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.

Back for lunch and the required down time before we could go out again. I was prepared not to enjoy food while I was living aboard Aquarius based on discussions I had had one or two previous aquanauts but I am pleasantly surprised, perhaps an indication of how hungry swimming around for 8 hours can make you. A microwave oven is the only means we had to cook food and I knew exactly what we would be eating from an afternoon of shopping at the local Publix. Dried and packaged fruits like apricots, bananas, and apples replaced the hydrated variety. Food samples include: Mountain House nutritious high performance food, vegetarian entree, freeze dried long grain and wild rice mushroom pilaf, Near East minestrone soup, dried fruits, health choice pudding, miso cup delicious vegetable soup, , Lipton tea bags, and coffee bags, Hormel beef ravioli, small boxes of cereal, peanut butter, breads, Maruchan Ramen noodle soup pork flavor, chips, nuts, crackers, candy bars, cheese and peanut butter crackers, snickers bars, fig Newtons, raisins, and parmalat milk, the only kind of milk that works for this environment. Most important of all is the Tabasco sauce.

After lunch I sleep for an hour or so and then join Greg in the moon pool to top off our scuba tanks. One of the wonderful features of being on Aquarius is the filling station they have set up right at the water’s edge. A high pressure hose from our dive rig attaches to the tank fill station and while we are standing on a platform in the moon pool we get all the air we need for out tanks. Minutes later are tanks are full and we swim off for our next expedition. Today we decide to find a spot along one of the excursion lines and watch the transition from dusk to darkness, hoping to see some of the night time predators lurking around the reef. We reach a wall that climbs slowly above us, follow it to the top and look down on a huge plain of sand the I imagine is the Serengeti in Africa. A pair of barred hamlets flutter through a mating dance, intertwine their bodies by arching their backs, and then flick apart. I watch this over and over until the light gets so dim that we have to turn on our lights to see our way around. As I look up to the surface, I see the dim form of a large stingray winging its way toward the waning light.

The evening dive ends as we return to patches of reef that surround the habitat. By careful inspection with our underwater lights, we find all the small invertebrates, tiny shrimp, cleaner shrimp, brittle stars, and bold lobsters which scurry across the coral sand out in the open.