This is pretty cool:

While the smallest of the rat-tail fish was still alive — until the octosquid made a meal of it — the other creatures were dead. War said the fish that come up the NELHA pipeline quickly die or are already dead because the change in atmospheric pressure expands and eventually ruptures a fish’s swim bladders.

But invertebrates — animals with no backbones — are seemingly unaffected by the pressure change. The light may have bothered the octosquid, though, since it is pitch black at the 3,000-foot depth. War said the exceptionally clear waters off Keahole Point allow light from the sun to penetrate to about 500 and 600 feet.

When we were diving in Kona last fall, we went down to the top of the pipeline, which is at a depth of about sixty feet. It’s kind of eerie to look down it, and then look at the outside of it, as it descends almost half a mile into the depths, down the undersea slope of Mauna Kea.