Having participated in two previous saturation missions, I planned this project to be an all stomatopod mission with six primary objectives. We wanted to explore communication among stomatopods using polarized signals, examine the evolution of monogamy in one group of stomatopods, study stomatopod larval behavior, match larvae to adults, detail stomatopod distribution and abundance, and characterize polarized light at the depth of Aquarius. These were all projects that had developed from the previous missions and promised to advance our understanding of how stomatopods communicate in the subtidal environment and lay the foundation for their use as bioindicator species.

I had been planning the mission for months and it was with considerable excitement and anticipation that I arrived in Key Largo to start training for saturation. The exercises were rigorous, but there was a certain satisfaction