When we arrived at the NE station much to our surprise our friend the grouper was hanging out inside. We noticed his fins under the edge of the station as we approached. The weigh station is a small structure that has air inside. You can stand up inside the air pocket and take your regulator off, talk, or get something to drink if you plan ahead. Importantly, you can plug your tanks into an air manifold and top off or refill your tanks. The waystations are really nice when you have a lot of work to do out on the excursion lines, away from Aquarius. It's a great way to keep diving without having to return to the hab. Okay back to the grouper. He was just hanging out just below the air pocket, beneath the cover of the waystation. Dan and I looked in the port holes and could see him below just gently swishing his tale. As the fish we see under the hab he seemed to be sitting under a shady tree in the afternoon. I think he was taking a nap. As we descended below the level of the waystation he saw us and moved to give us some room to do our tank filling. Pretty cool to see him up close and personal.

The comm checks went surprising well and even though we had to repeat quite a few of them we were back at the hab about one hour early. We helped our buddies tear down the construction task and even got a little more free time to look around for our scorpion fish friend. He was blending in too well for us to find him today. We did however see a smaller nurse shark swim out from beneath Aquarius. They swim so gracefully. Tail swishes, then mid body, then head. Barracuda seem a little less graceful and fish smaller than that seem to just dart around. Watching them move is almost as fun as looking at their different body shapes, sizes and colors. A very different world down here.

After lunch our next dive was out on the Pinnacle line for Coral Science. So you are probably wondering about coral science, huh? Well so were we, but now we know all to well. Coral science consists of laying transects on the reef and then categorizing and documenting the largest 10 corals along the transects. On our way out to the site we stopped at the waystation to check in and get some air (standard procedure). When we got to the station guess who was there? The grouper! We couldn't believe it. We were pretty sure it was the same fish we saw at the NE waystation and the one that also hangs our under the hab. We had to sort of push him out of there. Dan and I were cracking up. I was worried that he was going to start leaning on us like a big old Labrador retriever. On our way out of the waystation we were also lucky to see a formation flight of eagle rays. Probably 8 to 10 with wingspans of 2 to 5. Amazing, the mind's true liberation! They were so gracefully flying by, it made you want to follow them. Unfortunately they were not going toward our worksite, so we had to let them get away from us. The rest of the afternoon we spent doing coral science. Surprisingly enough after 2 hours I think I actually started to recognize different types of corals and enjoyed checking out the different colors, sizes and shapes.