As we descended into the clear blue ocean you could see Aquarius shining just 45 feet below. The sun’s rays glistening off her metal shell, with thousands of different fish swimming all around.
I have dreamed of this day since I was a boy watching the first space missions, thinking someday they will have a hotel underwater for the rest of us. Today I checked in, and it has been everything I have ever dreamed about and more.
We have finished our first day of work down in Aquarius and soon I will be sleeping peacefully, dreaming of what we will accomplish tomorrow and in the coming days.
The day started off a little slow, but, that might have been because of the excitement that was built up inside oneself. For on this day a dream was about to come true, the dream of living underwater. Not just for a few hours, but for a few days. As of September, I have been in the United States Navy for 21 years and 20 of those years as I as a Navy Deep-Sea Diver. This by far is one of the best days in my diving career.
We loaded the boats and where underway by 1200 hours. The boat trip was quick with a cruising speed of 25 plus knots to the Life Support Buoy (LSB) about 20 minutes from Key Largo, FL. Once on station we where dressed and ready to dive within 10 minutes and could not wait to move onboard Aquarius. The Diving Safety Officer, Roger Garcia, gave us a tour of the outside of the habitat and then took us inside and briefed us on Emergency Procedures while living in Aquarius. 1200-We are underway and ready to start an adventure that only was a dream to most of us since we where children.
By 1400 hours we were already working, as the Navy has taught us to do so well over the years. By 1600 hours, we had the Surface Supplied Dive System operational and divers dressed out in the MK-21 Mod 1, Underwater Breathing Apparatus (UBA). Our mission was to position a special underwater laser camera and take images of the habitat.
Before we knew it, we where sitting underwater inside the Aquarius, eating dinner in “awe” over the beautiful marine life and the great opportunity we were living…..as the first Saturation Dive class (05-10-SAT) from Panama City, FL. So few are able to take advantage of this great program….I truly am blessed and honored.
The first day of my summer vacation…no, wait a minute, I’m working here. Anyway, since our scuba dive yesterday to bring everything down to the habitat, I have been extremely excited to get this dive started - you know the kid in a candy store excitement. Since I got down here inside the habitat, I have had trouble pulling myself away from the viewports and staring at all the marine life outside. It is hard so far, but I’m forcing myself to stay focused on the work that I’m helping with during this mission. This may sound a little out of the ordinary for a Navy diver, but I have never had the opportunity to do a “wreck” dive and see everything that is down here. Things such as how the life down here “hang out” and do the things they do. I’ve always dove in bottomless mud or three feet visibility (on a good day) under a vessel.
I guess it goes back to my childhood, very Tuesday I spent swimming and snorkeling in Lake James in the hills of North Carolina with my $1.99 general store mask and snorkel. I have always had a fascination with fish and other marine critters in the water, especially if a segment about this underwater world is on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. Today I stayed inside and covered my duties as diver support while a couple of my deep sea diving brothers went out, set up and moved a 3D laser scanner around the bottom for the topside engineer. It was a great diving day and they got a lot accomplished. I’m still looking around in awe and can’t believe I’m here, this is truly a blessing, nowhere else in the world can you work, eat, sleep, and hang out at 45 FSW and watch all the marine life continuously swimming by in crystal clear sea water. I’m probably going to have trouble going to sleep tonight from the excitement and energy still inside me. I was patient today…tomorrow I get to EXPLORE and see all the sea creatures God created…of course in between work. By the way, it took me two and a half hours to write this - I’ve been distracted by and watching a 100 pound goliath grouper four feet from the viewport! I sincerely thank the people who organized this and allowed us to experience this.
Day 1 of the first half of the joint NURC (Aquarius), U.S. Navy saturation mission started off fairly hectic, but let me put this in perspective. Normally with a scientific mission, the scientist’s have a full week of introductions, training and preparation prior to saturating. During this week, scientists are educated in saturation diving techniques, but additionally equipment, experiments and other things are being prepared for support of and entry into the Aquarius underwater habitat.
In this case, 11 Navy divers arrived Saturday night, made some minor preps on Sunday and then we all sat in on the emergency procedures and orientation briefings after some cordial introductions on Monday morning. These brief’s lasted about two and a half hours followed by boat load out. At approximately 1130 we headed off shore in the RV Legacy and team two in the RV Delta as support. By 1249 we (6 aquanauts) had left the surface and ventured into saturation.
So… from my perspective we had just accomplished what would normally be done in a week in literally one day. This also included setting up 3 umbilicals, 3 MK-21 hats, a laser scanner that weighs 400 lbs with a 10 foot high tripod, and we still managed to get two divers a 1 hour and 20 min dive and some nice laser picture of the habitat. I suppose all in all… not bad!
However, I have to admit it was a bit reminiscent of my days as a chief petty officer in the Navy. They would give me a mountain to climb and I had to do it in one hour with only the bare minimum and the people that worked for me. I’m here to tell you, I’ve climbed that mountain many times in my Naval career but I never would have done it without the people that worked for me (Navy Divers). Today was different, we couldn’t have done what we did in one day without the hard working and selfless devotion to what we do, exhibited by the divers and staff of the NOAA National Undersea Research Center (now my home) and the U.S. Navy divers that are here with us today. HOO YAH!
Having said all that, what kept me focused on the task at hand today were two main things. One is that no one can ever take away the fact that I have faced many difficult and stressful situations throughout my Naval career that most folks would give up on, I keep going and find a way to somehow show leadership and guidance that gets it done. I was determined to stay steadfast no matter what. Today on a lesser scale was one such time to call upon past experience and I jumped in head first with my former Navy counterparts and with the support of our NURC divers we got things done! The other was what I referred to as rule number one for today… Rule Number one was to keep reminding myself that no matter how stressful anything may seem or if we ever felt like we failed in some way, we were already successful because we had joined forces (NURC and Navy) and came together to keep saturation diving strong and alive.
When I came to work today I told myself the most important thing was just the fact that we (NURC and Navy) were saturating together, if everything else fell into place… good, bad or indifferent this will be a success solely based on the fact that we were in saturation together (Rule #1). Everything else would be a benefit. I kept pounding that into my head all day. Good thing because we found ourselves getting very frustrated at times throughout the day but mainly because of time crunches and minor equipment set backs. So all day long I kept going back to rule #1. It worked! Looking back at today I would have done several things differently and I certainly had some ideas of how I would do certain things before today, but no matter. Hind sight as we say is always 20/20 but what sets some apart from others is being able to learn from an experience rather than remain stoic. I certainly learned from our experience today.