We also drilled a worst case scenario in which both divers are disoriented and lost their masks. Our goal was to return safely to the habitat. To do this, we attached our secondary reel of rope to a stationary point on the seafloor and used the line to swim in a circle (in a constant radius) around the stationary point looking for one of the neon excursion lines that led back to the habitat (all without masks). Initially the drill was complicated; but practicing it first on land really helped. In the water, Liz and I nailed it. Liz described in her Girls's Rule blog post: "It was a good feeling to be on the same page as my dive buddy Grace, especially considering we are about to spend over 20,000 minutes underwater together! I have a feeling that by the end of the Mission, Grace and I will be able to read each other's minds underwater." 

Billy Snook, a member of the Mission 31 production team, filmed us underwater today with a Nokia (one of our sponsors) Lumia 1020 camera. Thanks to Billy and Nokia for the photos and video clips bleow!  

Two Aquarius dive masters named Otter and Otto ran our training today. We again started in the classroom and finished in the water. We took a virtual tour of Aquarius and then had safety briefings on emergency drills for the habitat. Emergency situations for the habitat include getting lost, running out of air, receiving contaminated air, flooding, and fire. A fire underwater might seem like a firefighter's dream, but it's not; a fire could devastate Aquarius wiring and/or the habitat from inside where there is 2.5 times more oxygen than on the surface. We'll run through habitat safety drills again throughout this week. 

This afternoon we dove with double tanks again near Aquarius. Double air means more time to work in the water, so we'll use double tanks whenever we're not using the dive helmets. Otter and Otto ran us through the drills we discussed earlier in the classroom, including extending and recalling excursion lines (i.e., ropes we can follow back to the habitat), searching for a lost buddy diver, buddy breathing while swimming, and turning on/off all the valves on our tanks with our masks off. We all did ok. It's a bit hard to get used to swimming with two heavy tanks on your back plus all the extra gear, including two reels, knife, extra regulator, slate, radio, strobe light, and a safety sausage (an inflatable, bright-colored column). 

In the evening we headed back to mission headquarters for home-made pizza! Tomorrow we'll train longer underwater with more mask-off drills, so I expect my eyes to hurt. 

Otter, a former Navy diver and our classroom instructor today, reiterated the importance of safety. We reviewed what to do if we get lost, separated from our dive buddy, run out of air, have equipment malfunctions (from regulator failure to loss of a flipper), or fire breaks out. By the end of the week we'll know how to deal with all imaginable emergencies.

It's easy to become disoriented underwater; sometimes everything around you looks blue! When we're in the diving helmets, we're always able to follow our air-carrying umbilical cord back to the habitat. While we're in SCUBA gear, we can follow excursion lines (i.e., ropes) leading back to Aquarius.

In an emergency while saturated, your instinct shouldn't be to go to the surface, but back to the habitat. Rushing to the surface while saturation diving is as dangerous as rushing to the bottom of the ocean from land; your body doesn't have time to adjust to pressure differences without careful procedures.

We must also remain cognizant of our surroundings. Visibility (how far you can see underwater) can change on the reef from 100ft to 10ft in a few minutes, meaning one moment you can see your dive buddy next to you and the next she's out of sight. If we ever lose sight of our dive buddy, we need to do a quick circle-swim to look for them and then head back to the habitat to send out a search party. There's always a standby diver in the habitat ready to jump in the water and assist in any sort if rescue.

Running out of air is almost always caused by lack of dive-planning or diver carelessness. All the aquanauts are experienced divers so we're not going to let this happen, plus one of the habitat technicians will also track every dive. He said if we return from a dive as much as a minute later than planned, the search party will deploy. That said, we still practice what to do in case we run out of air! Like I said, we're preparing for every imaginable emergency situation. In case a diver is out if air, they would buddy breathe or use the alternate regulator of their dive buddy. We also tested our respiratory stamina in the pool. We need to know how far we can swim on a single breath so we know our limits. We'll always plan our dives to return to Aquarius with at least 500 psi in our tanks, so if something unexpected happens we'll have enough air to deal with it.

Practically all our gear has fail-safe mechanisms; e.g., on SCUBA we have two regulators with us, two tanks, three ways to inflate/deflate our buoyancy control device, three ways to signal for help (radio, strobe, and inflatable), so in the rare case one failed, we've a backup, or our buddy's extra. It's rare that gear fails, however, but we're prepared for anything.

Kindergarteners I spoke to recently asked me, "What if a shark ate your mouthpiece? What if a shark bit your tank? What if you tripped on a turtle?" With all the fail-safes on my gear and emergency scenario training, I can deal with all those situations. 

Apparently the most common medical issues while saturation diving are ear infections and infected cuts. The habitat technicians are trained dive-medical officers so they're prepared for everything. We also need to be aware of hyperthermia. The water feels warm, slightly over 80 degrees, but swimming for three hours (like we'll be doing) can wick away your body heat and lower your body temperature below its normal 98 degrees.

We also claimed Aquarius bunks today. There are two stacks of three bunks. The technicians need the lower bunks so they can get out of bed quickly to fix things. Fabien called the middle starboard bunk because he's left handed. Liz and I wanted top bunks; she's left handed and I'm right handed so we'll split starboard and port. We're a team made in heaven! 

After lunch, we dove in the double tanks, like we'll do from Aquarius. The dual tanks are tricky to get use to because they're so heavy, but the advantage is we'll carry enough air to dive for several hours. We got the hang of swimming with them, however, and aced the practice drills, including shutting off, turning on, isolating and de-isolating the tanks, practicing buddy breathing, and doing flips and turns to show that we're comfortable in the new gear.

Just after dinner, the production team uploaded the first video of our training week!  Check it out: http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=fb9W_WQL9Lg 

Today is a rest day. We're having a cookout tonight with the whole crew, including Navy divers. It's going to be fun. Tomorrow, part of the production team will leave us for two weeks of filming in the Amazon for a piece by Fabien's sister Celeine -- I can't wait to hear their stories when they return!

Last night, we went to an great lecture by Bob Croft at the History of Diving Museum.  He was a Navy diving instructor and the first person to free-dive beyond 200 ft deep. He said, "You really don't need to breathe as often as you think you do." 

This morning mission scientists (Adam, Andy, Liz, and I) reviewed all the research experiments with the rest of the Mission 31 team. Researchers from Northeastern also joined us on a conference call. "Mission scientists" aren't the only scientists involved in this mission. Dozens of other scientists and technical advisors are participating by providing knowledge, expertise, research equipment, and other resources. From Northeastern, for example, five graduate students designed experiments for the aquanauts to conduct. Other researchers will also assist us via regular surface dives in the work that don't require saturation diving. See What's Mission 31 All About? Understanding M31 Ocean Research [video] in my blog. 

The big take away here is that we are conducting research that isn't possible without Aquarius, the world's only undersea laboratory. It would take a normal diver six months to collect the amount of data that the aquanauts can obtain in 31 days. Specifically, we're researching: 

• Coral reef health
• Goliath grouper feeding behavior 
• Zooplankton 
• Barrel sponges
• Environmental contamination
  

Science research during the first half of Mission 31 is run by Florida International University (FIU), and by Northeastern University (and me, from MIT) during the second half of the mission. For the second half, Liz and I are aquanauts working with a large team, including: 
Principal researchers: Mark Patterson, Brian Helmuth, and Loretta Fernandez 
Graduate students: Amanda Dwyer, Alli Matzelle,  Jessica Torossian, and Nick Colvard 
Technicians: Francis Choi and Sara Williams
Media and Outreach coordinators: Morgan Helmuth, Amanda Padoan, Angela Herring, Ursula August, and Kara Sassone 

In addition, Florida International University has planned a number of experiments to conduct during the first half of the mission. We expect the Mission 31 will produce much valuable data and many research papers! 

Continue reading. More Grace Under Pressure blog posts here.

Today we started promptly at "eight hundred," as the Navy divers say, and headed back to Aquarius with the Kirby Morgan diving helmets. It's our last of training day in the helmets, so we all should be very comfortable in them. The plan is to dive in pairs back to Aquarius for 30 minutes each. My goals today were to trim my weight just right so I'd be neutrally buoyant on the seafloor, practice climbing around the habitat underwater without flippers, get used to keeping my head back (with the heavy 30lbs helmet) underwater so I'm more balanced and air doesn't leak from the neck seal, and to be conscious of the umbilical cord so it doesn't get tangled or caught too often. I also need to remember to speak clearly in the communication device inside the helmet. Interestingly, the communications system filters out (to an extent) high-pitch background noises and sometimes Liz and my voices reach just that high-pitch frequency so they get cut off. It's not a major issue; if I don't hear a response I'll just repeat my message, but still it's something to be aware of. 

The neck seal on the dive helmet is pulling on some of my (long) hair, so I need to be better braiding it out of the way. One of the Navy divers, however, recommended that I go for a 2 mm buzz cut ... that's not happening. I'm not ready to take fashion advice from the Navy.

After training, Adam, Liz and I visited the local Montessori school's science night to tell them about Aquarius. We showed them the model of Aquarius with a LEGO aquanaut and let them try some freeze dried foods we'll be eating underwater (think astronaut food). It was so fun! Many of the kids were familiar with Aquarius because it's basically in their backyard. 

Before dinner with the crew this evening, we took a group photo with all the aquanauts, wearing our new gear from Oceanic. Also, Fabien brought us together for a surprise gift... He loaned us each limited edition Mission 31 DOXA watches! 

Next week is the final week of training. We'll focus on SCUBA and the details of Aquarius, and a Navy doctor will pull each of us aside for a final check to make sure we are fit for saturation. Safety is of paramount importance, so it's still possible any of us could fail the final check and not be allowed to saturate. Astronaut Ken Mattingly learned 3 days before Apollo 13's launch that he would not go because he was exposed to measles. If any of us for any reason is no longer able to saturate we could still aid the operation and research from topside, and even SCUBA dive down like other support divers. 

Saturday we'll be up early to review Mission 31 science research plans! 

It's World Turtle Day!  All sea turtles breathe air (like SCUBA divers!). Many sea turtles fatally mistake plastic garbage bags as jellyfish food.  With ocean garbage on the rise, using recyclable bags instead of plastic is a great idea.

Back on the dive boat, the aquanauts took turns operating the air supply box and talking with the diver in the water over the communications line. I really enjoyed being on the radio; it's fun to hear divers describe what they are seeing. 

Our gear from Oceanic arrived yesterday screen printed with the Mission 31 logo, so today we all wore matching fins, wetsuits, and booties. We looked like a team! More photos of the team gear to come. Also, more videos to come! Back at the house, the Bonnet Rouge team continued to edit footage from today. 

Here's a quick clip of my descent to Aquarius (with director's commentary), filmed by the Bonnet Rouge crew on the RED camera. The team is still hard at work editing footage from today.

I've also uploaded a video (below) that we took yesterday with the Edgertronic high-speed camera. Sam, our Mission 31 mascot, proved a fascinating subject. We filmed her lapping up milk in the video below,at 700 frames per second. Who knew dogs tongues worked that way? Only after watching the video did I realize that their tongues curl backwards, forming a ladle shape when lapping up milk! 

Right now the plan is to tether the camera (via it's underwater housing) to the habitat for power and ethernet connection. But it's also possible to power the camera with batteries inside the case, and maybe connect the camera to a small screen inside the housing. I saw Eric Cheng do essentially this with an iPad and wireless router. I wonder if I could plug the camera's Ethernet into a Nokia smart phone via an adapter that went to the phone's miniUSB.

Tomorrow we'll dive back to Aquarius in the helmets and take a peak inside the habitat. After this week we should all be comfortable in the helmets and know what to do in the unlikely event that something goes wrong. I'm also working on adjusting the weights I use to dive in this gear. When diving you need extra weights to overcome your body's neutrally buoyant to reach the bottom. Fine-tuning how much weight to add is mostly a trial-and-error process. Today, to compensate for the 5mm wetsuit and new gear, I added 10-lb weights and sunk like a rock. Tomorrow I'll try 6 lbs. I can't wait to spend more time around the habitat. 

I'm exhausted.  Good night -- off to bed.

Today we spent a full day in the classroom. Aquarius' dive safety officer Roger Garcia taught us all about the dive helmets we'll be using on the mission. The helmet completely cover your head, surrounding it with air. It weighs about 30lbs, so it feels like a huge weight on your shoulders on land, but in the water you won't feel the weight. The helmet, also called a Kirby Morgan after the manufacturer, brings air to the diver through an umbilical cord, which can be up to 600ft long. Some of the aquanauts (Matt, Andy, Fabien) have used dive helmets before, but for the rest of us, it is a new and exciting experience. 

Tomorrow we'll dive with the helmets and practice the drills we discussed today. That way everything will become muscle memory. One drill we'll do is to completely flood the mask with water (on purpose!) and then clear it with a purge valve. 

Liz and I woke up at 7:00am, ready for a packed day of training. Billy Snook picked us up around 7:30am and drove us to the Aquarius Reef base, the building onland where Aquarius operations and management happen. We met the entire Mission 31 team, including the mission coordinators, topside crews, Navy support divers, and FIU scientists. After working with these people remotely for several months now, it was great to finally meet in the same room! The only people not there were the PR team and complete Northeastern and FIU science support teams. We spent time getting to know each other before reviewing the week's schedule.

Mid-morning the aquanauts and working divers headed to the pool where we passed swimming tests, including treading water for 10 min, swimming 400m, swimming 25m holding breath, and mask-snorkel recovery exercises.

Back at the reef base (i.e., "control center") I chatted with David Peta who runs IT for Aquarius and was manning the watch desk. The watch desk has six display monitors showing information about Aquarius, including information about the health of the aquanauts, video feeds, and statistics on power consumption and air quality. 

We also started eating some of the four dozen boxes of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish that arrived last week courtesy of our food sponsor, Campbell's.

I've been hearing from past aquanauts that your senses of taste and smell are dulled while living underwater. One group of researchers on Aquarius apparently did a study on it, but no one is sure where the results are. I thought I might as well do a quick study before leaving . . . and it might as well be Goldfish we taste test.

The diving hard hat we'll use on the mission was designed and built for the National Treasure movie, but they didn't use it after all! For the movie the designers added an extra-large viewing window and inside lights. The helmet in the picture at left is on display at the Aquarius reef base, similar to the one we'll be using tomorrow. It weights about 30lbs, so it's heavy on your shoulders. 

In the afternoon we completed checkout dives to test our basic SCUBA skills, such as taking on/off mask underwater, buddy breathing, and buoyancy control. We completed the tests on a coral reef called "hen & chickens," because a boat carrying chickens accidentally dropped a few of them nearby. Poor chickens . . .

The day of training wrapped up with a classroom debrief from Aquarius manager Roger about the decompression chambers available onsite. Afterward, the FIU aquanauts Adam and Andy returned with Liz and me to the big yellow house the team is sharing. After a few errands, we all drove the short way to mission headquarters to check on the rest of the crew. Everyone had work or research to catch up on. While Fabien filmed an interview inside, the rest of us worked productively on on laptops by the pool, enjoying the gorgeous weather.

Tomorrow will be entirely in the classroom. We'll go over emergency protocols and be fitted for the neck-dam and vest that is necessary for the dive helmets. We need to make sure we're all comfortable with the MK-III light weight surface supplied diving system we'll be using. Before lights out in the yellow house, the aquanauts plan to wind down by watching the movie classic Life Aquatic, hands down one of my favorites -- a perfect way to end Day 1. 

Aquanaut training starts tomorrow! We begin a grueling week-long training program off the Florida Keys tomorrow, including intensive fitness tests, acclimating our bodies to underwater living (much like astronauts train for space), and learning to handle the specialized equipment we'll use on the Mission.

Liz Magee (Northeastern scientist) and I traveled from Boston to Miami this morning. We met Fabien Cousteau (and his seven cases with 350lbs of camera equipment!) at the airport. He introduced us to team members Kip Evans, who'll live in Aquarius at the beginning of June, and Billy Snook, a dive shop owner and member of topside crew.

We packed into SUVs provided by Mission sponsor Ford and headed to Costco. We had an extensive shopping list from the team at the base, including food, various batteries and extension cables.

After lunch we traveled to Mission headquarters on Islamorada. It's been a crazy week. In the past two days I finished my undergraduate studies with a final exam in Mechanics & Materials II on Friday, packed all my belongings into three bags, prepped the Edgertronic high-speed camera, and said goodbye to many friends. 

Mission headquarters is a house converted into a warehouse/meeting space/lodging. It's fascinating to see some of the equipment Fabien Cousteau's film production team, Bonnet Rouge, will use. I saw the underwater housing (about the size of a microwave) for the RED digital camera (the same type of camera Peter Jackson used to film The Hobbit), and looked at dozens of underwater lights, tripods, and other equipment. 

Tomorrow we start training, so we all need a good night's sleep! 

At the MIT Edgerton Center, Jim Bales, Kyle Hounsell and I tested the Edgertronic high-speed camera again. My goal was to become as comfortable with the camera as possible on-land before taking it underwater. It was my last chance to meet with the Edgerton Center experts again before heading to Mission 31 training this weekend! Also, an MIT videographer, John Freidah, filmed us working for a video he's doing on the Mission. We captured some beautiful footage of a candle flickering and water droplet, the kind of subjects "Doc" Edgerton recorded. One reason we're so excited about the Edgerton-Mission 31 connection is that Doc Edgerton worked closely with Jacques Cousteau on underwater photography. I'm still working on the underwater video camera casing for Mission 31.

Check out how different the phenomenon looks filmed with a standard camera below compared to the Edgertronic videos above. 

Luckily I got to spend another day in Nahant. Today we had the last meeting with the entire Northeastern science team before some of us head to Florida for training. We spent the bulk of the afternoon going over the science overview for the team, and then hearing stories from Mark Patterson and Brian Helmuth about their past saturation diving experiences in Aquarius. I can't wait for the adventure to begin! 

Last week 100,000+ people and thousands of companies were in Houston for the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), which is basically the Disney World of the offshore oil and gas industry. I was there as a student representative for the Marine Technology Society Council, along with the extraordinary Breezy Grenier, the other MTS student representative.  The Marine Technology Society, especially OTC Board member Chuck Richards (of C.A. Richards & Associates), deserve a huge thanks for welcoming Breezy and me at the conference. 

Most of the conference was geared towards oil and gas companies. I was more interested in underwater imaging systems. Bowtech Products Ltd put on a good show of their underwater cameras, LED lighting, connectors, and fiber optic multiplexers. There were also a number of impressive sonar imaging systems, e.g., by 2G Robotics. Most companies there are looking to make business connections with other businesses, so I'm really thankful when they're willing to chat with students, even though we're clearly not buying. 

Brian Salerno, Director of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, had interesting remarks on the conference from the perspective of a regulator: 

Your industry sets a very aggressive pace, you are the source of new ideas and technology.  The challenge for those of us who are regulators is to keep pace with you, and to understand the safety and environmental implications of this technology, so that offshore resources can be developed without incident. 
 
This then gets to the fundamental question of the role of the regulator, vis-a-vis the industry, and how we can collaborate in a meaningful way, all the while remaining true to our obligation to act first and foremost in the public interest. 

His full statement here. 

I learned that the US government is extremely interested in a) the missing flight 370, and b) the Pacific garbage patch, but little else ocean related. These are by no means the biggest threats facing the ocean -- that list would start with overfishing, pollution, and climate change (which includes acidification). Frankly, it's scandalous that the US still hasn't ratified the Law of the Sea Convention that it negotiated more than 30 years ago. 165 other countries have passed us by!

The MTS council meeting was the day before the conference started, so we had time to explore the city, including the Natural History Museum. 

Something interesting happened at dinner. I was talking about Mission 31 and from across the table someone quietly said "I worked for 5 years to get Aquarius shut down." I won't name names here but a fascinating conversation ensued about the relative value and merits of deep-sea research compared to other fields (say, hurricane prediction). I learned that the National Science Foundation (a major source of government science funding) now judges its grant applicants on the broader impacts of the research and its benefits to society (see broader impacts criterion).  The problem is that scientists, especially those doing cutting edge research, don't always know the impact of their research. Fourier, for example, struggled to fund his theoretical mathematics research on the Fourier transform. He died long before the results of his work (i.e., the Fourier Transform) were used as the basis for most telecommunications on the globe. 

The debate on who should fund what scientific research is huge. Should governments fund? Should private companies? If the government funds, will the private sector follow? I don't have answers, but I know something has to change. See "James Cameron says today's ocean exploration is “piss poor.”  He's right.

To all mothers of all species! And to my own wonderful mother, of course!

Gorgeous video of a dive in the Maldives. Shout out to EunJae Im. 

I took the train from Boston to Nahant yesterday to spend the day with Brian Helmuth, Mark Patterson, and their team at the Northeastern Marine Science Center. Brian and I will saturate at the same time on the latter half of Mission 31. Although we'd chatted over the phone and exchanged numerous emails, we hadn't met in person until today. I'm absolutely honored to be diving with him.

As much as I love Boston, it was nice to get out of city for a bit. Nahant, an island north of Boston, has a gorgeous rocky shoreline, and in the distance you can see the Boston skyline.

Over lunch I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Joe Ayers, inventor of the RoboBee, RoboLobster and others. His group builds biomimetic robots you can see in the Smithsonian. 

In the afternoon I joined the Northeastern team on our weekly Mission 31 science conference call. The conference call was more fun this week with the focus on dive helmets and the schedule. Everyday I get more excited for the mission.

Yesterday was also the annual Riser Lecture at the Marine Science Center. The guest speaker, Dr. Mark Hay, made his hour talk fly by in what seemed like a few minutes. Mark's topic was the current health of coral reefs.

Astounding numbers!  I've long been convinced Marine Protected Areas are the key improving our oceans health, and Mark's talk confirmed this notion. He cited a number of studies, including his own, that quantify the effects of marine protected areas (i.e., without fishing, dumping, etc.) on ecosystems. The numbers are astounding, summarized in the slide below.

Dr. Sylvia Earle is also a huge proponent of Marine Protected areas, and her TED Talk on the topic is excellent. She raised over $17 million with that excellent speech! 

Dinner following the Rise Lecture was fancy and fun. I can't wait to spend more time with Brian Helmuth and his team in Florida. 

How much plastic is in the ocean? Way too much. This infographic by One World One Ocean explains.

More Grace Under Pressure blog posts here.

I spoke at STEMspiration today to a group of high school students in D.C. So honored to be part of a great line up of speakers: 

From the STEMspiration site: 
STEMspiration is the first STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) conference of its kind - a completely student-led event bringing together leaders, doers, makers and thinkers of the highest caliber. STEMspiration has been crafted by the USASEF Youth Advisors as an independent initiative to promote powerful ideas and collaboration in the STEM world.

Who is STEMspiration for, you might ask? Frankly, it is for anyone who cares deeply about the future of science in our society, and how we will encourage rising generations to fearlessly jump into the fray of innovation and discovery. Students, teachers, policy makers, non-profits, inventors, academics, and anyone else will find a place at STEMspiration. While the event will be taking place at McKinley Tech High in Washington D.C., it will be live-streamed for easy access to anyone who has access to the internet.

The STEMspiration Speakers:
Keynote by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Bill Drayton: Founder and CEO, Ashoka
Stephan Turnipseed: President Emeritus, LEGO Education
Adam Garry: Manager of Global Professional Learning, Dell
Joe Palca: Science correspondent, National Public Radio
Grace Young: Aquatic robot scientist, MIT
Jim Meeks: Board of Governors, Jefferson Awards
Steve Culbertson: CEO, Youth Service America
Kaya Henderson: Chancellor, Washington DC Public Schools

Ritankar Das: Founder of See Your Future, the youngest university medalist in Berkley history, Oxford MSc candidate for Bioengineering, and generally nice guy.
Jack Andraka: Winner of the International Science and Engineering Fair for work on a new detection tool for certain cancers, advocate for open access and pokemon master in the works.
Jonny Cohen: Inventor of Greenshield, Forbes 30 under 30 twice, Mechanical engineering student at Columbia, makes them busses work better.
Adora Svitak: Author at age 7, curator of TEDxRedmond, champion and advocate for world hunger, short-story connoisseur.
Omar Abudayyeh: Researcher, MD/PhD candidate at Harvard/MIT, entrepreneur and published scientist. He can see in cells what others cannot.
Sara Volz: Intel Science Talent Search grand winner, published researcher, created super-algae for alternative fuel from her bedroom, MIT student.
Param Jaggi: Founder of EcoViate to make green products widely effective and available, discovered effective algae bio-reactor at 14, looks pretty great in lab goggles.
Parker Liautaud: Explorer of the great Arctic and Antarctic, fighter for the environment, TIME magazine 30 under 30 list, he can get you to the North or South Pole, and he can get you home.
Erik Martin: Game Designer and education activist, works on games that help people and society, founder of The Edvengers Super Hero PAC, is a fire mage in his spare time.

Kids are so fun. Today I talked with about 40 pre-kindergarten students (as young as 3 years old!) at the Tobin School about the ocean and living underwater. They were excited about everything, from Mission 31 to the fact that my necklace had a whale on it. Unlike the kindergarten through third grade students I talked with in the fall, pre-schoolers are a bit too young to understand the full concept of a question. They did, however, tell me tons of stories. One girl even told me she wanted to come on Mission 31 and be a SCUBA diver when she grows up. This made me happy!

I got a lot of "what if" questions, but mostly they told me stories about the water or swimming pools. I love their imaginations. They asked:

• What would happen if you met a shark and made it angry? 
• How do you get food? How do you get drinks?
• What if a shark ate your food?
• What if a shark visited you? 
• How big is the house? Is it bigger than a T-rex?
• If it was Easter underwater, would all the eggs float? 

And told me stories, such as: 

• "I saw a pink fish once. It had eyes but it couldn't talk."
• "I have a swimming pool." (. . . and then everyone talked about swimming pools.)
• "I went to the ocean once with my mom." (. . . and then stories about going to the ocean.)
• "I have a SCUBA diver bath toy." 

How Can Robots Help Us Understand the Ocean? I'm enjoying creating Skype in the Classroom lessons about the marine robotics and the ocean, and interacting with teachers and students.