The research vessel bobbed in the southwestern Pacific like a toy boat in a bathtub. Three scientists watched numbers scroll across a monitor as the minutes ticked by on another 12-hour shift. The instruments collecting that raw data had been deployed days earlier in a line on the ocean floor. Now, the ship was towing a fish-shaped transmitter just above the seabed to pick up the remote devices’ signals and send them back to the vessel. Things were going well. Until they weren’t. “When you’re out at sea, you pray…
