Life in the Habitat continues, and, believe it or not, the novelty of living
24 hours a day underwater has begun to wear off – amusements border on the banal.
It seems that waking hours are spent focused on food. What is for a snack? Was
it good? When shall we eat dinner? Who ate all the Baby Ruth bars? Is it
possible to put too much cheese on the freeze-dried eggs? The
facilities are splendid, the mission crew great, and the science is so far going
well.

This morning we made a long, deep, video survey dive from the deep S4
mooring. Staging our dives from Aquarius really pay off. We could spend 91
minutes at 130 feet (normally you only have about 10 minutes) and after a few
hours resting back in the Habitat, we could head back out to continue working
for another 3 hours. These sorts of dives are just impossible from a boat.
The video transect went well – we ran line reels from the S4 mooring anchor (a
S4 is a type of undersea current meter) for about 100 meters while collecting
algae along the bottom. We left early in the morning (0730) and the sea floor
was lit with the eerie glow of the video lights.

For lunch we had a great treat. Our hard-working surface support team
stopped by carrying a load of freshly cooked pizza, which was a welcome change
from the piles of ‘just add water’ freeze-dried dinners we have been consuming.
Diving burns a lot of calories and everyone has an appetite. It was also great
just being able to talk to our surface friends face to face, rather than
through the evening telephone connection. We wish they could be down here with
us, but we do need the help from above and we really appreciate their sacrifice
(while we are down here, having all the fun….).

This afternoon we all swam over to our primary survey location, and
splitting into 2 teams began the long task of making biological surveys of
every location we have one of our temperature data-collecting nodes. We managed
to complete a coral census at 18 nodes – only 82 more to go. I didn’t have the
best of dives as things seemed to be conspiring against me. First, my camera’s
strobe cord shorted out so I had to lug it around as a useless extra weight for
the next 3 hours. My mask was continually flooding because my now unshaven face
has started to disrupt the mask seal (time to shave!) and I managed to swim
into some sort of stinging nasty that zapped my face leaving welts along one
cheek. Nobody said that science under the sea was all ‘smiles and sunshine.’

We have all just finished an evening meal and some of us will be heading out
on the hookah gear to work on equipment attached to a platform just outside the
Habitat. As we will be at the same depth as our living quarters, we can work
there almost indefinitely. We’ll insert some deepwater algae into a pair of
variable speed incubating flumes as well as making a few in situ fluorescence
measurements on their cell chloroplasts. Should be a hoot! After all that,
we’ll once again come into the sanctuary of Aquarius for some much needed rest.
Tomorrow will be another busy day.