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

Most people believe the Navy hasn’t been involved with saturation diving from sea floor habitats since the SEALAB and TEKTITE days, but I can safely say that they are actively involved and one of our biggest supporters. As I look back on the ten-day saturation mission that we are now decompressing from, the US Navy diving community is involved in just about all we do. First and foremost are the Navy divers involved in the GENESIS and SEALAB programs that scientific saturation diving evolved from, allowing us the opportunity to be here. My friend and mentor Bob Barth is a daily inspiration to us and a true friend to our program, linking us with so many talented and influential US Navy divers.

Last night I spoke with Capt Jim Wilkins, Supervisor of Salvage, he stopped by our watch desk to say hi and drop off his son Kip, one of our Naval Academy engineering Midshipmen interns, who is spending three weeks of his summer break with us. Capt Wilkins has lent his support to our program on many fronts, securing waivers allowing Navy divers to saturate in Aquarius, and I’m pleased to say I’ll be joining him on a joint Navy/NOAA saturation dive here in December. When Bob Barth called down here today, with him at NEDU was the next Supervisor of Diving and another friend, Capt Mark Helmkamp. Mark has been a major supporter of our program due to his desire to see the Navy and NOAA cooperate on diving operations, initiating the Diving Medical Officer program supporting both Aquarius and USS Monitor diving. For three years now, this program, managed by Cdr Ross Levine at NDSTC, has supplied highly trained Navy DMOs and DMTs to support NOAA/NURC saturation and TRIMIX technical diving operations. Mark was also extremely helpful in the acquisition of our new underwater waystation, the Kamper Station, allowing the scientists to do underwater fills at the deeper reef location.

Panama City, Florida, home of the Experimental Diving Unit and Navy dive school, has become our second favorite place next to Conch Reef. Cdr Pat Keenan and the folks at NEDU have been a great source of information and help for us, additionally with support from Dr. John Clark and Dr. Rich Little. The list of Navy and retired Navy divers that assist our program could probably fill another page, people like Pete Ruden, Jack Schmitt, Jerry Pelton, Bob Kilpatrick, Dave Sullivan, Mike Zinzer, Jeff Washburn, just to name a few, as well as others like John Camperman and Lew Nuckols with his Midshipmen interns.

Besides all the advice and informational support we get from these Navy friends, one has only to look around NURC to see the many ways we benefit with the surplus equipment that we’ve obtained from the Navy, allowing us to obtain equipment we couldn’t otherwise afford. Items going to surplus by the Navy often become front line or backup systems to help support our operations, and we are grateful for it.

Lastly and certainly not least, are our ex Navy (and Army) divers and sailors on staff, who along with our other staff, are the backbone of this habitat program. The experience and skills that Otter, Roger, Thor, Byron, Hal, Billy, and Joe bring to our program are an asset to our operations. Without these men, Aquarius would just be an overgrown chamber at the bottom of the sea.

Officially, maybe the Navy isn’t operating a habitat program, but it would be hard to imagine being where we are today with Aquarius operations without their past and present involvement. The bright outlook is for even more far reaching cooperative efforts in the future, and that has us all filled with excitement. Thanks to all of you, and especially thanks to you Bob, for far too many things to mention here.

Today is sadly our last full day of diving. It is hard to believe this mission has flown by so fast! It seems like only yesterday we were wide-eyed and eager to move in to our underwater home. The wide-eyed bit hasn’t changed much over the week. Everything is still amazing and exciting. Now we don’t want to leave!

This morning Jo and I took care of PAMming the chamber corals before heading down the 5th leg line. This is the first time any of us have been out to the 5th leg this mission. Most of the excursions that I have been out on have involved a visit to the Kamper station, and today was no different. The excursion lines are like an underwater highway that leads us to and from the habitat and all over the surrounding reef. Some of the lines intersect with each other so we can get to a fill station without swimming all the way back to the habitat. The 5th Leg line extends out from the starboard side of the habitat and there is a line leading to the Kamper fill station about half-way down the line. Today we went all the way to the end of the 5th Leg line and used our cave-diving reels to go out another 300 feet (we used every last inch on our reel!) to get out to a depth of 110 feet. We PAMmed a bunch of Montastrea faveolata coral colonies and were soon joined by our Aquanaut friends Mark and Kristen who ventured out to collect pH profiles.

Along the way, we saw a couple of banded jawfish (Opistognathus macrognathus) poking their heads out of their burrows on a sand plane. The burrow openings were surrounded by bits of coral rubble and easy to spot as we swim above them. The fish look a little like bullfrogs with big mouths and big eyes.

We also saw an old abandoned lobster pot near a large coral head where we were PAMming. There were two smooth trunkfish inside that looked as if they were having a hard time finding their way out to the small opening leading out of the trap, so we ripped the lid of the trap off and freed them.

About an hour and a half into our dive, we decided to head back to the Kamper station to fill our tanks and check in with Cooper and Roger back at the habitat via the nifty intercom system. It’s truly amazing that we can talk to the folks in the habitat from all the way out at a fill station. Later today, Cooper and Roger are going to install a new web cam out at the Kamper station so that Aquarius viewers like you can see divers when they out there. Today we will be out at Kamper sometime between 3:15 and 5:15, so maybe you can catch a glimpse of us while we are filling or collecting samples!

Today we had the luxury of a small lie-in – Mark and I didn’t stage out until 9am! This is 30-45 minutes later than usual and it was very welcome. I had a deluxe breakfast this morning too, because the surface team sent down some raisins to go with my morning oatmeal – thanks chaps!

We briefly checked the chambers to make sure all was well, but Kristen and Janet were hot on our heels to do the morning tissue sampling and PAM-ing, so we didn’t have to stay there long. One of the pumps was broken, but luckily we have a spare and Janet and Kristen were able to replace it later in the morning. Next, Mark and I went over to set up an ADV (Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter) on the reef next to the habitat. In case the name doesn’t leave you much the wiser (I know it doesn’t me) this is an instrument that measures the speed and direction of the water flow at a point above the reef. One of the things we have been doing this mission, with the help of our surface divers, is moving it around so that we have some current data from the various sites where we have been working – knowing about the speed and direction of flow is very important to our project. It took us a while to set up, because it’s pretty heavy, even underwater and the top measuring part is delicate. Also, the current was strong, so we had to be very careful not to flail around and bash it. I saw another scorpionfish on the reef next to the ADV while Mark was messing around with zip-ties, putting the finishing touches to the set-up. They have amazing camouflage – for the first few days I didn’t see any but now that I have got my eye in I see that they are quite common. Another cool thing that you only notice with the benefit of the time underwater that Aquarius gives you!

Once that was done, we set off on an excursion to look for worms. We flew out along the Pinnacle line with the current and dropped down the excursion line to 110 feet, where there is plenty of the rubble-type habitat that the bristle worms like. We did several transects, but had to leave earlier than usual, to make sure we had plenty of time to get home against the current – lucky we did because it was really tough going.

In the evening, we were doing a night dive, so we had a nice long time to rest inside the habitat. We are usually obliged to have four hours, to make sure that we have lost most of the additional nitrogen we accumulate by doing deep dives in the morning. Four hours sounds like a long time, but somehow it flies by! It takes us a while after we “stage in” (finish our dive back at the wetporch) to fill our tanks, take them off and put away our dive gear, rinse our suits, shower and get dressed. Then we are usually STARVING. I have invented the Special Jo Burrito, which is my usual lunch:

Recipe: Take one tortilla, cover liberally with grated cheese, microwave until bubbly. Meanwhile, add boiling water to one packet of Mountain House Mexican rice and beans, wait for the mixture to rehydrate. Spread this on the cheese tortilla, add a good dollop of salsa, some lettuce, and ranch dressing. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Actually, today lunch was a little delayed because we had a visit from a journalist from Reuters, who was interested in the habitat, and in Mark’s experiment on coral bleaching. Mark and Coop talked to him for a while very eloquently – I hope he goes away and writes about how cool this place is! After he left, we had time for a quick lunch before the surface team came to pay us a visit. It was really cool to see them all down here, and I think they had fun. They also brought a visitor who works for the Senate – so I hope we made a good impression on her too. Bridget – if you are reading this, I hope you had fun! We have been having a lot of visitors recently – yesterday Jim Buckley, the Habitat Operations Manager, came to “baby-sit” so that Coop and Roger could go out on an excursion. It was great to have him down here, especially since he brought us ice-cream (Ben and Jerry’s!) and homemade cheesecake – thanks Jim and Kea!

We set off on our night dive at 7:15pm (I should say 1915, in habitat parlance). We were going back to the Pinnacle with the oxygen and pH profiler and the PAM. We got out there only to find that the profiler was still playing up. The oxygen part is not working well, although the pH and temperature parts are still fine. Luckily, pH gives some of the same information as oxygen about respiration and photosynthesis, so it’s not a bust, although it is frustrating. Still, that’s science for you… Mark and I headed back to see if we could sort it out, while Janet and Kristen carried on PAM-ing around the Pinnacle before following us. We saw a lot of really cool things on the dive – huge filter-feeding brittlestars (called basketstars), a turtle, and horseshoe crabs. The corals look really different during the night because their polyps, which are closed during the day, open up so that the animals can feed – just like a flower coming out. Kristen and Janet also saw something BIG and SHARK-LIKE under the habitat when they came back, which has had us looking over our shoulders ever since…

We all carried on working (and looking around) near the habitat, until it was time to come in. Then the techs, Coop and Roger, kindly let us stay out another few minutes, as long as we stayed “at storage” (no deeper than the wetporch so we didn’t take on any more nitrogen). We had a wonderful time out on the grating looking at the plankton and bioluminescence in the water and the animals on the habitat. There are probably representatives of half the known animal phyla in the animals that live in the holes in the grating! – sponges, corals, fish, crabs and shrimp, clams, worms, sea urchins and brittlestars, as well as less well-known creatures like bryozoans and tunicates (filter-feeding animals that look a bit like sponges and are our closest invertebrate relative!). We staged in at around 10pm, and for a while our excitement was warring with our tiredness, but the tiredness won out fairly quickly and we all went to bed and slept like babies as always, lulled by the sound of the snapping shrimp.

I had the privilege of visiting the habitat this afternoon for 90 min while the two inside techs (Coop and Roger) went out and did a little recon for places to set up new waystations for future work sites.

As always, Mark, Jo, Janet and Kristen were in rare form. Buzzers, a mask, and who knows what else they have, all to entertain themselves and the techs. Maybe entertain isn’t the correct term. I took them ice cream (Ben&Jerry’s Cookie Dough and New York Fudge) and some homemade cheese cake that Kea made.

My 90 minutes flew by quickly. During my visit we potted spent SodaSorb (used for removing carbon dioxide from the habitat’s atmosphere) up to the surface, added 300 gallons of water, answered VHF calls, and checked on the two divers out at 110 fsw. I had little time to chat with the aquanauts. We did manage to get a few photos. Thanks for being such great aquanaut hosts.

The school of baitfish is still with us under the habitat, despite the best efforts of the larger fish to finish them all off. They like to ball up around larger animals – perhaps they hope that this will protect them. However, the schools of predatory fish (yellowtail snapper, schoolmaster snapper and grey snapper mainly) have been getting more and more worked up and excited by the day, and they don’t seem to be afraid of anything any more, least of all us. Today we found that if we moved slowly and gently under the habitat ourselves, the bait-ball would form up around US! This meant that the snapper frenzy was directed right in our faces. We had hundreds of snappers right in front of our masks, between our legs, nipping at our arms and bumping into our dive gear. You could only tell where your buddy was by the bubbles and the cloud of snappers surrounding them! And it wasn’t only snappers. Three nurse sharks were right in the midst of things, as was a large stingray, which kept swimming backwards and forwards across my legs. I was keeping a close eye on its stinger, as far as I could see through the snapper cloud…

When the nurse shark started feeding right under my legs, bumping into me quite hard, I had to beat a retreat with my adrenaline levels at maximum. This was truly one of the most incredible diving experiences of my life. Only at Aquarius would we have the chance to do a two-and-a-half hour morning dive on science, and then spend our final half hour of bottom time being part of the reef! Twenty-four hours later, we are all still on a high.