Day 8 of our saturation sees some pretty tired looking faces. Although we all have enough "down time," it's hard to sleep with a work schedule that changes all the time. We are also all keen to get the last few important samples before we start decompression tomorrow. Decompression means 16 hours of sitting inside the habitat waiting while we are slowly returned to surface pressure. At least during decompression one of the computers in the habitat will be available, so we will be able to watch DVD movies to alleviate the boredom.

The mission has gone extremely well. We have excellent video footage - about 24 hours of continuous filming of corals at different magnifications so that we can assess zooplankton feeding rates under natural conditions. We also have water flow profiles and zooplankton abundance throughout the mission to correlate with prey capture and feeding success by the corals.

Apart from the work we have also had a lot of time to watch the local wildlife. The habitat is teeming with fish - it is easy to see that this is a marine sanctuary. Every day big tarpon (some 6 feet long) accompany us to the work site. We also have resident schools of permit and snook around the habitat. In the entrance hatch, "Bob," the barracuda, is getting more and more reluctant to get out of the way when we are trying to get past. He acts like he owns the place, but then most of the time I suppose he does. I'm disappointed that I haven't seen any sharks, although Mike saw a hammerhead yesterday while out cleaning the hull. The highlight so far was the manta ray we saw from the porthole two days ago.