The days are passing quickly, and we only have 2 full days left to work - today and Monday. Tuesday is a short diving day. We will spend the day cleaning up the evidence of our research (flags marking the stomatopod burrows, the rope marking the edges of our 500 m2 plot, etc.), and then we start decompressing over 17 hours. The habitat techs will bring the air pressure inside the Aquarius back to the surface pressure and then we'll have a quick dive to the boats waiting on top. I've gotten used to the blue light of the ocean, to seeing fish outside the window, and to the Aquarius habitat that's become our temporary home. I want to remember some of the unique aspects of the experience here, such as falling asleep to what sounds like raindrops on the roof, but is really the snapping of shrimp claws and oyster shells. I've also been falling asleep with visions of stomatopod eyes peeking up from burrows on the inside of my closed eyelids - we spend so many hours a day looking for just that!

It's now mid-afternoon, and we're in our 4-hour interval between dives - which means its naptime as soon as Mark and I finish entering the data! We have plankton tows to do at night so the rest will do us good. This morning with the surface team, we tried some of the more experimental aspects of the project. We "cast" stomatopod burrows to see what shape they are and if they have side burrows (we'll see if the epoxy hardened tomorrow). We also chased larvae that we had collected last night, to see if we could tell which way the tiny, nearly transparent animals would swim (the answer seems to be: up). Later, I saw a spotted eagle ray on the swim back from one site - it's one of my favorite animals, and aptly named, as it gracefully flies through the water. Just before coming in for lunch, I put on the hookah rig and hung over the side grating in the middle of a "bait ball," thousands of tiny silver fish, darting in different directions and streaming by as they try to avoid the Bar Jacks and Yellowtail Snapper that patrol the edges. I took some video as a souvenir of our remarkable 10 days underwater - it's been a great experience!