Craig B Cooper (Lead Habitat Technician and Aquarius Manager)

We're into day five of our ten day mission and all is well with things in the habitat. There have been a few electrical problems on the surface buoy, but they were merely an inconvenience for life in the habitat. As usual the support crew was quick to diagnose the problem and attain a fix so all systems were back on line.

Most of the journals being presented during our missions highlight the science being conducted and what it's like to live underwater surrounded by a reef. I think it's important to identify some of the people who allow us to conduct saturation missions due to their pioneering efforts in diving. Aquarius and most of the habitats preceding it would not have operated if it were not for the work done by the US Navy and their Genesis and Sealab programs during the 50s and 60s. It was then that the theory of saturation diving was developed by Capt. George F. Bond, Dr. Robert Workman, and Comdr. Walter Mazzone, with heros Bob Barth and Sanders Manning making the first chamber dives and continuing on through Sealabs I, II, and III. I'm quite proud to say I know Bob Barth and worked with Sandy Manning and Dr. Workman in the 70s. You won't hear about them as you did the early astronauts, but not for their lack of guts or the unknown they dived into.

The Aquarius was originally named after Bond, a Bat Cave, North Carolina native and resident, but the name was changed prior to it's deployment in 1986 to the Virgin Islands. Not only did the Navy play the major role in developing saturation diving, but they continue to assist us in every way possible with our endeavors as the only operating habitat/laboratory in the open sea. People like Pete Ruden, Jerry Pelton, Jack Schmitt, Tom Brissie, Dr. Claude Harvey, and certainly Bob Barth - to name a few - are all Navy people who provide us with technology and information gained through their extensive diving career. It's with their assistance that a soft-funded project like ours can still make advancements to program, which allows us to operate into 2000 and beyond.

Next journal entry I'll relate some of the neat things we see being here peering out from the habitat, but I felt we should mention some of the people that gave us this capability. Sometimes we also need to identify the "invisible ones," the crew topside working 12-14 hour shifts to support all this. Their only glory comes with their turn as on board tech, but even then they remain invisable in most accounts. If the scientists are the astronauts, these guys are the junior Bob Barths.