Here's a sneak peak of the kind of footage we are capturing. This clip shows a yellow-headed jawfish popping out of it's den, and then spiting out a mouthful of sand. In real time, this happens in the blink of an eye, but today we filmed it at the high speed of 2,000 frames per second, so you can see details of the fish's movement. We've also filmed sail fish, crabs dancing (what are they doing?!), sergeant major, coral cups feeding, Christmas tree worms, and bubbles. Incredible! 

This was a great Google hangout today about coral reef health in the Caribbean Basin hosted by Northeastern University's Urban Coastal Sustainability Initiative. Fabien, Liz and i were conducting research outside and "dropped by" to say hello in the Aquarius viewport. "You never know who's going to swim-by the viewport when you're in Aquarius," said Mark Patterson.

Day 3 already! Oh man. Time is flying by. Even Fabien thinks so. As of today, he, Otter and Ryan have been here 19 days, making it one day longer than the longest previous stay in Aquarius. Just incredible. 

When I rolled out of bed, every one was already up and at'um, eating breakfast, chatting, and prepping gear for the day. I started pulling on my wetsuit at about 6:30am, meanwhile reviewing with Liz our plan for the dive. 

On our second dive of the day, from noon to 3pm, we greeted astronaut Clay Anderson in the water. It was unreal. Fabien, Liz and I all shook his hand as he stepped onto the "porch" of Aquarius. We then gave him a tour around the house. A video of his visit is here. There's an interesting New York Times' article about the space and sea: Cosmic Connections in the Deep Sea. Living undersea, I have a new appreciation for our planet as a whole. Both astronauts and aquanauts are willing to live in an alien environment to explore the unknown, which links our cosmic work, whether it be in space or ocean. We are still looking for life in outer space, but there's so much undersea. 

During our afternoon dive, Liz and I also used a plankton tow to collect more plankton samples. You can read more about the research we are doing with the Northeastern topside team at their blog, specifically Amanda's post about zooplankton. 

In between research dives, we are Skyping with different groups around the world, spreading the word about how exciting and important the oceans are. Yesterday, I Skyped with the AAT Project and the Birches School (read about my fall visit there) and from the research boat last week. Birches' kindergarten through third grade students asked:

There are more great adorable questions from this group in the fall.

Unwrapping the camera housing felt like unwrapping a birthday gift. Billy, Brian, and Mike from our production team stayed up with me to gawk over the camera and housing. It's really a special piece of equipment. Doc Edgerton from MIT was with Jacques Cousteau on Calypso in 1954, and now as an MIT alum, I'm in Aquarius using Edgertronic with Fabien Cousteau in 2014! Lot's of history being made here.

Before sending it underwater, I wanted to make sure, once again, that I understand the ins-and-outs of the Edgertronic camera and housing. Fortunately Sexton, the maker of the the underwater casing, thoroughly tested the case for us, and made everything as user-friendly as possible.

Northeastern Professors Mark Patterson and Brian Helmuth, both former aquanauts, and their graduate students joined us yesterday for dinner, and this morning they waved us "bon voyage" from the dock at 7:30AM. They'll be in the water with us, conducting research via surface dives (about 45 minutes to avoid need to decompress), for the remainder of the mission. In addition, we're in regular communication about research procedures and goals. Liz and I enjoyed the wind and sun on the boat ride out to our new home.  

Adam was the first to resurface. He arrived with arms open, in the victory pose. I can't imagine what it must be like to finally feel the sun and breath air from an endless sky after over two weeks. I'll know what that's like soon enough, however. We gave all the returning aquanauts (i.e., Adam, Andy, and Kip) hugs as they boarded the boat, ready to make the journey back to shore. I asked them humorously, "Guys, should we really do this, or turn back now?" Without hesitation, they all said Aquarius is worth it. Go! There's nothing like what we're about to do. 

Water drop I filmed with regular video from my iPhone at MIT's Edgerton Center in May. 

Yesterday I ventured with Matt and Brian to the Content Keys, where we met with two guides who took us on an adventure through the Florida mangroves. Mangroves are trees that grow partially submerged in the ocean. It felt like we were filming a Discovery Channel special (like this one on mangroves). 

We were there because we wanted to learn more about the grouper from an expert, our guide Don, who formerly hunted the fish but now tries to protect them. Matt and I will attempt to film the grouper's unique feeding strike during our saturation on Mission 31. 

Mangroves are amazing plants. They thrive in the salt water either by filtering out the salt at their roots or secreting excess salt through their leaves. They form forests in the middle of the ocean that harbor juvenile fish, filter water, and serve as attachment points for other water-filtering marine organisms. In addition, animals, such as pelicans and other costal birds, find shelter in the branches. There are even stories of monkeys living in the Florida mangroves! 

We snorkeled in the mangroves for several hours. Swimming under their branches, it was an alien world, like a scene from Avatar. We saw grouper, many snapper, some horse shoe crabs, and tiny crabs. The sounds were like nothing I've heard before. I could hear branches creaking and snapping, the rush of the current, and some popping noises from fish. Matt and Brian used the fancy RED camera to film the experience in incredible quality. The RED camera has more than 5 times the number of pixels of the very best HD camera. You'll have to wait to see their footage -- it'll be worth the wait! 

The past few days I've also been helping prepare science research, so everything is ready for our saturation on June 17th. The Northeastern surface team, who has a fantastic blog here, started shipping their gear last week, and it's slowly arriving at base. One of the things I was most excited to receive was the plankton traps from graduate student Amanda Dwyer. On our first day in Aquarius, fellow aquanaut Liz and I will deploy a dozen of the traps over different regions of the coral reef. All traps are small, so they are minimally invasive. They will collect zooplankton that rise into the net. Each day and night we'll then collect samples from the net, and Amanda will analyze the results. She'll be able to tell the health of the reef from the samples, and learn more about the zooplankton's nocturnal behavior. Plankton are an incredible resource on earth; they provide at least half of the oxygen we breath! I'm excited to help learn more about their important role in our ecosystem. 

The tools for other research, including for the sponges DNA, coral-stress, and sponge metabolism studies, arrive this week as well. More on that to come! Other exciting news is that the underwater housing for the Edgertronic camera is on it's way here, thanks to the Sexton Corporation, who has amazingly designed, created, and tested a modular system for using the Edgertronic underwater. 

 . . . the ocean! Pioneer explorer Jacques Yves Cousteau said, "The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever." 

Today we celebrated under the sea in Aquarius what would have been Jacques' 104th birthday. In commemoration, we all wore red caps, like Jacques' team was known for. We also brought red cap-shaped cookies down to Aquarius, from our friends at Lucky 13 Bakery. 

We also collected sensors for Northeastern's environmental contamination study. The sensors are powerful although they look vaguely like plastic bags floating on lines  (image credit Mission 31/Billy Snook). They will detect even tiny pollutants, including PCBs, PAHs, and potentially dispersants from the BP oil spill.

Yikes!  We arrived back to base at 4:30pm, just when I was suppose to leave for a talk at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami. Cutting it close. I quickly changed and left just in time to make the event. Thank you Bob Howard from the MIT Club of South Florida for the ride!

On the drive to FIU, I really enjoyed Bob Howard's stories of MIT from the 1960s. He talked about working on punch-card computers, getting drafted for the war, and then working at the Pentagon. It's pretty crazy we ended up meeting in the Keys! 

There was an impressive turn out for the talk. I was happy to see many young people in the audience; including a group from FIRST robotics, which brought back fond memories because FIRST introduced me to robotics as a high school student. Also attending were MIT Club of South Florida members, FIU students, and visiting coral reef scholars. The talk went well, despite experiencing every speaker's nightmare. My laptop crashed just before my talk without saving the last version of the presentation I'd prepared oh-so-carefully yesterday. Even though in my mind the slides weren't quite right, no one in the audience seemed to notice and everything went well. It was a good reminder to be prepared for the unexpected because things in life don't always go as planned. 

After introducing Mission 31 and Skyping with Andy in Aquarius, I spoke more broadly about ocean exploration. The audience was enthusiastic and asked many excellent questions, including details about aquanaut training and life underwater in the habitat. Others asked about my background in ballet and how I got started in robotics, which was through FIRST robotics, and how this organization influenced my career path! Thanks to Bob Howard, Gary Chin, and Aileen Soto for organizing the fantastic event! 

Today Mission 31 team members Matt and Brian returned from the Amazon, where they were shooting a continuing project with Fabien Cousteau's sister Celine. You can see photos, showing how the Amazon has changed during the lifetimes of three Cousteau generations, in the ebook Return from the Amazon available in the iTunes Store. Matt and Brian told us the Amazon was scorching hot, over 105 degrees F. The 80-degree weather here in sunny Florida must now feel like a cool spring day! The intrepid explorers also shared stories of the bugs and difficulty in traveling around the Amazon. What an experience! I can't wait to hear more over dinner. 

Meanwhile, I continue preparing Mission 31 science research from topside. Today we sent out plankton nets for a research project designed by Northeastern graduate student Amanda Dwyer. I'm also counting down till  saturation -- 7 more days! 

             

I forgot to tell this story. On Spalshdown Day, the Mission 31 production team smartly deployed quadcopters to capture aerial footage of the excitement. Well, there was some problem with one of the copters (never really understood what happened), and it fell into the ocean. Luckily, one of the Navy divers, Carter, without missing a beat, dove in and rescued the copter on a breath-hold dive to 10m. Amazing! Sometimes robots need the Navy to rescue them too. 

Today I  graduated from MIT! I'm incredibly grateful for the many, many people who helped me get to this point. Since I didn't graduate from high school, this is was my first degree (B.Sc. in Mechanical and Ocean Engineering). Even though I missed the ceremony, I followed along the live feed and flipped the "brass rat" class ring with the rest of my classmates. 

Someone put a model of Doc Edgerton's iconic milk drop image on their cap at commencement. I've been working with the MIT Edgerton Center (blog post here) to use their remarkable high-speed camera for Mission 31. With this camera, we'll try to capture Goliath Grouper's unique feeding behavior, hoping to validate an unproven theory that they use the sound of a collapsing cavitation bubble formed in their head as a weapon to stun prey. We should produce some amazing footage if all works. We tested the Edgertronic camera by filming the M31 German Shepherd mascot "feeding" on milk  (video here). Doc Edgerton also worked with Jacques Cousteau.

The commencement speeches were inspiring, such as MIT President's Reif's charge below:

"Whatever road you choose to travel, I want you to reject the idea that what you see in front of you is the best that we human beings can do. I want you to see the status quo as nothing more than ... a place to start, because you know we can do better. ... More daring and more passionate. More rigorous, playful, and ambitious. More humble, more respectful, more generous, and more kind." -- from MIT President Reif's commencement charge to graduates today

On the boat this afternoon, I was delighted to reconnect via Skype with the Birches Elementary students (kindergarden through 3rd grade) about Mission 31. I met the Lincoln, MA, students last fall and explained what it's like to be an aquanaut (blog post about that). They asked so many excellent questions! Today they asked me when I'll start living underwater (June 17th!) and what training was like. I was impressed they'd seen all of Mission 31's YouTube videos and, of course, had more excellent questions, such as: 
 

• What is the red button for?
• What would happen if you pressed the red button when you weren't supposed to? 
• What if your tank cracked? 
• What if there is a cyclone? 
• Have you seen a shark yet?
• What animals have you seen?
• What do you eat? 
• How does food get there?

Adam

Andy

Kip

Aquanaut scientists Adam and Andy are currently doing undersea research for the first part of the mission, and Liz and I will switch with them on June 17.  To follow along with the undersea research, there's information on the Mission-31 website, video channel, and aquanaut scientist Adam Zenone's blog Zen1 for 31.The Northeastern team is also keeping a topside M31 science blog at View from the Surface.

Every morning at 5:30 a.m., Adam and Andy set-up the Goliath Grouper decoys (in the photo above) before the real grouper (and rest of us!) awake. Adam's blog post describes about how one got away! 

Adam was forced to simply watch as one large grouper decoys slowly slipped upward after it crossed his dive "ceiling" -- the height he cannot pass due to saturation. I can only imagine being so close, but unable to swim after it. Adam describes more details about the research he and Andy are conducting in his blog, including why he's chatting and collaborating with Norway about research while underwater!  Please keep a lookout for the grouper decoy and become a part of M31 research!

Every two days, Adam and Andy generate 800 gigabytes of undersea research data; that's a lot of data (yea!). The prefix giga means 10 to the 9th power; so one gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes. They only use solid state drives in the habitat even though spinning drives are cheaper because the pressure differences undersea squeeze the spinning drive too much. So, Adam and Andy pod their solid state hard drives to me from below , and I transfer the data to spinning drives. Keep the ocean data coming, guys!

The  Mission 31 aquanaut scientists will trade mid-way through the mission. Currently Adam and Andy are in the habitat with Fabien and camera crew. Liz and I will switch with them on June 17th. I can't wait! While topside, I'm supporting the crew in any way necessary, including prepping experiments, and helping with surface dives and outreach. 

These are the prepped rigs and supplies I sent to Aquarius. The cooler contains the contamination sensors wrapped in foil. The foil and cold temperature keep the sensors free from other contaminants (that would mess up the study). The styrofoam spheres toward the back of the photo are the floats that pull the rope upward with the sensors.

"The science we will be doing on this Mission will be cutting edge . . . But what excites me most is that Mission 31 may start to rekindle that lost connection to the sea, so that some day my daughters can look back and say, 'Wow, humans really came close to messing things up. But somehow we found our connection to nature just in time to turn things around.'"  -- Brian Helmuth

When you think marine mammals, do you think polar bears? I didn't until I learned more. Polar bears are the only bear considered a marine mammal. Their scientific name, Ursus maritimus, translates to "maritime bear." Born in snow dens, they spend most of their time on the frozen sea, which they use as a platform for hunting seals. Mission 31 will study climate change effects on some tropical creatures. Although the Florida Keys have no polar bears, ocean health and climate change research impacts all sea life, from zooplankton (microscopic animals) to polar bears (up to 1,200 lbs). Want to know more? 20 Interesting Facts about Polar Bears.

Specifically, Mission 31 experiments will study climate change effects on zooplankton and coral reefs, marine life found in the Keys.  An overview of all M31 science research is at blog post 5/24/14.  Polar Bears International, the world's leading conservation group for polar bears, will celebrate World Oceans Day on June 8 in honor of all ocean life, large and small, even the ones that don't first come to mind!   

It's hard to comprehend all that's happened in the last two weeks. It's been a whirlwind of adventure, meeting new people, learning, and jumping (literally) out of my comfort zone. I can't believe how time has flown by; already, we're done with training! 

Today we dove for a little over an hour, getting in final practice with the full face masks and the double tanks. We also did an underwater photo shoot with the ultra-high definition RED camera, for Fabien's documentary film. The RED camera has revolutionized photography with a sensor that has more than 5 times the number of pixels of the very best HD camera. RED: The Camera that Changed Hollywood. 

Our final debriefing was sentimental. Roger, chief of Aquarius operations, told us more people have gone into space than have lived underwater, so what we're doing is very special. We have now a unique opportunity to bring ocean science and public awareness to a new level. It's tremendously exciting! Fabien said it only hit him yesterday that this was finally real, really happening. At last, there's no turning back! 

In the afternoon, a research team from the Florida Institute of Technology (FIU) showed us how to use their sonar imaging system. This system will help record and monitor fish, and our FIU researchers will use the system to record fish behavior in response to predators. 

Splashdown is in 48 hours!  Tonight we'll celebrate, somehow. 

This evening at mission headquarters, we met with a representative from Nokia, one of our sponsors. She showed us some cool features of our new phones, including its professional-quality camera and image editing capabilities. We also finally got to meet Mission31's publicist, Amy Summers, who visited today. It's so nice to meet the face behind so many emails! 

Today was fun (...even though we were reviewing some serious emergency situations). We started in the classroom reviewing drills we'd do in the water, including how to use the marine VHF radios and safety sausages (brightly-colored, inflatable buoy columns) we'll always have with us underwater. We all got a little competitive during the emergency drills, which kept everyone's attention piqued. 

In the first drill, we practiced navigating with a compass. To make sure we weren't cheating, the instructors put towels over our heads (Mission 31 monogrammed towels, of course), so we had to "blindly" rely on only our compass heading to get where we wanted to go. I'm sure this looked ridiculous to anyone who passed by, but we're all now great at navigating!