Thursday 1700 Update

The aquanauts were safely recovered by 1400, and back ashore by 1445. The first twelve hours after the end of saturation include a bends watch, where aquanauts stay close at our shore base, and take it easy. We are all watching the weather channel and checking the National Hurricane Center homepage regularly. And the weather turns darker each hour. Indeed, we are now officially under a Hurricane Warning.

We expect that our operations staff will return to shore in the next half hour, after a full day getting things ready. The final task of flooding the Aquarius Wet Porch was completed just a few moments ago. Hot macaroni and cheese, cold cuts, and key lime pie will be on the table when they get back. The aquanauts already have full stomachs.

Everyone is disappointed that the mission ended early. We will regroup over the next few days after the storm passes, and probably conduct surface-based nitrox diving to help the aquanauts recover some of their deep water sponge experiments. We expect a few Expedition Journal reports from the aquanauts soon, and we'll post them tomorrow.

Thursday 1200 update

The Aquanauts are still locked in Aquarius undergoing decompression, so they can't help in any of the routine storm preparations currently underway. As this update is prepared they are nearly back to surface pressure (technically they are at 1 foot depth). During decompression the aquanauts are instructed to stay well hydrated, and they move about periodically to maintain good blood circulation. Our habitat technicians, Jay Styron and Thor Dunmire, are conducting a flawless decompression.

Early this morning (0800) Craig Cooper, Aquarius Manager, and three staff, Jim Buckley, Mike Hutchens, and Tim Gallagher, headed offshore in the R/V Delta to recover scientific equipment deployed by the Aquanauts around Aquarius, and some operational gear including scuba tanks. Craig and his staff had the difficult task of taking the respirometer apart, bringing it to the surface, and loading it on the boat - all without damaging this expensive piece of equipment. The respirometer is fairly fragile because it's mostly made out of Plexiglass. The battery pod used to power the respirometer on the other hand is made of stainless steel, this and the fact that the batteries are quite heavy present a whole different kind of challenge in getting it back to the boat. Both the respirometer and battery pod are now safe on shore.

While the R/V Delta was on its way back to shore the rest of the Aquarius crew (Mark Holsbeck, Mike Florant, Russ Lounsbury, and Fred Young) headed out in the R/V Sabina to Conch Reef to prepare the site for the storm. Work includes removing gas panels in the wet porch, securing oxygen K-bottles used for emergency decompressions, removing gas and communication panels in the gazebos, and then securing and flooding (to reduce buoyancy that can be a problem in high sea states) the gazebo. All of this work was done while the Aquanauts were in the final stages of decompression. After decompression, two major tasks include disconnecting and securing the chiller unit, which is part of the environmental control system, and detaching and recovering the umbilical that links Aquarius to the Life Support Buoy.

At 1100, the R/V Delta headed back offshore again to assist the R/V Sabina crew with site preparations described above. Additional tasks include getting the way station secured and flooded, retrieving panels related to the underwater fill station, and recovering antennas and the telemetry dish off the LSB. At noon, the R/V Wild Card left the dock with Otto Rutten, Doug Kesling, and Buddy Person. They are the ones who will actually recover the aquanauts and transport them back to shore. They will also deploy a specially programmed piece of oceanographic gear (an InterOcean S4 current meter) that will take measurements throughout the storm for water temperature, salinity, current speed and direction, and wave height. We have nearly 10 years of oceanographic data from Conch Reef so these episodic storm events are quite interesting when measured against the long-term record.

While all of this is going the weather is taking a small turn for the worse. Seas are a full 4 - 6 feet, the sky is gray, and rain squalls periodically move through the area. We are not yet under a tropical storm watch. Please visit again for an update after the aquanauts are safely ashore.

Thursday 0845

The threat of Hurricane Irene required that we end the Patterson mission early. We take a conservative approach toward storm planning to prevent the dangerous situation of saturated aquanauts trapped in Aquarius under severe tropical storm or hurricane conditions. This means we plan far enough in advance to conduct decompression with sufficient time to recover aquanauts before sea state conditions deteriorate. Since normal decompression takes 17 hours we began the process last night, at 2100. Decompression will end early this afternoon. After which, the aquanauts exit Aquarius and return to shore.

Habitat technicians Jay Styron and Thor Dunmire are running decompression from inside Aquarius: they started the process at 2100. Prior to the start of decompression, Mark Holsbeck, Mike Florant, and Doug Kesling traveled offshore to install an exhaust umbilical used to vent Aquarius during decompression; this is standard operating procedure.

From a safety standpoint, Aquarius is outfitted with redundant life support systems located on the Life Support Buoy, and enough onboard stored air and battery power to support the aquanauts for at least 96 hours (including full decompression capability). This means that if for some reason the Life Support Buoy suffered massive system failure the aquanauts could still survive. You might ask, why not just let aquanauts ride out a storm inside Aquarius? The problem with this approach is twofold - at least. First, storms also damage shore-based facilities and our staff are required to evacuate the Keys before major hurricanes strike. Therefore, we may not have boats or people available for days or weeks after storms to recover aquanauts, or to respond to an emergency should one develop (we treat storms as emergencies). Second, Aquarius is not designed to support operations under severe storm conditions. Primary life support systems could fail, and while backup systems are likely to remain operational, there is absolutely no reason to put people at risk when advance planning can take them out of harms way. Safety is paramount in all our operations.

From past experience we know that Aquarius gets bounced around quite a bit during major storms. During Hurricane George we recorded 24 foot waves at Conch Reef. Would you want to be in Aquarius under those conditions when you could be safe at home, warm and dry, maybe even watching TV or surfing the net? We do, however, leave behind oceanographic equipment to monitor storm conditions at the site; several interesting research papers exist from data we collected during storms.