Mission Journal 5 — Jo Gascoigne: Day 4: Thursday, July 17th, 2003
This morning we woke up earlier than expected - around 2am! The air conditioning went off, and the habitat got quite hot and humid rather rapidly… Roger was the only one who seemed able to sleep in the bunkroom - it must be because he is from Miami and used to the heat. The rest of us, from more northerly climes (MUCH more northerly in my case) got up, had a drink of water and a bit of a laugh at the situation and then settled back down to sleep wherever we could find a cool spot. Janet and I settled down in front of the air vent in the entry lock, which gave quite a reasonable breeze. If anyone got too hot, there was always the water - we ate breakfast sitting around in the moon pool with our bathing suits on, which made an interesting change. Nevertheless, we are all very grateful that our techs and topside support, super-efficient as always, had the pump fixed and the temperature back to normal by mid-morning.
Meanwhile, we went on our usual morning dive. Kristen and I had duty at the chambers since poor Kristen is always delegated to do the tissue sampling (the rest of us are too cack-handed - at least I definitely am). We also measured photosynthesis with the PAM machine and left the corals out so the surface team could get their work done efficiently. Having got that done, we set off to do some more PAM-ing of wild coral colonies, down the Kamper extension line. We buzzed off down to 100 feet or so, stopping en route to gape at an enormous loggerhead turtle with a carapace the size of a kitchen table. He also stopped to gape at us a bit. That’s the good part about the Aquarius experience - the wildlife is looking in at you just as much as you are looking out at them! We got back from our PAM-ing excursion in time for 5 minutes of swimming around under the habitat. Aquarius is currently sheltering a huge school of little baitfish, so the usual crowd of schoolmaster snappers occasionally work themselves into a frenzy of feeding, which is something to see. In fact, it was quite tricky to get geared up in the wetporch this morning - there were snappers in the way of everything! We also like to poke around in the rubble, looking at the small animals that live underneath - worms, snails and brittlestars are common.
We came back in for our 4 hour rest and off-gassing period, as usual, grateful for our lunch and the nice cool temperature. In fact, most of us decided to make the most of the break by catching up on missed sleep from last night… It was hard to get up in time to stage out again, but we just about made it, and soon woke up when we got outside. Kristen and I went off down the Pinnacle drop-off line to do bristleworm transects (see Mark’s journal for an explanation as to why). There wasn’t all that much suitable habitat down there - they like loose rubble - but we found a few suitable spots. We also enjoyed the rest of the wildlife, as always. The corals are particularly beautiful out there. On one transect we came across a red-banded lobster, which was really exciting for me, since I have spent many hours underwater doing surveys for lobster, and have never seen that species before. They live on deeper reefs - and of course you don’t have much time at those depths unless you happen to be lucky enough to be in Aquarius! So we had another productive day, I think. It is now about 9pm and we are finishing up our work for the day - writing up data, cleaning slates and so on. Mark is making a habitat home movie and is currently interviewing Janet from her bunk and videoing the contents of the fridge. Some people blame nitrogen narcosis for people’s batty behaviour while saturated. We happen to know that he is always like this.