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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Meanwhile, we went on our usual morning dive. Kristen and I had duty at the chambers since poor Kristen is always delegated to do the tissue sampling (the rest of us are too cack-handed – at least I definitely am). We also measured photosynthesis with the PAM machine and left the corals out so the surface team could get their work done efficiently. Having got that done, we set off to do some more PAM-ing of wild coral colonies, down the Kamper extension line. We buzzed off down to 100 feet or so, stopping en route to gape at an enormous loggerhead turtle with a carapace the size of a kitchen table. He also stopped to gape at us a bit. That’s the good part about the Aquarius experience – the wildlife is looking in at you just as much as you are looking out at them! We got back from our PAM-ing excursion in time for 5 minutes of swimming around under the habitat. Aquarius is currently sheltering a huge school of little baitfish, so the usual crowd of schoolmaster snappers occasionally work themselves into a frenzy of feeding, which is something to see. In fact, it was quite tricky to get geared up in the wetporch this morning – there were snappers in the way of everything! We also like to poke around in the rubble, looking at the small animals that live underneath – worms, snails and brittlestars are common.

We came back in for our 4 hour rest and off-gassing period, as usual, grateful for our lunch and the nice cool temperature. In fact, most of us decided to make the most of the break by catching up on missed sleep from last night… It was hard to get up in time to stage out again, but we just about made it, and soon woke up when we got outside. Kristen and I went off down the Pinnacle drop-off line to do bristleworm transects (see Mark’s journal for an explanation as to why). There wasn’t all that much suitable habitat down there – they like loose rubble – but we found a few suitable spots. We also enjoyed the rest of the wildlife, as always. The corals are particularly beautiful out there. On one transect we came across a red-banded lobster, which was really exciting for me, since I have spent many hours underwater doing surveys for lobster, and have never seen that species before. They live on deeper reefs – and of course you don’t have much time at those depths unless you happen to be lucky enough to be in Aquarius! So we had another productive day, I think. It is now about 9pm and we are finishing up our work for the day – writing up data, cleaning slates and so on. Mark is making a habitat home movie and is currently interviewing Janet from her bunk and videoing the contents of the fridge. Some people blame nitrogen narcosis for people’s batty behaviour while saturated. We happen to know that he is always like this.

Today was a good one. Jo and I were dive buddies and we “flew” the oxygen/pH/temperature profiler down deep at the Pinnacle in the morning, and at the NE waystation in the PM. By the afternoon, Jo gave me back my “profiler’s license.” The readings again change dramatically as you traverse the nooks and crannies of the reef, or let the probe linger over the water flowing out from the body of a sponge, or tuck the meter inside a crevice. The coral bleaching chambers are running well too; the new pre-mission repairs and super glue job done by topside coordinator and Ph.D. student extraordinaire Lawrence Carpenter have held up to the rigors of deployment. In fact, set up of the chambers took less than a third of the time last year, thanks to his “packaging” of wire bundles, and flotsam and jetsam in a way that makes it a cinch to unwind in situ. We are sucking up almost a kilowatt of power from the entry lock! It would be impossible to run this experiment from the surface. The temperature controllers have their own kaleidoscopic rhythm in the entry lock, as they pulse packets of heat into the chambers at their own rhythm. I can watch the current meter on the power supplies that Byron has expertly wired up pre-mission, and know by the rise and fall of the numbers that all is well on the seafloor.

Kristen and Janet collected tissue samples expertly. I was amazed by Kristen’s fine motor skills yesterday using a very sharp implement and syringe, centimeters from my fingers holding the base of the coral. She missed her calling as a surgeon. They did some PAM measurements in the AM and on their PM dive, they made some preliminary transects for bristleworms on the reef, that may or may not have a connection to coral bleaching. Some work in other parts of the world seems to indicate that this worm may be a host for a pathogenic bacterium. My student Lawrence wants to see how common the worm is around Aquarius.

Byron and Doc Cargile paid a house call between dives. Byron came to fix the cell phone and the Doc to check on physical (and surreptitiously mental) health. He seemed to indicate that we (OK, maybe just I) get weirder by the day. I don’t suppose the “joy palm buzzer” I subjected him to yesterday has anything to do with that! (Said buzzer accidentally found its way into Roger’s bed last night under the covers, which gave him a jolt and a laugh at O dark hundred. It is now his to use as he sees fit on unsuspecting visitors.)

I write this at O dark hundred myself, as the chilling unit has gone out after years of flawless service. It could be as simple as the circulating pump. According to our Papa Bear, Craig Cooper, later this morning, the experts ashore will arrive and fix, but we are up temporarily as the temperature and humidity make it difficult to sleep. As I close, Jo and Janet have decamped to the entry lock, where they look quite comfy under the blower, with their porta-bedding. I am off again to try for sleep in the bunk room.

There is more profiling for us to do this afternoon, but meanwhile, my macaroni and cheese is smelling really tasty, so I will sign off here!

We checked in at the habitat with our mission technicians, Coop and Roger, and got to work right away. Our first task of the day was to go and find the corals that we used in November for our chamber experiments. We glued them back on the reef just outside of the habitat and tagged them so we could find them again this mission. The surface team, Randy and Lauren, then arrived and photographed each one so we would know what they looked like after having enjoyed some “time off” from our experiments! After Randy and Lauren departed we took measurements of flow direction and fluorescence (a way to measure how the photosynthetic machinery is performing in the symbiotic algae inside the corals). All the corals looked happy and healthy! Later in the day the corals would be removed from the reef and placed back in their chambers for another round of experiments over the coming days.

At around 1pm we came inside for lunch and a break until 3 pm and then headed out on an excursion line for another task- checking fluorescence of wild corals out on Conch Reef. We found lots of our species of corals to check and saw some other neat creatures too- a bunch of spiny lobsters, arrow crabs, spotted moray eels, and a really cool juvenile fish called a spotted drum, which looks kind of like a black and white miniature angel fish with really long fins that trail behind it on the top and bottom of its body. Between two dives, Jo and I spent 5 hours and 35 minutes diving today – who’d have thought I’d ever be able to do that!! The snapping shrimp sound like rain on the outside of the habitat, and are beckoning us to our bunks at the end of an exciting first day. We’ll sleep like a rock tonight…coral, that is.

Yesterday was our first day down here, but it was a hard working one for all that. Kristen and I went straight to work collecting baseline data on the corals that we are going to use for our bleaching experiment. They are the same colonies that we used last time (November mission 2002) – our surface team glued them to the reef at the end of the last experiment and we were really glad to see that they were all healthy and thriving. We located them all for the surface team of Randy and Lauren, who arrived promptly to take photographs of them. We soon discovered that four people diving in a small area was a little crowded – it was a bit like Oxford Street during the January sales – and since the surface team were more time limited than us, Kristen and I beat a retreat and spent a happy 10 minutes looking at the fish and little animals around the base of the habitat while they finished their work. Then we set to work with the PAM machine, measuring their photosynthetic rates. We got that done in the nick of time, and staged in with two minutes of dive time to spare. Coop gave us our safety briefing, showing us the escape lines and the emergency gazebo where we will be safe if anything bad happens to the habitat.

We all ate a swift lunch together and then set off again for our afternoon dive. Usually we leave four hours between the first and second dives of the day, but since we were staying shallow (defined as less than 95 feet!), we had plenty of time even without a long surface interval. Mark and Janet got to work setting up the chambers for the bleaching experiment, while Kristen and I set off down the Pinnacle excursion line with the PAM machine, looking at photosynthesis in wild coral colonies in relation to flow. There were a lot of healthy colonies of the species we are working on (Montastrea annularis), so we worked our way slowly down towards the way station, where we called in to contact the habitat and top up on air. It is really amazing to pop up inside an air bubble out on the reef and be able to call back to base and fill our tanks without going home. The reef around the Pinnacle way station is gorgeous, with lots of large, healthy multicolored coral colonies, as well as gorgonians, sponges and lots of fish and invertebrates.

Having filled our tanks, we worked our way back, but it was starting to get a little dark for the PAM to work well, so we decided to call it a day, and spent our remaining 20 minutes of dive time making our way slowly back home, pausing to look at a little spotted drum with streamers on his fins and some funny, colorful little cleaner shrimp. We ate dinner to the accompaniment of the fish and plankton show out of the window, and were lulled to sleep by the snapping shrimp…