[ WP ] 50 years from now deep sea exploration has been abandoned since technology has already scanned our oceans fully , or so we think . You continue as a hobby , and you find something .

This was my life's work. I'd been dismissed and told to keep nauticoexploration as a hobby, and I listened for the most part. People were n't really shocked when they found out I had been taking on all those DIY projects to learn how to build a super deep sea camera. Nobody really took it seriously, they just saw it as a hobby tool, not the mind blowingly difficult project that it actually had been. Launch day was a slow day like pretty much any other weekend I took from the oil fields. The cameras on the machine were highly sensitive, enough so that the only reliable read out on the monitors came from from the depth and pressure sensors. It was n't until my undersea `` probe'' had gotten to a few hundred yards down that it was finally able to pick up any usable images. At this point I was excited enough that the cameras and body of the probe itself had survived a dive for this long, but I knew I'd have to find just how deep it would go before it suffered any failures from the pressure if I wanted to see anything that was genuinely interesting. 
 
 The feeds were still running fine, all were receiving transmissions with no interruption and the water was practically as clear as glass. I had to hand it to those environmentalists, the second they get aggressive, they get results. The water should have been getting darker, but the cameras and lights on the probe were enough of a beacon that light levels were more than nominal, even at ever increasing depths. I still had n't seen anything on the monitors, but this hobby had taught me a ridiculous amount of patience with anything that had to do with these instruments. I had been traipsing around for a few hours, marveling at fish and animals that had gotten bold and curious enough to come inspect their new robotic neighbor. It had been a successful launch day, and the probe had taken a beating that would be expected from tiny curious fish. 
 
 Over the course of the next few months I continued to explore the coastline near my home, mapping and archiving everything I come across that seems interesting or unfamiliar. I run into fish that I'd never known existed in this part of the world, and even found a few vents that displayed some very unusual coloration, though I found that the color came from the chemical content of the gas that the tubes ejected. These few months were some of the best months of my life, but probably the most annoying of some of my friends. I do n't remember the last time I was so excited to talk about anything and everything about a hobby. Writing had never really taken off, painting was a bust, sculpting was more of a passing fancy, but undersea exploration had stayed and I had kept with it out of sheer passion. 
 
 After three years I had already begun chartering boats to take me and my probe further and further out to launch, which meant that each expedition was costing me more and more as their frequency increased. That meant that I was taking fewer, but longer expeditions. A few hours on the beach turned into a few days on a boat or a ship when I could afford it. The few captain's I had appealed to for my first major expeditions had all been skeptical, but had come over to my side after seeing what I could pick up with my probe. Chartering the *Fair Weather Lass* had taken some time since I did n't actually know the captain as well as I knew the captain's of *Fall Away* and *Beatrice's Folly*, though we did eventually come to an agreement. The day we left was bright, clear, and just a bit too sunny for the probe to be able to see until it had gone a fair distance down. The captain and his crew had set the ship at anchor and were watching intently as I set up my equipment and uncovered the probe. It was looking more and more weathered with every expedition I had it lead, but it was working as well as it had the day I first launched it. I had added a few reinforcements and dimmer lights to the casing, but for all intents and purposes it was the same probe it had always been. I had been right about the light levels, it was n't until it had gone down five hundred or so yards before the light had dimmed enough for images to be visible on the screen. The captain had brought me out to a part of the water I had n't had a chance to touch just yet and I was more than excited for the change of scenery, despite the distance between the two spots only being a few dozen miles. 
 
 Once the probe hit the upper floor of it's tolerable pressure levels I eased it deeper and switched to the dimmer secondary lights. For a few hours I assumed that this was a fairly empty section of ocean, and I was more than willing to accept that, but after dropping another hundred yards I found the local neighborhood. The fish here were completely alien to me, they seemed as though they were made of spun light and shone with colors I could n't even begin to describe. They gathered in small schools around the lens of the camera and would back away cautiously whenever the probe moved in the slightest. My journals and every book documenting local seatime flora and fauna came up with nothing about these creatures, not even sailing legends mentioned anything about these little sprites. I was transfixed, edging the probe forward slower and slower until it was practically immobile and beginning to sink. The little sprites began to disperse, and only sped up when I moved the probe towards them. Eventually I ended up going almost beyond the probe's reachable distance chasing after the last of the sprites that I could see. As it came back I found no evidence of the sprites. 
 
 The captain and crew did n't share my disappointment. To them they'd seen some mythical creature and that was more than enough to keep them happy for the rest of their lives. Simplicity has it's merits, and the footage I captured has no equal anywhere except maybe in some sy-fy movie. 
 
 The following day I assumed would be as uneventful as a typical day on any other expedition. I found that the sprites from the day before had invited their friends along to inspect the new addition to their home. The sprites had at the very least, tripled in number and were still completely content to flutter around the lens of the camera. On a whim I flicked on the higher intensity light to see the reaction. The creatures pulsed even brighter and fled from the lights at first, but after a few seconds they crowded the camera lens again, their eerie light brighter than it had been before. 
 
 Practicality made leaving the probe in the cloud of sprites useless after the next day's launch, so instead I opted to have the camera face down at the school of sprites. Employing the method I had come up with was tougher than I thought it would be, but once I got the angling and controls right I could finally take in the size of the group of sprites I had been visiting. How these things had not gotten anyone's interest as of yet is still a mystery to me. The school, I suppose swarm is more appropriate, was massive, the camera could n't capture more than a quarter or third of the total collection at a time. I had learned to keep the lights on the probe dim, as the sprites attempt to reflect nearby light back at an increased intensity. I do n't have the equipment to measure lumens, so that has to wait for another day. I was taken aback at the size of the school, when I saw it move. Not as a collective group, but as a single smooth motion. Something was being concealed under the cloud of sprites. I flashed the lights from bright to dim and saw most of the cloud shift in place and light level, but the parts that were out of the light's range dimmed and brightened as well. Determined to make heads or tails of the situation, I moved from head to tail of what I assumed was something massive. As soon as I got to the tip of what looked like the tail, the entire cloud of sprites buckled and shifted in light intensity. A multitude of discs slid upwards on the mass of sprites, revealing a mass of black insectoid eyes. The entire collection of creatures shifted once again, and whatever was being hidden by the sprites started moving away from the ship. Desperate to keep up with my discovery I pushed the probe after it. The massive creature outran my probe in matter of seconds, vanishing into a fading ball of light in the distance. I sat and slumped down in my chair with a sigh and my face in my hands. The monitors were lighting up again while I stewed in disappointment, the creature was coming back around. I had been left alone by the captain and crew after the first three days, something I was less and less content with as the expedition went on, but I wonder what would have happened had somebody told me what was about to happen. I looked back to the monitors to see the tail of the creature slide off camera after doubling back and passing it. Almost panicking, I jerked the control stick of the probe to follow what looked like upward motion. The sound of something rising from the water is unique, especially if it's something much, much larger than a person or an average fish. The creature leaped out of the water like a breaching whale, poise and power embodied, the shining sprite's trying to cling to it's body. I watch for the briefest of moments, awestruck at the size, majesty and beauty of the creature. Underneath the sprites, the creature is a black untouched by the concept of light. I take in the sight of this creature for a handful of seconds, when the light of the sprites starts to shift. 
 
 Of all the sights in the world, of all the beauty on our planet and in our stars, we have seen so little of it in person, yet after the global scan people mostly lost interest in the oceans, turning instead to space when there was still so much work to be done. Our oceans are the frontier now. I'd give my eyes a dozen more times if somebody told me that I'd push people to look back to where we came from before looking forward to where we'll go.
