That mistress would be a small, elusive creature called Paleodictyon nodosum, whose fossilized tunnels Seilacher discovered half a century ago. Remarkably, he believes that the prehistoric creature, which he thinks is a kind of worm, still exists; geologist Peter Rona has found similar hexagonal patterns of tunnels on the deep ocean floor. But neither these two nor anyone else has ever seen the creature.
So off we go into the deep, in search of Paleodictyon. But first we get some back story: about Alvin, the famous submersible the scientists will use; about the mid-ocean vents that an Alvin team discovered in the Pacific three decades ago; about volcanic eruptions underwater and how and why they occur; about the many weird creatures that live near these "volcanoes," properly known as hydrothermal vents; about the connections between this deep-sea life and deep space. It's all nicely narrated by Ed Harris, but it derails the narrative about the elusive living fossil.
Perhaps, though, director Stephen Low would have been wiser to go even further off the rails. For when we do finally get back to Seilacher, as he and Rona eagerly slice open cores of sediment to look for Paleodictyon, disappointment awaits. They find the tunnels, but not the creatures.
Science is like that sometimes. But the failure to find a living creature makes the decision to focus the film on the search for it an odd one. Perhaps this emphasis was influenced by Rona's association with Rutgers University, which coproduced "Volcanoes" and would naturally want to see its professor's discovery highlighted. Still, the university as well as the viewer might have been better served by a more broadly framed narrative -- something that you'd think the executive producer, James Cameron, would know.
