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

As a general rule under normal conditions sat dives tend to be around 28 to 30 days on average and some contractors will restrict sat divers to no more than 182 days of sat in a 12 month calendar year (Diving Medical Advisory Committee).  As for longer sat dives, there’s a history for sure of longer and deep sat dives, one example is a COMEX diver did a 2300 foot sat dive that lasted 43 days in 1992 (I think it included decompression but not sure).  Also, the longer they go the harder it is to support with logistics, personnel etc… as you know, and can quickly wear down the crew and the divers.  Medical conditions become more prevalent like ear infections, skin infections and skin conditions etc…

Ron Asks: Have the divers had any encounters with big sharks?

We frequently see large nurse sharks that rest on the bottom. Other sharks are not seen very often. During one overnight decompression period, we had a large (10 foot) hammerhead shark circling the habitat for most of the night. He was gone by the time we exited the habitat to return to the surface

- whew!

Mr. Kallenbach asks: Can you give me an idea about what changed the mission to a surface set-up rather than a submersion mission. This must require more work and you had prepared to be down for 7-10 days. Disappointed?

Carol Leonard asks: Was there a problem with the habitat? Why did you change this from saturation diving? We are studying diving technology in our marine science class.

Whenever you operate a system as challenging as Aquarius there is always the chance that technical issues will arise. In this situation, a system review uncovered an air storage facility that did not meet our standards. While we are confident that the flask would have performed without incident, we believed that it was prudent to take that system off-line and adequately address the issue during our extensive winter maintenance period.

Do you use any media for scrubbing CO? If so, what do you use?

We use sodasorb to remove CO2, but do not actively remove CO. We take steps to prevent CO from getting into the air supply, monitor for CO in the habitat, and continuously flush the habitat atmosphere.