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

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

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

Ana V Reyes asks: Hi my name is ana from adamerritt k-8 center and i want to know do you u get out the same way you came in? if no how?

Hi Ana

Yes, we do go in and out the same way.  The divers step up through an entryway we call the moon pool into the wetporch area of the Aquarius habitat.  Because the air inside Aquarius is kept at the same pressure as the surrounding water, the water does not flow in and we can leave the moon pool open.  So you just take off your scuba gear and walk up the steps…about 50 feet under the sea.  It is very cool to be standing in the moon pool in air from the waist up and with fish swimming around your feet!

The aquanauts then shower and dry off in the wetporch before entering the main compartments of the undersea laboratory…..

Thanks for the question.

Dr. Ellen Prager

Chief Scientist, Aquarius Reef Base

It was quite a day at Aquarius today. Sure, it started the same for the saturation team, buddy teams out at 6:45 and 7:00 as usual, but by 9:30 they were staging back in to Aquarius to prepare for the first live video show. Before that, NURC’s tech guru Dominic Landucci was hard at work along with the two habitat techs Dewey and Jim as they ran the equipment through sound checks, getting levels set. After a few last minute fixes, we were ready to go. As is the case for most live events, it didn’t go exactly as planned, but the team did a good job of making it work. There was a tour of the habitat, video of training week and the first mission day, a visit by Dr. James Lindholm, the Principal Investigator who talked about the mission and its purposes. I was topside at the shore base for my segments, one of which was unplanned. Dominic did a great job producing the show, cutting video in and out, switching camera shots, and getting us all through it. If you didn’t catch this morning’s show, log on to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/aquarius-undersea-habitat to see it archived. In fact, if you want to participate by asking questions on the next show, you can sign up on ustream , and then ask questions via instant messaging. The next show is on Saturday, 10:30 am EST.

After the show, I changed quickly and boarded the Sabina, our support boat for a trip out to join Dr. Lindholm for an afternoon of fish tracking. The whole crew here is amazing, nothing would happen without them. When we got out past the reef, the 2 to 4 foot seas forecast were nowhere in sight. It was still the 4 to 6+ that have been around a few days. As we closed with the RV Research Diver, the boat we stage from, I got my fins and mask on and jumped in for a quick swim over. I got aboard and got into my dive gear, which I had loaded first thing this morning and we were in the water for our first of three research dives. We got data on a few fish today, but we’d hoped for more. Funny thing about field research – your subjects don’t always show up on demand. When we track fish, we are looking for several things, are they actively swimming, are the “station keeping,” or hanging out in a certain location, are they feeding, and if so, what type of feeding? We also log the type of habitat – is it over the hard bottom, over coral rubble or over the reef itself, in the water column, etc. This is important because it will give us data, which we can logically extrapolate to other species and help inform us about the general ecological interaction of fish with their habitat. It is important that when deciding where to place Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) we have proper habitat makeup to support populations of fish. While we were only able to track four fish today, the saturation team tracked twenty. Should I say it again? Okay – this is why we need to be able to have a place like Aquarius to do research from, the difference in the volume of collected data is staggering.

On our dives today, we did get to see more interesting things, like a school of 12 to 15 or so barracuda. I’ve never seen more than two at a time before. I saw a large cowfish and a scrawled filefish. One of the Parrotfish that we tracked had a remora attached, that was new. I saw a coronet fish with a lot of blue coloration. While gathering data on a Black Grouper, I looked down and saw a trumpetfish trying to act like the gorgonian he was hanging out next to. In the mouth of a large sponge, James noticed coral growing – that was amazing to me. Every time I dive I see new things. Perhaps that is what drives my love for the oceans. There are things that most people never get to see or to appreciate. As I put in my profile, one of the things that has always intrigued me is the diversity of life I see. Unfortunately, that diversity is on a hard decline to put it mildly. We cannot afford to lose this, but that’s another blog. Tomorrow we head back out for four science dives. I’m praying for flatter seas – you know the 2 to 4’s they keep promising would be nice.

Ocean Ed Item of the Day:

As noted, today I saw a Scrawled Filefish. They are cool. One of the interesting things to me about this fish is that although they have a large caudal fin, they rarely use it in swimming. Instead, they use other fins to do it. See if you can find out which ones they use and then figure out why this method of movement is effective for their needs.

Stephen Houwen

Teacher, Alameda High School

Science Surface Support

Thanks for all the great Ask an Aquanaut questions this mission.  Watch our broadcasts at 10:30am on Saturday and next Tuesday and aquanaut Mark Tohulka and lead scientist Dr. James Lindholm may answer your question live.  The shows will also be archived for later viewing.  Click on Aquarius Live on the web site to go to the links for viewing the broadcasts.

Dr. Ellen Prager

Chief Scientist, Aquarius Reef Base