Aquanauts Study Shrinking Coral Reefs

A nine-day mission that began earlier this week is the world's only permanent working undersea laboratory. As if living in a virtual fishbowl, anyone with an Internet connection can watch the researchers as they work and live 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface through live Internet video feed.

The six aquanaut researchers are studying changes taking place along a coral reef. They work, sleep and eat at the Aquarius Reef Base, on the Atlantic Ocean floor about nine miles southeast of Key Largo in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. The project allows students and others to have an extensive real-time view of the underwater life surrounding the 21-year-old lab.

The team is hoping to raise interest in science and the oceans by bringing its research to students across the country with undersea classroom sessions, and to the general public through live Internet video. Feeds reveal the happenings both inside and outside of the base. Divers wear helmets mounted with cameras and audio equipment as they explore their surroundings, to give observers a virtual “fish-eye view”

"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 a fertile habitat of sponge biology and coral reefs — habitats that are currently being threatened around the world by disease, rising ocean temperatures, pollution and overfishing.

The Aquarius base is yellow, and about the size of a school bus. It lets researchers dive for nine hours a day and return to the habitat without the standard scuba diving requirement of surfacing and decompressing. The base 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. Using a system of cables that stretch out from Aquarius, divers visit sites to take measurements and determine if any long-term change has taken place.

"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.

One of those components is sponges, which pump water through their bodies to filter food particles and produce dissolved nitrogen, a fertilizer.

"Corals have gone through huge changes in terms of being totally dominant in oceans to being lesser," said Martens.

They are hoping to unravel more of the mystery of how coral reefs and sponges are being affected and how they may in turn affect each other, as the world’s reefs continue to undergo dramatic changes.

Posted by Rebecca Sato.

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