View of the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy from the ice.

US Coast Guard Cutter HEALY operates with a compliment of two Coast Guard HH-65B Dolphin Helicopters in addition to Healy's normal equipment and crew. All personnel and scientific equipment for the 2005 Hidden Ocean cruise are brought aboard exclusively by helicopter.

Healy's Bow breaks through Arctic ice!

Hymenodora glacialis, the only pelagic shrimp known to inhabit the Canada Basin.

A divers view of the underside of the ice.

A divers view of the underside of the ice.

Ice Divers Katrin Iken and Elisabeth Calvert descend below the ice through a hole in a melt pond while Shawn Harper teds the safety line.

Jeremy Potter tends the safety line for divers beneath the ice.

The science team descends onto the ice below in a manlift.

Scientists work on the ice in foggy weather. The "manlift" in the foreground , raised and lowered by one of Healy's cranes, is their transport to and from the Healy.

One of Healy's cranes lowers a scientist and equipment onto the ice.

The comb jelly Mertensia ovum is fishing for food under Arctic ice.

Mike Nicholson (left) and Joe Caba (right) move the ROV into position for deployment.

The multinet, a device which captures small creatures in the water at different depths of the water column, is deployed off the back of the Healy.

Nathan Buck works on preparing his Automated Trace Element samplers to collect water at different depths for trace metal testing.

An undescribed deep-water species of Larvacean.

A young mother and her cub look curiously towards the Healy.

The photoplatform is deployed into icy waters.

View of Arctic ice through one of Healy's portholes.

The ROV begins its descent into the deep waters of the Canada Basin.

The ROV is brought back on board after a dive deep into the Canada Basin.

In many species of copepods, males are rare and short-lived. This male of Scaphocalanus acrocephalus is readily distinguished from the female by his antennae and tail.

A sea star brought up from a benthic ROV dive.

Ice Diver Shawn Harper shoots video of creatures living underneath the ice.

Sue Moore uses a hydrophone to listen for whales and other marine mammals.

Rolf Gradinger works on an ice core while Mette Nielson takes measurements on a core already brought to the surface.

Katrin Iken uses a transect to measure the density of amphipods and other creatures living on sea-ice.

Scientists work on ice over the deep Arctic Ocean.

In order to maximize the amount of information collected during the research cruise, scientists participating in the Life on the Edge 2004 mission used a variety of nets and traps in addition to the JSL submersible.

patches of sargassum floating at the surface are often home to a large diversity of marine animals. Andrea Quattrini, a technician with Steve W. Ross at UNC-Wilmington, passes time between submersible dives by collecting sargassum for later analysis.

Martha Nizinski, a scientist from the NMFS Systematics Laboratory, closely examines a piece of Lophelia. She hopes to learn more about the types of marine organisms that live in and around the deep-sea corals.

Beryx decadactylus (alfonsino) hovering around a large Lophelia coral. Many fishes use the deep coral habitat in a similar way as fishes in shallow coral systems, and this is a major focus of our research.

The 4-person Johnson Sea-Link (JSL) submersible is equipped with a variety of tools that scientists use to collect samples from the ocean depths.

The Johnson Sea-Link (JSL) submersible is typically launched two times per day from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution's R/V Seward Johnson.

Deep-sea corals form important habitats for unique and diverse array of marine life. Live bushes of the deep-sea coral, Lophelia, may act like island oases in the deep sea.

This small chunk of Lophelia coral lives in almost utter darkness hundreds of feet below the sea surface. Lophelia has been found to grow in massive "thickets" is some areas off the coast of North Carolina.

The Life on the Edge 2004 mission has collected a diverse array of invertebrate life around deep-sea corals. Squat lobsters are just one of the many types of organisms that use deep-sea corals for shelter.

Galatheid crab (possibly a Eumunida species), showing the extremely long claws they possess that enable them to cling to the inside of the suction sampler so tenaciously.

Close-up of photoreceptors of crab collected from 1800 feet. The enormous size of these eyes suggests that they are adapted for extremely high sensitivity to light.

Another species of galatheid (squat lobster) showing distinct eyeglow, which results when light hits the reflecting tapetum behind the retina.

Unidentified sargassum shrimp bearing two colors of fluorescent patches.

Fluorescent chain cat shark at about 1820' feet deep. This shark was no more than a meter long and "posed" for a couple of minutes lying still on the bottom near the submersible.

The exuberant science crew watching video footage of the chain cat shark.

Zooanthid polyps under fluorescent light setting (this is the blue image) and under white light.

Zooanthid polyps under fluorescent light setting under blue light.

Dr. Mikhail Matz checking his yellow submersible light filters prior to launch.

Dr. Justin Marshall with slime extruded from the pores of the hagfish.

The six-gill shark, approximately 8 feet long.

Shark attracted by the fish pieces attached to the tip of the EITS frame and in its bait cage.

Six-gill shark swimming in for an inspection of the Eye-in-the-Sea.