over half of the space was taken up by the control panel and twin banks of screens. Some were switched off, but the rest showed navigational data and operational feedback from the ROV. A group of men sat with Lund at the consoles.
‘The guy in the middle is the pilot,’ Alban murmured. ‘To his right, the co-pilot operates the articulated arm. Victor’s very sensitive and precise, but the operator has to be equally skilled in telling it what to do. The next seat along belongs to the co-ordinator. He maintains contact with the watch officer on the bridge to ensure that the vessel and the robot work together. The scientists are over there, with Tina. She’ll operate the cameras and record the footage.
‘Are we ready?’ he asked her.
‘Prepare to lower,’ said Lund.
One after another the blank screens lit up. Johanson could make out sections of the stern, the boom, the sky and the sea.
‘From now on we can see what Victor sees,’ said Alban. ‘There are eight separate cameras, one main camera with zoom, two piloting cameras and five others. The picture quality’s amazing - sharp images and luminous colours even several thousand metres below the surface.’
The robot descended and the sea loomed closer. Water sloshed over the camera lens and Victor continued downwards. The monitors showed a blue-green world that gradually dimmed.
The control room was filling with people, men and women who’d been working on the boom.
‘Floodlights on,’ said the co-ordinator.
The area around Victor brightened, but the light remained diffuse. The blue-green paled, and was replaced by artifically lit darkness. Small fish darted into the picture, then the screen filled with bubbles. Plankton, thought Johanson. Red-helmet and transparent comb jellyfish drifted past.
After a while the swarm of particles thinned. The depth sensor recorded five hundred metres.
‘What’s Victor going to do down there?’ asked Johanson.
‘Test the seawater and sediment, and collect a few organisms,’ said Lund, focusing on the screen, ‘but the real boon is the video footage.’
A jagged shape came into view. Victor was descending along a steep wall. Red and orange crayfish waved delicate antennae. It was pitch black in the depths, but the floodlights and cameras brought out the creatures’ natural colours vividly. Victor continued past sponges and sea cucumbers, then the terrain levelled off.
‘We made it,’ said Lund. ‘Six hundred and eighty metres.’
‘OK.’ The pilot leaned forwards. ‘Let’s bank a little.’
The slope disappeared from the screens. For a while they saw nothing but water until the seabed emerged from the blue-black depths.
‘Victor can navigate to an accuracy of within less than a millimetre,’ said Alban.
‘So where are we now?’ asked Johanson.
‘Hovering over a plateau. The seabed beneath us contains vast stores of oil.’
‘Any hydrates?’
Alban looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Sure. Why do you ask?’
‘Just interested. So it’s here that Statoil wants to build the unit?’
‘It’s our preferred site, assuming there aren’t any problems.’
‘Like worms?’
Alban shrugged.
The Frenchman seemed to have an aversion to the topic, thought Johanson. Together they watched as the robot swept over the alien world, overtaking spindly legged sea spiders and fish half buried in the sediment. Its cameras picked up colonies of sponges, translucent jellyfish and miniature cephalopods. At that depth the water wasn’t densely populated, but the seabed was home to all kinds of different creatures. After a while the terrain became pockmarked, coarse and covered with what appeared to be vast whip marks.
‘Sediment slides,’ said Lund. ‘The Norwegian slope has seen a bit of movement in its time.’
‘What are the rippled lines here?’ asked Johanson. Already the terrain had changed again.
‘They’re from the currents. Let’s steer round to the edge of the plateau.’ She paused. ‘We’re pretty close to where we found the worms.’
They stared at the screens. The lights had caught some large whitish areas.
‘Bacterial mats,’ said Johanson.
‘A sure sign of hydrates.’
‘Over there,’ said the pilot.
The screen showed a sheet of fissured whiteness - deposits of frozen methane. And something else. The room fell silent.
A writhing pink mass obscured the hydrate. For a brief moment they saw individual bodies, then the writhing tubes were too numerous to count. Pink flesh and white bristles curled under and over each other.
There was a sound of disgust from the men at the front. Conditioning, thought Johanson. Most humans disliked crawling, wriggling, sliding creatures, even though they were everywhere. He pictured the hordes of bugs swarming over his skin, and the billions of bacteria in his belly.
But, despite himself, Johanson was unsettled by the worms. The pictures from the Mexican Gulf had shown similarly large colonies, but with smaller worms sitting calmly in their holes. These worms never stopped slithering over the ice, a vast heaving mass that obliterated the surface.
‘Let’s zigzag round,’ said Lund.
The ROV cut through the water in a sweeping slalom movement, the worms ever-present.
Suddenly the ground fell away. The pilot steered the robot to the edge of the plateau. Even with the combined power of eight strong floodlights, visibility was limited to just a few metres, but it was easy to imagine that the worms covered the length of the slope. To Johanson they seemed even bigger than the specimens Lund had brought into the lab.
The screens went dark. Victor had launched itself over the edge. There was a hundred-metre vertical drop to the bottom. The robot raced on at full speed.
‘Turn,’ said Lund. ‘Let’s take a look at the wall.’
Particles danced in the beam of the floodlights. Then something big and bright billowed into the frame, filling it for an instant, then retreating at lightning speed.
‘What was that?’ Lund called.
‘Turn back!’
The ROV retraced its steps.
‘It’s gone.’
‘Circle!’
Victor stopped and started to spin, but there was nothing to see, apart from impenetrable darkness and showers of plankton glittering in the light.
‘There was something out there,’ said the co-ordinator. ‘A fish maybe.’
‘Bloody big one,’ growled the pilot.
Lund turned to Johanson, who shook his head. ‘No idea.’
‘OK. Let’s go a bit deeper.’
The ROV headed towards the slope. A few seconds later a steep wall of seabed loomed into view. A few raised areas of sediment were visible, but the rest was covered with the now-familiar pink masses.
‘They’re everywhere,’ said Lund.
Johanson joined her. ‘Have you got a chart of the hydrate deposits here?’
‘The area is full of methane - hydrates, pockets in the rock, gas seeping through the seabed…’
‘I mean the ice on top.’
Lund typed something. A map of the seabed appeared on her screen. ‘See the light patches? Those are the deposits.’
‘Can you point out Victor’s current position?’
‘About here.’ She indicated an area of the map covered with light patches.
‘OK. Steer it this way, along and then up.’
The floodlights found a section of seabed devoid of worms. After a while the ground sloped upwards and then the steep wall appeared.
‘Take us higher,’ said Lund. ‘Nice and slowly.’
Within a few moments they were back to the same picture as before. Pink tubular bodies with white bristles.
‘Just as you’d expect,’ muttered Johanson. ‘Assuming your map is right, this is the site of the main belt of hydrates. The bacteria will be grazing the methane here…and being gobbled by the worms.’
‘How about the numbers? Would you have expected to see millions?’
‘No.’
Lund leaned back in her chair. ‘All right,’ she said, to the man controlling the articulated arm. ‘Let’s set Victor down for a moment. We’ll pick up a batch of worms and take a look at the area.’
It was gone ten when Johanson heard a knock at his door. Lund came in and flopped into the little armchair, which, together with a tiny table, was the only comfort the cabin offered.
‘My eyes ache,’ she said. ‘Alban’s taken over for a while.’
Her gaze wandered over to the cheese and the open bottle of Bordeaux. ‘I should have guessed.’ She laughed. ‘So that’s why you rushed off.’
Johanson had left the control room thirty minutes earlier.
‘Brie de Meaux, Taleggio, Munster, a mature goat’s cheese and some Fontina from the mountains in Piedmont,’ he said. ‘Plus a baguette and some butter. Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘Do you need to ask? What is it?’
‘A Pauillac. You’ll have to forgive me for not decanting it. The Thorvaldson doesn’t have any respectable crystal. Did you see anything interesting?’
He handed her a glass, and she took a gulp. ‘The bloody things have set up camp on the hydrates. They’re everywhere.’
Johanson sat down opposite her on the edge of the bed and buttered a piece of baguette. ‘Remarkable.’
Lund helped herself to some cheese. ‘The others are starting to think we should be worried. Especially Alban.’
‘So there weren’t as many last time?’
‘No. I mean, more than enough for my liking - but that put me in a minority of one.’
Johanson smiled at her. ‘People with good taste are always outnumbered.’
‘Tomorrow morning Victor will be back on board with some specimens. You’re welcome to have a look at them.’ She stood up, chewing, and peered out of the porthole. The sky had cleared. A ray of moonlight shone on the water, illuminating the rolling waves. ‘I’ve looked at the video sequence hundreds of times, trying to work out what we saw. Alban’s convinced it was a fish…and if it was, it must have been a manta or something even bigger. But it didn’t seem to have a shape.’