"Back To The Past" - My visit to Classroom Under The Sea
It’s November of 2014 and I’m currently mid-flight from sunny warm Florida back to my home in chilly Connecticut.
I’ve just become a certified aquanaut after living 24 hours underwater with my new friends Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain. An aquanaut is an “individual who remains underwater, exposed to the ambient pressure, long enough to come into equilibrium with his or her breathing media. Usually this is done in an underwater habitat on the seafloor for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface.”[1]
Bruce and Jessica are more than mid-way through their record setting 73 days (and nights) underwater in Jules Undersea Lodge (Jules’). I believe today marks 41 days down, 32 days remaining. Jessica has already broken the record for a female, whereas Bruce and Jessica are aiming, and no doubt will beat the all-time record of 69 days set in this same habitat by Richard Pressley 22 years ago in 1992.
I was honored that they invited me to visit Classroom Under The Sea, participate in a live webcast on Ocean Exploration, and to stay the night.
Classroom Under The Sea’s mission is to:
1.) “Host the first online college credit biology course taught from below the sea surface.
2.) Provide opportunities for middle and high school students to learn more about the ocean and challenges of living in the sea through weekly episodes broadcast on the web.
3.) Provide opportunities for local students to join the aquanauts in the habitat and experience living and working in the sea.
4.) Set the world record for undersea living”[2]
Bruce is an Associate Professor of biology at Roane State Community College and Jessica is an Adjunct Professor at Roane.
A fascinating undertaking it is, the partnering of the Key Largo-based Marine Resources Development Foundation (MRDF) and Classroom Under The Sea. To date Classroom Under The Sea’s live weekly webcasts have featured topics including:
History of Man in the Sea
The Sea and Space Connection
Fisheries: Prey and Predator
The World of Art and Its Impact on Ocean Conservation
Episodes are viewable on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/user/classroomunderthesea
More information is available at www.RoaneState.edu
Bruce is self admittedly a Cousteau groupie, having been influenced by JYC and the team’s exploits. Lucky for me as that enabled this amazing experience. Bruce sort of apologetically even admitted that he likes his diving equipment black and yellow, in line with Cousteau’s black wetsuits with a yellow stripe down the side. I love that.
So what is Jules’? As John Denver, one of my Cousteau friends would have undoubtedly said, “Far Out!” John would have loved it. Oh yeah, it too was literally cool as I guess Jess likes the A/C cranked. Good thing I listened to Bruce when he told me to bring sweats.
During the evening of my visit, Chris Olstad of MRDF paid us a visit. Chris showed me a fascinating historical video, which explained to me that Jules’ is a repurposed underwater research laboratory. Formerly known as La Chalupa, it was an underwater habitat used to explore the continental shelf off the coast of Puerto Rico. Mr. Ian Koblich (pronounced Yan) developed and operated La Chalupa.
Today Ian is President of the MRDF, www.MRDF.org, which owns Jules’. The Key Largo Underseas Park in Key Largo, FL operates Jules’.
In the mid-1980s Ian and Neil Monney developed Jules’. “The two men have developed and managed undersea habitats that have produced more aquanauts than all of the other undersea habitats in the world combined.” Today there are only three surviving habitats worldwide, two of which are here in Key Largo’s Emerald Lagoon. The third, Aquarius, is not far away, adjacent to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
Jules’ is fixed atop legs about five feet from the lagoon’s 30-foot bottom. I asked Jessica whether the habitat moves, as it occasionally felt like it. She agreed and we briefly discussed that there must be a physical explanation for why we sense movement. I don’t know but suspect that the life support system has something to do with it, as compressed air is constantly being pumped into and exhausted out of the environment. An underwater habitat has to meet the needs of human physiology. Obviously one of the most basic human needs is to be able to breath air.
The habitat is filled with compressed air, which prevents the water from rising and flooding the living area. A five by seven foot "moon pool" in the floor of the centered wet room is how you enter. You dive underneath the structure and rise into the moon pool. There you deposit your dive gear and hop in a shower. It seems pretty important to dry off in the wet room before sliding open a circular doorway that’s about twice the size of a man hole cover, and climbing into either the dry sleeping chamber with two semi-private bedrooms (bunks), or on the opposite side of the wet room climb through a similar entry to the eight by twenty foot dry common room. The two bedrooms and the common room each have a 42 inch round window to the sea.
Figure 1: A model showing the two cylinders, which make up the sleeping chamber and the common room with the wet room in the center. (The “lab”, which I’ll mention is the other white cylinder to the right.)
Figure 2: Bruce and Jessica Skyping with a school. The common room’s circular window is behind them.
Much of the research conducted in habitats has been focused on aquanaut and astronaut human physiology and the effects of breathing gases under pressure. Bruce and Jess recently hosted astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Gernhardt who discussed how underwater training has helped prepare astronauts for space exploration. Buzz was 1969’s Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot and the second person to walk on the moon. Mike manages the environmental physiology lab at Houston’s Johnson Space Center and has logged more than 43 days in space.
I expect they both know my friend Russell Schweickart. Rusty was 1969’s Apollo 9 Lunar Module Pilot, the third manned flight of the Apollo series and the first manned flight of the lunar module.[3] He too served as backup commander for the first Skylab mission in 1973 before moving to NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC as Director of User Affairs in the Office of Applications. In this position he was responsible for transferring NASA technology to the private sector. Thanks to Cousteau’s great relationship with NASA, specifically Dr. George Low[4], the Deputy Administrator of NASA, Rusty also had the role of liaison to Cousteau. That opened the door for me to intern for Rusty in Washington the bicentennial summer of 1976.
Jules’ is a pressurized environment, so if one stays long enough one will become saturated. Saturation means that due to exposure to breathing gas in a pressurized environment for a prolonged period of time a diver’s tissues have absorbed the maximum amount of gas possible, e.g. the tissues are saturated with nitrogen. Once the tissues become saturated, the time to ascend from depth and safely decompress will not increase with further exposure. This is a diving technique that reduces the risk of decompression sickness, e.g. “the bends”[5], enabling divers to live and work in undersea habitats at depth for extended periods of time.
I became saturated and although we were not deep enough for me to have to make any decompression stops during ascent, I did have to wait 24 hours before flying in order to “off gas, meaning reducing the load of nitrogen and other inert gasses from my tissues. Although Bruce and Jessica will be saturated for 73 days they will follow a similar protocol. Andy Pruna, a visitor mentioned below, did suggest they consider taking some oxygen upon surfacing and Bruce agreed that they would do that as a precaution. (Taking an abundance of caution, simplifying the story, I told today’s flight flight attendant that I’d been diving. I’d waited 24 hours but if I didn’t feel well I’d need oxygen. She blew me off.)
Regarding MRDF, I didn’t meet Ian. He sounds like a fascinating and brilliant personality. I wonder if he and JYC ever met. I can just hear them at the dining table in Calypso’s wardroom or in Jules’. I’m reminded of something I write in my book, about Dr. Low’s visit to Calypso when he and JYC discussed “the upcoming space flight with the Russians, mass transit, American cars, rockets, weather, submarines, and what JYC calls the ‘energy problem’, not a crisis...Cousteau is interested in networking satellite-based technology and ocean-based sensors to remotely monitor the health of the oceans.” I expect Ian and JYC might discuss JYC’s three Conshelf Missions, including 1963’s Conshelf Two, which was at roughly the same depth as Jules’.
So let’s get back to the beginning… I first arrived at the habitat a bit earlier than I was expected. I just didn’t want to be late. This allowed me time to get acquainted with Bruce and Jessica before two other visitors arrived, Andy Pruna, a multitalented accomplished documentary filmmaker and diver, and Chelsea Wegner, an impressive young lady who is a Sea Grant Fellow from NOAA. The three of us made up the day’s webcast program along with Chelsea’s boss, Craig McLean who was on Skype.
Figure 3: Left to right, Bruce, Chelsea, me, Jessica, Andy
The webcast seemed to go well, except for the telephone call that came in as Bruce was mentioning my bio.
My usual presentation has evolved and is now well honed and quite popular. I use over 100 photographs to share my story of adventure. I could have easily walked the students through the 20 photos I’d prepared. I think they would have enjoyed that.
Figure 4: The set in the common room.
Figure 5: Megan (Jessica’s sister who’s staying topside) making some magic.
Figure 6: Chelsea and Andy heading out. (Note the spider hanging in upper right, a Halloween leftover.)
After the webcast, no sooner had Chelsea and Andy departed than the Univision television crew arrived, including Andy’s son Andres. That was entertaining, to say the least. Over the course of a few hours, they set-up, shot live footage, and then packed and surfaced.
Figure 7: Andres and the Univision crew in the common room.
Then after a short breather Chris arrived. He’d made the long commute of ‘five kicks’ over from the neighboring “lab”, the aforementioned second habitat within the lagoon. He’s a biologist and underwater technologist and has operated MRDF’s manned underwater laboratory habitat ”MarineLab”, the longest serving seafloor habitat in history, since 1984,
The eight by 16 foot habitat supports up to four people and is divided into a laboratory, a wet room and a transparent observation sphere. MarineLab was used as an integral part of the Scott Carpenter Man in the Sea Program.[6]
“Chris has logged more underwater hours living and working from undersea habitats and has directly supervised more aquanauts on more missions than any other human.”[7]
I was blown away and intrigued by Chris’s intelligence and seemingly futuristic work and thinking about Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) and other mind bending disruptive yet potentially productive technologies. According to Chris much of it is not so futuristic. Chris spoke of work underway and real progress to reduce the latency of signal processing to more practical useable levels between a land-based operator and a ROV on the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean, or the shallower oil well heads below the Gulf of Mexico, or even between earth and an ROV on the surface of Mars.
As the evening visit from Chris wound down, it was probably approaching 10:30 p.m. or so, he invited us to then come visit the lab…a night dive. The three of us, Bruce, Jess and I were all pretty comfy and I’d say a little chilled by the A/C…at least Bruce and I were, as was Chris. Bruce was understandably tired, as was I. Jess suggested to Bruce that he “man up” and she offered to take me. I kind of let them off the hook. I’d had a great full day and didn’t need to prove anything. Given Chris’s wonderful passion I’m quite sure he was disappointed. I’m hopeful I can visit the lab another time.
Shortly thereafter we turned in. Bruce graciously gave up his comfy bunk for me to sleep in while he slept on the bench seat in the common room. He said he prefers the bench but I didn’t buy it for a minute. It was awfully nice of him.
I left the common room, passed through the wet room and the passage into Bruce’s bunk area.
Figure 8: The circular passageway one climbs through from the wet room into Bruce’s bunk area.
The next morning I awoke early, around 6:00. The water outside the large circular window at the foot of my bunk (Bruce’s bunk) began to lighten.
Figure 9: Early morning sunlight in the water at the foot of the bed.
I didn’t want to stay in the bunk or awaken Jess in the adjoining room so I climbed through the small but manageable circular sliding door into the wet room where the moon pool is. I slid the circular door closed behind me. This is important, as the sleeping rooms and the common room are climate controlled whereas the wet room area in the center of the habitat is less so. I partially opened the door to the common room on the other side of the wet room to see if Bruce was awake but it was still dark so I quietly slid that circular door closed and camped out by the moon pool for an hour and a half. Although not silent due to the life support system it was peaceful and enjoyable. Nothing dramatic but I enjoyed sitting among the air tanks, wet suits and regulators, watching individual snappers and angelfish scoot by and smaller schools of other fish amble by more slowly.
Thankfully around 8:00 we had two surprise visitors, Rick Molchan and Christina Saida. Both proficient divers and good friends of Bruce and Jess’s from back home in Tennessee. They were fully of energy and good spirits so the humor, entertaining stories and teasing were a fun way to start the day. Rick, who’s a PADI instructor, presented Jess with her recently earned Divemaster card and they shared a contraband pop tart to celebrate. Before long Rick and Christina geared up as they had a 1:00 date with a dive boat in Key West, heading off to catch my old friend Panularis Argus, the South American Spiny Lobster. I wrote a research paper on this creature in 1975 during my Cousteau expedition to Mexico and Belize.
Soon thereafter I packed my few belongings, Bruce and I donned our gear. The plan was to swim to the common room window, where Jess would take our picture. Then we’d look into the nearby lab, tour the lagoon and head back to Jules’. There I’d say good-bye and get the airtight yellow plastic box containing my belongings. Bruce could not surface, as he had to stay submerged to set the record.
Figure 10: Jessica showing off the shirt I made for her. I guess it should have said FROGWOMEN.
Figure 11: Bruce and I are ready to go.
Best laid plans…we headed toward the corner of the habitat and the common room window for Jess to take the photo. Rather Bruce did. My tank’s cylinder valve became tangled in a line that anchored the habitat. I quickly unhooked and hustled after Bruce but was surprisingly short of breath. Something was wrong. Although I had no air gauge, I knew I was out of air. I had no choice but to surface.
I was concerned that Bruce would be worried. He could not surface or he’d lose the record..
I made my way to the diving dock. We confirmed a leak in the tank. - Megan said, “oh and by the way your nose is bleeding”.
Shame on me for not checking the air before the dive. I “assumed” that since I’d had 2,200 psi before the prior day’s descent, that I still had a mostly full tank. Overnight it had leaked.
I dropped my buoyancy compensator (BC)[8], tank and weight belt at the dock and swam out and under with my mask and fins to hand signal to Bruce that I was OK. He got my signal and returned to the moon pool.
There’s a hookah you can take down to the habitat. It’s a long flexible yellow tube with a mouthpiece that supplies air. Pretty cool…but I’d never used one. I got a weight belt and swam down to the habitat using the hookah. Bruce was waiting in the moon pool and Jess was nearby in the wet room.
Figure 12: Megan on the dive dock. Note the bubbles in the distance. That’s from Jules’. A hookah is in the water as others hang nearby. The green barrier across the water is a curtain protecting the habitat from boats passing in the channel. There’s an opening in the curtain below the dock, enabling fish and manatee to enter and exit.
Then I got a new tank, different weight belt and BC. I swam down to Bruce and off we went.
In closing I’m reminded of what John Denver wrote in his song Calypso:
“For though we are strangers
We must learn from the sea”
It was interesting to visit Classroom Under The Sea and get a glimpse of what it takes for us to ‘live in the sea’…
Bruce and Jessica, bonne chance!
P.S. Here’s the Ocean Exploration webcast. Check out the intro and then if you’re wanting to get to my piece it starts at about the 19:45 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWXYX-VUmJ8&list=PLb7b9-MwnHFwo3u7RgQsomvtHm5uEGrIx
#Cousteau, #La Chalupa, #Classroom Under The Sea, #SCUBA
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquanaut
[2] http://www.roanestate.edu/classroomunderthesea/
[3] I’m struck by both of these dates being 1969. Apollo 9 in March and Apollo 11 in July (Apollo 10 in between in May.) Talk about a space race!
[4] On the day after Christmas 1974 I flew from Miami to Mexico with George, spent time with him there aboard Calypso, and later was a guest in his Northern Virginia home. After retiring from NASA he became President of RPI, a position he held until his death at the early age of 58 due to cancer. The day before he died the White House announced he’d been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to education and the nation’s space program.
[5] Decompression sickness (DCS), also known as “the bends” or caisson disease, is a condition that most commonly refers to problems associated with underwater diving depressurization. It arises from gases dissolved inside the human body coming out of solution and forming into bubbles. The bubbles can migrate to any part of the body, producing symptoms such as joint pain, rashes, paralysis and death. The term caisson was introduced in the 19th century, when pressurized watertight retaining structures known as caissons were used to keep water from flooding large excavations below the water table, such as bridge supports and tunnels. To ascend the high ambient pressure inside the caisson is slowly reduced; otherwise workers are at risk upon return to the surface level’s lower external atmospheric pressure. In the 1870s, during construction of St. Louis’s Eads Bridge, 15 workers died, two were permanently disabled and 77 were severely afflicted from what was then a mysterious illness. Later during construction of the Brooklyn Bridge there were 110 cases of DCS. (Sources Wikipedia and Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine.)
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_habitat
[7] www.underseacolony.com
[8] JYC told me to leave my BC at home. “We don’t use those.” In FROGMEN I write, “The diver inflates it by either manually breathing into it via an attached tube or by puncturing an attached CO2 cartridge.”… “PADI considers BCs to be a mandatory piece of equipment, but we don’t have a single one on the ship.”
[9] FROGMEN page 35, www.richardehyman.com