Michael Harlow has been scuba diving for more than half of his life, seeking underwater adventure in every corner of the earth. He has explored picturesque coral reefs and dramatic shipwrecks as a PADI divemaster for more than 20 years, but never in all his aquatic exploits had he encountered something like what he came upon in a shipwreck in the South Pacific several years ago. Harlow and a couple of other divers were exploring a World War II-era sunken Japanese freighter when Harlow separated from the group, fascinated by a dark hole in the wreck above his head. He ascended into the void, keeping one hand above his head in case he bumped into anything. The panic started to set in when his dive light went out. “I started freaking out. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch black,” he said. “But when I brought the light up to my face, it would turn back on.” When the light illuminated, Harlow saw it was covered in a dark brown goo. And when he brought it back down to his side, the light went out again. Harlow began to realize he had penetrated a thick oil sheet, and as soon as he discovered that, another development in his predicament hit him: his arm, still above his head, suddenly felt heavy. Why, he wondered, would his arm feel heavy if he were under water? As the pieces of the puzzle began to fall in place, Harlow realized he was no longer under water. He had found his way inside a large air pocket, probably created when the ship sank and festering 130 feet below the ocean surface for 70 years. Fortunately, his vast diving experience stopped him from taking his regulator out of his mouth. The air, he said, was probably so toxic it could have killed him instantly. “I was tripping out a bit,” he said. “There were a number of factors I was aware of. I knew I was in a 70-year-old wreck, in oil-saturated air, and at any moment I could die from any number of things happening.” Harlow brought his dive light up near his face and dared to get a better understanding of his situation. What he saw when he illuminated the light nearly took his breath away. “I started looking around and was amazed at what I saw,” he said. “Everywhere I turned, there were these crystals, on every surface, reflecting back at me.” Harlow looked further into the abyss and was shocked to see that, through a small passageway, the air pocket extended and opened up into a giant hold. The space was so large his light couldn’t penetrate the other end. He estimated it held about 125,000 cubic feet of trapped air. “The air hold was so huge, you could get out and play football in it,” he said. Feeling that his good fortune at surviving in such an inhospitable environment could not hold out forever, Harlow began to consider a descent back down to his diving partners in the lower level of the wreck. First, however, he wanted to take a sample of the peculiar crystals. When he tried to pull on a large one (the biggest, he said, reached about one foot in length), it wouldn’t budge. He tried for a smaller one, but even that wouldn’t give an inch. Not wanting to risk triggering an explosion with a spark from trying to chip off a piece, he decided to cut his losses and get out of the chamber while he still could. His partners located him, still covered in gooey oil — which burned his skin as it seeped into his pores — and they left the wreck. The experience, however, stayed with him for the better part of a decade. “It’s been eating at me for years and years,” he said. “I kicked myself for not going back and documenting what I saw. I’ve dived all over the world, and have never seen anything like this.” Now, finally hoping to quell his curiosity and perhaps make some scientific discoveries in the process, Harlow is returning to the wreck — and this time he won’t come back empty handed. In July or August, he and his wife will once again try to locate the giant air hold, and he will collect samples of the crystals — using a rubber mallet and chisel, to avoid the possibility of creating sparks — to turn over to the scientific community. Already, Harlow said, scientists are taking notice. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have expressed interest in working with Harlow once he returns with hard evidence of his bizarre discovery in determining what the crystals are and what could cause them to grow inside the air hold. The dive site, Harlow said, is fairly popular with adventure divers. The site is remote — and thus expensive to get to — but noted enough in the dive world that Harlow went so far as to describe it as a “wreck-diving Mecca.” Why then, one might ask, has no one else discovered what Harlow did on his trip years ago? “They probably weren’t stupid like me to try to penetrate an oil sheet,” he said simply. “And to dive right into a pitch-black hole.” At the moment, Harlow is collecting donations for his data-gathering trip. Using funding platform Kickstarter, he hopes to gather enough funds to make the costly trip possible. When he returns with air and crystal samples, he said, his hope is that the scientific community will take even more notice and that his discovery may lead to official explorations of the wreck. Harlow’s excursion will satisfy his curiosity, but that’s just a small part of a larger reason for wanting to revisit the site. “Our oceans make up more than half the world,” he said. “We need to explore them and know more about what goes on down there.” For more information or to donate to Harlow’s project, visit www.kickstarter.com/projects/tropix-man/explore-the-crystal-wreck-dive.