This morning we set off down the other excursion line we have been using the Fifth Leg line. It goes to a beautiful area of the reef with high coral cover and lots of relief (lots of hills, valleys and holes that are good for animals of all kinds). Today Beth and I were doing profiles, while Mark and Janet were wielding the PAM. I often seem to get profile duty; I really like doing them, plus driving the PAM involves holding the sensor still and lifting your finger in the air at the same time, something that I just can't seem to coordinate! Mark was cracking up with laughter the only time I tried to do it with him. Funny, I can pat my head and rub my stomach just fine & perhaps it's the nitrogen (which is a convenient excuse for all lapses down here!).

Anyway, Beth and I did a series of profiles down at the end of the Fifth Leg. The conditions this morning were pretty challenging because it got very rough in the night and even down around 90 feet there was wave surge as well as quite a strong current. We also (as yesterday) enjoyed all the night animals, as well as the bioluminescence. Beth looked like a magical witch swimming along ahead of me with sparks flying off the end of her fins. Basket stars might be my new favorite animals; they look like the Plant from Little Shop of Horrors (in miniature, luckily).

We came back to Aquarius for a top up of air just as it was getting light; the coral polyps gradually closing up, the moray eels going back to their holes, some fish coming out and others going to sleep and the reef generally starting to look gradually more familiar. On our way back out, Beth and I saw a huge Southern stingray settling down on the sand next to our chambers. He has been round here quite a bit, and seems to like the sand right where we work. Surface team, if you are reading this, be careful tomorrow! Anyway, he landed on the sand, gave himself a couple of shakes and in no time was buried so that just his eyes and tail were visible. On the way back the next time, he was gone, but we could still see the stingray-shaped imprint, like a snow angel.

Once it had got light enough to see the numbers on our datalogger, we could see that the waves and current were so strong that there was very little structure to the boundary layer we were measuring - i.e., the water column was so churned up that differences in water chemistry were all smeared out and mixed up. So we consulted with Mark (by slate - consulting underwater is always very cumbersome, especially if your handwriting is as awful as mine is) and decided to take some profiles near the habitat, as baseline data for our current meter, and then call it a day. We were grateful because both visibility and water temperature were deteriorating fast. We spent the last half hour of our dive time in a bit of tourism - searching around and under the habitat for animals. We saw a frogfish living right on the habitat! This might be my other new favorite animal. It is a fish but doesn't look like any fish you ever saw. In fact, I am at a bit of a loss to describe it, except to say that it is bright green and looks a bit like a cross between a sponge and a frog, and apparently walks rather than swims. If this doesn't give you a good mental picture (it certainly wouldn't help me!) I think Janet took a good photo of it, which will hopefully be posted on the website. We also found some other cool things - brittlestars which crawled up Beth's arm, fileclams with bright red flesh and long whiskers coming out of their shells and some arrow crabs that look a bit like long-nosed spiders with tiny, luminous violet claws. Also a lot of different kinds of worms, which are Beth's very favorite.

By the time we had finished our nature trail, the visibility had deteriorated to about 10 feet and it was time for us to come in for hot showers and cups of tea. We discovered that the surface team couldn't come out because of the weather. Fifty feet above our heads, they are apparently having 25 knot winds, 6-9 foot seas and thunderstorms - even our devoted surface divers couldn't make it down here through that! This required us to change our plans for the afternoon a bit. Beth and I set out with lots of trepidation to try and take the coral samples for protein analysis - usually Kristen and Laurens' job. Luckily, Beth is just as dexterous as Kristen, so we managed OK. I just had to hold the lid of the syringe, and not lose Beth in the murk. The visibility was so bad that we had to use our cave reels to get from the habitat to our chambers - a distance of about 20 feet! Mark and Janet have just got back from their afternoon outing with the report that the visibility is a little better (although it is dark!) but the water temperature has dropped dramatically - to 25 degrees Celsius from 28 at the start of our mission. In fact, Janet looked about as cold as I have ever seen anyone - Beth rushed in with hot chocolate as she was putting her dive gear away and she is now sitting at the table wrapped in towels and fleeces. But I'll let her tell you all about it.