After 5 days in the habitat, much of our day has become routine (diving for 6-8 hours per day, voracious appetites quenched by freeze-dried meals, wetsuit sores in the most unlikely places). Nonetheless, each day also brings surprises and new sightings of spectacular marine life, and one could never grow tired of watching the endless rhythm of predation that plays out all around the habitat. Huge schools of silverside baitfish encircle the Aquarius, much to the delight of the flanks of large predators (snook, barracuda, jacks, permit, yellowtail) that continuously slash through the schools. We were told that we would be able to see the baitfish schools noticeably shrink each day as the snook grow visibly fatter, but they seem as abundant as ever.

Yesterday was a good day for our science; we were finally able to capture a large (about 1 foot in length) Lysiosquilla glabriuscula male stomatopod from a burrow in front of the habitat. For 2 days he had eluded our snares, but yesterday we finally enticed him into taking a baited herring sent down to us from the surface. This species lives in monogamous pairs, with the male hunting from the burrow entrance while the female tends eggs deep in the sand burrow. Now that the large male has been removed, we will monitor the burrow entrance 24 hours a day (using video cameras) to detect when the now solitary female emerges and begins advertising for a new mate.

We also exceeded our expectations by finding and marking over 60 Odontodactylus havanensis burrows. These smaller stomatopods (roughly 3-4 inches) seem to have a unique signaling system using polarized light - now that we have their burrow systems marked, we will begin experiments with the polarized light tomorrow.

We ended our day with a night dive in the vicinity of the Aquarius. While the invertebrate life was not quite what I am used to on the reefs in front of my house in Indonesia, we did have a number of interesting encounters. Lobster are numerous around the habitat (the area is protected from fishing), and a friendly nurse shark was seen throughout the dive. Moray eels of every imaginable color pattern abound on the reefs around the Aquarius. But again, the "winners" of the night dive show (at least in my opinion) were again the snook and barracuda, who seem to step up their attacks on the baitfish schools as darkness falls. We ended our dive by capturing stomatopod planktonic larvae, which were finally in abundance after 5 nights of curious absence.

Overall, the most impressive aspect of the Aquarius to me is the fact that such a small "marine protected area" (no fishing is allowed in the vicinity) is so effective in increasing fish abundances. I've already mentioned the abundant lobster (probably the only place remaining in Florida where you can see large aggregations of these animals fearlessly moving about), but the number of large predatory fish is truly spectacular. Most reefs around the world are depressingly lacking in large predators (they have been long ago fished out), but the area right around the Aquarius is packed with snook, barracudas, permit, jacks, and large grouper. I was ecstatic to see numerous large specimens of Nassau grouper, which is considered a threatened species throughout much of the Caribbean. Perhaps it would be instructive for the citizens of Florida to examine comparative video footage from this area and from the overfished Florida reef tract before the next public commentary on the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Signing out - time for another dive…