Mission & Project Info | NOAA’s Aquarius Undersea Laboratory
Mission Blog

Richard asks: In your research involving rebreathing systems do you ever consider the artificial gill? I first heard of it in the 1960’s . A thin membrane of silacon 1000th of an inch thick allows oxygen to flow though it from the water. I read about it again in 1985. A back pack model was shown in a British dive magazine. I wrote to Aquanautics Corperation in 1993 about their product and learned that they were using the membrane in fresh produce packages to remove oxygen from the fruit and vegetables, but there was no mention of using it as a breathing apparatus. Have you heard any news about the artificial gill?

Dear Richard

This is not an area that our operations and diving experts are familiar with. May be something out there, but not that we are aware of or are working on. Sounds pretty science fiction like…though would be great if it could come to fruition.

Ellen Prager
Chief Scientist, Aquarius Reef Base

Zack Davison asks: What do your need for an everyday diver to dive the underwater habitat? I’ve been a diver for 3 years now, I’m a jr. open water, soon to be jr. recuse, and I’ve my jr. advance for 2 yaers now. Who do I need to contact about that? I think it would be an incredible sight to see and i could tell my science teacher about it.

Hi Zack!

Thanks so much for you interest in diving at Aquarius.  We would love to be able to bring enthusiastic young divers like you to see Aquarius, but unfortunately for safety of our operations and research, we don’t regularly allow the public to dive at Aquarius.  In fact, the Aquarius sits in a designated research-only zone within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to protect the Aquarius, our work, and the habitat and fish that our researchers are studying and for safety. For now, you will have to join us virtually on the web and watch for broadcasts that we will be doing later in the year…..keep up the diving and who knows maybe one day you can work with us or become an aquanaut doing science or developing new underwater technology.

Dr. Ellen Prager

Chief Scientist, Aquarius Reef Base

Ron Peters Asks:Breathing mix question. What atmospheric mix are you using inside the habitat? Are you using the standard 21% or a richer mix? Is the same breathing mix used in the tanks during the aquanauts excursions outside the habitit? What is the deco profile for recovery of the aquanauts at the end of the mission? 

Dear Ron

Aquarius, with its open ambient wet porch, has a constant air bleed throughout a mission, good old 21% like we breathe on the surface.  The partial pressure of oxygen however is .45ATA and not .21 ATA because of the 47′ depth inside Aquarius.  Nitrox or enriched air could be used for a habitat mix and diver breathing gas, this has been done in previous habitats in the 70’s with depth ranges of >50′.  Mixes were selected to provide partial pressures of oxygen similar to atmospheric air at .21 ATA for that depth-called “normoxic” mixes.  

Aquanauts are breathing air in their tanks, we have two high pressure compressors on the Life Support Buoy overhead, with 86,000 cu ft of storage air in flasks on the seabed.

Decompression, which was completed at 0830 yesterday morning, takes 17 hours, we close the swinging door to the wet porch, then slowly exhaust the atmosphere through an umbilical to the surface.  Once we reach 0 FSW or “surface” inside Aquarius, we pressurize back to hatch depth of 45 FSW, open the door to the wet porch, and are greeted by two escort divers for a two minute ascent to the real surface on a short repetitive dive.

Craig Cooper

Aquarius Reef Base, Operations Director

Greetings from the Texas Children’s Cancer Center!

This past Thursday marked the culmination of months of planning and preparation. It was finally time for Purple Songs to Swim! The days beforehand were busy with final checks and preparations to ensure that the space was ready for all of our activities and the two giant television screens set up to host the live videoconference with Aquarius. We were so excited! Thanks Dominic, Jim and Jesus for setting up all of the technical configurations to get us to live.

Finally the day arrived and, after a morning of dancing, singing and crafts in honor of our “under the sea” theme, it was time for the kids to go live with Aquarius. The link up went incredibly smoothly and we found ourselves face to face with Otto at the galley table. The smiles on the kids faces and their excitement was uncontrollable! Otto joked that he would have to turn down the volume on his receiving end because we were making such a commotion with all of our clapping and excitement, as the kids waved to the “undersea explorers.” It was such a special experience for them to get a glimpse of life under the sea and the work being done by NOAA scientists. It was especially fun for them to get a special tour of the habitat from Otto and see how aquanauts live and work underwater. Having the live conference setup was really neat. The kids had great questions for the aquanauts and continued to talk with me long after the live linkup as they had more questions about the ARB, and it was fun for me to see their excitement.

Probably the most special part of the day, however, was when the kids got to hear their music played underwater. Zach, whose song “That’s why I don’t eat fish” inspired me to arrange this day in the first place, was present to talk with the Aquanauts and share his passion for marine science and desire to be a proponent of the oceans in his work. A huge smile erupted on his face as he heard his music being played 60 feet underwater in Aquarius, along with several other songs. I can’t think of a better way to honor these kids and their expression than by sharing these beautiful songs, which the aquanauts have really enjoyed listening to during the mission.

This is just another example of how the work in education and conservation being done at the ARB connects on so many levels to the greater community and I was just tickled to be able to share my work and experiences at NURC with these kids. It was a very enjoyable time for everyone and such a special time for the kids to have this rare glimpse into the undersea world and the work of these scientists. We may even have inspired some future scientists! More importantly, however, we were able to create a special experience for these kids to honor them and create a reprieve for them to just be like any other kid - - playing and exploring.

To say the mission was a success would be a huge understatement!

Cassia Rye

Here we are, the 5th Day on our mission with our Aquanaut pep squad cheering us on, (this can be none other than the incredible fish community), and they keep amazing us…

Today, early in the morning while sampling with the PAM (pulse amplified modulator, measures fluorescence), we had an encounter with a barnacle covered, hawksbill turtle that decided it would be fun (??!) to do a couple of loop-de-loos around Abel.  He must’ve circled my dive buddy at least three times before he decided that was enough and continued on with his early-bird reef hunt.  Also, as if on cue, again, we had an early first-sunlight visit from a pack of spotted eagle rays, and they continued to check-in with us throughout this dive and the rest of the day.  One ray we came up on was in the midst of doing roller-coaster like sine waves, slowly rising up and kamakazi diving down, until we noticed his antics, and then he gracefully turned toward me and “flew” right over my head and off into the blue yonder. 

Well now we are only 18 corals away from completing our task of transplanting, so we anticipate finishing our work tomorrow in our early morning dive. There’s more work with mapping, and sampling the corals, but tomorrow is the day to wrap up the mission. Only one early, brief morning dive on Monday, before we start our decompression in preparation for surfacing early AM on Tuesday, June 17th. As my boss warned me, it is about to be over, even though we’ve finally just gotten into our groove.  I can’t imagine how I’ll get to sleep at night without all these gentle fish at my “window” to lure me to rest.

The wet porch goliath grouper ‘groupies’ continue to entertain us by hanging around with us while we gear up for each of our dives. The two mammoth “guardians” seemed to have taken a liking to us, and always seem to want to get closer and keep us company, continuing their watch over us. I called them our spirit guides today, as one kept nudging up to Abel as we waited our turn to dive. Ken got a video and photos of this bonding experience.  I will definitely miss these guys most of all, when we go, and somehow I suspect the feeling may be mutual!

The team in the habitat is getting rowdy tonight, lots of cheer and more stories of life experiences. It’s time to let someone else get online, so I’ll be signing off for one more night. Many sweet dreams and think …. fish!

Lauri Mac,  a pisces tried and true!