Yesterday, we learned that the old adage "Cut me some slack, Jack!" does not apply when using lines underwater. Old King Neptune will take the least bit of slack in any line you are laying out and wrap it around you like a spider wraps a fly for dinner. And if King Neptune is looking the other way, his faithful assistants Otter and Thor are all too eager to take up the slack...and include you into their version of a cocoon.

Why are we so interested in laying out lines? And who are Otter and Thor? Well, before we can conduct research underwater using the technique of saturation diving and the underwater habitat, Aquarius, we must receive a week of intensive training. Otter and Thor are our primary trainers during this week and it is their job to impart much of their competence to us.

Saturation diving is a technique that gives underwater researchers a precious gift...time. Time to set up complicated experiments; time to make uninterrupted observations of behaviors; time to collect pages of data on the density and distribution of organisms. There is a small price to pay for this gift of time, however. Saturation diving is very much like cave diving in that both have a ceiling that can't be penetrated. Should we get lost or run low on air, we cannot "just go to the surface," we need to go laterally to find a known position or an alternative source of air. And just as in cave diving, it is important for us to know always where we are relative to air sources and our underwater home, Aquarius.

To help us with this essential navigation, there are four main reference lines leading from Aquarius to potential study sites. But many times, we need to work in areas that are some distance from the reference lines and therefore, the reference lines cannot be seen. When this happens, we must lay a secondary line from the reference line to our study site. Shouldn't be too difficult to lay a line from point A to point B, right? Sounds like child's-play…and it was when we practiced in the parking lot this morning. But gravity in the parking lot doesn't create slack like the nearly weightless world underwater. We can't be "slackers" underwater because we will get wrapped…and wrapped….and wrapped again. As with most skills, practice makes perfect, or at least much better. Under Otter and Thor's watchful eyes, we soon became semi-experts at laying slack-less lines and thereby learned yet another essential skill for saturation diving.

It's one thing to lay lines, it's quite another to find the reference line if we lose our secondary line. Consequently, the last training exercise yesterday taught us how to conduct an organized search for a reference line and to follow it back to Aquarius. This was fun...because for the first part of the exercise, Otter and Thor twirled us around with our eyes closed so that we lost all sense of direction. With our eyes still closed, we then found a secondary line, followed it to the reference line, and determined the correct direction to Aquarius. In my mind, Otter and Thor beat any amusement park ride!

Our first day of training on Tuesday involved getting familiar with new equipment and brushing up on our basic scuba skills: removing and replacing our masks, buddy breathing, and buoyancy control. Buoyancy control is especially important when diving on coral reefs as clumsy divers easily can break corals and sponges...some of which may be hundreds of years old. Thus, it is important to adjust our buoyancy so that we always hover over our study sites, not sit in them.

This afternoon we will continue to develop our line-laying and line-finding skills, the latter without our masks. We've been promised some surprises, as well, and I'm sure Otter and Thor have some good ones up their wet suit sleeves. In all seriousness, however, I'm enjoying the challenges and rewards of the training program. Good and safe divers always are respectfully confident in their equipment and skills. The Aquarius training program definitely instills respectful confidence in us all.