We are finally here. After all the waiting and training and packing and so on, today we came down to Aquarius.

A bit about the preparations, though: We spent the last week in the NURC apartment in Key Largo. We were scheduled to have 4 days of training, but because our mission is relatively simple (our study site is directly at the base of the habitat), we didn't need to spend as much time learning to find our way back from long distances. It was still an arduous process... long dives getting familiar with our double-tanks, safety reels, emergency equipment, etc. this included using our reels to find a lost line without our masks... a frustrating exercise as I led my (also maskless) buddy directly under the sought-after line without knowing it. We found it on the next pass, however, and were wiser for the experience.

We also spent days making plaster models that we will be deploying on the reef; these will dissolve in the seawater, giving us a measure of the rate at which water flow brings such essentials as nutrients to the corals. Each plaster model had to be cast in the mold; sanded; glued to a base; baked in the oven; and finally weighed, numbered and recorded. Kristy was in charge of this process, and did a great job of turning these out.

Finally, today, the preparations were over. We were supposed to leave by 9:00, so we got up early and began to pack our toothbrushes and last-minute items. Dean and Chris, who have been here before, were trying to anticipate all the problems that they know will happen. Brian and I have much less to worry about; we simply do the diving parts of the mission without having to keep the wiring and the computers up and running as well.

Finally, the boat was tied up to the mooring, the last bits were "potted down" (sent to the habitat in pressure-sealed cans), and we donned our 125lbs of gear and rolled into the water. It was a beautiful day: a little chop, but the water was clearer than it has been all week. We could see the habitat clearly from the surface, and the water was filled with large jellies. We dropped straight down to our field site next to the habitat, and together (well, ok, Brian did most of the work) moved a concrete base into position to hold a current meter. Then we swam to Aquarius.

We had actually done 1 dive to the habitat during training, but this was different. For one thing, we didn't need to worry about our bottom time on this dive. For another, we knew that we were here to stay. After we dried off, we began to unload our gear. Then we ate a bit of lunch, and Brian and I went back out to glue together the mount for the S4 current meter that will be here tomorrow.

This dive brought the first realization that Aquarius is something different: I went to reset my maximum depth indicator (something that I do at the start of every dive) and realized that the depth gauge already read 50 feet -- At the beginning of the dive!

The gluing job went surprisingly well, so we went back to the habitat to grab the camera and shoot some photos of our study specimens. Brian also wanted to shoot some video, but his camera (which has been balky this whole trip) chose to sleep through this dive (Aaargh). We knew that Dean and Chris would still be sweating over mazes of wires about which we knew little, so we stayed outside to shoot some tourist photos under the habitat.

We had plenty of time and air left, but tomorrow will be a busy day. We went in and organized the plaster models that we will mount on the reef tomorrow. Chris and Dean, still in electronics-geek mode, were hooking things up and Hutch went out to plug in their cables to the outside of the habitat. Judging by their diction and tone, things seem to be going better than expected (expectations set by last year's mission when all the electronics were dead at the first day). Obviously something will go wrong (a lesson that every scientist, especially those using expensive equipment in harsh surroundings knows), but at least the problems will be different from those they have experienced before... they might even be relatively minor.

We ate dinner, and then spent most of the evening trying to work on some writing, but mostly staring out the window. It is wonderful to watch the fish (which you can see on the web-cams), but it is even more interesting to watch the little invertebrates that flow past the window -- cnidarians, copepods, larvacians and salps... an ever changing menagerie.