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
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