Newsmaker – Sea Study Lets Students Dive – Virtually

By Adrian Sainz

KEY LARGO, Fla. – A nine-day mission that began Monday in the world’s only permanent working undersea laboratory is like living in a fishbowl in more ways than one: Anyone with an Internet connection can watch the researchers work and hang out 60 feet below the surface.

Six “aquanauts” studying changes along a coral reef will work, sleep and eat at Aquarius Reef Base, on the Atlantic Ocean floor about nine miles southeast of Key Largo in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It’s the first time students and others will get such an extensive real-time view of the underwater life surrounding the 21-year-old lab.

The team, hoping to raise interest in science and the oceans, is bringing its research to students with undersea classroom sessions and to the public through live Internet video. Feeds are coming from inside and outside Aquarius, and from divers wearing helmets mounted with cameras and audio equipment.

“It would be ideal if all the students we are going to reach on this mission could actually be here, but the truth is most of them will never get that opportunity,” said Ellen Prager, chief scientist for Aquarius. “So the best we can do is have them connect and be virtually there.”

Researchers will study sponge biology and coral reefs – fertile marine habitats that are threatened around the world by disease, rising ocean temperatures and human factors such as pollution and overfishing.

On most reefs around the world, the abundance of hard coral has declined, and the cover of soft algae has increased, said Steve Gittings, science coordinator with NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program. Algae is a natural part of the ocean ecosystem, but it can respond to human influences such as pollution to create large or unnatural concentrations that can displace corals.

“We’re seeing dramatic changes literally on reefs around the world with regard to the relationship between all those different components that live on the bottom,” Gittings said.

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Living and working under water

The Aquarius Reef Base in the Florida Keys will be the living quarters for the reef researchers

Details

About 60 feet below the Atlantic, the yellow, tube-shaped Aquarius is 43-feet long and about nine feet in diameter – about the size of a school bus.

Owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and operated by the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Aquarius was built in 1986 and began operating in the U.S. Virgin Islands before being redeployed off Key Largo in 1993.

The facility has bunk beds and showers; a microwave, refrigerator and sink; and the computer and diving equipment needed to research reefs and collect, assemble and relay data.

Food, computers and other equipment are sent down using pots that can handle 2 1/2 times normal atmospheric pressure below the ocean’s surface.

ON THE WEB

OceansLive: oceanslive.org

Aquarius: uncw.edu/nurc/aquarius

Virtual Dive to Aquarius:

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/ technology/diving/aquarius/ aquarius.html

NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program: http:// sanctuaries.noaa.gov

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Originally published by Adrian Sainz Associated Press .

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