Skylar Crowley asks: what are the names of some of the fish being studied on the Reef?
Dear Skylar,
We are studying the behavior of hogfish, blue parrotfish, and black grouper. We chose these three because they have very different diets. Hogfish eat invertebrates that they dig up from the sand (benthivore), blue parrotfish munch on the algae on the reef (herbivore), and black gouper eat other fishes (piscivore).
Thanks for your question!
Ashley Knight
Aquarius Aquanaut
Krystal Kohlberg asks: I was wondering how you take note of any information that you need to write down while out in the water? What do you write on or use to write with???
Dear Krystal,
Hi Krystal,
We just use a good ol’ pencil and paper. Actually, we have special paper that is waterproof - it’s kind of like plastic. We can write all of our notes on this paper and can even erase when we make a mistake. We have to make sure and tie our pencil to the clipboard we use or it can get away from us pretty easily. We have been taking notes on data sheets that we printed on the waterproof paper. We note the fish’s swimming behavior, its feeding behavior, and the habitat it is in every 20 seconds for ten minutes. We also note other behaviors on the page, such as color morphologies, size, and interactions with other fishes.
Great question!
Thanks,
Ashley Knight
Aquarius Aquanaut
Tomlin Middle School asked: Dewey,
Thank you for the interior walk through of the Aquarius. The 7th grade science class have been watching daily, with pictures of the outside of the Aquarius projected onto the walls. When asked how big is the Aquarius I tell them about the size of a school bus. How far off am I on the size?
Happy Thanksgiving You and All of the Crew.
ann
Dear Ann
Thank you for the question and for watching. The Aquarius undersea research station is roughly, 43 feet long and 9 feet in diameter. A school bus is actually a common object which we refer to Aquarius in regards to dimensions… and even the color. You may not be able to see the exact color of Aquarius (depends on when the picture was taken) because of the marine growth accumulated over the years, but we often call the habitat, the underwater school bus because it is painted bright yellow!
Dewey Smith
Aquarius Aquanaut and Habitat Technician
Mission Day 4
Today we got out early and began another day of data collection. I was tasked primarily with photography so that we could have some photo and video evidence of the project. The water was better, still not prime, but everything is relative. When you’ve been diving the conditions we have, today was not bad. Honestly, getting off the boat and being on the boat are not too bad, if you are not prone to sea-sickness, it’s getting back on after a dive that sometimes takes some doing. Thanks to our captain, Tim, we get our cameras, clipboards and fins on the boat and then time the waves so that we get on the ladder in the trough (bottom) and ride the wave up. You can get a little beat up while you are handing your fins up, so we are careful.
In our four dives today we tracked 8 fish. The saturation team got 17! Thirteen were Grouper. Apparently they hit the mother lode on what is called the S4 line. Since the saturation team has been so successful, they were going to run out of data collection sheets, so when the surface team sent more materials down to Aquarius today, we included more of the waterproof data collection sheets that we are using to track our fish.
Steve Houwen
Alameda High School
Surface Science Support
Related Links
Mission Summary
Aquanaut Profiles
Mission Photos
Ted Riehman asks: What is ur daily routine or work u have to do for the day?
Dear Ted,
Good question! We have pretty long days…
06:00 - Wake up and have breakfast, and then we have to don all of our gear - there is a LOT of stuff we have to wear.
07:00 - Hit the water, just after the sun has risen.
07:00 - 11:00 - Fish surveys out on the reef. We find either black groupers, blue parrotfish, or hogfish out on the reef and observe their behavior (feeding and habitat associations). We can come back to the habitat as many times as we need to fill up our tanks and head back out for more fish observations.
11:00 - 14:00 - Much deserved break! We can eat lunch, transcribe and organize data, or rest up during this time. Swimming around in the ocean for four hours really wears us out. This is also the ’storage interval’ for our bodies to off-gas (or to get rid of the extra nitrogen that has built up in our blood from diving deeper than the habitat for so long).
14:00 - 18:00 - Back in the water for more fish observations. It has been getting dark here around 17:45 so we try and get back close to the habitat by then.
18:00 - Time to shower up, dry off, and eat some dinner. We also are transcribing that afternoons data and catching up on emails and just relaxing for awhile.
That’s about a day in the life of an Aquanaut. It is actually pretty hard on the body to be out swimming in the ocean, hauling these tanks around for 7-8 hours a day. But it is worth every minute of it! To be in the water for all that time is the most incredible experience!
Thanks for your question!
Ashley Knight
Aquarius Aquanaut