Morning of the second day: Wednesday, July 14

The Aquarius crew had a delayed opening this morning due to some unexpected late night problems with the habitat’s air conditioning unit that left us at 95 F and 95% humidity for much of the night. It was a veritable Japanese American steam bath, not necessarily unpleasant under the right circumstances but not what the newly acclimating aquanauts had been expecting. Greg Stone had reported being down right cold on a few nights in his previous Aquarius experience in the Virgin Islands. Some kind of vapor lock apparently prevented proper circulation of the coolant in the environmental control unit.

Although we were told it sometimes takes a few hours for the cooling system to come around at the beginning of a mission, tonight there was no relief, even after we finished our meal around 8 and 9 p.m. Jay Styron and Cliff Rassweiler, the two Aquarius technicians who are the live aboard managers of the habitat methodically went through all the possible causes by monitoring the readings of the habitat system with Aquarius computers but without any success. Around 2 a.m. having exhausted all onboard efforts to bring the humidity under control, Jay called homebase in Key Largo, where they monitor us 24 hours a day with fixed cameras and data readouts, and they decided to send a rescue crew onboard the speedy shuttle called the Manta. Twenty minutes or so later, the intercom crackled with the voices of divers who had already begun diagnostics on the buoy and outside Aquarius. They had already flushed the coolant and replaced it with a fresh supply, and a blast of increasingly cooler air was quickly apparent. Kudos to Jay, Cliff, and the rest of the crew for solving a difficult problem and bringing us all much needed relief.

The aquanauts and crew slept in this morning for obvious reasons but emerged ready to continue equipment set up and testing for the coral respirometer and the 3 D camera that would record activity around the test area. Since this would be ongoing for the entire day, Greg Stone and I again joined Cliff for a trip to a deeper part of the reef called Deep S-4 (to a oceanographic sensor platform at 107 feet). While we were here, Greg and I wanted to see as many of the different parts of the reef and the various research projects as we could, and thus this visit to an area of large sandy bottom plains and adjacent reef structure introduced corals and sponges we hadn’t seen around the habitat.

Thursday, July 15

Continuing our tradition of one exploration dive every day, Greg, Cliff, and I today headed to the waystation to the northeast, another 1000 foot journey following excursion lines to another gazebo, this one equipped only with an air pocket but without voice communication back to Aquarius and without the ability to fill our tanks, which is usually possible but this gazebos was not fully implemented because it was not expected to be in service for our mission. On a tributary line from the gazebo, we soared over a drop off looking down at a field of experiments isolating certain kinds of sponges for observation. The plastic matrix that surrounded the individual sponges had already started to blend in with the adjacent sponges and corals. Greg found a lobster which he chased to collect video footage. I found more barracuda, several French angelfish, and lots of parrotfish of all sizes and colors. We returned to the habitat around lunch time and I settled in for an afternoon of sleep and writing.

4:15 p.m. Thursday, July 15. While Greg and Satoshi went out for an afternoon excursion, Mineo and I remained in Aquarius while Mineo continued to do equipment adjustments on the instruments cabled to sensors around select corals a few hundred feet outside the window of our undersea bunk room. While we were working, we experienced our first house call by Aquarius Doctor in charge Dr. Kruse; he appeared as an apparition as I was typing this diary, clad only in his bathing suit, towel and a smile; he immediately showed good bedside manners by inquiring about my health (other than congestion and a headache, not much to report). Was I attending to my ears properly (each aquanaut has personal ear drops to make sure we don’t develop infection), was I sleeping OK (better than topside), any cuts or bruises that weren’t healing properly (only minor ones), was I drinking enough water? He had come to visit us using regular air and SCUBA and spent the next 20 minutes chatting about how the project was going, regaling me with stories about barracuda (they are like house pets around the habitat), and just plain exploring what it was like to live 47 feet down. Satisfied he had all the information he needed, he disappeared just as he had arrived, only this time he made sure to pass by the porthole where I was writing this dispatch to deliver a parting salute. While he had paid us a visit, he sent an e-mail to his wife.

The day ends with a visit by Adam Geiger from National Geographic television. He has already set up lights in Aquarius for interviews and snippets of stories he finds as he watches us do our work. Today he listens as Greg talks with Mineo about the camera and data collecting program sitting on the work bench in our living room area. Mineo speaks, Greg translates, Adam films. It is dinner time and I open a package of noodles stroganoff leading the camera through the simple steps that add hot water and wait 15 minutes till all the water is absorbed. Jay Styron out on a hookah dive (regulator connected by a long cord back to Aquarius) finds a rock fish in the sand under the habitat, tickles its belly until it loses all resistance and swims it up to the dining table porthole for a video moment. Greg Stone teases Ken about his need for hot sauce, saying he will lose his standing as his number one assistant named Falco (based of course on the idea that Greg is Jacques). Such is life in the cable television studio until Adam realizes he has stayed his time limit and must return to the surface.

Sounds:

Lying in bed at night let’s me focus on the sounds we live with everyday in our underwater home away from home. The shrimp and other animal noises I described in an earlier dispatch alternately crackle like the flames of a fire, splash and gurgle like the patter of rain, snap like the explosions of miniature fire crackers or in their wildest reincarnation, make me imagine thousands of children let loose in a field of popit packages, the kind that are used to cushion fragile pieces of mail which kids love to pop until they have released every last one. What I hear depends on how well my ears are functioning at any particular moment, and I have found that varies morning to afternoon, day to day, often depending on how much diving I have been doing. A case in point is the night time crackle of shrimp I hear over my head lying in my upper bunk; with a good dose of ear clog (despite the ritual of ear drops I use after every dive). Greg Stone’s early morning typing at his computer, at his usual frenzied and hard tapping pace, sounds just like snapping shrimp.

The crackle of shrimp and Stone take place in a background of the air conditioning unit that blows a stream of cooled air out of a vent above the refrigerator, a familiar and soothing reminder that our support system has the right stuff and a helpful background as a noise machine for falling asleep. While the air conditioning unit blows, the intercom radio in the main living area at the center of the habitat plays a continuous medley of waves crashing on a beach, the result of air being pumped through our living quarters and belched out of the moon pool in rhythmic pulses. The air conditioning unit and the intercom play an important role of burying the predictable chorus of snores that emanate nightly from the slumbering bodies snuggled in their bunks at the front end of our underwater locomotive.

The only other sounds other than our voices in conversation are the intercom that allows us to talk ship to shore and ship to ship (Aquarius, this is Geo (National Geographic television) do you copy? Copy that. We are coming for a visit; Roger that, Standing by), and the cordless telephone (all the comforts of home) that let Mineo and Satoshi check with colleagues and technicians back home in Japan if they are experiencing difficulty with their coral sensor and monitoring set up.

Internet

Now that we are Internet connected we are experiencing the strange and alien sounds of cyber music played from a host of web sites which play show tunes, computer games like Dr. Doom, music from Mission Impossible, Bat Man, Beverly Hillbillies, the Entertainer, definitely out of place in our world of fish and bubbles but somehow humans seem to need these sorts of things. I can now read the Boston Globe online, find out who won the All Star Game (American League 4-1: Boston pitcher Pedro Martinez selected most valuable player), check the international scene through the New York Times, find out what’s happening on the New England Aquarium home page, and even read aquanaut dispatches on the Aquarius home page.

Next time: THE ANIMALS AMONG US and more undersea adventures.