Today was awesome! Have you ever seen a 1962 Buick Electra Convertible underwater? I did! It was the Tarpon (Megalops Atlanticus) and have they grown since last year! We have three that have been cruising the habitat all day. One is at least 7 feet long! I think they are just as curious about me as I am of them. At first they would cruise by at about 30 or 40 feet away. Then through-out the day, they got closer and closer until I could almost touch them when they rounded Aquarius. My old friends the Smooth Truckfish (Lactophrys triqueter) seemed quite pleased to see me since I was feeding them lots of shell fish. We also have a few new additions to the reef that I haven’t seen before! An 8 to10 foot Nurse Shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum) swam by on several occasions and is the biggest shark I have seen here yet. I also saw a southern stingray (Dasyatis americana) that was very big! Probably a 6 to 8 foot span at his widest point. The Sergeant Major (Abudefduf saxatilis) and the Damselfish (I am not sure which one, I will check on that tomorrow) have their eggs everywhere and are very defensive in protecting them. Pound for pound, they are the most tenacious and aggressive fish on the reef! When we clean the valves and piping on Aquarius, we have to get close to their eggs and must seem very antagonistic to them. It’s like having a woodpecker pounding you all over your body. It doesn’t hurt because you have a wet suit on, but it sure is annoying. One note on the smelly microwave; The HOM has put the thing on the Out Of Commission (OOC) list. This is a bad thing, I hear rumors from the crew and scientists of Aquarius about a mutiny…More tomorrow…
It was so nice just working outside Aquarius again, but first a little history about what has been going on at the National Undersea Research Center (NURC) since my last journal entries. It seems like all we have been doing since December is overhauling the Life Support Buoy (LSB). The LSB provides electricity, air and communications for Aquarius. This entailed pulling the five mooring lines and umbilical out of the water, then moving the buoy to a protected anchorage. During this time the buoy was completely painted inside and out, much of the electronics were replaced, the compressors were given a top-half overhaul and the generator’s fuel system was cleaned to squeaky clean standards. All the plumbing for the fuel system was replaced. The generator’s air start reducing system got the once over by the Habitat Operations Manager (HOM)(aka Jim) which made the buoy ready for action this year. The job involved all of the Aquarius crew working day after day for months to get it ready for the science mission season. My hats off to the Aquarius crew for a job well done. Now back to day one at Aquarius.
The First thing was to get the zincs cleaned. Zincs are pieces of metal that deteriorate before Aquarius and are sacrificial “soft” metals. Every metal corrodes in the water, especially saltwater. By putting zincs on the habitat, we cause the zincs to corrode faster and the habitat to slowdown. While I was doing the zincs, I found an animal called the Donkey Dung Sea Cucumber (Holothuria mexicana) and plan to mark his speed under the habitat during my stay. More on this speed demon later. Next are the valves and piping. This will take the remaining 10 days to complete because there are a lot of valves and plumbing on the exterior of Aquarius. When we normally work on Aquarius, we make short 90 minute dive trips down to Aquarius to avoid decompression. 90 minutes is o.k., but you never get all the work done. 90 minutes inside the habitat is always too short to get any work done. Seems incongruent that we avoid decompression in a diving saturation complex that can simulate being on the surface when you are at 47 feet underwater. But that’s a rookie’s perspective. After the zincs and some other husbandry work, the scientists were at the wet porch wanting in to Aquarius and to start the ten day mission. The Lead Technician gave all the safety briefings and last minute items got organized for tomorrows work. One little problem is our microwave smells funny…Still works, but definitely has an odor. More tomorrow.
This mission couldn’t have started any more amazingly than it did. Within 2 hours of being under, I saw 5 spotted eagle rays, a green sea turtle, and at least 30 species of fish. Steve and Jim had a little meeting with a rottweiler-ish moray eel as well as a very lonely remora trying to find a large fish to suck onto. With all this eye stimulation, who could think of work! But, of course, we are down here to do science. We started getting the BOA (Benthic Oceanographic Array) laid out. It’s over 2 kilometers of cable to set over the reef; that means a lot of swimming with large bundles of cable in your arms. My legs and arms feel like rubber. We work until we get low on air and then swim to a ‘fill station’. Fill stations are clear plexi-glass hemi-spheres that we stick our heads up into to talk to each other and re-fill our tanks. We also stash some drinks in there; tomorrow I’m going to sneak some chocolate out there for a mid-dive sugar ‘buzz’. We check in with the 2 habitat technicians every 2 hours to make sure things are going well and also to keep tabs on how the diving is going.
Being in the habitat feels almost out of the ordinary, I’ve gotten so used to being wet. The habitat is really cozy, although a little chilly. We have plenty of food to keep our strength up and I may even learn to enjoy Mountain House food by the end of the 10 days! I keep forgetting that there are cameras everywhere and that a lot of friends and family are watching me. Anyway, all this excitement for the day has worn me out, and I’ll have lots more tomorrow so I’ll end my first day’s journal and head to bead! Night!