Yesterday's dives were marked by the beginning of our clean up. We paced the removal of soon-to-be-finished transects with jobs that gave our experiments a few final hours. It's almost sad to see the reef emerge from the burden of our flagging tape and nests of experiments. The reef looks oddly wild again after a month of daily nitrox diving and 8 days of saturation diving. As much as I'd love to keep on with this level of work, it is time to return to patient families and, for me, time to let my rashes heal.

Our dive this morning left us time to sleep to the leisurely hour of 6:30 AM. For once, we watched sunrise through a window. The storm front overhead kicked up winds and seas, making the support role for the surface-based R/V Delta crew unenviable. They worked to unload Aquarius of our clothes and science gear, making dive trips back and forth from Aquarius to the boat above. All we had to do was to stage out, swim 10 minutes to our site, and collect the remaining experiments and travel lines. Even those few jobs drained 2 hours too quickly! Our last looks at the Pinnacle site included only the gazebo and mooring - pretty close to the way we found it nine days ago.

This evening we were treated to a lightning show from a storm above - viewed from inside Aquarius. Maybe mother nature was celebrating a successful mission too?

So what did we accomplish with this combined dayboat and saturation mission? We added new sites at the limits of the depth distribution for Halimeda tuna, we collected samples for genetic analyses of these populations from 3 sites that span a 50 ft depth gradient, we ran a shade acclimation experiment to see how quickly these plants can adjust to changing light regimes. Via the loan of a Diving PAM from Dr. Kevin Beach, University of Tampa, we've explored light responses by H. tuna in response to nutrient enrichment, shading, and diurnal periodicity. In short, we've gained great insight into how these plants grow and respond to their environment. As usual, much of this will lead to new experiments; we've already begun to ask questions that we couldn't have formulated last month.

As usual, Team Halimeda needs to thank all the terrific support from the staff at NURC for this Saturation Mission headed by Craig Cooper, Jim Buckley, Jay Styron, and their crews for the shifts including Otter, Thor, Fred, Tim, Hutch, Russ, Chris, Kendall and Ryan; these guys supported our activities 10 days straight. Otter and Thor ran our training week drilling into us the need for safety; Mike Florant and Mike Smith deserve my special thanks for putting up with us for 10 days in Aquarius and keeping a sense of humor through it all. Dr. Monica VanEvery oversaw our medical needs, showing off a high professionalism and compassionate doctoring. The dayboat Team Halimeda crew of Peter, Jen, Ryan, Erica, Linda and Laura were great in covering our shallow site and providing for our chocolate needs while we were in saturation.

At what seems to be the end of this mission, I 'm left wondering why this remarkable research tool can't be more available to biologists. The technology's already in hand; it's application is part of our future as we all work to understand and manage these complex biological resources - our coastal frontiers.