There are eight functioning portholes on Aquarius three of which are around 30 inches in diameter, one in the bunk room, another above the dining room table in the main living area and the third in the wet porch. When we first arrived in the habitat, porthole visitors were dominated by bluehead wrasses and assorted juveniles and schools of blue chromis. The wrasses picked at plankton on the outer edges of the viewing port then disappeared seemingly oblivious to the humans inside. Other than sergeant majors and the occasional bold barracuda (lots of barracuda hung back in the distance but only a few ventured closer), that is most of what I saw on the first day.

Wednesday brought a new cast of characters; the creole wrasses came in squadrons, pacing by the window often at high speed, flooding the window at times then disappearing. Thursday switched back to bluehead wrasses with some schoolmasters thrown in. But by Friday, it seemed as if the owners of the place had returned to inspect their property, a trio of impressively sized tarpon swimming lockstep one after the other, the leader a true giant at about 6 feet, his companions only slightly smaller. They don’t just make a few casual passes; they make intimate, eye contact inspections, in languorous, slow passes as if they are trying to make a statement. Jay says they are familiar to the crew but no one knows for sure if these are always the same fishes that return over and over again and it provokes a long discussion about what a great research project this might make for the habitat, setting up listening stations around the area and using tags to collect migration behavior, perhaps establishing that there are resident and commuter populations of fishes. The tarpon spend the day and night and I expect we will see them every day from now on.

Porthole visitors usually change from day to night, with nighttime characters dominated by the pilchards that feed on the plankton attracted to the lights inside Aquarius (there are six lights to illuminate the reef surrounding Aquarius, two at the wet porch, two by the bunkroom, two about mid ship). During the day, fish swim by in lazy circles, picking at the water column but at night their movements become frantic, high speed rocket thrusts usually at awkward angles, zigzags, that suggest the animals are running for their lives). Barracuda still lurk in the background and sometimes begin a chase of their own. They also follow the tarpon in groups perhaps waiting for scraps.

At night the window swarms with plankton. Satoshi recognized many as larval forms of fishes and worms and I am surprised some enterprising fish doesn’t just sit by the window and gorge. Perhaps that would make them too much of a target for other predators but occasionally I do see schoolmasters nip and run for a quick feast. When we go for a night dive, the camera lights set up in front of the Japanese experiments (two respirometer bubble containers, one with a sample coral head, the other empty as a control) are so thick they almost smother the light.

Out on the reef, we get to see some of the shyer animals that don’t make their presence known at Aquarius portholes. The first day we arrived to take up residence, we were pleasantly surprised to see a nurse shark lounging directly beneath the belly of the habitat: we didn’t expect that because the word was out that most sharks had been fished out of waters around Key Largo. Greg’s goal of testing a shark repellent had seemed rather remote until we discovered the nurse shark and it built our expectation to see more of them, perhaps even the rare hammerhead shark.

Other out of the ordinary encounters featured several sightings of a southern stingray perhaps five feet in diameter, which like the nurse shark, found the sand at or near the base of the habitat a safe haven for a little rest and relaxation. Jay found a yellow stingray one morning, perhaps a foot long with its tail partially chewed off; based on the fluttering movements along her belly, she was full of little stingrays and that made her particularly cautious when inquisitive divers came around.

Barracuda are without question one of the most visible and memorable fishes when you first approach the habitat. You can find them in the water column above you, in twos and threes peering down, but in far greater numbers they laze on the sandy bottom or just above, in far greater numbers than I have ever seen (schools of 8 or 10). They remind me of my golden retriever Savannah; she is one of those incurably curious animals that follows you wherever you go, watching you dig a hole in the garden, rake leaves, pick weeds: any mundane garden or household task is a source of endless excitement to her because it offers the promise of some great discovery she can share. In Savannah’s case, she is holding out for the treasured tennis ball, preferably with yellow fuzz made by Wilson. Barracuda have that same sense of intense and intimate examination although I am sure their pot of gold is something other than a Wilson tennis ball.

Savannah’s instincts for retrieving (in other words, her behavior being rule by instinct) also remind me of the sergeant majors you can find everywhere on Conch Reef. There is one such sergeant major which lives directly out in front of the dining table porthole, faithfully guarding a steel girder that supports the habitat where a buoy line is attached. Most days the ocean topside is fairly snotty as they say here in Florida’s water world, with the result that the buoy line bobs and weaves up and down in a way that suggests it is invading the sergeant majors chosen territory. The bobbing and weaving of the buoy never stops and neither does the belligerent response of its pugilistic guardian angel.

I love the way different parts of the outside habitat have become miniature undersea gardens. One of the girders nearby that is a structural support for Aquarius has a space of about a cubic foot, a rectangle with sides and no top and inside is the most delicate Bonsai garden of sponges, corals, and plants no human could ever design. This is true throughout other small corners and girders on the habitat, where some sponge colonies take on the shape and dimensions of a large branching tree.

AQUARIUS CREW

Aquarius lives because of the people who were the visionaries to see the value of an underwater habitat for scientists, but it also lives because of the support staff that keep the habitat working day to day. Without people like Jay Styron and Cliff Rassweiler, the onboard technicians who monitor our life support systems and solve problems day to day, Aquarius couldn’t operate they way it does. Jay Styron runs the show down here and has been in a position as Aquarius tech for nearly 8 years. His responsibilities in the habitat include playing liaison with the scientists and topside support, helping solve experiment set up issues, maintaining CO2 and oxygen levels onboard, and trouble shooting issues like the failure of the air conditioning unit the night we arrived.

Jay studied marine biology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where he got his college degree and where he was headed for graduate school with a special interest in sharks (too bad so many have been overfished from local waters). A particular point of fascination for him is the bull shark, one of the ocean’s most ferocious predators. The bull shark has the best of all worlds for a shark because it can adapt to freshwater estuaries and habitats as well as the ocean, thereby doubling the playing field. Jay may some day try to continue his studies by exploring the navigation and sensory systems in bull sharks to better understand how they work in fresh water and salt.

Cliff Rassweiler manages the computer systems on Aquarius and helped design the computer program that monitors life supports systems both in the habitat and in the support buoy. Besides his race car background mentioned in another dispatch, Cliff brings a background as a charter boat scuba operator and scuba instructor, and as an employee at the Jules Verne Underwater Lodge; he has studied civil engineering and marine science, and attended the University of Miami. The keys to his getting a job on Aquarius were the computer skills he developed in his car racing career where he worked on automobile data acquisition for different racing teams. Cliff makes sure all the Aquarius computers communicate with one another, maintains Internet connections, and helps develop monitoring software.

Saturday, July 17, 1999

This morning we started later than usual, around 10 a.m. for what we hoped would be a 5 hour dive especially designed to get photos we had not been able to get earlier: photos of different parts of the habitat that include portholes, overhangs where schoolmaster fish (a kind snapper with yellow tail fin, anal fins) hang out in 10s and 20s, the gazebo where we get to surface and speak to one another in a bubble of air, the moon pool where we enter and leave every day on our diving excursions.