Today started at 5:30 am when our Aquarius reef base technicians started performing their morning systems checks. I managed to squeeze in another hour of sleep before getting out of bed, but the other aquanauts seem to stay awake once James and Tim start going. Of course the days always beging with a freeze dried brakfast of some kind and today was no different…I had freeze dried granola with milk and blueberries. JUST ADD WATER AND EAT!! Once we all eat and did our morning routines, we started preparing for the very busy schedule we had in store for this day.
First up was a polycom lecture between our Aquarius aquanauts and a Key Largo (local) Montessori school grades 3-6. From the beginning of this mission, I have been the camera man for these shows so I suited up, along with our hostess Kate Thompson, around 9:30am to be ready for the 10:00am start time. This particular show was going to be even more interesting for us because Dr. Lindquist’s daughter Kelly was also a host, and eventually joined us in the water. Also, as Drs. Chris Martens and Niels Lindquist were doing their show, we were very honored to have our local congress woman and environmental advocate, Ileana Ros-Leithen, come visit us inside the Aquarius during this broadcast. She is a wonderful person and we were thrilled to have her visit. She even managed to answer some questions asked by the students while she was here. Once madam Ros-Leithen departed, we had to quickly turn our divers around to do our LIVE noon show. So, Niels had to unsuit from the SuperLite 17 helmet, I had to stage in with my SCUBA gear, then turn around and get into the SuperLite 17 to host the Friday noon show. I was pretty nervous because I had never done anything like that before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. PLUS, I had somewhat of a script I needed to memorize to make sure I highlighted the important aspects of coral reef conservation. SO…I started my noon show not fully prepared, but I don’t think anyone is “fully” prepared to do those types of things. I ended up just pointing out some of the easier ways to make a difference to ocean health and coral reef conservation and I hope all of our audience got something usefull out of it. Hosting the show was really exciting and it’s a blast doing these thing LIVE from 60 feet under water. Seriously, how cool is that? I hope everyone gets the opportunity to do something like this because it is really the coolest thing I have ever done (except quiting smoking). After our noon show ended, I “staged out” of my SuperLite 17 helmet, then came back inside the habitat for some lunch (a couple of tortillas with cheese and salsa).
After lunch, I had a great time in our chat room answering some questions from other people in there. I apologize to everyone for us not spending more time in the chat room but we will be this weekend. After spending about an hour or so in the chat room, Dr. Martens and I gave three press interviews to various organizations. The first one was Fox News, where we answered various questions about the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program, sponges and their ecological role in coral reef and ocean health, and other questions Aquarius-related. That interview should be packaged into a pod-cast, available from iTunes sometime next week. The next interview was from AP press, and focused on similar questions. The final reporter was one from the Keys, and asked some great questions…so we recapped the mission objectives and scheduled a time for him to visit the outside of the habitat sometime tomorrow. Once Kate and Niels got back from their dives (at 6:00p) we had dinner (freeze dried hamberger and mashed potatoes for me) then discussed our next days dive. We try to schedule a maximum of 6 hours of diving but Dr. Martens is feeling a bit under the weather, so we are trying to schedule dives for 3 divers. Thankfully,most of the hard work is finished so we can make a bunch of “fun” dives now. We will be shooting some awesome video footage during the next couple of days and we will try to post these on our OceansLive.org, or www.sanctuaries.noaa.gov, AND youtube.com.
Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow for our daily noon show when Dr. Ellen Prager will tell us more about the Aquarius habitat and the incredible missions NURC has supported over the years.
That’s it for now. But don’t forget…if any students out there are reading this log, YOU could be down here some day if you apply yourself.
Aquanaut Scott Donahue
Today was a special day in several ways for our team. We sstarted by teaching our UNC-Chapel Hill courses LIVE from underwater. The classes include my first year seminar entitled “Change in the costal ocean” and Professor Niels Lindquist’s “Coastal and Estuarine Ecology.” The first course is for freshman students in our Department of Marine Sciences on the main UNC campus in Chapel Hill. The second is taught at UNC’s coast laboratory The Institute of Marine Sciences in Morehead City, NC. The Institute and the Department comp[rise UNC-Chapel Hill’s Marine Science Program. Our students in both locations were able to watch and listen live as Niels began his reef tour by visiting with Earl, our resident Goliath grouper of the Aquaarius Reef Base habitat located 3.5 mile off Key Largo, in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Advanced technologies for two related mission purposes were used throughout the live broadcast. Those two purposes were: 1) state-of-the-art communications from the sea to the classroom, and 2) state-of-the-art scientific measurements being made continuously on marine sponges. As readers know from our Oceanslive.Org website, we are seeking to better understand the roles of sponges in coral reef ecosystems. Building on excellent research by other scientists we have learned that disturbing sponges by removing them from their natural environment biases experimental results. Therefore we are utilizing the world’s only manned underwater observatory, The Aquarius Reef Base, to conductour investigations right on the sea floor. The scientific tools we use include several of the most advanced instruments in the world, among which is an underwater mass spectrometer capable of continuously sensing chemicals being taken up and emitted by sponges. It is frontier science out here int he ocean realm because no one has ever before attempted to utilize this technology in coral reef ecosystems. As you can imagine, we are extremely excited with the success of our mission thus far. As I write this log entry, we are “watching” sponges consume oxygen and release carbon dioxide by watching the mass spectrometer data on a computer connectected into Aquarius. As I look out the viewport in the main lock of Aquarius at a group of fast moving Permit (Trachinotus falcatus) swimming by, I am reminded that it is truly remarkable to get to do such “work” for a living.
The teaching and outreach components of our joint mission with our fellow aquanauts from NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program are just as fabulous. Students and visitors from wherever internet technology reaches have been able to tune in as we perform our live experiments. The most surprising part of the day came when one of the most famous divers in the world, marine biologist Sylvia Earle paid us a visit while filming a segment with the National Geographic Society. Her group toured our instrument arrays out on the reef then came into Aquarius to photoshoot the interior of the habitat’s interior, including our mass spectrometer data live on the computer. What a kick!!
At mid-mission, it has begun to sink in (sorry for the pun) that we have indeed entered a new era of experimental scientific education and outreach. I’ll never again be satisfied to simply fly off from Chapel Hill without taking the students with me. Before now only a few could join us in the field…now we’ll be taking along everyone who wants to come.
Join us in the coming days as we make new discoveries and explore the exciting costal ocean surrounding Aquarius. Look for opportunities to engage us in live interactions using the chat room, www.nurc.net/aquarius, or simply watch us swim with Earl the grouper, and his littler friends!
Aquanaut Dr. Chris Martens
What an amazing day! Last week we had our training day for the Superlite 17 diving helmet, and today I was able to put the excellent instruction of Aquarius crew members, Roger Garcia and Dewey Smith, to use in my first live underwater teaching experience. The day began with a 6 am wake up and a quick breakfast. Aquarius technicians, James and Tim, had already been up for an hours working on the daily habitat check list. With a tight schedule for 3 live broadcasts, we had to be right on time for our appointed departure times from the wet porch. James and Tim staged out aquanauts Chris and Scott on scuba. Thier job for the morning was to assist me with the helmet diving by ensuring my umbilical with my air supply and communications lines didn’t snag and hold me back. Scott held the ‘navy cam’, which he used to send out video of me helmet diving. After Chris and Scott left the wet porch, Tim and James helped me get the Superlite 17 helmet attached and quided me through the safety checks. Safety is paramount down here as the Aquarius crew are fond of saying, “The surface is not an option!”
As I swam off the grating of the wet porch, I settled to the sand bottom below Aquarius to get comfortable with my new head gear. Remember, move the head slowly I told myself or I’ll have people across the country, and maybe the world, feeling seasick. I felt good with the helmet and started walking and swimming around with Chris behind me handling my lines and Scott to my side with the camera. As I panned around, Aquarius came into view with Tim working on installing a new deck in front of the wet porch. This new decking will be used in future saturation missions by NASA and Navy aquanauts. Aquarius is really an impressive site from where I was standing. It’s amazing have smoothly this system operates, but then it has an exception group of dedicated people making sure it functions properly, is safe, and that as much science as possible is accomplished.
As we were waiting for our live broadcast to a 3rd-6th grade classroom here in the Florida Keys, we began looking around for plants and animals, coral and sponges in particular, that related to the class’s current topics. Before beginning the dive, we noticed that one of the large Goliath Groupers usually seen around Aquarius had returned - an excellent target for the video camera. Not soon after the dive started, a large sting ray swam next to me twice. Hopefully people were watching the live feed at that time and saw that sight! Later, we put the camera on a large cobia swimming in quick, tight circles over a large sting ray laying on the bottom under the habitat. After a few minutes of that action, the Goliath Grouper swam over and chased off the cobia.
We had an excellent show with the classroom and the kids were asking great questions. We did a sponge pumping demonstration for the kids and talked about the importance of sponges in coral reef ecosystems. Tonight we rest, as it was a long day in the water, and tomorrow, Chris and I host a live lecture to our university classes in Chapel Hill and Morehead City. It is an unbeleivable experience to teach classes live 60 feet underwater to think about what reef today would say if reefs could talk.
Aquanaut Dr. Niels Lindquist
My students and I at UNC Chapel Hill began the semester in the normal way. We showed up at the beatiful new Stone Center on campus and started classes with our discussions about “Change in the Coastal Ocean”. During the first week of classes we discussed sea turtle navigation and read research papers by Catherine and Kenneth Lohmann, both faculty members in our Department of Biology. About the time that our class was visiting the live juvenile turtles at the Lohmann’s house in their laboratory, I was in full training to become an Aquarius Aquanaut. Best of all, by the next week I was living in Aquarius and teaching my class while out on Conch Reef, located about 4 miles out from Key Largo on the Florida Reef tract.
The classes were able to make a virtual visit because I was diving with a “superlite” hard hat helmut equipped with boath a camera and audio. Questions from the students were relayed out to me by Dr. Lindquist who was back in the Aquarius underwater habitat. On Thursday, we’ll reverse our roles and Niels will lecture from out on the reef. It’s really important to make a direct connection between the classroom and the coastal ocean. Those of us involved in coastal ocan research are aware of apparently widespread changes in most coastal environments. In general, it is proven difficult to explain the causes for even the most obvious changes suc as the shocking decline in coral reef cover in tropical environments around the world. In some cases, overfishing or pollution happen to be important causal agents. It is extremely satisfying to be able to take students live right out to Conch Reef, where change is underway. In addition, we are able to introduce the students to teh experimental approaches that are being utilized to understand the changes. In particular, our work with in-situ mass spectrometry, on of the very first such studies in the world that is very exciting!! Usually it is impossible to actually show how we are making measurements. Now we see it every few seconds right of the reef live…
In my opinion, we need to place greater emphasis on exposing students to experiential learning, that is, actual involvement in the fieldwork needed to solve environmental problems. Because of the Aquarius facility, and this mission sponsored by NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program, the first of it’s kind for the coastal ocean, we are able to accomplish both educational and scientific objectives while having lot’s of fun!!
I grew up in South Florida and the Florida Keys. My Dad was a fisherman working out of Marathon just down the road towards Key West. I owned a small boat at the time and a free run of the nearby ocean after school. During my youth, there were larger patches of branching coral reefs all along the outer reef tract plus alot more fish. I hope that our shared experiences from the Aquarius Mission- If Reefs Could Talk will heighten both itnerest in the coastal ocean and awareness of the changes that are now occuring around us down here.
Signing off - Aquanaut Dr. Chris Martens
Today is the day… Up early to make sure everthing is ready to go. All of the logistics and planning come down to this day! I feel very confident leaving everything topside in the capable hands of the great group of technical experts we have working on this mission.
We load up the boat and leave the dock by 9:30 AM- It felt as if we were headed out for another day of training. As we geared up to make our first splash, we took in our last bit of sun before being submerged for nine days. Thinking about it felt as if we were in a movie…
As aquanaut candidates we looked forward to the experience. Now we are really on our way to becoming a part of an elite group to live beneath the waves. Scott Donahue and I splashed first, followed by Dr’s Niels Lindquist and Chris Martens. As the bubbles rushed by my mask, the shadow of our undersea home came in to view. We popped are head in the wet porch to check in, and that was it. We were officially to stay below 45 feet. As we were taught, THE SURFACE IS NOT AN OPTION! I glanced upward and saw the mooring buoy bouncing at the surface. Instantly an underwater perspective was what I saw…
NBC dove down with us to shoot Niels and Chris setting up their experiments. Niels did an exceptional job for the NBC film crew injecting a large barrel sponge with dye to show how to visualize a sponge’s breath. It was definitely potent! Good thing we can’t smell underwater!! It was like Sponge Bob’s rancid breath!
After setting up all the science equipment (and a three hour dive!!!) we went back to the habitat for our full safety briefing. James took us on our tour of the habitat ensuring that SAFETY IS FIRST!! After our briefing, we shot our “moving in” daily show for tomorrow. James was a natural!! Post shoot, Chris and I suited up in our Kirby Morgan Superlight 17 helmets to test the links out on the reef for our live feeds back to oceanslive.org. The helmet truely is an amazing feeling for me, and is like nothing I have ever experienced before. The communications are crisp and clear and really make for a great adventure underwater! TRUE DIVING!
As we set-off for the wet porch, I took a quick look back to the twilight hours beneath the waves… What a blessing this experience really is.
Signing off from 60 feet down.
Aquanaut- Kate Thompson