Mission Journal 9 — Meredith Kintzing: Mission Day 9: Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005
Today was our last full day of research. Tomorrow, we begin the educational outreach portion of our stay, where we will be doing live broadcasts to high school students to explain our research and answer questions. It was a lot of hustling around to try and gather as much data as we can before we switch gears. While setting up our vacuum filtration system, we were surprised to look up and see the crowd that had gathered around. Some curious yellowtail, Spanish hogfish, and schoolmasters had congregated and seemed as interested in the results of our experiment as we were. Niels snapped a great picture of several of the fish peering into our flasks. Later while filtering water from a sponge so we can determine what it is eating, a small damselfish kept nipping my fingers to let me know I was invading his territory. You have nothing to worry about from the giant barracuda that circle Aquarius; it is the little guys like the damselfish and sergeant majors that cause you to be wary.
Something interesting that you might not know about Aquarius is that we have pneumatic doors. These are doors that we do not have to push, but pull a lever and compressed air causes them to slide open. Every time I head to the wet porch to begin a dive, the pneumatic door makes me feel like I am setting off on an exciting adventure, which is a pretty good description of a typical day in Aquarius.