Next Tuesday (November 18) at noon EST follow and Tweet to the hashtag #MITAlum to join a Twitter chat with me and fellow MIT alum and Mission 31 coordinator Saul Rosser.

The last Twitter chat with #MITAlum was about space exploration. Read more about it here. 

UPDATE:  You can view a summary of the chat at http://oceans.mit.edu/featured-stories/aquanaut-grace-young-lived-undersea-15-days-cousteaus-mission-31-live-qa! 

Thank you Fusion for the nice profile! In the video I share (in 1 minute!) why the ocean is important and my goal to explore and more sustainably manage the ocean using marine robotics. 

Check out other videos in their "genius" (flatteringly named) series too: 

I just launched a KickStarter campaign to help fund an exhibit of underwater high speed photography from Mission 31 and continued work. It'll be at the MIT Wiesner Art Gallery all of January if the campaign is successfully funded! 

Check it out (link here), and please consider attending the exhibit! 

Thanks to Holt McCallany (who was nominated by Fabien Cousteau!) for nominating me for the ALS ice bucket challenge. I've donated and poured ice on my head... 

Thanks to my sister Isabel and our friend Abir for their assistance! 

And in case you've forgotten what this is all about, watch this short film by ESPN.

Fabien, Liz and my interview with National Geographic is now online at: 

Liz and I started our dive. Before every dive we spend about 10 minutes going over a checklist with Otter, who reads the checklist, and Ryan, who helps us put the Kirby Morgan dive helmet on. (My dive helmet post with Lady Gaga is here.) In going over the checklist, we check the functionality of various valves and emergency back-ups on the helmet. Every time everything works, as far as I know. The checklist can seem tedious, but I realize how important it is. I started thinking back to Atul Gawande's book The Checklist Manifesto:  How to Get Things Right. I remember hearing that the medical profession, which suffers from human error, should really use checklists, but doctors just don't. I see why. They're annoying. And everything seems to work. But then again, the checklist seems like the only way to ensure all is as it's suppose to be. Not only do we catch anything not functioning, but routinely checking all the valves, etc. puts our mind at ease. I never have that feeling of, "Am I forgetting something...." I just focus on my dive, and I feel like the master of my equipment. 

This morning of our dive we collected samples in jars from the plankton traps (described in this previous post), and then stored the jars in a mesh bag that Northeastern divers will pick up in the afternoon. We also adjusted a tripod around a giant barrel sponge. The tripod suspends a sensor above the sponge, and the sensors measures the sponge metabolism. 

We returned to Aquarius from our first dive. I ate a late breakfast and change both the the lens and set-up on the Edgertronic camera in case we have extra time to use it on our afternoon dive. 

Space and ocean and space explorers alike remembered Jacques Cousteau, the great explorer, on his birthday this month. See my post Happy Birthday  Jacques Cousteau! for details of the celebration.

To be able to see myself working, on the Mission 31 Live Cam. 

More Grace Under Pressure blog at Aquarius Day 4: Science and Ballet Art Undersea. 

What is historic Mission 31 (and why is it so special?) This great video from Fusion explains the story very well: "Living underwater gives ocean explorers an incredible advantage. Unlike normal surface diving, where a person can only stay underwater a few hours a day, Mission 31 aquanauts can be under the surface for 12 hours or more. This is because their bodies are saturated with nitrogen, allowing them to live at the same pressure as the water that surrounds them." 

"To put it in perspective, it would take a normal diver six months to collect the amount of data that the aquanauts can obtain in 31 days."

"To say the least, Mission 31 is  ... cool." 

The cast of characters includes ... yours truly, Grace under no pressure :)

"This is a story about saving our waters, our oceans, our seas."

We Visited Jacques Cousteau's Grandson at the Bottom of the Ocean, article and video from This is Fusion.

Another great Mission 31 video is Splashdown: Aquanauts Switch Mid-Mission when when Liz, Matt and I splashed down to Aquarius.

Update: Our guide Don just sent me a copy of July's National Geographic with a terrific piece with amazing photos about the Goliath Grouper in the mangroves that they've been working on for years.  I'll write a separate post soon about his fascinating work and this interesting creature that can be up to 800 lbs and nine feet long!  (added 6/21/14)

This afternoon I got a very pleasant surprise in the mail. The students at Birches, whom I chatted with last week, sent me many thank you notes. It put a huge smile on my face! The letters have more excellent questions too. Kids are so curious! Have you seen anything cool? Have you swam with sea snakes? What other animals have you seen? Will you send me a 'pikshr'?  My first visit with this school was in the fall, and it was great (blog post here). 

"From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free."--Jacques Cousteau

"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat." --Jacques Cousteau

This was my first time at the Aquarius table! Until now, I'd only gone as far as the wet porch. It felt like home, as I've taken so many Skype-tours of the habitat, watched it for hours from the control desk, and studied every inch of it during training. Plus, it's such a small space that it doesn't take long to become well acquainted! 

My visit to Aquarius today was a surface dive only, so we could spend only 45 minutes maximum in the habitat due to decompression. Time flew by! It was great to chat with Fabien and Kip, and briefly with Andy and Adam as they headed out for research. They're none the worse for wear -- cheerful and extra grateful for the cookies (a welcome respite from the freeze dried food). See Andy's video diary about why they tend to eat "astronaut food," and see this video about how we can send food from land. There'll be a video about today coming out soon; stay tuned! 

This afternoon, the Mission 31 production team shot a short video about how colors change as divers go deeper underwater.  Photo credit to Mission 31/Nokia Lumia.

Happy World Oceans Day! Mission 31 and Aquarius, the only undersea research laboratory in the world, was the place to be for this year's celebration. Jean-Michel Cousteau and Dr. Sylvia Earle graced us with their presence, as well as Vampire-actor and conservationist Ian Somerhalder (his foundation) and former aquanaut Greg Stone (his TED talk). We celebrated with visits to the crew in Aquarius (Fabien, Adam, Andy, Otter, Kip and Ryan) and with a special event at Islamorada's History of Diving Museum.

Today I was happily back in the water. Billy Snook, Tom, and I shot two short videos explaining basic "underwater" science concepts. The first video was about how colors change as you descend in the water column (reds become dark, blues look basically the same -- I'll miss the color red while living underwater!). For the second video, we took a balloon from Aquarius to the surface, showing how the differences in pressure will inflate the balloon. 

The also asked if I had been bitten or stung by a jellyfish, and the answer is yes! (stung, that is; you can't really get bitten by a jelly). One of the Navy divers on our boat shared an exciting story of a jellyfish attack that certainly peaked their interest.

The production team, including Marc and Toby, edited these video diaries from the aquanauts currently down below. In addition to the three profiled below, Fabien and two technicians, Otter and Ryan, make up the present Aquarius crew. 

Tomorrow is a big day for me. I'll graduate from MIT! Since I didn't graduate from high school, this will be my first graduation. Even though I won't make the commencement ceremony in person, I'll be following the live feed, flip the "brass rat" with the rest of my classmates, and have a mini-celebration here in the Keys. 

It's wonderful to see so many students and teachers excited about our oceans. There's lot's of outreach everyday via M31 Skype-in-the-Classroom and other sources. There's also a  Mission 31 curriculum for grades K-12 to bring back lessons "from the seafloor to the surface." 

I can't wait till tomorrow. I'm helping film 30-second science clips demonstrating basic physics concepts underwater. More on that later! For now, good night. 

Topside I assembled cinder-block/float rigs for the environmental contamination study. In this research, we'll deploy and recover sensors that absorb and measure environmental contaminants, including PCBs, PAHs, and potentially even dispersants left from the BP oil spill.  (A Mission 31 science overview is in post 5/24/14.)  The rig set-up is basically a rope attached to a cinder block on one end, and a styrofoam sphere float on the other. The rope will carry sensors that look like thin clear film and must remain frozen until deployed. Early in the morning, I sent the prepared rigs (in a cooler) to the aquanauts to place on the reef. 

Brian Helmuth and his team of graduate researchers from the Marine Science Research Center at Northeastern University arrived from beautiful Nahant outside of Boston (see blog post 4/30/14) and started a topside blog called, "View From the Surface." I like what Brian says in the blog about Mission 31 connecting people with the ocean:  

Can you imagine this being the view out of your living room window? Fabien tweeted these images on Day 1. Aquarius is definitely a "room" with an amazing view.  

For a summary of the undersea research, one of the aquanaut scientists currently saturated, Adam Zedone, is keeping a blog at Zen1 for 31 about his and Andy's work and adventures. I've enjoyed learning more about their coral, grouper, and predator/prey research. In this video, Adam not only shares details about their experiments, but he also tells of an extended 3-hour excursion in which he caught a "nap" on the seafloor in his Kirby Morgan dive helmet and swam with fish he got to "know" (that seems like an amazing experience, getting to "know" sea life in their natural environment). 

Aquarius' air conditioning broke for awhile, so the temperature and humidity soared to 90 degrees F and 100%, respectively in the habitat. According to Adam, It felt like a hot steamy sauna. Mission control, however, was able to fix it within the day. The habitat fare on Aquarius will be freeze dried food. Fabien tweeted that his "sense of taste seemed dull or maybe food is." Why freeze dried food undersea? Because a cooktop or oven flame would be very dangerous given the increased oxygen levels in the air at that pressure. Andy has a video about this titled, "Science and Dinner." Want to see what's going on in and around Aquarius? You can view the mission -- anytime 24/7 (even now!) -- via the live feed to the habitat on the Mission 31 website. Try it!

What attracted me most to Mission 31, In addition to the scientific research, was the possibility of exciting hope and passion in people of all ages about our oceans.  Students of all ages are Skyping daily with Mission 31 aquanauts to learn more about the ocean via M31 Skype-in-the-Classroom and various news outlets. In addition, almost every day we'll have VIP visitors who dive to the habitat and stay at the seafloor for about 45 minutes maximum to avoid having to decompress. One of the visitors that I helped topside, TV personality Katie Linendoll, wrote this CNN report from her visit.

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! 

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. 

Today I talked about the ocean and living underwater with girls in the Boston Science Club for Girls at the Denver McCormick Middle School in Dorchester.   The Science Club for Girls is a terrific program with such a worthy goal.  The four instructors were incredibly patient and qualified; one had just come back from the Peace Corp and another had a degree in physics. After telling the girls about Aquarius, they did experiments with cans in water to help understand the concept of buoyancy. As they thought about air, buoyancy and fish, one girl brightly asked if fish fart! The surprising answer to this question actually won an Ig Nobel Prize, awards given just before the Nobel Prizes to scientific research that at first makes people laugh, and then think! Regarding buoyancy, did you know that a can of Diet Coke floats but a can of regular Coke sinks?  Try it!  (reason why is here).

Yesterday I spent four hours talking to K-3 students about the ocean, and showed them some robots I've worked on. Best question: "Can you turn this building into a cow?" 

They were so curious about everything, but spent most of the time saying hilarious things! Every 10 minutes or so someone would ask if I would get eaten by a shark, or I'd show them a piece of SCUBA gear, and they'd say, "What if a shark ate that?" I said sharks will really only eat you if you smell like blood and maybe look like a turtle. "You'd better not wear your ninja turtle costume under water!" one smartly said. I truly enjoyed my time with these students. 

More great questions from this group are posted here.

P.S. After my visit, these amazing students built an underwater research house, complete with electricity!  I want to go to school there!  A lesson plan from NOAA ocean education for building an underwater habitat is here: Aquarius Technology: Building an Underwater Habitat. Enjoy!

P.S.S. In June 2014, Mission 31 posted curriculum for grades K-12 to bring back lessons "from the seafloor to the surface," in addition to their M31 Skype-in-the-Classroom.

Today a kindergarten teacher emailed me questions her students had about the ocean (see below . . . she has a curious bunch!). They are adorable, and asked all excellent questions. I'll chat with her students next week to tell them about the ocean and Mission 31. I can't wait to answer some, although I don't know the answers to them all! 

How do fires start under the ocean?
How do killer whales kill?
How do seals get away from killer whales?
How do fish swim? How do seals swim?
How do volcanoes erupt under water?
How does a squid get its tentacles?
How do octopus grow their legs back?
How does a squid squirt its black ink out?
How do boats float?
How do fire boats get water from the sea?
How do starfish get their eyes on their legs? (suction cups?)
How do starfish get their noses?
Do animals in the oceans have noses? Can they smell?
How do boats get made?
How do walruses get their tusks so long and how do they grow
out of their mouth?
How do fish live in the bottom of the ocean?
What lives in what parts of the ocean?
How does water float by itself?
How can Blue Whales hold their breath?
Are there undiscovered sea creatures?
What does it feel like to live in the ocean with gills and flippers?
How big are tiger sharks teeth?
How are coral reefs formed?
How do you know what the whales saying? How are they communicating?
How do fish communicate?
How do Blue Whales grow so big?
How do jellyfish get their tentacles?
How do they sting if they have no brain?
How do crabs eat?
Why are sharks' eyesight so bad?
Why aren't fish warm blooded?
How do crabs get out of their shells?
Why do sea turtles have bad eyesight?
Eyesight of underwater animals?
How can jellyfish swim?
What makes orcas good hunters?
Why do sharks like blood?
Why do orcas eat other whales?
Why are dolphins so friendly?
Why are porpoises so shy?
Why are some sea animals shy?
How did the ocean get salty?
Why is the pressure deep in the water so heavy?
How come the water is blue?
Why is the water dark in the deep sea?
How can animals live in intertidal zone?
Why is the ocean so deep?
How deep can the ocean get?
How did the water get there?
How are islands formed?
How does the ocean work?
How come the water you drink is clear but the water in the ocean is blue?
What makes the ocean clearer in some places than others?
How are waves formed?
Why does the ocean have waves?
How are low and high tides formed?
What causes slopes on beaches?
How come the sand texture changes?
Some beaches have lots more shells and rocks than others?
What percentage of our world is land?
How do animals that live in cold climates get fur and blubber?
How is an iceberg formed?
Is the ocean restless? Does it stop moving?
Why are there tsunamis in places like Japan?