When we were finished working, we had a few minutes left of our two hours, and we spent it in a final tour of the habitat - took a few more pictures and searched out a few more cool little animals in the nooks and crannies. Jim and Byron made sure that we were back in at 9:30 sharp because it is important to the decompression process that we don't take on any extra nitrogen by being below storage for more than our allotted time.

The decompression process actually started at 4 pm, but Jim and Byron were manically busy all day, preparing things and doing final checks. We tried not to get in their way... In the middle of the afternoon, we were joined by Ryan, another UNCW hab tech, who was in charge of controlling the decompression process, since we all had to start by breathing oxygen - including, of course, Jim and Byron, so they couldn't also control the process by themselves. We started deco by lying on our bunks and breathing through large Darth Vadar looking masks for three 20 minute periods. After that there was really nothing to do except sit around, chat, sleep, drink plenty of water and watch movies (the surface support team kindly sent down a DVD player and a pretty good selection). All week, we were making great plans for the useful things we were going to do during deco (write up data and so on) but in the event, we were all too exhausted to do anything much. Although the process is very carefully planned and safe, some tiny bubbles of nitrogen do form in your tissues - not enough to do any damage, but enough to make you feel as if you had a heavy night out on the town the night before. First the nitrogen narcosis, then the decompression hangover!

We finally finished our "trip" to the surface at about 9 am this morning. Poor Janet got a little sick for the last few hours - apparently a problem with equalizing the pressure in her ears was making her feel nauseous. The rest of us had no excuse and were put to work by Jim and Byron cleaning the habitat to make sure it is in good shape for the next mission. At 8:30, we were "blown back down" to ambient pressure (2.5 atmospheres) - we all sat around the table and cleared our ears as we descended, just like on a regular dive. Then we all quickly got out into the wet porch, where three divers from the dedicated surface support team were there to escort us up a specially placed line to the surface. Unlike our normal dives the last couple of weeks, which have involved lots of heavy equipment, we were only wearing bathing costumes, masks and fins, with small "pony bottles" of air tucked under our arms. Emerging into the light and air was really wonderful, and our surface team, Lawrence, Kristen and Danny, were there to greet us, which was great. So nice to talk to them properly and share our experiences of the week. A short boat ride later, we are back on dry land, and are enjoying the luxury of long showers, real toilets and fresh fruit. But I would still go back to Aquarius tomorrow if I could. It was possibly the best experience of my life.