Sunday morning, and at the watchdesk all the screens are sleeping but one, as the lone tech team member records the last stages of blowdown and ascent for our aquanaut team. In half an hour my buddies will be back ashore, tired but glowing. I look back on the completed mission with satisfaction at what we have accomplished. Near forty ultrasonic tags and four passive data loggers are in place, and my piscian patients all seemed to be doing well…save the one eaten by a barracuda in the evening twilight following a day's last submarine surgery. We will remember and drink a round of beers to him when all are topside later today. Masses of data from computers in the habitat, the first fruits of data downloaded from one of the automatic loggers, and plastic sample bottles full of both seawater and stories, all await our inspection and analysis. The three precious living coral specimens on which we performed our at-depth experiments, now rest happily in the magnificent reef tank at our friendly dive store World Watersports, awaiting shipment to Biosphere 2 in Arizona for my further study. These are the details. But what have we really learned? The science will take weeks to sort through. All we know now is what we feel in our gut. What do I feel?

Feeling one is that of a luscious new power. All the questions that have ever plagued us about how the larger reef animals live and move can now be answered; the technology has proven its potential. This owes much to my surface scientist colleagues- James Lindholm of the National Marine Sanctuary Program and Mitch Sisak from Lotek, the manufacturer of one of our acoustic technologies. I am happy that our National Geographic photographer, Brian Skerry, had a good mission and is returning home with lots of exposed film. It feels great to know that I can bring my marine biology students in the BU Marine Program a new sense of inner excitement, and lots of new images and videos to keep their enthusiasm up through all the taxonomy and equations they still have to master. The mission forged a stronger bond among our five institutions that can lead to bolder projects in the future- that feels good (the mission brought together the National Undersea Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the New England Aquarium, Boston University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the National Geographic Society). There is also relief that we managed to implant all those tags without causing undue suffering to the fishes themselves. Strange thought that…at the end of each day I feasted on our patients' kin while the aquanauts faced up to the prospect of a freeze-dried repast. Some relief is there as well from having more or less managed to operate the apparatus to study coral calcification, loaned to me by my colleague, Chris Langdon of Columbia University. You always fear feeling like a fool when you do something that you haven't done before. And of course I look forward to seeing my family again tomorrow evening. But lingering about all of these feelings, like a darkness around the edge of everything, are my recollections of how the Florida reefs have continued their depressing decline. It's a feeling I've had many, many times over the past two decades. The world is changing for the worse, as the colors drain from the earth's most beautiful and diverse underwater realms. Are people to blame? And even if they aren't, they certainly are being hurt by the disappearance of corals and fishes from Florida and many other places in the warm Atlantic. What can we do about it?

The best of all the feelings I have at the end of this mission is the feeling that we now have the capacity to make things better. In my two weeks in the Keys I've become aware of a great groundswell of energy, now slowly organizing itself, to create a community of Watchers in the Keys. Scores of scientists, government bureaucrats, sport divers, fishermen, and everyday citizens are contributing their time, their effort, their money, and their sweat to gathering information about the condition of the undersea world off the south Florida coastline. This information will tell us if the conservation measures now in place are working, and if so, whether more or different measures are required. The powers that be - government bodies, industry leaders, community leaders - all have the choice of heading or ignoring the wisdom born of our new underwater vision. But if they choose to ignore it, this time there will be somebody to blame, and something that can be changed. There will always be rogues and folks who refuse to get with the program- signs of fish poaching right on Conch Reef, a totally protected area, are legion. Nonetheless, responsibility for the future of Florida's coral reefs shall now rest where it belongs. With the people who live here.