Mission Journal 5 — Meredith Kintzing: Mission Day 5: Friday, August 19th, 2005
Imagine the biggest bowl of Rice Krispies you have ever had. That is what Aquarius sounds like at night when all the snapping shrimp get going. One of the cool things about living in Aquarius is we get to see and hear all the creatures that are active at night, many of which are quite different than the ones you typically see during the day. Last night I did a dive on hookah, which is a really long regulator attached to Aquarius, to retrieve an instrument and get some water samples. As I was swimming along the excursion line, I saw a nurse shark foraging for its dinner. On my return trip, I could see Noah, the baby Goliath Grouper, hanging out with the yellowtail outside our window. This evening we had a turtle swim up to the window. These guys are never around to greet us when we get up for breakfast.
In addition to really cool fish watching, Aquarius allows us to collect loads of data. All of our experiments are going really well and keeping us very busy. It is hard to believe that we have been living in Aquarius for five days already. We spent today collecting water samples and will do more of the same tomorrow. The artificial habitat that we created for the outreach portion of our mission is already starting to attract some interest from curious fish.
Every day down here is like a new adventure. We have already seen so many cool things and accomplished so much, I can’t wait to see what the next nine days have in store for us.