Danger in the deep sea, p.1
Danger in the Deep Sea, page 1
For my kids, Lindsay and Eric—two incredible treasures! KJ
Welcome aboard! You’re about to join Marena Montoya on an incredible adventure with OceanX!
OceanX’s scientists, marine biologists, and filmmakers use cutting-edge technology to explore the ocean and share their discoveries with the world! Its fantastic ship, OceanXplorer, brings two submersibles, a helicopter, science labs, and a film studio to incredible locations to reveal creatures and habitats that have never been seen before.
You can find amazing OceanX videos, photos, and fascinating information about the world under the sea at oceanx.org.
CHAPTER 1 A DIGITAL DOOR TO THE PAST
“Marena, sometimes I don’t even know why we’re friends,” Aisha complained.
We’re not friends. We’re BEST friends.
My inner voice was at it again. I never know when it’s going to pop up. Luckily, it’s just me talking to me—usually with a little attitude thrown in.
It was her idea to start this project. Not mine.
I had a poster that had been lying on my bedroom floor for weeks. I was in no hurry to get it onto the wall. But Aisha felt differently. She likes to get things done. She was currently dragging my desk chair closer to the wall so she could stand on it. I could tell by her noises that she was impatient with me for not helping.
Aisha let out a dramatic “Umph” as she gave the chair a final nudge to the wall. I ignored it.
“Aisha,” I said, not moving a muscle from my sprawled-out position on the bed, “you’ve got to look at this website! It has information on real ships that never made it to wherever they were going. Do you know there could be as many as three million shipwrecks lying undiscovered on the ocean floor?”
Aisha gave a long look at my cluttered bedroom floor. The wreck connection was obvious.
“Most of these ships sank long ago,” I continued. “And most will never be found. But it says here there is now a better-than-ever chance of actually finding a few of these old wrecks—”
“Is this poster straight?” Aisha interrupted. Her voice was sharp. It seemed like a good idea to sit up and give her my full attention.
“Looks great,” I said with real admiration.
Maybe I should think about splitting my allowance with her.
Aisha eyed her work and nodded in satisfaction. Then she stepped down from the chair and began slowly pushing it back to my desk.
“Okay. Now I can listen,” she said, plopping down next to me on the bed. Since the chore was done, she seemed ready to move on. Aisha was like that. She never stayed mad for long.
“So what makes it easier to find these wrecks now?” she asked.
“Well, for one, the tech is better,” I answered. “Sonar equipment makes better maps of the ocean floor. And underwater submersibles can dive deeper than ever.”
Aisha gave a “Makes sense” nod.
“Also, there’s this website,” I said. “People are making digital records of old ship’s logs and diaries and uploading them here—for the first time ever! That means you don’t have to travel to the library or museum where the books are stored. You can look at them from anywhere in the world.”
“It must take hours to go through all of those old ships’ records and input the data,” Aisha said.
“Yep, and it’s pretty interesting stuff,” I agreed. “You’ve heard of Blackbeard the Pirate, right?”
“Of course,” Aisha answered.
“One of his big ships, called the Queen Anne’s Revenge, sank off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. But the wreck wasn’t found until 1996. And the state of North Carolina didn’t say it was for sure Blackbeard’s ship until 2011. It took that long to study all the things they found.”
“A pirate ship… wow! Imagine the treasure!” she said.
“Yeah, well, I think they found mostly old cannons and stuff,” I said. “Not much gold.”
“Yet!” Aisha said eagerly.
She had a point.
“Sometimes gold coins can wash up on the shore many years after a wreck,” I agreed.
“Imagine going for a swim and finding some of Blackbeard’s treasure!” Aisha said. She loved a good story. “So have you found any new clues?”
“For what?”
“Missing treasure, of course!” Aisha’s voice had that “Why can’t you keep up?” sound.
When I shook my head no, she got a faraway look on her face. I knew what that meant. Aisha was about to drop one of her big ideas.
“So, imagine this. What if you discover a missing clue that unlocks the secret of where a long-lost ship might be?” she asked. “Then we could sail out on the ocean to that exact spot. We’ll get one of those underwater vehicles to dive into the deep sea to take a closer look. That’s when we’ll find the treasure. Could be gold. Could be jewels. Then we’ll become heroes when we donate it all to ocean research.”
Aisha sat up on the bed, her face shining with excitement. I had to smile. Her big ideas were always so creative.
But she gets so carried away!
It really is weird that we’re such good friends. Sometimes we can be such opposites. She dreams big and moves fast. I like to ask questions and take it slow.
“Come on,” I protested. “Even if I discover a clue, how would we convince someone to take us out on a ship? And borrowing a submersible? Are you kidding? We don’t even know how to drive!”
I was trying to make Aisha see reason. There were a million more questions I could ask her. But I didn’t bother. The ones I had already asked seemed like deal breakers.
Aisha seemed lost in thought for a moment. Then her mood changed. I could feel her excitement draining away like air escaping from a balloon.
“When does Lucas leave?” she asked in a forlorn voice as she rolled on her back to stare at the ceiling. “I just can’t believe he got the internship on the OceanXplorer!”
My mood shifted, too. It was a tricky subject for both of us. My brother was so excited about working on the big research ship that he never shut up about it.
Don’t get me wrong. I was happy for him. But I was also a little jealous that he was going on a big adventure without me. It was the first time we would be apart for a whole summer. Mom and Dad said it would be a good “test run.” I guess that meant it was practice for Lucas to see if he could survive on his own before he went away to college.
But what about me? What if I don’t like being the only child?
Aisha was bummed for a whole different reason. Although she was thrilled about Lucas’s internship, she was going to miss him big-time. That’s because she liked him. And not in the “I think your brother is nice” kind of way. I mean she liked him. Lucas didn’t know, of course. But I did.
There are no secrets between best friends.
“He leaves in two weeks. But there’s good news,” I said.
Aisha raised her eyebrow at me. She wanted to know more.
“Mom and Dad have decided our whole family should fly to Miami to see Lucas off,” I explained. “OceanX is going to allow all the families to tour the ship with the interns before they set sail.”
“I hate you,” Aisha said quietly.
I grinned.
“No you don’t,” I answered.
She heaved a dramatic sad sigh. Then she grinned back at me as she jumped off the bed and grabbed her backpack to leave.
“Just keep looking at the shipwreck website,” she ordered. “I have a feeling about it.”
I shook my head at my friend as she left the room. I loved her enthusiasm about a deep sea adventure. But there was no way I was going to find a real missing clue.
Was there?
CHAPTER 2 A MISSING CLUE
“I told you!” Aisha practically squealed in excitement. She grabbed me and jumped up and down in a pogo stick bear hug. “I knew you would find something! You ask the best questions!”
“Aisha, stop! It’s probably nothing,” I protested as I pulled myself away. School was just out and there were lots of kids around. Nearby classmates started moving toward us. They wanted to know what all the excitement was about.
I looked at Aisha in near panic.
“Okay, okay,” Aisha could see I wasn’t ready to share the news. “Let’s ride over to your house so you can tell me everything.”
I nodded in agreement. Anything to avoid being questioned in public. As we pedaled down the bike path toward my house, I wished I hadn’t mentioned anything to Aisha at all. Knowing her, she would want me to do something. And there just wasn’t anything practical to be done.
* * *
“So let me get this straight,” Aisha said as she poured popcorn into a bowl for our after-school snack. She settled into her favorite kitchen chair. “You’re talking about a real Spanish galleon, right? One of those old sailing ships from the eighteenth century?”
Before I could answer her, Lucas strolled into the kitchen.
“Oooh, a Spanish galleon,” he said in a teasing voice as he opened the refrigerator to look at his options. It was normal for him to mock us.
“Hey, Lucas,” Aisha said, suddenly perking up. “Your sister might’ve figured out where a real shipwreck could be.”
Lucas turned around with a yogurt in his hand. “Yeah, right. This I’ve got to hear,” he said as he sat down in the chair across from Aisha.
Aisha smiled. I scowled.
“It may not be anything, Lucas. I’ve just been looking at some online records of lost ships,” I said.
“Marena found this cool new website that’s turning old ship’s logs into a digital database.”
Lucas spooned some yogurt into his mouth and waited.
“And you know how Marena is,” she continued. “After studying that website, she found something really odd!”
Ugh. She set him up!
To his credit, Lucas just whispered the wisecrack under his breath. Something about “It takes one to know one.”
Aisha ignored the jab and leaned over the table toward him. “Marena thinks people have been looking for a very important shipwreck—in the wrong place!”
Aisha stayed frozen in her pose. I could tell she was trying to send mind bullets to Lucas. She wanted him to be impressed.
PUH-LEASE! Lucas is paying more attention to the yogurt cup than to you!
Aisha must’ve realized the same thing. She sat back in her chair with a slight shake of her head. Then she turned toward me with a “Your turn” look.
Lucas looked up from his yogurt cup and squinted his eyes at me. I could tell he was weighing the odds. Was I about to say something stupid, or would it make some sense?
Fair question. I’ve been known to do both.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Here’s what I know. In the early 1700s there was the War of the Spanish Succession. You remember that one?”
“Sure, we studied it,” Lucas said as he stood up to toss his empty yogurt cup into the recycling bin. “It was a fight between some European countries. They were arguing about who would rule Spain after its monarch, King Charles II, died. But what does this have to do with a shipwreck?”
“I’m getting to that, Lucas,” I said.
Don’t rush me!
I paused to gather my thoughts, then continued. “As we’ve all learned in history class, wars take money. So Spain sent ships to its colonies in South America to collect gold and silver to pay for the fighting.”
“They didn’t just ‘collect the treasure’—they looted those colonies,” Aisha said with disapproval.
“That’s another subject,” I said, steering back to the point. “One of the ships was a Spanish galleon called the San Luis Pedro. In the spring of 1705, after it was loaded with treasure from South America, it set sail back to Spain. But it was an unlucky voyage. Just a few hours from port, the San Luis Pedro was spotted by an enemy English warship. England wanted the treasure, so the two ships had a battle at sea.”
Aisha jumped in. “The San Luis Pedro lost. And it sank really fast.”
“Yep, that’s the story,” I agreed. “And, although it’s hard to believe, the San Luis Pedro and its treasure have never been found to this day.”
Lucas was typing into his phone to fact-check my story.
“Hmm,” he nodded, showing real interest for the first time. “It says here the San Luis Pedro was so loaded with treasure that it was a wonder it could float. Bet that cargo would be worth billions by now. So why hasn’t it been found?”
I looked over his shoulder. His phone screen showed an illustration of what the Spanish galleon had looked like.
“I don’t know, Lucas,” I replied. “Lots of people have been searching for it. For decades. They know when the battle happened. They also know the general area where the battle was fought in the Caribbean Sea.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If they know where it went down, then they must’ve searched that area pretty well,” Lucas said.
“I’m sure you’re right,” I agreed. “But that’s where it gets interesting.”
I was warming up to the subject now that I had my brother’s attention.
“Historians are entering new stuff on the shipwreck website every day,” I explained. “At first I couldn’t make sense of it all. So I decided to zero in on just the San Luis Pedro chat.”
Could I possibly get any more nerdy?
Ignoring myself, I continued. “And I noticed something the other day. A researcher posted about an eastern flow found in the Caribbean Sea currents.”
Lucas frowned. He had been studying Caribbean ocean currents to get ready for his OceanXplorer trip.
“That’s weird,” he said. “Most surface currents flow to the west.”
Exactly.
“Umm, what difference does—” Aisha stopped mid-sentence. I could tell she was slowly piecing it all together.
“Oh. I get it,” she said after a moment. “When you look for a wreck, you have to think about the currents because they would carry the sinking ship in whatever direction they flow. But if explorers thought the currents only traveled to the west, then they might not even look toward the east.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s a possibility. I mean, there’s got to be some reason they haven’t found that wreck for centuries.”
“I don’t know.” Lucas sounded doubtful. “Explorers do really wide searches of an area where they think a ship might’ve gone down. Especially with a treasure this large.”
“Yep, all true,” I said. “But that eastern flow is kind of a new idea. And I’m not sure how recently anyone has searched for this wreck. I also don’t know whether they’ve used the latest sonar equipment.”
Lucas nodded. “It’s true that only twenty percent of the ocean floor is mapped,” he agreed. “That’s one of the things that the OceanXplorer is doing. Mapping the ocean floor, I mean.”
“Do you think you’ll get to help?” Aisha asked.
And… I’m done.
Lucas and Aisha launched into a full-blown conversation about his new favorite subject. I knew Aisha was willing to keep the questions going just to hear him speak. So I quietly left the room and headed back to my laptop.
I checked the San Luis Pedro chat stream. There were new entries.
Just think of all that lost treasure!
Yeah. That was the trouble. I didn’t have any way to search for it. All I could do was think about it.
CHAPTER 3 AN UNUSUAL CHAIN OF EVENTS
“It’s a big boat,” Lucas said, staring up at the OceanXplorer. He didn’t seem to want to move.
We were at the dock in Miami, staring at Lucas’s new home. The ship was almost as long as a football field. It had a helicopter landing pad at one end and a huge crane to launch submersibles at the other end. We knew it had space for seventy-two crew members. And Lucas was about to be one of them.
My dad clapped an arm around Lucas’s shoulder and gently steered him forward.
“Let’s go take a look, son,” he said.
My mom took my hand as we followed them up the ramp. She had a small smile on her face. The kind of smile that said things were going exactly as she expected.
Mom is scary like that. She knew he was going to get cold feet!
I was feeling the opposite way. I would give anything to be going out on this research ship. I wanted to ask Lucas if ocean exploration included treasure hunting. I was also dying to check the San Luis Pedro chat again to see if there were any new posts.
It’s official. I’m obsessed with that website.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the shipwreck. I mean, we were just a few days’ sailing from the Caribbean Sea, where the San Luis Pedro sank. How lucky was that?
“Marena! Look who’s here!”
My mom’s voice was loud.
She knows you’re zoning out.
I snapped back to attention and saw Dr. Anna Knowles walking toward us. She was the science lead for the OceanXplorer. Anna, as she had asked me to call her, was also a mentor at the aquarium where Lucas and I volunteered. But I had only ever seen her on a laptop screen, and now I was thrilled to be able to meet her in person. Lots of introductions followed.
“Welcome, Montoya family!” Anna said with a big smile. “I’m so excited to see all of you here. Lucas, you are going to love this internship. And you are just in time for the tour.”
Anna’s enthusiastic greeting was matched by everyone we met. We started up on the bridge with the captain. He explained the ship’s navigation system.
Next stop on the tour was the ship’s kitchen, which Anna told us was called the galley. We looked at all the storage rooms and the large ovens. It took a lot of food to feed dozens of people for weeks at a time when they were out on a mission.
