Jasper shivered slightly in the cold and cramped cockpit of his submersible. At these depths, the ocean was incredibly cold and water has the incredible ability to just suck heat out of whatever it touches. Even with his heaters running the temperature in the cockpit could barely manage to stay above fifty degrees. Still, the cold and the uncomfortably tight sitting arrangement couldn’t deter him or diminish his excitement for his work.

He piloted the submersible gently through the dark water, navigating more from the information on his instruments than from sight, until at last a dim purple light in the distance began to grow. The silt and sediments cascading down from the ocean above made it difficult to see detail this far out but Jasper already knew what he was coming up to; he’d been here before.

The ground beneath the submersible sloped away suddenly into a yawning trench and the faint glow was revealed to fill the entire underwater valley. It was like cresting a hill while driving at night and finally being able to see down into a city. The lights in the trench wavered somewhat here and there, almost like twinkling stars, but by and large their bioluminescence was surprisingly constant and it stretched out in either direction as far as he could see.

“Hello my beauties,” Jasper whispered.

Jasper shut off his propellers and let his momentum carry him to the middle of the trench. He then used his ballast tanks to lower the submersible the rest of the way into the bottom of the trench. He worked carefully, making sure he descended as slowly as possible. Not only was it dangerous to change depth too quickly, but he also didn’t want to disturb anything around him. He wanted to observe the life here in its natural environment and if he spooked them all too much then his time down here would be wasted.

After what felt like an eternity, the hull settled gently onto the ocean floor. Before him and all around him, glowed an iridescent rainbow. He was mostly certain now that they were plants, though he doubted anyone had ever seen any such aquatic plant before. That isn’t to say that the plants looked totally alien either. On the contrary, if he’d seen these plants on land, aside from the bioluminescence, he would have thought them to be normal flowers. But that was what made them so spectacular. They had petals that opened and closed, though their cycle obviously wasn’t based on sunlight. They had a complex and deep root structure that anchored them into the silty ocean floor. They even appeared to have something similar to pollen and relied on other organisms for assistance in pollination.

The light they emitted pulsed gently from time to time, and it seemed to Jasper that the plants tended to pulse together in order to create different patterns. Sometimes they made rings of light, other times they made bands and ribbons that waved through the field of flowers.

It was utterly bizarre. As he sat watching, several fish nearby began to scuttle around the flowers. The fish were pale and blended into the sand almost imperceptibly. They’d swim slowly, sometimes just above the silty floor, sometimes just beneath its surface, but then they would dart upward to the flowering tops of the plants and nip off  one of the small pods that appeared to be the plants pollen. The fish would swim back down, chew the pod for a moment and then dart back up and spit out the yellowish gray dust.

Fish after fish repeated this process and Jasper took eager notes. Was there something in the pods that the fish were eating other than the pollen, or did they just eat a certain amount and then spit out the rest? Was it even pollen in those pods? He longed to be able to do more, to study them further beyond just visual observation but his submersible had no outboard arms for taking samples. Even if he could get samples, he lacked the expertise to actually study them. He was, after all, little more than a hobbyist when it came to oceanic exploration.

He had no research team, no official organization he worked under. He was, as the papers recently put it, a very wealthy, unemployed young man with a fascination for the ocean. He’d inherited his wealth and had no interest in expanding that wealth. He had plenty to last him a life time. Several lifetimes, in fact, even considering the rate at which he tended to spend it on things like submersibles.

He sat on the ocean floor, chin in his hands, and thought. No one else knew this place existed. Or rather, they knew the trench existed but no one knew about the life that thrived down here. He could announce his discovery, earn some recognition, be seen as more than just some lazy eccentric. But then what? He was no scientist. He’d never even gone to college. Even he had to admit that the notes he took were basic and probably of little value. A real oceanographer could do so much more here. On the other hand, if he shared his discovery, he worried that he’d no longer be able to just come down here and watch the fish as they darted among the flowers. This was like his own secret garden where the flowers glowed in the dark and cold ocean depths.

All too soon the light on his control panel illuminated signaling that it was time to begin the process of resurfacing. Reluctantly but obediently, Jasper began to maneuver his submersible back upwards. It was a slow process, taking around an hour to resurface. Even then he wasn’t free to exit the submersible. In order for his submersible to survive at these depths, the interior cabin had to be pressurized which meant he had to spend several hours on the surface, inside the submersible, slowly building up the pressure so his body could acclimate to it. Then, once on the surface again, he’d have to go through the same process in reverse, slowly lowering the pressure and giving his body time to readjust once again. In all, he spent more time on the surface dealing with pressurization than he did down in the ocean exploring.

It was times like this that he really considered the possibilities of getting something mounted onto the hull that would allow him to bring back samples. He may not be a proper scientist, but he yearned to be able to see and handle these things without the submersible in the way. Such equipment, however, tended to raise questions about why he wanted or needed such things on his private submersible. With growing concerns over drug traffickers and others beginning to use submersibles more frequently, more countries were instituting additional laws about their use. It was to avoid such scrutiny that lead him to choose a submersible with so little interior space. The world was such a complicated mess at times and all he really wanted was to be left alone while he marveled at the wonders he discovered.

Perhaps he should announce his discovery, if only to make sure he could avoid any legal problems. Certainly it would only take a few more trips out here before someone would get suspicious about what he was doing.

Regardless, as his submersible continued its steady rise upward, he looked down through one of the lower windows just in time to see the last of the glow fade away beneath him. The thin purple strip of light marking the trench was swallowed up in the murky dark of the deep ocean and he smiled. His deep blue violets would be there when he returned in a few days. Perhaps he’d bring a camera along to take some photographs next time. At least then he’d have something to look at while he was away from this miraculous place.