We got our bag and headed back out in search of cold water and ready to tackle the filtering syringes. Okay, so they were a little difficult to get pulled apart, but we finally managed to get three and were pretty proud of ourselves for remembering to write down all the scientific stuff we're supposed to note when doing the experiment. As suggested, we quickly made our way back to the hab to drop off the samples...and then we saw them! A large grouper and a sleeping nurse shark under the hab. I think Dan's eyes were as big as his mask, I am sure mine were just the same. It looked like the hab was a shady tree for these two content fellows. Again, I realized we were not the toughest guys in town. We had some time after that to really start looking around at the surrounding sealife so we opted to take another trek down the S4 navigation line, this time closer to the sea floor. We saw a large spotted eagle ray with a wingspan of about five feet. He was gliding around the seafloor like he was flying - sort of cool. I just can't seem to get my bouancy under control to swim like that. A couple more turtles passed by us as well. They looked like little guys compared to the first one we saw. Sort of cute though I am sure they probably weighed about 70 pounds...

There is a lot of stuff going on down there. Amazingly small and transparent creatures scurrying about. Seems like all of them have a plan, though I am not sure what the heck they are doing except possibly looking for food. We saw the same fish we had seen earlier with Thor during our previous dive. I recognized him because he was "tagged" (I later found out), and a stream of algae was growing on the tag. I thought it was fishing line at the time, but Thor explained later that a number of fish were tagged at the site as part of other scientific studies. It is funny how many of the little creatures are sort of possessive about their part of the ocean. I also noticed that the ocean bottom is a pretty crowded place. I saw hundreds, and probably thousands, of life forms swimming around (we put a flashlight up to the window later that day and I actually numerous larval forms of fish and other critters.) An eye opening morning dive!

The second dive had a lot less sight seeing. We were on a mission with well defined work tasks. After a pre-dive briefing by our fellow aquanauts on the "comm/line tagging DTO (Detailed Test Objective)" Dan and I thought we were ready...little did we know. Our task was to tag the NE navigation line every 25 feet while making communication checks with Houston. We're using NetMeeting, which Ryan was totally instrumental in making happen. And it worked pretty darned well. I set out to tag the line measured between Dan and myself with a tape measure. Dan hung out at the tagged parts of the line and did the comm checks facing all four cardinal directions. Comm was pretty good for us up to about 300 feet away from the habitat as we marked the line in 25 foot increments with plastic ties up to about 500 feet. Sounds pretty easy, right...well, in the meantime, I dropped all the tags and had to catch them as they were floating away, dropped the tape measure, went to the fill station to get air, had no comm, so swam back to the hab to get air and check in, went back out to finish tagging the line to 500 feet, and bustered back to stay on schedule for the Daily Planning Conference (DPC) with Houston. In the DPC we were entertained by the comm difficulties similar to those we had in our exercise...an exercise in frustration management that is obviously and most easily solved with humor. Down here inside Aquarius we all got a good chuckle talking about our experiences, victories and blunders, with no more falsehoods or derision! Another great day under the sea!