Day 8:

Today was our last full day of research, and it was a doozy! Actually, it was incredible, but it really wore us out. We sat down last night and looked at all the data we gathered so far; then we established some priorities for our last day of diving. We decided to take a break between dives to download information from the outside computers, to check the numbers. This meant that we didn't get back into the water until about 3:30 PM for our second dive.

In the meantime, Dean, Hutch and I spent some time in the afternoon doing an interview with a school group out of Miami. We hooked up a hand-held video camera to one of the web cams, and gave them a quick tour of the habitat. These activities are cool; they remind us of the fact that some event in the past, somewhere in our own personal histories, made each of us want to become a marine biologist. Perhaps today we can inspired someone else to want to study the ocean.

By the afternoon dive, it had definitely sunk in that this was our last chance to get data. Dean and I were swimming around like wild men, trying to get as many trials with our brass models as possible. Thor and Hutch were extremely helpful, chipping ice and helping us run experiments as fast as possible. Because of our late start, it started to get dark fairly soon into our dive. This really made the dive an incredible experience. As the light went down, the reef came alive. We even saw the sunset (although from 70 feet, it wasn't much to look at, it was the first I'd seen since I've been here).

Each of our experiments with the brass models involves a 3-minute waiting period. During this time, Dean and I explored, keeping one eye on our watch. The reef is totally different at night: during the daylight hours coral is more plant than animal. At night, they send out their feeding tentacles, and the corals begin to look fuzzy. Actually, the whole reef looks fuzzy as brittle-stars poke their arms from every crevice, reaching up to feed from the water column. There was also lots of bioluminescence, including something that was wrapped around one of our cables, making it look as if green electricity was arcing along the cable.

Many of the reef residents spend their days in hiding but by night, crabs, shrimps, lobsters and other crustaceans are out and moving around. Chris and Brian found a huge decorator crab with a sponge on its back - we took a break to check it out. We all kept our eyes peeled for octopuses, but none of us saw one.

We finally quit because we had exhausted our time out of the habitat. Tomorrow, we get to do one last dive to clean up the many cables that we have spread out beneath the habitat and across the sand. Then we have to get everything packed up and out the door before the Aquarius staff seals things up for the start of decompression.