In February of 1977, oceanographers embarked on a series of exploratory dives from the Atlantis, a research ship in the East Pacific. They left a broad horizon and leagues of open ocean to find a place hotter and more crowded than any on land - hydrothermal vent sites just a mile away, albeit in a direction very seldom traveled. Here I aimed to capture the teeming loneliness of the deep ocean, the initial shock and wonder at discovering a place so strange just a few thousand feet below the familiar waves and sunny skies.