I was surprised by two things while diving from Aquarius this week. The first was how fast time passes when you're working under water, not just sight seeing. During our first dive, I checked my watch at 17 minutes, then again at an hour and was amazed at how much time had gone by. After that I checked regularly since I wanted to be sure we didn't check in late and get grounded to the habitat for being numb nuts.

My other surprise was how alive the reef became as I relaxed during the dives and was able to see the world around me. Before we came down to the habitat, I was more concerned with not drowning, getting bent or eaten, or worse, doing something stupid, especially in front of the NURC divers who make this stuff look effortless. After a week of training dives, this place was all of a sudden teaming with life. The longer I looked in one spot, the more I saw. This is definitely the place to be to illustrate the circle of life in action. As alive as the reef is today, it's difficult to imagine what it looked like 30 years ago before it had declined 90%. I remember the open water and sandy bottom life from snorkeling around the Keys as a kid, but I don't remember the reefs.

Our working dives were all pretty easy thanks to relatively calm bottom conditions. A couple of days gave us a challenge swimming back down the 5th leg at the end of the dive, but nothing close to an aborted dive. I can't imagine how difficult the work would have been if we'd had a strong current or heavy surge. Seventy feet above us the reef was apparently seeing 6-8 ft waves. On the bottom, just a barely perceptible slow surge. Our biggest challenge was controlling our own buoyancy, which we had gotten more natural at by the first day in saturation. Every dive thereafter was that much easier.

Now that we've hit our stride diving, we're done and getting ready for decompression. In a few hours we'll go on oxygen for an hour, then a staged exhaust up to surface pressure. Then it's a wake up, a quick pressurization back to ambient depth, and a short swim to the surface. We'll be in Key Largo for 2 days off-gassing nitrogen, then back to Houston.

Last week, we all felt like we'd been here for months. Now we're sad it's over already.

This work is similar to manned space flight in many ways. Not the least of which is that it is difficult to believe someone is fortunate enough to be paid to do this for a living. In a few days I'll be home with my family and back to my other job that I can't believe I'm paid to do.