It has been a long and exciting day for the Northeastern Surface team! After waving goodbye to Liz Magee and the other second half Aquanauts as they left for Aquarius, we hung out around the Aquarius Shore base for a bit. We then had a boat briefing from Captain Brady, went back to the house to pack up science and do last minute errands. It started pouring down rain and thunder stormed, so we ate lunch at the house. After 1pm, we got back to the shore base and departed for our first dives of Mission 31! For most of the team, this was their first dive in warm water! Very different from the 55 degree Fahrenheit water up in Boston. We did a check-out dive at a site called "Hens and Chickens," where we just got our buoyancy straightened out and went for a swim so that the people who had never dived on a coral reef before could just check things out. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of coral disease on this reef. Most, if not all of the corals looked unhealthy. But, we saw a lot of cool invertebrates and a turtle! We then headed over the the Aquarius reef to bring down equipment and to start setting up some basic framework for our experiments. The Aquarius reef site is such a unique dive. Of course, the main attraction is the habitat itself, but then theres also all of the big fish that it attracts by being such a large structure. There were huge tarpon swimming around the habitat and also quite a few grouper. While setting up tripods for the sponge experiment, Allie and I swam by the grouper-dummies that the FIU scientists are using to study predator-prey interactions. The dummy-fish were strung out on a line, and at first Allie couldn't quite figure out what they were. I had to come up with some pretty creative hand signals to tell her that the fish dummies weren't real and were part of the other experiment. Underwater communication can be a bit tricky, luckily we are picking up some dive slates tomorrow so that we can write notes to each other underwater. After a day of successful diving, we were all exhausted and most people slept on the boat ride back to the shore base. Once back at the house, we ate dinner while preparing more of our equipment and scientific instruments for tomorrow's dives. We had such a busy day!
Below, is our day in pictures:
Below, is our day in pictures:
Sorry for such a short update, hope you all enjoyed the pictures!
Best Fishes,
Sara
Best Fishes,
Sara