Mission & Project Info | NOAA’s Aquarius Undersea Laboratory
Mission Blog

It’s been an awesome 3 days of diving so far and tomorrow is the last day. We’ll make one short two-hour dive in the morning before settling for decompression. I’m very thankful to have had the opportunity to dive on Aquarius, especially thinking of all the researchers and divers who have accomplished so much in the past to make this possible. Since I’ve been a working diver for the last 19 years, it’s always nice to work and dive in the clear, alluring waters of the Keys and the Caribbean. A place where you can actually see what you’re working on, keep track of your buddy, and watch the sea life, all at the same time. Sure beats the hell out of diving in the Elizabeth River in Norfolk, VA in the middle of February!

Working with this team of divers has been an experience I’ll never forget. Roger Garcia is an old Navy buddy who still has the utmost of professionalism in his “civilian life”. Nice working with you again, Roger! Masterdiver Becker is still grouchy, even under pressure. Jeff Spence is either diving, eating or sleeping. I have earned a great deal of respect for Bob Whaley from NAVSEA, especially after seeing him tie the best truckers’ hitch I’ve ever seen underwater! And last, but especially not least, LT Joe O’Sullivan, who’s been my main dive buddy on every dive. Between his movie one-liners and being a Hoover with his air….He’s been non-stop comic relief during the whole mission. Thanks LT.

Okay, so that’s my Blog, the seas are kicking topside and the pressure inside keeps surging up and down. I think our ears are in for a work out tonight. Until next time, I’m signing off.

Another wonderful day in Aquarius. I got another 5 hours of diving in, finished all assigned projects with time left over for some pictures. If all works well they should be posted soon. Thanks for the invitation to be part of the team Aquarius. This sure beats sitting behind a desk at the Washington Navy Yard.

Well here we are, back on track. After the “troubled seas” with our budget issues, it feels good to start our first mission of 2006. I will be part of the top side support on this short mission and am excited to see the outcome of some new video we introduced to the habitat. To give the public better streaming video we are using new servers to encode each camera feed in a mpeg4 format. This reduces the bandwidth needed for good quality streaming video and can be decoded by various players (decoders). The video server that will be handling the connections topside is running open source server software called “Darwin streaming server” and works well with the popular QuickTime player. Another new feature we are testing out this mission is the new Journal entry system. The new “blog” is managed by the Wordpress content management system, making it very easy for Aquanauts to post journal entries. This will also allow for some interaction from the public with a comment section. All posts will first be reviewed before being published to the site. This new blog also features an RSS feed. You can subscribe to this feed and be informed any time the blog is updated. To subscribe, click the “RSS” link at the top of the page. Aaron also added a very nice “help” link to walk you through this process if you have any troubles getting started. It’s about noon now and the Aquanauts should be preparing to work their way to the habitat to start the mission. Off to the Watch desk I go!