As I sit here by the main window and write these entries, I am constantly distracted by activity outside Aquarius. I've heard some people comment that being in saturation is like "having an aquarium at your front door" but I tend to think that the fishes have a "self-contained terrarium" at their front door. It is often difficult to understand who is the observer and who is being watched. When I think about the "experience" fishes have to gain to enable them to thrive in their environment, I begin to wonder how they must perceive our foreign presence here. The shy "school master" and small "yellowtail" snappers are constant and inquisitive visitors to the window and they seem intent on finding a way inside. They frequently bump their head into the window and seem puzzled that they cannot pass through the transparent obstruction to perhaps, gain a better understanding of what's inside.

There are hundreds of fish that use Aquarius for shelter and many actually make it their permanent residence. There is a particularly "healthy" jewfish residing underneath Aquarius that seems content to allow the aquanauts to call on him from time to time. It does not appear to be frightened by our presence and patiently endures our daily visits. Its hunting grounds can't be too far away because its belly always seems to be enlarged. It must feed early in the morning or at night, as it never seems interested in the many schools of fish that continuously dance around it during daylight hours. There are also several large tarpon that continuously circle the habitat. When water visibility is poor, their silver bodies are invisible until they emerge from the cloak of silver-blue to surprise us; I'm glad that I'm not a small baitfish, for they seem to be formidable and efficient predators. Other residents, such as the lightning-fast barracuda, appear to take selective advantage of our "overly inquisitive" visitors and have been observed to remove the unwary from the population. Ironically enough, this action benefits the long-term survival of the species being eaten, by removing their genetics from the population, thus ensuring that the "unwary" don't live long enough to breed and pass on their non-adaptive genes. Apparently the rules of life around the habitat are no different than any other animal population; the weak, the old, the very young and the unwary are the first to be removed.

We went out to Pinnacles today and fought the current again. I felt rather like a mountaineer trying desperately to summit a ridge in high wind. This particular site happened to be at the top of a ridge where the current was at its worst. We worked feverishly against the flow and managed to establish one monitoring area despite the ocean's overwhelming physical barrier. While working on the second site of the day, I looked over at Will who seemed to be concentrating intently on something that I could not see. When I went over to see him he communicated to me, through a combination of hand signals, that he was not feeling well and he wanted to end the dive. We finished what we were doing and immediately left for Aquarius. When we arrived, Will told us that he felt like he was having stomach trouble and that it had been sporadic throughout the day. Day to day life is odd enough down here when you feel well but it's especially strange to be living down here when you don't feel up to par and don't have the comfort of being in your own environment; hopefully he'll feel better tomorrow after a good night's rest.