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
- Bree