Michael Perfit’s journey to the bottom of the ocean started with a dream of flying to outer space.
Perfit, a 69-year-old UF geology professor, said he wanted to be an astronaut when he was younger but became too tall once he reached high school.
Instead of launching into the stars, Perfit has been exploring the unknown depths of the seven seas. Most recently, he dove 8,000 feet into the Pacific Ocean in December to further understand the ocean floor, the composition of Earth’s interior and Earth’s evolution.
“It’s amazing to realize you are the only person who’s been in some of these places and to discover some of this stuff,” Perfit said. “It’s exploring; it’s how I keep going.”
Perfit and his team set out to explore volcanoes on mid-ocean ridges in a six-foot-wide submarine called Alvin, which is the world’s first deep-diving submarine and is named after the engineer, physicist and oceanographer Allyn Vine.
Alvin is built to go 14,764 feet below the surface, Perfit said. The deepest Perfit has ever gone was 11,000 feet back in 1991.
The cost of a dive trip is about $45,000 per day, not including the cost of supplies, equipment and staff salaries, Perfit said. Funding comes from government grants and contracts, as well as foundation and private donations.
Perfit said he has done about 40 dives in Alvin, each one lasting about six hours, which totals 10 days spent at the bottom of the ocean as an “aquanaut,” or someone who spends an extended period of time underwater.
His most recent dive was significant because it was the first dive into a chain of submarine volcanoes called the 8°20’N Seamounts, where divers found the chemical composition of the volcanoes to be more diverse than usual, Perfit said.
Up until the 1970s, when Alvin started operating, scientists knew almost nothing about the seafloor, Perfit said.
“You can’t just have oceanographers or marine biologists do this,” Perfit said. “You need somebody who understands what a volcano is like on land to figure out what they’re like on the bottom of the ocean.”
Carly Daniel, a 20-year-old UF geology junior, said she wants to specialize in volcanology once she graduates. Daniel is looking forward to having Perfit as a teacher next Spring because she has heard he is a great professor from her friends, she said.
“They all say he is so passionate about what he teaches,” Daniel said. “You can tell he loves what he does and has so much experience which makes his classes so interesting.”
Michael Perfit, 69, a UF geology professor, inside the submarine on a dive.
