Coming up next on Jonathan Bird's Blue World,
a visit to the world's only undersea laboratory!
Hi, I'm Jonathan Bird and welcome to my world!
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When I was a kid, I dreamed about exploring the ocean from an undersea lab, far away from
the distractions of the world above. That might seem like a science fiction fantasy—even
less likely in fact than a space station.
As it turns out, a bunch of scientists and engineers thought an undersea lab might be
a great way to study the ocean, and life in the ocean. With funding from the National
Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration, they created the Aquarius Reef Base near Key Largo,
Florida. My childhood dream has become a reality.
Here, six people can live and work for weeks at a time without ever going to the surface.
Sure, it seems really cool, but to truly understand how this underwater habitat benefits the study
of the ocean, you need to understand a little bit about the physiology of scuba diving.
Scuba gear has given humans the ability to explore the shallow parts of the ocean. We
can hover weightless like fish, breathing underwater for as long as our scuba tank lasts—which
is generally about an hour.
But even with a limitless scuba tank, we can't stay too long underwater because of a phenomenon
called decompression sickness, or "the bends."
When I submerge underwater, the increasing water pressure at depth pushing in on my lungs
won't allow me to breathe unless my regulator supplies air to me at the same pressure as
the water around me. The deeper I go, the more water pressure there is, and therefore
the air I am breathing is at a higher pressure too—pushing out at the same pressure as
the water pushing in.
Since about 79% of the atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, and our bodies can't metabolize
nitrogen, all this high pressure nitrogen builds up in my muscles and other tissues
when I dive.
If I stay underwater for too long, too much nitrogen builds up in my body.
When I come back to the lower ambient pressure at the surface, it can form bubbles in my
blood, sort of like this. (shake and open a soda can). These bubbles get stuck in small
arteries and veins, blocking circulation and causing great pain.
But what if I didn't have to come back here to the lower pressure at the surface after
a dive? What if I stayed down there at a high ambient pressure by living in an undersea
lab? I could scuba dive all day long and never get the bends! That's the idea behind the
Aquarius Reef Base.
The blue world team has been invited to film an Aquarius mission, so Cameraman Tim and
I have come to Key Largo for an adventure.
We load the Aquarius support boat and join the staff as we depart from the dock for a
45 minute ride out to the Aquarius.
Once we clear the canal and reach the ocean, we still have a few miles to go. The Florida
keys have huge areas of shallow coral reefs before the sea floor drops off into deeper
water. So Aquarius is located a bit further from shore than you might expect.
Our ride takes us over miles of beautiful coral reef. I can hardly contain my excitement
to see this astonishing underwater habitat!
At last we reach the Life Support Buoy. This floating structure contains generators and
compressors, supplying power and air to the Aquarius below. We tie our boat up to the
Life Support Buoy.
Aquarius is sitting on the sea floor 60 feet beneath our boat.
Tim and I suit up and prepare to not only see Aquarius up close, but go inside to meet
the team of divers called Aquanauts with whom we will be working for the week.
Well, I'm all geared up and ready to go. This is so cool, you have got to see this!
As soon as I hit the water I can see Aquarius directly beneath me in the clear water. It's
almost like a submarine that doesn't move.
But unlike a submarine, the pressure inside Aquarius is the same as the pressure outside.
So even though there is an open hatch at the bottom of the habitat, water doesn't go
in. This allows people to go in and out of Aquarius as much as they like.
Which is totally awesome!
So this is it! The Aquarius, amazing! I can come right in through an open hole in the
floor, and yet, the water stays out, that's cool. Now, time for a shower. You have to
shower before you go inside the Aquarius because they don't salt water in everything. I mean,
we might be underwater, but this is civilized.
So the Aquarius, you can think of it like a big school bus with no seats in it. It's
sort of like a long tube and everything is spread throughout that tube.
At this end, behind this power door, is the front porch, and that's where I came inside.
We like to keep that closed because it's quite humid in there and its air conditioned in
here. Now the next feature you'll find right inside the front door here is the bathroom.
Here's your bathroom, you have got your privacy curtain...it's a pretty small bathroom but
it gets the job done. And of course, right across over here, a sink, and some laboratory
equipment, just in case you need to do some biological studies.
And then we come down a little further and we have a computer. Well... you have got to
be able to get on the internet even when you are underwater, I mean come on!
So here in the middle of the Aquarius we have the kitchen, or what you would call on a boat,
the galley. So if you come in here we're got the sink, and we've got a place to eat, sort
of a kitchen table if you will. And, a picture window! But unlike your picture window at
home, this picture window looks out on a coral reef with fish swimming by.
Where's the fish? Come here fishies!
And the last part, down here at the far end (this would be sort of like the back of the
school bus) you have six bunks all stacked up together. You can see there is not a lot
of space in here. In fact, if you're sleeping, you only have about a foot and a half from
your head to the next bunk up. It's pretty tight, but it's cozy and its dry.
And you can't beat the view out the window at the foot of the bed!
So now you might be wondering...what do you eat down here? Well, they eat sort of like
astronauts. It's freeze-dried foods. If you are a camper you might have used some of this
stuff. You rip the package open, you put water water in it and you can eat it right out of
the package. They don't really have a lot of facilities for cooking. They have a microwave
and they have hot water and that's about it. There is no stove and there's no oven.
Some of the food that gets brought down in very tight containers gets compressed with
the pressure down here. So this is something that was fully inflated at the surface but
once it gets brought down here to 50 feet, the pressure in here squishes it down, and
that's what it ends up looking like.
You can feel the pressure all around you even if you don't really feel like you are under
pressure. The air that we are breathing is a little bit more dense because it's compressed
and several things happen. My voice sounds a little funny to me, but on top of that...
( jonathan tries to whistle )...it's really hard to whistle! ( bad whistling ) There we
go!
Even though the scientists are out scuba diving, there are always two technicians in Aquarius
maintaining the life support, fixing little things that break, monitoring the various
systems and keeping track of the divers.
While technician Mark Hulsbeck is giving me an introduction to the life support systems,
we are being watched by someone on shore.
There are cameras all over Aquarius.
They send their signals through a cable up to the Life Support Buoy, where the signal
is beamed wirelessly back to the antenna on shore.
Here at the watch desk, another technician monitors activity, electrical systems and
life support. This is an additional layer of safety. If there is some kind of emergency,
help will be on the way immediately.
Meanwhile, down at Aquarius, I have to leave. I can only stay a little more than an hour
because I have to return to the lower pressure at the surface or I'll have decompression
sickness.
The biologists however, are out working on the reef, conducting their study of reef sponges.
They wear double scuba tanks so they can carry a lot of air. Even though they dive a hundred
feet deep, they can spend hours and hours doing their research, utterly unconcerned
about such trivial things as decompression sickness.
They can spend as much time as they like on the reef, because they don't need to go
to the lower pressure of the surface after their dive. Instead these aquanauts will return
to Aquarius.
When their scuba tanks get low, the aquanauts head over to the nearest gazebo. It's sort
of like an oasis for divers. It's filled with air. Inside they can take their masks
off, talk to each other and fill their scuba tanks from a high-pressure hose from Aquarius.
After an air fill, the aquanauts can go back on out the reef for a few more hours!
Eventually though, they get hungry and come back to Aquarius
for lunch.
The next day, I have another hour to spend in Aquarius, so I go during lunch to meet
these sponge-studying aquanauts!
What is it you can do here that you can't do from the surface?
Why do you have to go through all this?
We have over 900 sponges that we visit every year.
And it just takes so long that we really need a lot of bottom time.
And like this morning we did a 6 hour dive but
if we were to do that from boats from the surface,
that would have taken us probably 6-10 dives.
After lunch, the Aquanauts gear back up and head out for another few hours work. They
may swim quite a ways to their research site, but they have safety lines to lead them back
home to Aquarius.
Aquarius isn't just a home for aquanauts. Over the years, coral and sponges have grown
all over the structure. It has been transformed into an artificial reef, with thousands of
fish taking up residence. They're all used to divers. One of the resident tarpon comes
right up to my camera for a close look.
Cameraman Tim investigates a purple coloration on the hull of Aquarius, only to be attacked
by an angry Sargeant Major—a kind of damselfish. The purple coloration is an egg nest. The
tiny eggs are stuck to the hull by the female and guarded by the male—and he's not happy!
Aquarius is home to fish as well as people.
While the marine residents have all they need, the humans inside need constant supplies from
the surface. Drinking water is brought down each day by surface support divers.
Air gets pumped down all the time by the Life Support Buoy overhead. It continually overflows
out the bottom of the wet porch, so the air inside stays fresh. If the pumps in the Life
Support Buoy failed, there is a huge supply of air in reserve tanks next to Aquarius.
Getting dry things like food, cameras and towels down to Aquarius presents a bit more
of a challenge, but the team came up with a brilliantly simple solution.
"So, this is a modified paint pot, they apparently don't make them anymore..."
It looks like a giant pressure cooker. This heavy steel container has a valve on top for
equalizing internal pressure, and 8 strong clamps to keep it closed.
Depending on how heavy the stuff inside is, a diver may be able to handle it alone. Or an air-filled
lift bag might be required to keep it from sinking.
Once the pot is delivered, the valve is opened to bring it up to the same internal pressure
as Aquarius, and the clamps come off. With any luck, everything is dry. In the last ten
years, only one has leaked.
At the end of their week in Aquarius, the aquanauts must go through one long decompression
to bring their bodies back to surface pressure. They rest for about 18 hours, watching Blue
World DVDs of course, while the pressure inside Aquarius is brought back down to that of the
surface. For a few hours, they wear masks and breathe pure oxygen. Aquarius serves as
one huge decompression chamber.
In spite of all the effort required to keep Aquarius running, this underwater lab is actually
not very expensive to operate: about $10,000 per mission day. That might sound like a lot,
but it's actually inexpensive when the number of diving hours are all added up. Four scientific
divers can rack up 32-40 combined hours underwater each day.
We know very little about the oceans, just because they're so difficult to study. But
we do know that the oceans are incredibly important to our planet, our atmosphere and
all life on Earth. The more we know about the oceans, the better we can protect and
nurture the entire Earth's environment. Aquarius Reef Base is the world's only underwater
research station serving on the front lines of cutting-edge ocean research. And with continued
funding, it will be helping scientists study the ocean for many years to come.
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