In their bright orange work vests and hard hats, the ship’s crew stands at ease, waiting to pull in the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Doc Ricketts. As its tether rises from the Pacific, three crew members circle counter-clockwise across the deck in practiced succession to release its orange floats one by one—the entire procession, hands and cable, interlocking with the mesmerizing regularity of bevel gears—until the ROV hovers above the sloshing waves, its flotation pack a shade of school bus yellow.

Behold! The submersible’s underside reveals strange passengers shaped like picturesque tulips and dandelions. What you’re seeing are deep-sea sponges, animals that, in the span of this afternoon’s six-hour ascent, had been driven up 4,000 meters (about 2.5 miles) across three ocean zones. These fascinating organisms are the focus of my graduate research.  

My aspiration to work on the anatomical and morphological evolution of these sponges began years ago while combing through Libbie Hyman’s Porifera tome at the start of my PhD, a dream that has been magically realized on this very expedition. Each radiant evening, as the returning Doc Ricketts is hoisted up against the setting sun, I stand by eagerly awaiting my chance to see the sponges that have captured my imagination for so long.

Once the gargantuan submersible makes it on deck and the ship’s crew gives us the all-clear for safe access to the vehicle, all nine researchers comprising the expedition’s science team spill out from the adjoining hallways to surround the ROV. We pace from port to starboard, moving our samples from the deck to the lab, our bodies spinning to the click-clack of two carousels that hold transparent acrylic canisters of colorful, gelatinous jellies, gently suctioned from the water column. These samplers are specially engineered to collect organisms from the vertical expanse of midwater that stretches from the seabed far below up to the surface.

A human relay line materializes to shuttle these tanks and their precious cargo into the laboratory, while other colleagues focus on transporting samples collected from the deep seafloor. Samplers on another ROV arm consist of specialized tubes with covers that swing open or with lids bungee-strapped to sampler bases, perfect for storing benthic organisms, and this is where my otherworldly sponges rest.

Nobody notices the green flash of sunset on the horizon. Above the sea, we transiently form our own “currents” of water as we move samples across the ship, condensation collecting on everyone’s palms.

But in the moment, I don’t linger on these romantic details. The clamor of nine intersecting voices peppered with frenzied exclamations signals one singular thing: It’s disco time. As we dart between dissection microscopes and equipment boxes, our handheld flashlights flicker on and off to locate transparent, rarely-collected water-column animals in the sampling containers. Ctenophores, siphonophores, and medusa jellies glint briefly above our whirling steel ladles before being whisked away to fridges and photo tanks. Photography flash units fire at paparazzi speed. Only once all the creatures are accounted for do I retreat into the walk-in fridge, R/V David Packard’s very own Spongeland, and, for this expedition, my happiest place on Earth.

It’s from here on out that we begin tonight’s episode of deep-ocean speed dating. For my research, I’m compelled to ask all the important questions in this first meeting, such as what their names are and what they do for a living. But unlike the shallow-water sponges I’m accustomed to, these sponges came from the abyssal ocean, where temperatures are 1 to 2 ºC (34 to 36 °F). There is little time for pleasantries in a room-temperature lab.

At the heels of Darrin Schultz—former MBARI graduate student researcher, new professor at Lehigh University, and my mentor on this ship—I am catapulted between the lab bench and the cold room. Darrin spills 10,000 tricks for sample processing and macroscopic photography. I learn about lighting, aperture, and manipulating sample labels using forceps stored in a dissection box labeled “Darrin’s kit–2009,” a relic from his undergraduate years. I learn that minuscule bubbles slowly coalescing on our sponge are alarm bells to the warming of the surrounding water. And I also develop new skills of my own, like using my feet to steady the fridge and cold-room doors while retrieving animals to prevent their wild and disgraceful swinging to the lurch of the ship, to the peril of passers-by.

My hands are death-gripped around Darrin’s camera, and I am redundantly wrist-strapped to its body, preventing an accidental dipping of the lens into sponge-water and relegating one professor’s treasure to trash. A kaleidoscopic jumble of field guides and research papers zip to the forefront of our instant-recall limits as we struggle to orient ourselves to these spongeous morphologies and tissues. Deep-ocean animals take on bizarre forms, with nicknames often odd yet apt. Take, for instance, the lollipop sponge, or the parasol, the ruffled, or the harp. As our colleagues zip past from behind, they offer new, temporary aliases to help quell the collective ignorance of our less-familiar sponge encounters, such as the beauty blender, the mushroom, the shrimp chip, and the pancake.

Six hours pass before our most special moment, revisiting a sponge that Darrin published on during his fond PhD years at MBARI and UCSC. We clamber into the cold room and swing its door shut, sealing away the laboratory’s photoshoot flicker. Under a clammy sweat of anticipation, we count to 60, letting our eyes adapt to the darkness while our fingers blindly probe the room’s contours of shallow basins and chilled piping. Darrin locates a chapstick-sized sponge resting upside-down inside a collection tube, its body of milky-pink tissue safely submerged. A hardy stalk, once anchoring the animal to the seafloor, extends upwards from its visible base. It takes on a dim luster under the red-light illumination of our miniature keychain flashlights, with an intertwined architecture so beguiling I can’t help but picture evolution’s Rumpelstiltskin spinning these golden rods of glass from the silica of the sea. I dim our hand lights and watch as my mentor lowers his head past the basin edge, and his forceps disappear under the water’s surface.

Look here! Look down to where he’s pointing. From out of a forceps-sized depression in the animal, a defining pulse of bioluminescence radiates, searing blue-green into our interminable midnight. After this, there’s not much left to say or want. No more speed dating. No more discos. Only a Wattsian Starfish sort of serenity, watching these deep-ocean sponges glow within an abyss of their own.