Into The Underworld - Red Bulletin
Meet the ‘underground astronauts’ whose subterranean adventures are helping to illuminate our past – and shape our future.
We live our day-to-day lives on the surface of our planet. But beneath this familiar crust is a mysterious labyrinth of caves, crevasses, sea caverns and subterranean lakes.
This is humankind’s forgotten frontier.
We have explored the poles, the mountains and the Moon – and yet more than half of Earth’s caves remain undiscovered. As the writer and academic Robert Macfarlane relates in his 2019 book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, this secret world feels impenetrable and unknowable: “Look up on a cloudless night and you might see the light from a star thousands of trillions of miles away, or pick out the craters left by asteroid strikes on the Moon’s face. Look down and your sight stops at topsoil, tarmac, toe.”
Even the world’s largest known cave, Vietnam’s Hang So’n Đoòng, was first mapped as recently as 2009. At 38.5 million cubic metres, it could house an entire block of 40-storey skyscrapers. Yet, last year explorers discovered that the cave is 1.6 million cubic metres bigger than previously thought. This cave has its own river system, jungle and climate, with 30m trees, 70m stalagmites, and crystallised ‘cave pearls’ the size of baseballs.
Deep in the underworld, scientists have found organisms that produce antibiotics; microbial life akin to the earliest life forms, in existence billions of years ago; and fantastical rocks and dunes as alien to us as the deserts of Venus. In 2017, NASA experts revived microbial life forms that had lain dormant in gypsum crystals in a Mexican cave for up to 50,000 years, raising hopes that alien organisms could be found in extreme environments on distant planets.
“I’ve caved all over the world and seen some of the most spectacular things,” says cave explorer and microbiologist Dr Hazel Barton. “And my eyes were the first to see those [things]. When you think about the first Moon landing by Neil Armstrong… that ‘first man on the Moon’ experience is a rare phenomenon. But in caves you can do that on a regular basis.”
Cavers must squeeze through vice-like cracks and navigate in total darkness. Just knowing where to start is hard enough. “Caves are unique in that you can’t see them,” says Dr Barton. “Mountains can be seen, space can be seen. Perhaps the best comparison we have is the deep ocean, but you can map that with sonar. Ground-penetrating radar systems are lucky to pick up anything 30m underground. So the only way to do it is human exploration.”
Humans are drawn to the darkness. It’s where cavers seek life-affirming thrills and where families bury their dead. It’s where we store valuables but dispose of waste; where we extract precious metals but install dark-matter laboratories. As Macfarlane explains, “The same three tasks recur across cultures and epochs: to shelter what is precious, to yield what is valuable, and to dispose of what is harmful.”
We have trouble envisioning that more than 95 per cent of the world’s drinking water is stored beneath our feet as groundwater.Dr Kenny Broad
But, as climate change and pollution increases, ice caps melt and drug-resistant infections proliferate, exploring the underworld has never felt more urgent. Glaciologists are abseiling into ice holes to monitor melt rates, microbiologists are going deep in search of new antibiotics, and divers are plunging into caves to expose the vulnerability of our drinking water supplies. Macfarlane says the underworld invites a ‘deep time’ perspective that extends far beyond our own short lifespans. Paleoclimatologists are studying stalagmites that shed light on climate change 650,000 years ago, while European Space Agency astronauts are crawling into lava caves as training for a possible mission to Mars.
Caves are also a metaphor for the gaps in our everyday knowledge. “Out of sight, out of mind – that’s the problem,” warns environmental anthropologist Dr Kenny Broad. “We have trouble envisioning that more than 95 per cent of the world’s drinking water is stored beneath our feet as groundwater.” With less than one per cent of accessible freshwater stored in surface rivers and lakes, invisible groundwater is the primary life- support system for all human and animal life.
But, as we continue to pollute and poison the planet, the amazing photographs, stories and discoveries of cave explorers are helping to raise awareness of the beauty and fragility of the underworld. They force us to reflect on where our water comes from, where our rubbish goes, and how much we still have to learn. Here, we celebrate the ‘underground astronauts’ who are finding visions for the future in the darkness of the underworld.
THE MICROBIOLOGIST
Dr Hazel Barton
Dubbed the ‘Lara Croft of microbiology’, Dr Barton has explored caves on six continents, from Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico, USA, with its 240km of passages, to the vast Cloud Ladder Hall in China’s Er Wang Dong – caves so big they have their own weather system.
“I work out every day – you need to be in top shape for this,” says the 48-year-old, who directs the Integrated Bioscience PhD Programme at the University of Akron, Ohio. “I took a yoga instructor caving and she said it was like a six-hour yoga session. The Lechuguilla expeditions usually last eight days underground. Carrying 17-20kg packs, we squeeze and rappel through tight spaces. I’ve hacked through the Borneo jungle to caves that are 25-27°C. They’re full of leeches, you’re waist-deep in water, and swifts are banging your head. Like anything in life, for 100 per cent effort you might get three per cent return. But that three per cent is worth it.”
Dr Barton’s headline research is in antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics – derived from natural compounds made by microbes in soil – help treat infectious diseases. But their overuse has led to harmful microbes developing resistance, making it harder to treat conditions such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. The United Nations has warned that deaths from drug-resistant infections could reach 10 million per year by 2050, calling it “one of the greatest threats we face”. But Dr Barton made a discovery in the almost 500m-deep Lechuguilla Cave that could help us fight back.
A lot of scientists aren’t interested in doing these epic, sweaty, scary trips, so it gave me an opportunity to go to caves that a microbiologist had never visited.Dr Hazel Barton
“I knew that no one had ever been in this passage,” she says. “It’s pristine. For rainwater to percolate from the surface, it takes 1,000 years – long before the 1940s, when the first antibiotics were used to treat infections. So we tested the bugs in this pristine environment and they were resistant to every type of antibiotic used in medicine. Yet this cave has been isolated since it formed four million years ago. It suggests antibiotic resistance is hardwired and ancient.”
As cave microorganisms must fight for limited resources, they use ‘chemical weapons’ – or antibiotics – to defend themselves from rivals. These rivals then mutate to build resistance. “Learning how these mechanisms evolved buys us time to find new ways to prevent this happening in medicine,” says Dr Barton. She also plans to screen a million different cave bacteria to find novel microbes that could form the basis of new antibiotics.
The Bristol-born academic began caving at the age of 14 and loved the thrill of exploring in three dimensions. While doing her doctorate at the University of Colorado, she would visit caves in South Dakota and New Mexico. And it was during postdoctoral research with the eminent microbiologist and caver Professor Norm Pace that she realised she could fuse her two passions.
“A lot of scientists aren’t interested in doing these epic, sweaty, scary trips, so it gave me an opportunity to go to caves that a microbiologist had never visited,” she says. “That’s when I began finding new things. Cave exploration is very similar to science as you’re solving problems and developing perseverance, and cavers think outside the box. Nothing is intimidating or scary [to us], so we try things no one has done before.”
A thirst for exploration remains central to Dr Barton’s work. “About 70 per cent of our sample sites are just places where I’ve seen something that looks weird and decided to go back and sample it. Then you find something amazing.”
THE URBAN EXPLORER
Steve Duncan
Armed with chest wader boots, hooks, ropes and torches, urban explorer Steve Duncan slips through manhole covers and secret doors into the dark subway tunnels of New York, the slimy sewers of London and the bone-filled catacombs of Paris. His eye-catching underground adventures provide a jolting reminder of the fragility of urban ecology.
“We know that learning about nature can be useful, but there’s not that same attitude to urbanised environments,” explains Duncan, 41, who lives in New York. “We assume people are experts at running cities. We turn on the tap, water comes out. But going underground and seeing where water comes from – and where it goes – changes all that. In New York, if the water from 40-120 miles [65-195km] away was cut off, we’d be without water within a day. The city has been doubling its water supply system twice a century. How long before the entire US – more than three million square miles [almost eight million km] – becomes New York’s watershed?”
That feeling of ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this exists.'Steve Duncan
Exploring sewers has convinced Duncan there’s no distinction between natural and human environments. Modern sewers follow old underground rivers, the sewers of coastal cities experience tidal surges, and water obeys gravity. “Flooding is a human construct. That doesn’t mean there’s water in unexpected places – we put buildings where water wants to collect. With climate change, we’re going to see lots more urban flooding. If New York or London are to last another 1,000 years, we need to lose this urban/natural divide and focus on sustainable infrastructure and smarter planning.”
Duncan grew up in Maryland, but he first explored underground while at college in New York, sneaking into steam tunnels for daring adventures. “It was the coolest thing ever to find this entire underground layer of structures; that feeling of ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe this exists.’ It’s amazing that when you’re underground you can feel a fear of confined places and also a fear of heights. Anything seems worse when it is happening where no one can hear you scream. But, over time, fear was replaced by a fascination.”
The explorer has had narrow escapes with trains, been arrested for trespassing in New York and Paris, and almost drowned in a tidal surge. But he neutralises his fear with preparation. “I believe in trying to assuage one’s fear with intelligent measures and baby steps. Knowing about storm drains and tidal flows helps. And I carry a four-gas meter to check for hydrogen sulphide – sewer gas. I don’t want to pass out and drown in two inches of sewer water.”
Duncan has been hospitalised three times by infections, but even these illnesses yielded insights. “It was a reminder that waterborne pathogens have been one of the biggest killers of urbanised people in history. Our sewers are the biggest public-health triumph ever, but we still have these pathogens in water beneath our cities. Why do we still mix dirty water with clean precipitation water in combined sewers? We need to make our waterways cleaner.”
He hopes his photographs arouse curiosity and inspire people to think more deeply about the cities they live in. “Modern maps are an incomplete reflection of urban landscapes,” Duncan says. “The reality is much more three-dimensional.”
THE GLACIOLOGIST
Dr Sam Doyle
Around 10 per cent of Earth’s land surface is covered in ice caps, ice sheets and glaciers, the movement and melt of which is critical for the study of climate change and sea-level rises. To analyse glaciers in Switzerland, Greenland and Antarctica, Dr Sam Doyle – a field glaciologist at Aberystwyth University – abseils deep into vertical ice shafts known as moulins, which are formed when meltwater carves out a hole in the glacier over time.
“It’s extremely physically demanding, cold and wet,” explains Dr Doyle, 34. “You’re in a confined, slippery space and there’s always the risk of water rising or coming down. So we do this at 2-3am in the autumn when it’s freezing cold, because you don’t want melt while you’re down there. Using skills from caving and ice-climbing, we seek out the holes that mountaineers try to avoid. On Gorner Glacier in Switzerland, we explored a vertical moulin to a depth of 86m. Our super-skinny 7mm ropes – which we were using to save weight – became iced up, so our descending devices started to slip unnervingly. The descent became very fast and hard to control.”
Dr Doyle also bores holes with hot-water jets so he can deposit sensors to monitor changes in water pressure and movement. “Surface melt flows to the bed and can speed up or slow down a glacier, depending on the conditions,” he says. “My research is asking: is the ice sheet going to speed up if the climate warms? And is more ice going to be discharged into the ocean?”
Working at night in temperatures of -10°C can be daunting. “You have to control any fear by assessing the risks and having the right knowledge,” says Dr Doyle, who grew up caving in Sheffield and Scotland. “But going below the ice is incredible. Everything is a striking blue. And ice structures form much faster than in rock, so they are often bigger. The moulins are spectacular, but some glaciers have long canyon systems and elaborate [frozen] waterfalls.”
It’s extremely physically demanding, cold and wet... We seek out the holes that mountaineers try to avoid.
Dr Sam Doyle
With more than 600 million people worldwide living in coastal areas less than 10m above sea level, Dr Doyle hopes people wise up to climate change. “What happens to glaciers and ice sheets has big consequences for society as sea levels rise when the ice melts,” he says. “We now need to make progress in reducing emissions and changing behaviour.”
THE SUBTERRANEAN PHOTOGRAPHER
Robbie Shone
British photographer Robbie Shone captures stunning cave images that he hopes will inspire a sense of wonder and respect for the world beneath our feet. His highlights include Georgia’s 2,212m-deep Veryovkina Cave – the deepest-known on Earth – and Borneo’s vast 164,459m2 Sarawak Chamber, which is long enough to house eight Boeing 747s nose-to-nose.
“When I began caving, it was purely for the thrill, and I still get a rush from hanging on a rope in total darkness,” says Shone, 40, who lives in Innsbruck, Austria. “But I especially love photographing caves where no one has been. On New Britain, an island in Papua New Guinea, I explored caves formed long before the dinosaurs were around. They had never been seen by human eyes before, and might never be again.”
I had a vivid reaction to the darkness and adrenalin of the underground world the first time I went caving.Robbie Shone
Shone began caving in the Yorkshire Dales while studying fine art and photography at Sheffield Hallam University. “I had a vivid reaction to the darkness and adrenalin of the underground world,” he says. He later deployed his new rope skills when cleaning skyscrapers as a way to fund caving trips, before magazines and scientists began commissioning his work.
“Some caves are like a giant obstacle course,” he says. “One minute you’re abseiling into the dark, then at the bottom the passages might be so tight you have to turn your head sideways just to squeeze through.” On his 2018 expedition to Veryovkina, he was caught in a freak flood pulse. “I remember the noise of the water like a Tube train coming towards me. When I climbed out the chamber, the water was pummelling me. I had to keep my head horizontal just to breathe, as the lip of the helmet created an air space… The experience affected me for months. I got drunk. Even sleeping was difficult.”
He regained his confidence through self-talk. “I reminded myself that caves are normally super safe. The walls don’t move. They don’t cave in like mineshafts built by humans. But
I also took an open-water diving course to build up my confidence. The Veryovkina team now always have someone on the surface. Forecasts aren’t enough for a two-week trip underground.”
Shone enjoys documenting the work of microbiologists, scientists and geologists – he even accompanied ESA astronauts into the lava tubes of Lanzarote, where geologists taught them how to collect rock samples for a future mission to Mars. “Meeting scientists has filled a void and brought extra meaning to my work. I hope my photographs inform the public and reveal the amazing scientists who are helping us to learn about – and save – this planet.”
THE ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGIST
Dr Kenny Broad
Dr Kenny Broad is not your typical professor. The 53-year-old scientist flies helicopters, has worked as a Hollywood stuntman, and prefers scuba gear to slide shows. As an environmental anthropologist at the University of Miami, he dives into underwater caves everywhere from the Bahamas to Mexico to study climate change, evolution and freshwater management.
“Exploring caves is like entering Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, but instead of walking on a path you’re weaving up into the arches and down into a minute feature,” says Dr Broad. “It’s a sensory overload of beauty, but you’re also multitasking. ‘Am I breathing the right gas? Where is my buddy?’ There’s an amazing feeling of flow.”
A former National Geographic Explorer of the Year, Dr Broad learned to dive as a boy, and the hobby has become central to his research. The sediment and stalagmites in marine caves contain vital clues about past climate change, and the anoxic (oxygen-less) environment preserves fossils; his team has found the remains of previously undescribed birds and vertebrates.
Dr Broad dives into ‘blue holes’ (submerged marine caverns) in the Bahamas that serve as important analogues for ancient oceans. “The life forms there are linked to the earliest forms of life, from two-and-a-half billion years ago. They are also as close as we can get to what may be going on in other planets. I spoke to someone from NASA, because there might be something equivalent [a subsurface ocean] under the crust of Europa [one of Jupiter’s moons]. They’re very interested in extremophile forms of life.”
He also explores freshwater caves to monitor groundwater supplies threatened by pollution and saltwater intrusion as sea levels rise: “People don’t think about it, but this is our drinking water.” Population growth also has an impact: draw too heavily from coastal freshwater wells and saltwater starts to seep in, contaminating drinking water. “This is happening in coastal areas around California and Florida,” he says.
Dr Broad has appeared in documentary series such as National Geographic’s One Strange Rock (narrated by actor Will Smith) and enjoys sharing his research with schools and businesses. This is as important as the science, he says, “because it won’t be another paper on ‘climate reconstruction from the late Holocene’ that changes public policy or individual behaviour on water use”.
Despite the potential hazards of cave diving, Dr Broad believes that deep-water explorers such as himself bring valuable life lessons back to the surface. “When diving, you get so close to the fundamentals of being alive. Every breath matters. Then it hits you: ‘I’m swimming through our water supply – the veins of the Earth.’ It reminds you how fundamental and fragile life is.”
THE PALEOCLIMATOLOGIST
Dr Gina Moseley
Caves are time capsules that help scientists explore the past – and forecast the future. “They’re connected to, but protected from, the surface, so they trap information about climates over hundreds of thousands of years,” says Dr Gina Moseley, a paleoclimatologist at the Innsbruck Quaternary Research Group. “We have unprecedented, rapid climate change right now, but we can look back at when the climate has changed quickly in the past – with CO2 released into the atmosphere – and ask, ‘What happened? What were the effects?’”
For the past 2.6 million years, known as the quaternary period, the Earth has varied between glacial (ice age) and interglacial (warm) cycles, driven by the planet’s orbit relative to the sun. Warm periods trigger ice melt and suck C02 out of the deep ocean and into the atmosphere, which accelerates the warming, and studying these helps predict future climate change. Dr Moseley currently leads the Greenland Caves Project. The Arctic region is especially vulnerable to climate change, and the consequences will be felt worldwide through rising sea levels and changing weather systems. To reach the remote Greenland caves, Dr Moseley endures multi-day hikes and boat journeys, carrying drills, hammers and rope.
By exploring caves, we can look back at times in the past when the climate has changed quickly and ask, ‘What were the effects?'Dr Gina Moseley
“I research stalagmites – the candlesticks you find on cave floors, formed by dripping water. That water brings with it a chemical signature of temperature, how wet it was, if there were trees above the caves, and any human influences. All this information is trapped in the stalagmite, so we cut it open and analyse it. Our timescale is 650,000 years, so we get long records. In Greenland, we found beautiful flowstones formed by thin sheets of flowing water. They prove that although the land is covered in permafrost, it must have been warmer and wetter in the past. We use this information to see what might happen if temperatures change again.”
Dr Moseley, originally from Cannock in the West Midlands, first tried caving while on a family holiday in Cheddar, Somerset, aged 12. “I got the bug,” she recalls. “I’d save up my paper-round money to go caving.” She later explored caves in the Bahamas for her PhD in Geographical Sciences at Bristol University: “When I found out it was possible to work in caves as a science, everything came together,” The extreme isolation of caves teaches her self-reliance, she says: “In remote places, you learn to get on with what you have.”
Dr Moseley sees adventure and science as twin weapons in the battle against climate change. “People might have their eyes opened by the adventure side of things,” she says, “but if that gets them interested in climate change, I’m happy.”
(C) Red Bulletin Magazine
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