Cara Fiore

Cara Fiore

Jan 30, 2015

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Under the Sea: What It's Like Living in Aquarius

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One of the major challenges with reef-related research is the time needed to set up and gather data from the field for our experiments. This is why its so important for us to work with underwater research facilities, like Aquarius, where we can have longer "bottom-times" (i.e. time spent underwater). For my doctoral work, I spent 10 days living and working underwater. Here I share my experience for one of those missions.

Mission Control: Setting Up and Getting Our Samples

In Aquarius, an underwater laboratory measuring 43 x 20 x 16.5 ft, we could work for up to nine hours a day in the water - something you could never do using regular SCUBA.

We often did not dive for quite that long each day because you also get cold after a few hours in the water - even in warm Florida Keys water, because it is still a good 20 degrees cooler than your body temperature. The extended bottom-time (6-8 hours typically), let us setup experiments that normally would be too difficult to perform underwater.

The main goal of the mission was to determine how coral reef ecosystems will respond to a warmer and more acidic environment brought on by climate change. We collected common sponges and corals and challenged them to warmer water, low pH water, or both using special chambers that we setup on the deck of Aquarius. Over several days we monitored and sampled the sponges corals to examine them for a range of diagnostic tests.

Life At Sea: Staying Fed, and Staying Healthy

Because we were in the water working so much, we did not spend much time in the Aquarius habitat itself. Mainly we would eat and sleep in between dives - a great way to spend 10 days to me!

There was LOTS of food in the habitat. We had a small fridge so we had packaged salads and some fruits and veggies. There were also pre-packaged foods like soups and easy-mac type food and, fortunately, plenty of chocolate - an absolute necessity when diving! The food, and our clothes, were brought down in big pots that were sealed shut. One day a diver brought us key lime pie from our surface crew! We did have a phone and one computer with internet so we could contact the outside -surface dwelling- world.

There was a lot of maintenance performed on Aquarius everyday. We also needed to check in with our surface crew, to coordinate sampling, and with a doctor on the surface everyday to make sure there were no issues. One of the surprising things to me was that ear care was a big deal! Because we would be wet or damp for 10 days it would be very easy to get an ear infection, so we had to clean our ears and update the doc everyday.

It was also, perhaps not surprisingly, pretty cold - especially towards the end where I could tell that it took me longer to warm back up after a dive and not very long during a dive to get really cold.

Inspiration From Our Surroundings

One of the many upsides though, is that we got to see so much ocean life. Out on dives during the day we saw several eels, turtles, and rays - and lots of sponges and corals! We also noticed routine of a particular sea turtle swimming by the habitat every evening shortly after we finished our last dive. And, there were two goliath groupers that lived under the habitat. Every night they would come up from the below the habitat and would usually check us out through the porthole. It was a lot like looking at a dinosaur out your window!

Would I Do it Again?

Overall, it was a fantastic experience and the crew at Aquarius were amazing! I would absolutely do this again and recommend to anyone else!

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About This Project

Sponges are nature's filtration systems; they can filter up to 50,000 times their own volume in a day. Changes to coral ecosystems from climate change make reef sponges increasingly important. This project takes one of the first steps to explore the impact of sponges on nutrient availability on coral reefs.

Contributions are tax deductible, and backers will get timely labnote field updates. We invite you to ask questions and connect with us directly in the comments - we'd love to hear from you!

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