Mission Journal 2 — Ashley Knight: Mission Day 2: Sunday, November 13th, 2005
Our first full day of saturation was an exciting one! We were up at 5:30AM and hit the moonpool (our doorway to the reef) by 6:31. Emma and Sarah stalked the tagged and untagged species that we are studying - blue parrotfish, hogfish, and grouper (black and red). They are recording the feeding behaviors and habitat of each of these reef species.\
James and Ashley spent the morning chasing blue parrotfish with a siene net - but to no avail. The fish certainly have the upper fin when it comes to escaping from humans. By 10:00 the score was parrotfish: 100, aquanauts: ZERO - and - were they laughing at us?!?! It seemed that way. Just as we were giving up on the net to come back to Aquarius for lunch, FOUR blue parrotfish swam into a baited trap and made all of that fruitless chasing seem a little more worthwhile.
After lunch Sarah and Emma continued with their behavioral observations, but not until they got a nice show - watching James tag some of the blues that were in the trap. By the end of the tagging episode, FIVE big blues were tagged. Upon a tip from Sarah and Emma, James and Ashley headed out to the “Ridgeline,” where another baited trap had caught some fish.
Together, through a cloud of stirred up silt, we tagged one more monster of a blue parrotfish - nearly 60 cm!
Tired and hungry from a day in the sea, we four aquanauts swam home to Otter and Dominick back at Aquarius for some warm food and dry snuggly clothes. And for night number 2 of sleeping with the fishes…