Justin's Log 17-8-99

The Jack who would be a Grunt.

Decompression day! We are now all locked inside Aquarius, the doors tightly shut and the habitat being 'brought to the surface,' slowly. This is not a physical movement of the structure but a controlled change of pressure inside the habitat to make it the same as sea-level. The doors have to be shut or the water would begin to come in. At the end of this 17 hour process, we will do a 'dry dive' in the habitat, the pressure quickly returned to ambient for 45ft where Aquarius sits, the doors opened again and a short swim to the surface, sunshine and beer!. For the moment we are all feeling a bit like sardines milling around a large can.

Plenty of fish outside too, the dozen or so resident Permits are zooming around excitedly - possibly mating. We have a clear view of the reef but can't get to it. Occasionally a 6 ft Tarpon cruises by to look in the window. How frustrating! Needless to say we have all already thought of a thousand things we did not do and want to do next time, if there is a next time, and this makes sitting inside looking out tough.

Time is occupied with talking through results and trying to understand what we have seen over the last few days of intense work. One depressing topic of conversation is the prospect for Conch Reef and indeed all the reefs in this chain. The changes we have seen over the last 4 years have convinced us that if we return again in 4 years, it will be to a virtually dead reef with a substantially reduced population of fish, shrimps and other fauna. What to do? One thing is for sure, we must not ignore this change and hope it goes away. We must not deceive ourselves into thinking that because we don't see what goes on below the ocean surface every day that it will sort itsself out! We have hope that the results of the last few days will contribute to a solution.

Self deception apparently exists in the fish world too. This morning before lock-in I was busy watching a school of grunt forage along the sandy bottom, each fish occasionally dipping down to taking a mouthful of sand to sift for food before scampering on to catch up with its colleagues. At the back of the school was a small, confused looking horse-eye jack, trying its hardest to be a grunt too. Both these fish species communicate by grunting, so perhaps it got confused listening to the happily sand-chomping grunt-gang. As well as hanging out with its new friends, the normally open water dwelling jack was having a go at eating sand! Grunt are experts at mumbling through a mouthful of substrate to extract the small animals living there. Jack was not so good. Each mouthful being spat or coughed out. If fish think-bubbles existed this one would have read

"Hmmm that stuff still does'nt taste good. Maybe just one more mouthfull?"

This comical entourage finally swam out of view but, like us, hopefully Jack will manage to get his head out of the sand and rejoin his real friends.