Awake again with the indigo dawn. Jim and Billy were again hard at work. I was drawn to the viewport in the galley where a very active scene was holding sway. An enormous school of tiny silverside bait fish was undulating and darting around the habitat as if they were one giant heaving mass. Predatory jacks were picking away at their numbers with precision and stealth, wasting no energy in gathering their breakfasts. Mine was a less brutal meal of hot oatmeal and a mug of cold water.
After breakfast I placed a call to my wife, thanks to the LSB (with cell phone antenna) stationed overhead. It was wonderful to connect with one so close from seemingly so far away. It was also great to share with her the excitement I’ve been living, especially since she had to endure my preoccupations over the last four weeks since I learned that I’d earned a slot.
At the end of my call, Billy beckoned to show me an email he’d just received from a friend. The cool thing was it was sent from an Antarctic research station – from the frozen pole to the tropical depths in the click of a mouse!
Around the habitat the pace of activities was quickening in preparation for the start of decompression. That – as is often noted – is the cross all saturated divers must bear, since breathing compressed air at depth results in a dangerous build-up of nitrogen in blood and tissues. Returning to the surface without a properly moderated ascent can result in a crippling, even deadly, case of the bends.
To prepare for decompression we all gathered our non-essential possessions to be potted and sent up with the next visit from our top-side supporters. Potting is a procedure unique to undersea dwellers. To transfer items from surface to depth and back again calls for a hardy vessel to withstand the rigors of water and pressure. Pressurized paint-pots do the trick quite nicely. Of course, instead of paint, the liquid is seawater and it surrounds, rather than fills the pot. The dynamics work just as well in reverse however, so these pots have become a work-horse, of sorts, in the area of transferring goods between the habitat and the surface.
Today’s topside visitors came with empty pots that were quickly filled and escorted to the surface by Mark Hulsbeck. Our other visitor, Andy Pelczar, a navy doctor from Georgia, checked us over and briefed us on the effects of our coming decompression. Aquarius Operations Manager, Craig Cooper, stayed down to assist through decompression.
With the visitors on their way, Jim swung the outer wet porch door shut and sealed the inner door. The beginning of our decompression – and our next stop – was to be the equivalent pressure of 45 feet of seawater. The normal pressure inside Aquarius ranges from 45 to 47 feet depending on the tide, but since the tide was coming in we needed to decrease internal pressure to follow the decompression tables.
I haven’t had too much time to sit and do any computer work, but early morning seems to be best for me anyway. Yesterday went by way too quickly, as does all of the “Day One of Missions”. Between giving the briefing and getting the kinks worked out of the system, training the new Aquanauts how to use the Hooka equipment, and gearing up for the Media events that will happen on Friday morning, my day flew by.I did get a chance to call my mother for her birthday. I thought she said 39th, but the connection was not that great. And, since I’m 39…. enough of the non-humor.
Happy Birthday Mom!
Friday will bring some early morning checklist work with the “new” technician Billy, the Orlando science Center will connect with us and we’ll give a tour of the Habitat and answer some of the questions they might have for us. Then we’ll get the divers back out in the water where they belong.
So much for now.
The faint aqua-glow of morning nudged me from sleep and my bunk. The bustle of the reef never rested however. The night shift composed of hyperactive plankton, flinching shrimp and the occasional squid simply faded into dawn as the day shift those familiar hogfish, jacks and seargeant majors – took to the stage outside our viewports. It was just after 6:30am and I slept as might be expected – deeply.
Jim and Billy had been up for a while tackling the daily tasks required to keep a habitat functioning normally. I joined them in the galley and smeared peanut butter on some soda crackers while my coffee filtered into a large plastic mug.
With breakfast out of the way, I turned my attention to another impending test with our broadcast partners. We connected easily and with enough time for us to tweak the placement of our video lights and cameras long before the events 9:30 start time. We even had time to choreograph the movement of cameraman (me) and light guy (Billy) to follow Jim on the planned tour of Aquarius.
We were feeling very confident about the prospects for acing the link. Instead we learned that gremlins live just as easily underwater as they do on land. The connection that had moments earlier linked the four centers with sound and video simply evaporated. We waited and waited and waited for another call to bring it all together again, but it never came. Instead we were left to imagine the scene at the two science centers as Ellen Prager in Fort Lauderdale and Linda Walters – in Orlando, shouldered the hosting duties on their own, recounting their own experiences as Aquarius aquanauts.
The event window closed at 10:30, so we switched off the lights and cameras and coiled the cables and cords for another day. On to the next project an extended dive to the North East way station. Before that, we had visitors from above. Byron swam down to tinker with an uncooperative webcam and Mark and Kea, came in to guide us on our dive. With our topside companions leading the way down one of Aquarius many excursion lines we headed out John and Lew and single Scuba cylinders, Billy and I on twin one hundreds (carrying about enough air each to fill two phone booths at the surface).
The three hundred yard swim to the NE station, was punctuated with multiple clicks of my digital camera and soon we had arrived. Its a neat feeling to come up inside an air-filled refuge when youre out in the middle of the sea – sort of like finding a well-equipped tree house on a long jungle trek. Inside the white gazebo Marked checked in via intercom with Jim back at Aquarius and Lew and John charged up their singles while Billy and I swam around the outside looking for worthy photo subjects. The visability was only 30-40 feet so long distance shooting was not in the cards and our short mission wouldnt allow for another day of shooting.
Their tanks recharged, we all sped back toward Aquarius so Mark and Kea could surface safely within their limits. Standing waste deep in the moonpool, Billy and I mated our fill hoses into the onboard high pressure fill line and in minutes we were ready for another dive. Someone joked about the commercial potential for establishing a chain of underwater fill stations amid popular reefs but of course that would also increase the need for hyperbaric chambers to treat the surge in resulting bends victims without an underwater habitat to return to, you only have so much time to spend underwater before you must return to the surface.
Our tanks charged up, Billy and I dipped down and out of the moonpool for an extended underwater tour of Aquarius, hovering along and under her shape but never above it (Our saturation profile limited us to about 40 feet beneath the surface just enough to peer in our bunk room viewport).
After more than three hours in the water, my camera battery reading had shrunk to zero, our tanks pressure readings were dropping too and so were our body temps, so Billy and I decided to head inside for a hot shower and some lunch. While snacking on hot oatmeal and some tea I resumed my favorite undersea pastime observing the constant circus of sea life. It good to be part of the show.
Breakfast followed by more diving around the habitat with Lew. I thought I had most of the piping and pluming figured out yesterday, but that was before I tried to connect the dots inboard. Now I have more surveying to do while brushing curious fish away, and chasing fish now and then that make me curious. After a brief warm up inside we splash again, this time in scuba, under the leadership of staff divers from above who lead us 700 yards northeast along a high pressure air and communication line that feeds a gas tank charging station. We pass it for a sight seeing bounce to 90 fsw down the Conch Reef northeast wall, then return to charge. It is reassuring to see the pressure gauge up to 2400 psi as we start our return trek. A free ascent forced by lack of air that would normally be routine, would pierce the invisible ceiling above saturation that has formed an overhead diving scenario. Proven procedures and a well trained and dedicated crew above, armed with a fast boat to transport a stricken aquanaut to the shore base chamber only nine miles distant, would likely minimize serious injury, but I don’t want to trouble them today.
Switching over to hookah diving back at Aquarius, Lew and I continue getting familiar with the engineering side of Aquarius and the marine life that surrounds it. More showers, hot food, and then another night dive before tales are told and lights are out on Day 2.
We gathered at the dock and after watching a soft dawn grow into day, boat loaded, we sped out to sea. On board – the crew of the next Aquarius mission, Jim, Billy, John, Lew and me. Supporting us, Mike Smith, Thor Dunmire at the helm, and Mark Hulsbeck our Poseidon for the past few days of training.
Arriving at the Life Support Buoy marking the spot where Aquarius lies, Jim and Billy dove in with two transfer pots containing last minute items. Forty minutes later they had finished performing final checklists and radioed that they were ready to receive the rest of the crew.
Geared up and eager to dive, the rest of us splashed down, heading first to a newly placed way station for a quick tour, then on to Aquarius and an exterior tour. All the way I was firing off photos, tinged with a different perspective, that of an ocean dweller, not merely a visitor.
Entering Aquarius, we “de-gear” and climb up and out of the moonpool – the seamless interface between sea and undersea lab. Jim and Billy are waiting for us and so the requisite introductory tour and safety briefing ensues, concluding with a simulated evacuation drill to the nearby “gazebo,” a small, white, air-filled refuge just big enough for the five of us.
Jim continues the briefing, interrupted by five curiously inquisitive angelfish. Apparently, Jim explains, these critters respond more eagerly to divers who are stripped down to swimsuits rather than to those in wet suits. We were left to ponder what could possibly prompt such behavior. Maybe before the missions over, we’ll find out in the end.
Back inside we begin to chill by the window. The view is spectacular with action, colors and flashes every bit as entertaining as Times Square, except here no traffic jams clog the flow. Fish of every size dart from every direction in an anonymously choreographed kaleidoscope of undersea life. With a window on such sights, the lure of TV is exposed as a virtual fraud. This is reality at its best!
Numerous tasks occupy Jim and Billy. John and Lew slip out for a tethered dive around Aquarius and I prepare my video and photo equipment for recordings to come. Jim obliges with an on-camera tour of the habitat, so landlubbers can get a taste for life in the lab. Then we get ready for a videoconference test with BECON, an educational broadcast facilitator in Fort Lauderdale, the Orlando Science Center, and the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science.
Even though we’re miles off-shore and even further away from our vidcon partners, technology has magically brought us altogether. Tomorrow we will all connect and hopefully the educational event will give the participating students some new motivation to pursue ocean related studies.
We grab dinner in the midst of the testing and before long it’s past nine. Time enough for me to tap out these thoughts and gaze out the window once more in anticipation of tomorrow’s adventures.