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

Here we are, the 5th Day on our mission with our Aquanaut pep squad cheering us on, (this can be none other than the incredible fish community), and they keep amazing us…

Today, early in the morning while sampling with the PAM (pulse amplified modulator, measures fluorescence), we had an encounter with a barnacle covered, hawksbill turtle that decided it would be fun (??!) to do a couple of loop-de-loos around Abel.  He must’ve circled my dive buddy at least three times before he decided that was enough and continued on with his early-bird reef hunt.  Also, as if on cue, again, we had an early first-sunlight visit from a pack of spotted eagle rays, and they continued to check-in with us throughout this dive and the rest of the day.  One ray we came up on was in the midst of doing roller-coaster like sine waves, slowly rising up and kamakazi diving down, until we noticed his antics, and then he gracefully turned toward me and “flew” right over my head and off into the blue yonder. 

Well now we are only 18 corals away from completing our task of transplanting, so we anticipate finishing our work tomorrow in our early morning dive. There’s more work with mapping, and sampling the corals, but tomorrow is the day to wrap up the mission. Only one early, brief morning dive on Monday, before we start our decompression in preparation for surfacing early AM on Tuesday, June 17th. As my boss warned me, it is about to be over, even though we’ve finally just gotten into our groove.  I can’t imagine how I’ll get to sleep at night without all these gentle fish at my “window” to lure me to rest.

The wet porch goliath grouper ‘groupies’ continue to entertain us by hanging around with us while we gear up for each of our dives. The two mammoth “guardians” seemed to have taken a liking to us, and always seem to want to get closer and keep us company, continuing their watch over us. I called them our spirit guides today, as one kept nudging up to Abel as we waited our turn to dive. Ken got a video and photos of this bonding experience.  I will definitely miss these guys most of all, when we go, and somehow I suspect the feeling may be mutual!

The team in the habitat is getting rowdy tonight, lots of cheer and more stories of life experiences. It’s time to let someone else get online, so I’ll be signing off for one more night. Many sweet dreams and think …. fish!

Lauri Mac,  a pisces tried and true!