Until tomorrow!
- Bree
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This is what a sunrise looks like underwater! Trust me, I know, I've seen more than a few the past few days. Today was, as always, a fantastic day underwater, especially as things continue to improve in terms of our speed and efficiency down here! One thing I've started to notice is that after daily and constant use for hours at a time, wetsuits start to smell a bit.... funny. Which usually prompts an immediate shower to clean up! As I was thinking about this today, while waiting for our grouper treatment to finish up (some of you may have seen that on the helmet cams!), I started to notice that we as humans aren't the only ones concerned with cleanliness and hygiene. All over the reef there were organisms being cleaned, cleaning themselves, and fighting for the chance to clean up! I've known a little about this kind of thing before, but I've never really had the chance to sit for a few moments and actually watch it happen. It started small, when I noticed a little grouper species (Rock hind maybe?) sitting in a sand cove between some coral outcroppings. It was just sitting there staring at me, and so I stared back! Then a small cleaner shrimp crawled off the grouper, and walked away back into the sand. The grouper slowly sauntered off and I got a chance to look at the shrimp, who seemed happy with a job well done. I realized I had found what is known as a "cleaning station", where fish will show up to be serviced by smaller fish and shrimp! Turns out the reef is absolutely covered in stations such as this, and all service different sizes and types of fish. The picture on the left has a bar jack in the center, which is normally a mid to upper water column species... so I was curious as to why he was way down by the reef floor. He was surrounded by tons of little yellow cleaner fish, and was swimming almost vertically to stay in one place so they could pick parasites off of him! These stations are so important, that fish will even fight over them to have exclusive access, not so different than numerous Hollywood stars and their spas. I caught a sweet video of this particular jack getting cleaned and chasing off some other jack down below! It's not just little fish either, as this guy was willing to show us. This is Jyc (named years ago after Jacques-Yves Cousteau), and he is a seven foot long, 300 lb goliath grouper. He's big, he's old, and he knows it. He could eat pretty much any fish on the reef, but he doesn't eat the cleaner fish! In fact, he loves getting cleaned so much, that he allowed us to get right up next to him for well over an hour today. Some more videos and pictures of him below, as he let a remora clean him all over! Turns out grouper are just naturally inquisitive, I think. Or else they're just so much bigger than most other fish, they can afford to stick their noses where others may not dare. This little goliath under the habitat was keeping some Navy divers company as the worked on the habitat! It was a pretty cool day, that's for sure. It is very encouraging that some of our hard work is paying off already! The data we are collecting has looked very promising so far, and as I said we are only getting better. Tomorrow is shaping up to be a good day as well, as Fabien's father, Jean-Michel Cousteau, and famed ocean scientist Dr. Sylvia Earle are coming to visit. Hopefully we won't be out on SCUBA while they are passing by! Some sadness is to be had though, as we are now out of the homemade cookies and brownies that my dad sent. Alas, they were good while they lasted! Until tomorrow! - Bree
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Greetings all! We've settled into our schedules pretty well I'd say so far! By that I mean that our early morning wakeups are hurting more and more every day, haha. I've never been a morning person, I fear that this will not change over the next few weeks. Definitely starting to feel the effects of being waterlogged all day, and getting what I think is too little sleep. I'm still so very excited for the information we are getting though, that it's hard to let that get my spirits down! On that end, we are improving our research methodology and things go smoother and smoother each time we try it! We've got two full data transfers under our belt, two full days of "two-a-day" predator/prey collection, and "three-a-day" coral assessments. Starting to get some serious abrasion on one of my ankles from the constant wearing of dive booties though. While it's clean, it's about the size of a dime and a millimeter deep, so it can be a little touchy when I get the shoes on! We'll be keeping an eye on that for sure. Been a day with a little reminiscing too. When you're at the bottom of the ocean you think a lot about the people who you are physically unable to see! My aunt Renee uploaded this photo from years ago of me and my pap standing on a beach in the Outer Banks. Definitely remember this moment, and I remember how much I loved just being there with the family. I've come a long way since then and with every step my family was there.. wouldn't be here with all of their help, and I try to never forget that. Speaking of which, had a very pleasant surprise as well! My dad sent us all down a set of VERY delicious brownies and cookies. With what we've been eating recently, it was a really nice change of pace, thanks dad! We also had a couple of really good Skype calls today! Here me and Fabien were on the line with an aquarium in the northeast US. There was a really big group of people, and it was really encouraging seeing all of the interest in the work that we're doing down here!
So again, all in all a really good day, though they seem to go by so quickly. Time absolutely FLIES when you're underwater diving... I can hardly believe it's almost 10:30 already, but my body certainly can tell. I'm gonna crash hard tonight, that's for sure. Have a good night everyone! Evening everyone! Getting ready to hit the hay earlier than usual tonight... we started our first 4:30 am wake up calls. We will of course, be continuing those for the remainder of the mission! The reason being, we need to get out and deploy our grouper decoys before the fish themselves are ready to wake up and start feeding. It's basically the same principle as being in the woods before light when you're out hunting. So, we managed to do that... with the usual amount of first day bugs and glitches that I had oh so hoped to avoid! We started with a good one, actually, as we were unstrapping our decoys from the line they had rested on all night. As I'm gathering grouper from the line, I hear Andy over the coms, "Uhh... Bree, no no nooo noooooo" (with detectably increasing futility in each "no"... "you lost a grouper!". And so I look up just in time to see a grouper that had previously been negatively buoyant, floating freely to the surface... with no surface support to recover it. I have a theory that some bubbles from my regulators got into the holes and gave it the little extra push it needed for it's journey to the surface. I would have went to grab it, it was rising slowly enough that even a rock could catch it, however it was already above our allowable ceiling. The slow rise somehow made it all the more painful! Alas, these are things that happen, and who knows, depending on where it floats to, we may even end up with a neat little study of the ocean currents! We rallied, and made it out to our study site after finishing with Andy's coral nutrient input studies! Deployment of the grouper went fairly smoothly, as we had placed the nails earlier in the week to attach them to. We placed different densities of tasty seagrass on each test plot, and then left the groupers to their own devices before collecting them an hour later. The sonars were of course monitoring the stations, as were several GoPro's that we planted at each site. We retrieved the deployment, and returned to home base, where me and Andy were able to begin entering data! Which, even though simply a glorified jaunt into Excel, is still very exciting as we began to at least anecdotally see some effects of grouper presence. Still, replication is key and we do these studies and deployments twice a day. This will also allow us to compare differences between morning and afternoon behavior! In a few minutes we had as a break, I tried to snag some close ups of the really colorful growths over the Aquarius, unfortunately the camera lens had some water in it, so quality wasn't the best. As I said, replication in science is very important! This is because the more samples you have, the more likely you are to identify an actual trend, or effect in your experiment. That is, it is less likely to be influenced by random events and you can really get down to underlying causes. Random events such as... forgetting to collect an entire set of your deployed seagrass when you come in from diving. Which is totally something we as professionals would never, ever do on the first day... nope. While this is all well and good, what this means is that we'll need over 260 individual pieces of seagrass cut and measured to 10 cm. Doesn't sound like a lot, til you realize that we'll need this number -every- day over the next few weeks. Which means we need well over 2,000 of these little buggers in total! Oh well, monotonous repetitive actions are still very exciting when you can look up from your work desk and see that you're on a coral reef, 60 feet underwater! The evening ended with a pretty high note! One of our topside support members cooked his famous curry and sent it down to us in a pot! This is right after getting word that my dad had sent down a bunch of cookies for us that will arrive tomorrow! So all in all, we're not eating too bad. On a more logistic note, we are generating over 800 gigabytes of data every two days... which is a lot. Luckily we are able to shuffle hard drives to and from the surface, with many thanks to Grace for her help on that one! Anyway, here's hoping for a slightly smoother start to our early day tomorrow, and that you all are as well as we are down here! Don't forget to check out the newest video from Marc and team about our daily diaries and mission happenings: http://youtu.be/d6vYwWWZIGE - Bree Well we had hoped to collect some data today, however due to some late arriving equipment, we ended up just getting prepped for tomorrow. Fortunately, this is one of those very rare occasions where time is not the limiting factor for an experiment! We were able to get all of the grouper setups made, and are ready to deploy them bright and early around 5:30 am tomorrow. It won't be light yet, so this will be a lot of fun! Other than that I think we're all still just getting used to being down here. Slowly, things are finding their respective places where I imagine they'll lie for the next 28 days or so. And we also got the sonar streams up and running, I'm going to be adding those to the stream page! Had an interesting development earlier today in which the air conditioning broke. It quickly jumped to over 95 degrees and just about 100% humidity... which made things a bit miserable in the habitat. As some of you may know I'm not a big fan of heat, and had been looking forward to being cold again down here after being in Miami for a few years. Luckily the surface divers were able to fix things and we are no longer breathing a sauna! Some of the equipment for the experiments run by the folks at Northeastern University arrived today! We got some bags full of full covered test strips that will monitor hydrocarbon levels in the water. I can't speak for them, but I believe the basic gist of it is that we will be able to detect possible influences from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago. Again, not positive on that, we were just deploying the equipment! That was a fun exercise in itself, had a bunch of buoys tied to cinder blocks that had to be floated with the test strips somewhere in the water column... good practice on buoyancy! No these aren't real groupers, these are the decoys! However last fall they had them hanging in front of one of the web cams. Turns out people online were outraged because they thought we were killing and stringing up grouper for fun! Oh, and we also got the new experimental sonar up and running today, and that is being streamed on the website! It's really cool when you think how far technology has come, because I am sitting on a computer, 60 feet underwater, with a team of scientists from Norway using my desktop remotely to mess with the sonar underwater here. Mind-boggling sometimes. Well, that about sums up the third day! Not entirely eventful, but it's hard not to be happy and excited when you're in such a unique place. It also helps when you get some pretty amazing visitors like this goliath grouper. Close to 6 or 7 feet long, and probably around 300 lbs, this fish was big enough to fit my entire upper body in it's mouth at once. Not that I found out, but trust me it could! We are also doing a Reddit AMA tomorrow, which is basically like a virtual interview! You can find us at www.reddit.com/r/iama around noon, so make sure to drop by if you have questions! See you tomorrow! - Bree As I've mentioned previously, Andy and I are conducting a series of experiments while here on Mission 31. So even though it looks like all we're doing is having fun and messing around, we will actually be accomplishing some pretty cool stuff! We had to give a short write-up of our work, and it's importance, so I will share that with you all here. Coral reefs are one of the most unique and diverse landscapes on the planet! Although covering only ~0.3% of the world’s oceans, these biological habitats house over 25% of the species of marine fishes on the planet. Annually, reefs provide protein that supports roughly 10% of the world’s population and generate goods and services valued at as much as $375 billion per year. Despite their importance, coral reefs are in peril. Human impacts such as overfishing, nutrient pollution and climate change have caused the loss of over 25% of the planet’s reefs in the last two decades. In the Florida Keys where Aquarius is based, over 90% of coral cover has been lost! With such alarming declines, scientists fear that these fragile habitats may be the first ecosystem in recorded history driven to extinction by human activities. Overfishing is frequently regarded as one of the greatest threats to the health of coral reefs. Healthy stocks of algae eating fishes crop algae on reefs and recycle nutrients to keep reefs in coral dominated states. You can think of these algae eating fishes as farmers tending their coral garden! While it is becoming increasingly well known that overfishing of herbivorous fishes can instigate shifts from coral- to algae-dominated reefs, we currently still do not understand the role large predatory fishes play in maintaining healthy coral reefs. Worldwide, large predators such as grouper are often heavily targeted by fisherman for both food and sport (I'm looking at you bass and muskie fisherman, though these particular fish are sustainable fisheries of course!). In many environments, the loss of such large predators can trigger drastic changes in the environment. Predators not only impact the environment through the consumption of prey species, but can have indirect effects that far exceed the body count of the prey consumed. For example, the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park has initiated an environmental recovery that goes far beyond the wolves and elk that they eat. Rather than direct mortality, the fear of being eaten has driven elk to change the areas where they forage, allowing for the recovery of the parks previously declining aspen trees. It's the equivalent of someone dropping a ravenous lion into your cafeteria... how do you think you would react? From grazing herds and lions in the savannahs of Africa to snails and crabs along the shores of the Northern Atlantic these “landscapes of fear” that predators can create have been shown to regulate the feeding grounds of a myriad of animals across the planet. However, the effects of large predators on coral reefs are as of yet unknown. To investigate how predators shape the behavior of reef fishes, the first portion of our research will utilize model predators and cutting edge hydro-acoustic technology (Pic above: Here we see our imaging sonars aimed at a grouper in the distance. Poor water clarity illustrates why using sound can be so much more effective). We will be placing highly desirable food sources across the reef in the presence and absence of model Black Grouper, an important but depleted game fish. To monitor changes in the behavior and feeding patterns of resident herbivores, high resolution imaging sonars will continuously record fish behavior in the area. This data, coupled with detailed observations about food consumption, will allow us to understand how herbivorous fishes balance foraging decisions with the risk of predation and better understand the role of predators on reefs. The second portion of our research focuses on the impact of pollution on the corals that form coral reefs. Over the last century, humans have drastically altered the amounts of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in the environment. Florida examples include for example, agricultural fertilizing near the Everglades and a series of open sewage outfalls off the coast! In addition to stimulating the growth of harmful algae on reefs, these nutrients can have direct impacts on corals themselves and pose a significant threat to coral health. The tropical coral reefs that we see around the world arise from the symbiotic relationship between a group of coral-animals, known as anthozoans, and a group of algae, known as Symbiodinium. In this relationship the carnivorous corals capture and digest drifting food, providing nutrients such as nitrogen for protein synthesis to both the coral and the symbiotic algae living within the coral tissue. In exchange, the Symbiodinium carry out photosynthesis, transforming energy from the sun into sugars to provide energy for both partners. However, nutrient pollution may unbalance this delicate relationship. Just like fertilizing a garden causes plants to grow, excess nitrogen in the environment can stimulate Symbiodinium growth, changing patterns of photosynthesis, resource sharing, and the internal physiology of the coral. For a quick and catchy explanation of this relationship, please check out this video! Additional efforts will investigate these nutrient-induced changes in important reef forming corals. From the Medina Aquarius Base, we will simulate nitrogen enrichment on a select group of study corals, which were just delivered yesterday. These corals will be monitored with finely-tuned fluorescence meters and microsensor arrays to conduct round the clock assessments of the impact of nitrogen pollution on the health, physiology, and photobiology of these critically endangered coral species. The best part about all of this is that the equivalent amount of data could take between 8 months to a year to collect from the surface. We're doing it in just a little over two weeks from the Aquarius!! Anyway, I hope this helps you understand what we're trying to do here, and if you have any questions, please do ask, it's what we're here for! - Bree and Andy
So today I woke up on the bottom of the ocean, twice actually, but we'll get to that later. Unlike most days that I wake up in total disbelief of where I ended up the night before, I was totally cognizant of my surroundings all last night. Honestly, it felt like waking up in a bunk at my pap and uncle's hunting cabin, with about the same amount of comfort and musty-ish (but nostalgic) smell! I think I slept pretty good as well, which will either make the sleep researchers happy or disappoint them, I'm not sure. Upon waking the team and I shared a pretty decent breakfast of wraps and eggs with cheese and go along with our day. The first full day underwater was a pretty busy one, with a lot of water time, and a lot of technical trouble shooting. The habitat can quickly become pretty crowded, especially when there are VIP visitors coming to check things out. Today it was the fine folks from DOXA watches that dropped by, as you may have seen on the live stream! To make room in the habitat, Andy and I were deployed on our hard-hats to wait until our respective advisers, Drs. Kevin Boswell and Deron Burkepile, could make their way down with some equipment for our experiments. For a while, the novelty of having unlimited air and bottom time led to some pretty cool exploration around the habitat as we waited. I even managed to get some cool pics with the Lumia 1020 they allowed me to use for the mission!
However, as we waited an hour, we had to start getting creative and find other ways to keep busy.
After waiting 2 hours, we finally succumbed to it and tried to find the best way to fall asleep with a helmet on. We had mixed success, but I eventually nodded off for a couple minutes!
Finally, after what seemed like forever, our advisers arrived with the equipment and we could finally get down to business!
So we spent a little while longer getting the coral treatments into place, and also getting the sonar tripod in the right position. The rest of my night was consumed preparing a program that will allow the sonars to turn in the right direction every 5 minutes to observe a new station. It will hopefully be doing this for the next month! The work was briefly broken up when a 6ish foot shark swam through my view screen, so it's cool to know they're out there at least!
I also learned how we remove most of the CO2 from the atmosphere here when Ryan and Mark changed out the sodasorb filters from the air vents. These take CO2 out of the air so that we don't suffocate! Finally we got to conduct a few Skype calls with classrooms around the country, which was a lot of fun! I even was lucky enough to hear from my family when we talked with my old school district that my brother still goes to. Well, the equipment is here, the stuff is ready, the cameras are charged. Tomorrow begins the first real day of data collection, so here's hoping we don't experience the usual first day problems! Being that we're now at that stage, look for an upcoming post about the specific projects Andy and I will be working on over the next few weeks. All in all, a good day underwater. - Bree Greetings from 60 feet under the sea (and yes, that song is constantly stuck in my head now). Today was a pretty big day, and I've never experienced anything quite like it. I guess I'll go from the beginning and we'll see where that takes us! Like all good aquanauts, we arrived early at the reef base and prepared for our dives! Here we see Andy parking the truck. Turns out the Weather Channel had beat us there, and we were able to interact a little bit before the live feeds began! They took an interest in the grouper decoys we will be using for our predator/prey studies, and decided to interview Andy and I about our research! I've never been on Live TV before, so it was certainly an interesting experience. It was really cool to see that so many of my family members woke up around 7 am on a Sunday to watch the events... really means a lot to me and I think helped with the interview, haha. I even got an email from one of my undergraduate professors, Dr. Valerie Bennett, who happened to catch the interview! Was really nice to hear from her. Aside from the Weather Channel, there was a ton of media to see us off, and it was one of those profoundly surreal moments in life. The kind that leaves you wondering exactly how you got there, and instead of thinking about it you decide to film the whole thing on your phone instead, haha. Media gone, we took out on the boat and headed to the life support buoy one last time before splashdown. Got all suited up, said goodbye to the sun (Thank God, south Florida sun is way too hot), and descended to the Aquarius! When we arrived we had a few things to take care of, the first of which was the giant snarl of cables and cords that followed our sonar equipment to the Aquarius. I'd imagine most IT people would be in convulsions over the state of affairs, but it was quickly sorted out! Task completed I had some time to sit down and try some of the new Mountain House freeze dried food that will be our sustenance for the next few weeks. If all of them are as good as the lasagna, I think we're gonna be just fine! The following couple pictures are a small tour of the habitat, so you can see what we're dealing with! Now that we've gotten the equipment set up, and have completed our first couple of Skype calls, tomorrow is when the real work begins! On our plate is the deployment of the tripod containing our sonars, and planting the corals that the Burkepile lab is bringing to us. Weather has six foot waves predicted, which is going to be fun because the pressure in the habitat goes in and out with the waves... a bit rough on the ears. So happy to finally be here, and am excited to fall asleep to the sounds of a living coral reef.
I've added a page on the blog to our live streams within the habitat, so please watch us if you want! Tomorrow we will also be streaming live camera footage from our hard hat diving helmets, so you can get right out there in the water with us when we are doing our research! Here's hoping for a good day! - Bree Welp, that's it! Yesterday completed the full SCUBA mask training (see below!) Last few dives of our training were finished this afternoon. The papers are signed, the lessons were learned, the skills are improved. We're finally ready to get down to the real work! I will have to say that the training on the new masks were some of the most difficult I've had so far. The masks are designed in such a way that the regulators (breathing device) only fit in one particular position. This can make it quite difficult when you have your mask flooded full of water, or are buddy breathing with someone who is out of air! For the first time ever, I genuinely felt a little panic at not being able to properly clip in my air supply. That said, we got through it! I am a better, more comfortable diver for having done so, because in the end that is what training is all about. The situations we prepare for are exceedingly unlikely to happen, but should they occur, it's comforting to know I am able to handle them. Although I'm happy that we all have made it through the training, it's a bittersweet ending. Fellow aquanauts Liz and Grace will be saturating later in the mission, so Andy and I won't be seeing our new friends every day as we've become accustomed! Usually it's easy to get tired of being around the same people, but after spending almost every minute of every day of the past two weeks with these folks I have to say that they are some of the best people I've had the opportunity to work with (rest of the Aquanauts and production crew also included!). It may not seem like a big deal, but when you are going to be spending so much time in constant contact with each other, group cohesiveness is very important! Sadness aside, we will all still be involved in the mission until July, so I suppose I can save the teary goodbyes until then! Bonus video of me and Andy cruising around in our new masks. In other news we had a pretty cool little manatee visitor to the Aquanaut house. Incredibly photogenic and benign, he only stopped by long enough for us to get some really cool pics, and to notice a ton of scars all over his back. There's a big problem in Florida of these guys getting hit by propellers, which isn't helped by the fact that they will often dive just a few feet below the surface when they see a boat coming, making them nearly impossible to avoid. :-/ As part of a final instruction with some of the equipment we will be using, my advisor Dr. Kevin Boswell stopped by with a new toy in hand. From our friends at Sound Metrics, we received for use a dual-frequency identification sonar (DIDSON) that can be carried by a diver! These devices operate on a very high frequency of sound, and are kind of similar to a sonogram of the water column! (video here). Since they operate using sound instead of light like a traditional camera, this will allow us a view of the reef that cameras can't achieve! We will be able to examine fish and reef structure at night with zero light and during the worst visibility days. This has some big implications when you realize that most night studies require the use of lights, which inherently affect the way that fish behave. The small flip-down display on Fabien's mask here to the left is actually a small computer monitor that will allow us to see data in real time. So excited to get out and play with this one!
Well, as our dive safety officer Roger Garcia said yesterday, "It's officially too late to turn back!" As we move forward into the media and logistical frenzy that will be splash down day tomorrow, I want to remind everyone that what we are doing is very safe! Safer in fact, than a standard day of driving in Florida. Here we see a woman watching videos on her phone while driving. I think I'll take 60 feet underwater over that any day! Tomorrow's the big day, and my next post will be from the Aquarius habitat itself! I'm so incredibly excited to get down there and get set up. First thing on the plate for Andy and I will be to get the sonar equipment sorted out. Since it attaches to the habitat with cables that can be a few hundred feet long, there's a big old crow's nest waiting for us to untangle down there. From there we'll move onto the coral portion of the project and hopefully get into some sort of schedule. I'm sure there will be many pictures and stories incoming, so stay tuned. There will be also be a ton of live coverage, so keep an eye out on the Mission 31 Facebook page, Twitter account, and Instagram page for more info! There will also be live webcams from the habitat, which I'll link once we get down there. See you all down below, here we go! Hello all! Yesterday and today continues the safety training for our SCUBA excursions from the Aquarius. It may seem like a lot of repetitive training, however it's of the utmost importance to be comfortable under the water when using SCUBA for a couple of reasons. First, because we will be untethered from the Aquarius, the possibility exists that we may get lost or separated and not have communications. This means we're back to manual ways to identify our position, that of the Aquarius, and of our dive buddy. Secondly, it is possible to over-inflate our equipment on SCUBA, resulting in a dangerous rapid ascent. This is usually considered an emergency in normal open water diving, however once we saturate on the Aquarius, the gases in our bodies will be attuned to 2.5 atmospheres of pressure! This means going to the surface can be deadly. Essentially, by going to the surface you return the pressure to normal atmospheres and the gas expands very quickly in our blood and tissues, which I imagine would look something like this... except, you know, inside us! Obviously these issues are things we'd like to avoid, and so our instructors are doing their best to hammer all the contingency plans home! We also covered Medina Aquarius emergency procedures in case of catastrophic events such as fire, loss of air, or smoke! Manual searching underwater is difficult because in poor visibility the search diver him/herself can get lost! We learned to tie down safety lines and conduct circle patterns until we located our item of interest. We will be doing this underwater both with and without our masks to ensure we are prepared for all conditions! We also learned to use only our compasses to maintain a heading so we know how to return to the habitat. Here Liz does a pretty good job of finding her way to a few street pylons! Simulations of low visibility and sense deprivation are achieved with finely tuned technology in the form of a towel over our heads. Mission training aside, we found out that we would be participating in a sleep study while we're underwater. A group of sleep researchers are interested in the effects that lack of sunlight may have on our physiology. Frankly I'm more concerned about the fact that I don't sleep a whole lot anyway, might throw off their data. Anyway, we got some fancy watches to wear, though I must say they're not as sleek as the DOXAs. Going back out to the reef this afternoon for a second session of emergency procedures, so hopefully I'll get some more pictures! But until then, check out the new video from mission preparation that was posted to Youtube just a few minutes ago! Mission 31 - How to Grow a Coral Reef Hello all, my name is Aubree Zenone! If you're coming from a Mission 31 associated web page or social media you may have already seen some of my photos. I'll get right to the point and say that as with most things in life I am late to the whole blogging thing, actually a week late. That said, my fellow aquanauts Grace, Liz, and producer Marc have done an amazing job of keeping us all up to date on the first week of training, so I won't go into that too much here! What I will say is that everything so far has been incredible, and if you are wondering more about what we will be doing, please explore the website: www.mission-31.com. I will share a few pics though and please ask for further explanation! There, now that we've caught up on a week in just a few pictures, it's time to get to what we did today. The day started out as usual, with some very serious training on the safety procedures of advanced SCUBA diving from the underwater habitat (who doesn't do this every day?). Of course we couldn't wait to try on the new gear, though... Grace seems a bit skeptical! Safety training in hand, it was time to get some hands on experience with the equipment that we would be depending on for the next several weeks. We learned everything from how to diagnose a problem in each individual cylinder, how to treat a dive from the habitat as if we were in a cave (surfacing can be very dangerous once we are saturated), to how to properly do barrel rolls with a set of wings on our BC (Peppy would be proud). Still, nothing more exciting than a novel experience, and we all excelled at this particular portion of training. We were tested on shutting off our own air from each tank individually, which can be a bit of an undertaking, but not procedurally difficult. I apparently followed a few NASA astronauts in forgetting to turn on my primary air after giving my secondary regulator for someone as an emergency drill, but I figure if they can be qualified enough to be sent to space I must be in good company (hear that NASA?). After completing some drills we followed a few submerged guidelines to find the Aquarius from our training site and even managed to see a pretty big spotted eagle ray gracefully gliding through the water. All in all a good training dive, despite the lack of oxygen.
First day of technical SCUBA training down and I'm a bit waterlogged, but I'm looking forward to the next few days of further instruction. Besides, nothing a few BBQ chicken legs and libations at the Bonnet Rouge production house can't solve. There, wow, first blog down. Looking forward to sharing my journey, and be sure to check out the Mission 31 social media pages, as well as my own! - Bree |
Aubree
Small town girl from Pennsylvania with webbed fingers. Marine biology is my thing, and I am lucky enough to be participating in one of the most exciting undertakings of my life! Archives
December 2018
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