Two years ago, eleven intrepid Active Divers Association members enjoyed something that fewer than 1,600 of the world’s approximately 3 million certified divers (only about one-half of one percent) have experienced: a mission aboard the Aquarius Underwater Laboratory and Habitat. Part of the Florida International University (FIU) Marine Education and Research Initiative, the Aquarius Program operates the world’s only full time undersea research laboratory, dedicated to the study and preservation of marine ecosystems worldwide. In the two years since that mission, Active Divers has continued our relationship with Aquarius, forming a committee to plan future missions aboard the habitat and funding partial scholarships for two FIU students studying marine sciences. This is a call for volunteers to join that Aquarius Committee and to help us continue our collaboration with that unique underwater program. If, after reading this article you are willing to add your name to the Aquarius Committee roster, please email me at roy@wassonandassociates.com. We need your help and you will be part of an exciting project that will add new dimensions to your diving experiences.

Aquarius is a complex diving system that consists of the lab below the ocean; a life support buoy on the surface that houses power generators, air compressors and data connections; and a mission control center in Islamorada. Using a technique known as saturation diving, Aquarius residents can spend days to weeks under water conducting research that cannot be accomplished anywhere else on the planet.

Aquarius was built in Victoria, Texas in 1986. Underwater operations first began in the United States Virgin Islands, in St. Croix’s Salt River Canyon (now a national park and previously home to Hydrolab, the predecessor to Aquarius), in 1988. After thirteen missions (and Hurricane Hugo), Aquarius was relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina where it was refurbished over an eighteen-month period by the National Undersea Research Center at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). Aquarius remained in Wilmington until 1992 when it was deployed in to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary four miles off Key Largo.

After conducting twenty missions, Aquarius was retrieved in 1996 due to funding constraints. New operating protocols were then developed, funding was restored, and Aquarius was refurbished at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida, during 1997. In 1998, it was redeployed to Conch Reef.

In 2012, NOAA began the process of defunding Aquarius and UNCW relinquished its role as the program’s host academic institution. FIU seized the opportunity to take control of a national asset and in 2013 became the operator of Aquarius. FIU has a long history of research in the coastal marine environment in south Florida, and it counts former Aquarius aquanauts on its faculty. Aquarius serves as the cornerstone of the university’s Marine Education and Research Initiative for the Florida Keys and a generous philanthropic investment secured the purchase of its current shore base in Islamorada.

Our ADA mission started early on a Saturday morning, with Aquarius staff members meeting us at the program’s shore base in Islamorada at 7:30 a.m. to complete paperwork, distribute gear, and begin our classroom orientation. The Aquarius program’s commitment to safety and professionalism is demonstrated by its requirement that divers use program-issued regulators and buoyancy compensators, unless guest divers have certificates documenting current inspections of their own gear. For the next couple of hours our members received classroom instruction on the history and purpose of Aquarius, its facilities, and procedures we would use in visiting and occupying the habitat. We learned about the role of the shore base, safety measures in place, and the history of Aquarius in promoting research of the marine environment. 

After the onshore session, our ADA divers boarded two dive vessels for the forty-five minute cruise to the habitat itself. Our dive plan called for two one-hour dives, with one group visiting the exterior of the structure on the first dive and the other group penetrating the habitat, with a lunch break back topsides before a second dive in which our groups switched destinations.

Upon arriving at the site, one boat moored near the permanent Aquarius service buoy station, which houses two large diesel generators, air compressors, and communications controls for the habitat. (Aquarius was for years managed from a staffed, floating operations center, which has been replaced by the unmanned buoy and shore base.) The other boat moored some distance away. FIU staff divers went aboard the buoy to start the generators and compressors, and other staffers descended to the habitat to unlock the hatches and prepare for company.

The outside of the structure looks like you would expect for a sunken vessel that has been on the ocean floor for more than twenty years. The surface is crusted with barnacles, corals and sponges, and the area around Aquarius is teeming with fish of all sizes and species. Our groups saw giant barracuda, groupers, dolphin, permit, and even a tarpon circling the habitat looking for food and shelter. A nearby separate structure called the Gazebo is a white-colored roof holding air inside that is essentially a diving bell. The Gazebo provides a place for scuba diving researchers to stand up with their heads above water, to take off their masks and regulators to breathe the captured air for awhile during breaks from projects on the sea bottom. The Gazebo also is the emergency escape location should Aquarius catch on fire or another urgent emergency arise during a mission.

The laboratory itself forty-three feet long, twenty feet abeam, and sixteen feet six inches tall. It is attached to a baseplate that positions the underwater habitat about thirteen feet off the bottom. This means that the working depth of those inside the laboratory is about fifty feet deep, which is the atmospheric pressure maintained within the habitat.

We approached Aquarius from the bottom, entering an area called the “moon pool,” within which there is a broad shelf around the sides called the “wet porch.” Divers can kneel on the porch floor with their heads above water, take off their gear and leave it outside while visiting the habitat. Once inside each diver is asked to take a fresh water shower and put on a dry shirt from the dry pot that has ferried down our cell phones and other articles that should be keep dry.

Located inside we found all the comforts of home: six bunks, a shower and toilet, instant hot water, a microwave, trash compactor, a refrigerator, air conditioning and computers linked back to shore by wireless telemetry. Walls full of switches, dials and gauges control the various mechanical and electrical functions of the laboratory. Tables and chairs provide areas for dining, paperwork, and other activities. Large portholes allowed each group of Active Divers to watch the other group swimming around outside.

Aquarius supports one of the longest running and detailed coral reef monitoring programs in the world, an ocean observing platform, and surface-based research in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The first descriptions and identification of a disease pathogen that devastated large hard corals in the Florida Keys, including important information about the distribution, abundance and potential causes of black-band disease. In another study a conclusive link to terrestrial runoff was discovered in a disease that killed large numbers of an ecologically important coral species throughout the Keys and Caribbean.

Astronaut training and other missions in Aquarius typically last ten days and aquanaut trainees undergo five days of specialized training before each mission starts. Missions are conducted on a monthly basis from April through November. Aquarius is normally an ambient pressure habitat, which means that the interior atmospheric pressure is equal to the surrounding water pressure. The entryway within the Wet Porch, called the moon pool, remains open as the equal air pressure inside prevents the water from flowing in. At this depth and pressure, non-saturated visitors to Aquarius have less than about eighty minutes to visit and return to the surface before they risk experiencing decompression illness. However, the mission aquanauts living in Aquarius can stay indefinitely and have six to nine hours of diving outside of the lab down to about ninety-five feet each day, with unlimited time at storage depth. At the end of a mission, aquanauts undergo fifteen hours and forty-five minutes of decompression conducted within Aquarius itself, while on the bottom. At the end of decompression, Aquanauts exit Aquarius and ascend with scuba gear back to the surface.

In the time since our first Active Divers mission aboard Aquarius, we have been educated more about the program with visits to our annual cookout events by speakers from the program faculty and one of the students we provided with funding to assist in his marine sciences studies. FIU has now invited us to get more involved with Aquarius including possibly sponsoring a permanent scholarship in the name of the Active Divers Association. That would be great for our club and help us grow in visibility as an organization recognized for its leadership in marine sciences.

Hurricane Irma did some damage to the program. Aquarius’ external superstructure was damaged and mission-related test items deployed on the reef were lost, but the interior of the laboratory remained watertight. The Life Support Buoy, however, was torn from its moorings and relocated fourteen miles south to the Lignum Vitae Channel. The Buoy was recovered days after the storm and towed to the Port of Miami where it has been undergoing repairs.

Soon Aquarius will be back to operational readiness, and able to continue its relationship with the Active Divers Association. Please check out the Aquarius website (https://aquarius.fiu.edu/), and then please send me an email roy@wassonandassociates.com) to volunteer for the Aquarius Committee to help start planning our next Aquarius mission and other activities. Most of our meeting will be by telephone conference call, and the small investment in time and energy will be well worth the effort. Thank you.

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This summer I landed an internship at the Frost Museum of Science. I work in the “Inventor in Residence Laboratory.” This wet lab is a satellite lab from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. An experiment is being conducted by Dr. Andrew Baker and Dr. Rivah Winter. The focus of the experiment is to grow corals that are more resilient in warm oceans.

Less than one tenth of a fraction of earth’s ocean contain coral reefs and more than 24% of marine animals depend on coral reefs at some point in their lives. With 2016-2017 being a hot summer, most of the corals in the Florida Keys were sent to Davy Jones’ locker and 2018 isn’t looking good either. The University of Miami’s Rescue a Reef program has noted that even though 92% of the transplanted corals from a nursery survive, they will not survive an exposure to overly warm or cool temperatures.

In this first of its kind experiment, we are replacing staghorn coral’s algae community with a more heat and light resistant algae known as clade D zooxanthellae.

All reef-building corals live in a symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae known as zooxanthellae. The zooxanthellae lives in the polyp cell and produces energy by a process of photosynthesis. When the coral polyp is exposed to overly warm or cool temperatures, it can trigger toxins to be realized. When the coral host realized their partner is releasing toxins the corals dispel the algae. 

Dr. Baker’s group discovered that corals paired with clade D zooxanthellae resist bleaching. This may explain why clade D symbionts tend to become more common in reefs after mass coral bleaching events.

In the laboratory, we are able to make corals take on greater numbers of clade D zooxanthellae through a process called “stress hardening”. Ultimately, the experiment will be tested in the ocean and help rebuild reefs in Florida and around the world.

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Thirteen ADA divers took the short one-hour flight from Miami to Grand Cayman to spend a week diving from July 7-14. Grand Cayman is known for its crystal clear warm water and abundant marine life. We knew this year we were due for a safe-bet dive trip, and Grand Cayman didn't disappoint.

We stayed at the Cobalt Coast resort on the north coast of Grand Cayman. We had an all-inclusive meal package and a large patio table where we could dine together poolside every night overlooking the ocean. Dinner began every night with a beautiful sunset and each day began with beautiful diving. Each morning we would board Reef Divers' Twin Sister for three dives a day with valet diving, where all was required that you sit down while brawny lads carried everything to you.

One nice feature of this resort is the long pier with free air tanks and shore diving areas. We completed three shore dives (one afternoon and two night dives) from this pier, where you could go from 5 to 75 feet in about ten minutes kicking at a normal pace.

Unique to this trip was three generations of divers who traveled from St. Louis to be with us: Dennis Fiehler, son Jason and grandson Connor. It's true that the family who plays together stays together.

Diving highlights included the schooling horse-eyed jacks of the Doc Poulson wreck, Stingray City and the "Stingray High-Five" made famous by Connor Fiehler, Kill Puffer reef with the 500-lb. loggerhead turtle being chased by the paparazzi, Bonnie's arch with a beautiful natural arch of coral and schooling fish, Hepp's Pipeline with unbelievable colors, and the Oro Verde wreck complete with dive biking!

On the last day, nine hardy explorers set out on Friday afternoon after the last dive to see some of Grand Cayman above ground. The first place we visited was Pedro St. James Castle, also known as Pedro's Castle. It is the oldest existing building in the Cayman Islands. Located on the southern coast of Grand Cayman Island, the manor is a restoral of the original 1780 house, and the home of plantation owner William Eden. In 1831, it served as a rendezvous point for the first elected parliament in the Cayman Islands; the location has since been known as the birthplace of democracy in Cayman. During this meeting, the decision was made amongst the island's leading citizens to vote for elected representatives. Four years later, in 1835, the Slavery Abolition Act was read from the stone archway of the building.

By the 1970s, the building was reduced to ruin after decades of neglect. But In 1996, the house was restored, and an added area was used as a gathering place for locals, including a restaurant and bar. Trish, our guide, gave us the low-down on the building’s history, with an animated 25-minute show, and lead the tour of the house for us. After an hour we were back on our bus headed for our next stop, Cayman Spirits Company.

Based on some advice from Trip Advisor and the staff at Cobalt Coast, this was deemed the best “Rum Tasting and Distillery Tour” on the Island, and from what we experienced, we have to agree! The staff was animated and fun, playing 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s music as we sampled each and every flavor of rum they had, followed by a “lightening round” where we could resample anything we liked. It was followed by a very informative tour of the distillery before we boarded our bus for the return trip to the resort. We all agreed, this was the “most bestest rum tasting ever”.

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There is good news about the Oceans. I know I brought a lot of gloom and doom lately but here is the opposite side. The Ocean Conservancy (an advocate group for the Oceans) has received over $3 Billion dollars in commitments from countries and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) during a two-day conference. Now that will help. 

They work on expanding the marine protected areas, sustainable fisheries, marine pollution, the blue economy and maritime security. Each one will help the oceans recover from the stresses they are under. It is critical for the people living off the oceans. Forests may be the lands' green lung, but the oceans are the earth's beating heart. It also addresses the Oceans acidification. This is the increasing amount of carbon admissions the Oceans receive. This harms shell-building animals such as oysters, clams and mussels, not to mention the coral reefs themselves.

They have also started a program called the Trash Free Seas Alliance. These are countries that are committed to removing and preventing trash from entering the oceans to begin with. All these endeavors are a great move in the right direction. Saving our Oceans. So there you have it: The Good News.

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The Zen of Alan Watts As Applied to Diving
--by Jerry Kosakowski

(Note: Alan Watts was a 20th century philosopher who popularized Eastern philosophy to Westerners)

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.

Now let’s see how to apply this to scuba diving:

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them, they sink because the water gets in them. Don’t let what is happening around you, sink you, keep it outside of you.

If you are beach diving and getting pummeled by waves on entry get out of the surf zone. Walk back out and wait, immediately dive and swim to deeper water but don’t stay at the spot that has you in trouble. The same with your life. Make a change when getting pummeled.

Upon surfacing and not locating the boat, don’t panic, it didn’t sink. Look some more with your eyes wide open. Maybe with a change in your mind on how this happened. Your life isn’t sinking either, just taking you to a different spot, where you can learn a lesson.

I hope these “water” sayings bring meaning to your life. It hasn’t to me but who knows how it can work for someone else.

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The Green Flash
--by Jerry Kosakowski

Yes, it is an underwater superhero. Just kidding, does anyone really know what it is. Of course, it has to do with the oceans. It is one of the most elusive features of the gulf sunset. No wonder the Key West sunset festival is so popular. They are probably looking for the flash. On the other hand, they might just be getting prepared for their bar hunt and know nothing of the flash.

Let’s get down to details. Enough of this nonsense. The flash is a natural phenomenon. It is visible immediately after the sun dips below a clear horizon with no clouds or haze in the mix. It is the sun’s spectral bands being separated by the atmosphere (We may need a scientist* to explain that part). Only at sunset is the sun’s light diminished enough to see the flash. Red and yellow bands set before the sun does and the blue bands are scattered by the blue sky. The only remaining band is the green. Thus, the flash. Get it.? I am not sure I do but I never was good at science,

*Much like a prism bends light waves into their component colors, called dispersion, the sun’s angle to the atmosphere bends the sun’s visible rays into the familiar ROY G BIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet).--a Scientist

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Muddy Waters

-- by Jerry Kosakowski

If you dove at last year’s closing event you know what muddy waters are. Well, it wasn’t really muddy but it was a silt-out. I am still amazed that Rachael was able to train those divers. They definitely had an experience. This demonstrates Rachael’s expertise in training.

When you entered the waves were crashing and it was hard just to maintain your balance. You couldn’t even see your feet in 4 feet of water. This was the effect of the previous storms and hurricanes passing and it was challenging. Usually, it starts this way but once you get deep enough it will clear up. It wasn’t happening on this dive. This is one where your training had to kick in.

Diving in these conditions is like driving a car in real bad fog. You are a little apprehensive. This time the silt was very bad and not about to wash out with the tide. The best you could do is use that compass and stayed glued to it. The waves were turning you around every which way. Those familiar land marks never seemed to appear. At least I never noted any of them. I hugged the bottom and used my compass, when I could see it. It had to be in front of my nose. Paying attention to my dept gauge was a help in the direction department as well. After having enough of not catching any legal lobsters (a couple were too small) I decided this was not my day. I took a compass bearing and luckily came out close to where I entered. Some days that muddy water diving should be postponed. On other days it is a great training experience. This was one. Makes me recall the army saying: “If it ain’t raining we ain’t training.”

Predictions for Annual Florida Reef Spawning
--by DeeperBlue.com

The Deeper Blue website has announced the probable dates for the annual Florida Keys reef spawning event. Dives on or around the full moon on August 26th or September 24th, 2018 will be an opportunity to witness coral mass spawning in the region.

Although the exact reasons that trigger corals to spawn are not exactly understood, there is strong evidence to indicate that there is a connection to lunar cycles, tide, water temperature and 24-hour light cycles. The event is monitored by scientists every year, with a reasonable degree of accuracy of prediction when the next event will be.To read the entire article, click on DeeperBlue.com.

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Active Divers T-Shirts For Sale

Show your pride in the best dive club anywhere! Sizes small, medium, large, xlarge, xxlarge. Some tank tops available also. All shirts are $10 each. CALL LON AT 305-251-4975 AND PLACE YOUR ORDER TODAY!. Lon will deliver it to you on your next dive

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Dive Tip: DeFog
--by Dr. Dan Baeza

You're on the dive boat and about to plunge into the water, when you decide to squirt a little defogging agent into your mask. It is at that moment that you remember that you emptied the bottle on your last dive.

What to do? Hmmmm... Borrowing is always an option, but chances are, everyone is either in the water or on their way to the water. Well, just like an empty scuba tank is usually not completely empty, so is it with defog. Simply add a small amount of water, shake it around, and voila, instant defog.

Can't get the applicator nozzle off? No matter. Just squeeze the bottle, insert the tip into water, and let it vacuum up a small amount of water. Swish it around, and you're back in business.

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