Day 4 in Aquarius:

A good, but hectic day. When we started the dive this morning it was beautifully clear. Dean and I took the plaster models out and then decided to take advantage of the conditions to get some photos. Miraculously, Brian's video camera worked today, so I took some video while Dean took stills. Apparently, last year, they put off taking photos until the end when the water was murky and they were getting stressed about how little dive time they had left. We managed to get slides and video of all the experimental setups and specimens, as well as some fun shots of the habitat, the giant grouper living underneath, and a stingray that happened to cruise by.

After our dive, the day really got crazy. A film crew was here to shoot a segment for the Learning Channel. We knew about this in advance, but we didn't know what they would want from us. Turns out, they wanted divers to swim in and out of the habitat and they wanted us to talk about our science. We were very willing to do help, but Brian and Chris were selected to do this duty at the end of their dive, so they had to spend a fair bit of extra time in the water. Even though the water is warm, after 2 hours or more, one is pretty happy to get out and get a hot drink! The camera crew got a tour of the habitat, but they had camera problems, and weren't able to finish all their work. They'll be back on Sunday. For an hour or so, there were a lot of people potting supplies in and out, filming, and trying to get warm.

Once things calmed down, Dean and I went back out for more science. We were doing oxygen boundary layer profiles, which involve lots of squatting on the bottom. All of a sudden, I noticed that Dean was being attacked by a vicious scrawled cowfish. This is one of the cutest fish on the reef. It's about 8 inches long and with a puckered mouth and little fluttering pectoral fins that it uses to swim. Apparently, it decided that Dean made a nice protected habitat, and spent a fair bit of time tucked into his elbow. Dean was enjoying this for a while, but eventually decided to go back to work. Unfortunately, the fish didn't want to leave his safe haven. Finally Dean passed the fish off to me, where he curled up in my elbow and eventually moved on.

We also had another piece of equipment trouble tonight. We have data-gathering equipment mounted in PVC housings that we leave out on the reef. To get access to the data, they are connected to the computer in the habitat by cables that run through special connectors in the outer Aquarius wall. Unfortunately, due to the effects of electricity and salt water on metal, these connectors tend to wear out. As a result, we found that we couldn't talk to one of our water flow meters. Chris and I went out in the dark to bring it back through the moon pool to switch the connector. This ended up solving the problem, but we expect that we will have more difficulties with the connectors in the days to come. The night dive was beautiful - well worth getting back into the water.