Things are now becoming grim on Aquarius. Our surface crew was unable to get to us today because of high seas (6 foot swells) and we are now running short of essential supplies. The item we are most in need of is hot chocolate, Ove somehow managed beat me to the last one this morning, we are now forced to drink tea or coffee. Luckily enough this is the only thing that we are running low on. Because of the space limitations on the Aquarius we only have one small chill unit to keep food in, and so most of our meals consist of freeze dried food, which aren't half bad. We even have ice cream when we want, freeze-dried of course, but the taste is certainly reminiscent of ice cream. Mark has just whipped up what I think is the highlight of the menu so far, mini pizza, I will have to watch closer next time to work out how where he finds the ingredients.
Today Ove and I started using the Pulse Amplitude Fluormeter (PAM) out on the reef at 60 feet to examine the photosynthesis of the coral's symbiotic algae. This sort of experiment is only possible diving out of the Aquarius as our dive times are greatly extended, it is a real pleasure to be able to dive at this depth without being constantly worried about your bottom time, today's dive was over 3 hours.

Unfortunately it looks like there will not be a night dive tonight. The weather has turned nasty and visibility at the moment is down to only a few feet, we can not even see the web camera that is on the habitat porch. You know it must be rough when you see all of the fish sheltering next to the habitat.

Regrettably this bad weather may have affected the coral spawning. Josh and Sarah have been unable to find many larvae on their early morning dives checking the larval traps. That is the way science goes unfortunately, the best-laid plans go awry as soon as you are in the field. It was lucky for us that we already had collected a number of larvae on our first two days here to do the experiments. Even with a slight shortage of larvae though with the opportunity Aquarius affords us to work outside we have no shortage of additional experiments that can be done until the corals begin spawning again.

Cheers from Aquarius