Friday, June 22, 2001

Key Largo, Fla. -- Students at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Discovery and Science will be part of a unique video conference at 12:50 p.m., Wednesday, May 23, when they connect in real time with six ocean-dwelling aquanauts on board Aquarius. Three hundred students from Olsen, Sunrise and Ramblewood Middle Schools will fill the Museum's Blockbuster IMAX Theater and participate in the hour-long interactive program. Tens of thousands of additional students will be also watching the live event in classrooms throughout Broward County, thanks to the involvement of the Broward Education Communications Network (BECON).

Aquarius is an underwater laboratory that allows scientists to live and work on the seafloor for extended periods of time using a special technique called saturation diving. The lab is located 60 feet beneath the surface in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 3.5 miles offshore, near Key Largo. Owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and operated by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW), Aquarius is the only underwater research platform of its kind in the world.

During the event, students will learn about scuba and saturation diving. They will be able to ask Aquarius aquanauts questions about living underwater while live video from the ocean floor is projected onto the theater's giant IMAX screen. The six Aquarius aquanauts are participating in the first science mission of the year. Led by principal investigator Dr. Joseph Pawlik from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, the science team is returning for a second year to complete deepwater studies on the growth and ecology of reef sponges.

Topics that will be presented during the link include the challenges of living and working under the sea and the ecology of the Florida Keys coral reefs -- an area of particular interest to museum visitors since the Museum of Discovery and Science maintains the largest captive living Atlantic coral reef on public display in the country.

Underwater web cameras in and around Aquarius will allow anyone with Internet access to watch live pictures from the ocean floor until the mission ends on May 28. The Aquarius Web site can be accessed at www.uncwil.edu/nurc/aquarius.



Attention Assignment Editors:

Dr. Steven Miller, UNCW's Director of the National Undersea Research Center (NURC), will be on hand before and after the program for interviews and photographs.

For Additional Information Contact:

Dr. Steven Miller, (305) 451-0233, UNCW's Director of NOAA's National Undersea Research Center;

Mark Ward, (407) 461-1065, NURC/UNCW, Aquarius Public Affairs;

Theresa Waldron, (954) 713-0901, Museum of Discovery and Science.

.