TO get this week's color-picture story about submersibles (see SCIENCE), the TIME team followed trails that led through Louisiana swamps, experimental labs, shipyards and under the surface of two oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. Among the special equipment they used, the most important item was an underwater camera designed by Marine Explorer Jacques Yves Cousteau, now made by Nikon and sold under the name Nikonos. It is the first camera sealed to function under water without special waterproof housing.

Using this camera, George Leavens, one of the free-lance photographers on the story, spent a month in and out of the water photographing submersibles. A veteran of 30 years' diving, he still finds undersea photography tricky and rigorous work. Shooting the submarine Deep Diver, he wrestled strong currents along the Gulf Stream for three hours, switching between two cameras, one with 35-mm lens, one 28-mm.

Photographer Ben Martin was confronted with unusually chill, murky, turbulent Gulf waters when he arrived in Morgan City, La., to photograph the diving bell Cachalot. Seeking clear water for picture taking, crewmen maneuvered the diving barge bearing Cachalot far out in the Gulf, where a modern Russian trawler with sophisticated electronic gear lurked near by with obvious curiosity about what was going on. The Cachalot was dangled beneath the surface from a 100-ft. boom while Martin, insulated by a hooded wet suit, tried to focus on it. When a wave swell, of which he in the ocean depths was unaware, caused his target to heave up out of camera range, he swam up after it, only to swim even faster the other way when the ponderous bell descended.

Jim Collison and Bill Walker, working off the West Coast, carried 400 Ibs. of equipment to their seagoing photo assignments. Shooting the submersible Deep Quest, Collison surfaced with the craft, clambered into a helicopter to shoot the aerial view, then dived from the chopper to swim back to the mother ship.

To plan and execute such a project, it is necessary to have shooting scripts much like those of a movie company on location. The staff that charted the course for the photographers and produced the color pages included Senior Editor A. T. Baker, Researcher Andrea Svedberg, Washington Correspondent Jerry Hannifin and Picture Editor Arnold Drapkin. The accompanying story is the work of Science Writer Leon Jaroff, Researcher Fortunata Vanderschmidt and Senior Editor Peter Martin. Their combined efforts made possible TIME'S trip this week into the "inner space" of the sea around us.

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