Flag  Report  #29  

 

Mission  31:  Breaking  new  ground  in  ocean  science  and  exploration  from  20,000  mm  under  the  sea  

 

Fabien  Cousteau,  Brian  Helmuth  (FN  ’07)  and  Mark  Patterson  

 

On  July  2,  2014  a  team  of  aquanauts  emerged  from  the  waters  of  Conch  Reef,  Florida.    For  expedition  leader  Fabien  Cousteau,  the  event  marked  the  first  time  that  he  had  seen  direct  sunlight  or  felt  the  sea  breeze  on  his  face  for  more  than  a  month.    It  also  signaled  the  successful  conclusion  of  Mission  31  and  the  return  of  Explorers  Club  Flag  #209.  The  idea  for  Mission  31  came  to  Cousteau  two  years  earlier  when  he  visited  scientist  Mark  Patterson  and  ocean  explorer  Sylvia  Earle  in  the  school-­‐bus  sized  Aquarius  underwater  habitat,  the  world’s  only  saturation  diving  facility  devoted  to  scientific  research.  Located  at  a  depth  of  20  m  off  the  Florida  Keys  and  managed  by  Florida  International  University  (FIU),  Aquarius  has  served  as  a  training  ground  for  scientists  and  explorers  for  more  than  20  years,  but  Mission  31  was  by  far  the  most  ambitious  expedition  to  date.  Fabien  and  two  of  his  fellow  aquanauts,  Mark  Hulsbeck  and  Ryan  LaPete,  completed  the  longest  Aquarius  mission  on  record  having  spent  31  days  living  and  working  on  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  A  team  of  scientists  from  FIU  (Andy  Shantz  and  Adam  Zenone)  traded  places  at  the  midpoint  with  Liz  Magee  (Northeastern  University)  and  MIT  graduate  Grace  Young,  as  did  two  documentary  filmmakers  (Kip  Evans  and  Matt  Ferraro),  so  that  six  aquanauts  lived  in  “the  can”  at  all  times  throughout  the  entire  month-­‐long  mission.    

The  selection  of  31  days  was  by  no  means  arbitrary.  Half  a  century  earlier,  Fabien’s  grandfather  and  famed  ocean  explorer  Jacques  Cousteau  built  Conshelf  II,  a  “village  under  the  sea”  where  his  team  lived  for  30  days  at  a  depth  of  10  m.  The  underwater  

experiment  resulted  in  the  film  Academy  Award  winning  documentary,  World  without  Sun,  captivated  a  worldwide  audience,  and  launched  discussions  of  how  humankind  would  inhabit  the  sea  floor  in  coming  decades.  It  also  highlighted  just  how  little  we  know  of  the  ocean  floor.  One  of  the  main  objectives  of  Mission  31  was  to  rekindle  that  same  excitement  for  ocean  exploration,  as  well  as  to  explore  how  our  ocean  environment  has  changed  over  the  last  50  years.  Indeed,  there  are  many  parallels  between  underwater  exploration  and  the  space  race  that  was  underway  in  the  early  1960s,  just  as  there  are  parallels  to  be  made  for  where  both  space  and  ocean  exploration  stand  today.  To  date,  approximately  500  astronauts  have  flown  in  space  and  comparably  an  estimated  700  aquanauts  have  lived  underwater  in  saturation  research  facilities.  Incidentally,  NASA  now  regularly  uses  Aquarius  to  train  astronauts  for  life  on  the  International  Space  Station.    

The  science  of  saturation  diving    As  the  name  implies,  aquanauts  undergoing  “saturation”  allow  the  gases  in  their  bodies  (and  specifically  nitrogen)  to  come  to  equilibrium  with  those  in  the  pressurized  air  that  they  breathe.  This  sounds  anathema  to  surface-­‐based  scuba  divers  accustomed  to  careful  monitoring  of  their  blood  gases  in  order  to  prevent  “the  bends”  upon  surfacing  (when  nitrogen  bubbles  can  form,  causing  severe  pain  and  even  death).  Under  saturation,  divers  instead  have  nitrogen  levels  so  high  that  their  blood  would  rapidly  fizz  like  a  shaken  bottle  of  champagne  if  they  returned  to  the  surface  and  would  die  unless  immediately  placed  back  under  pressure.  The  trade-­‐off  is  the  “gift  of  time”;  where  a  surface  diver  can  spend  at  most  a  few  hours  underwater  in  a  day,  with  long  surface  intervals  between  each  dive,  an  aquanaut  can  spend  virtually  unlimited  time  at  saturation  depth.  As  a  result,  each  saturated  diver  can  spend  8  hours  or  more  per  day  working  on  the  reef,  returning  to  the  habitat  only  for  food  and  rest.  At  the  end  of  the  mission,  the  aquanauts  are  slowly  returned  to  surface  pressure  over  a  period  of  16  hours  so  that  the  accumulated  nitrogen  can  be  safely  released  through  the  diver’s  exhalations.  In  this  way,  the  combined  surface  and  saturation  team  conducted  the  equivalent  of  many  months,  perhaps  even  years,  of  research  in  just  31  days.      

The  science  of  Mission  31  Cousteau  assembled  a  large  team  of  scientists,  engineers,  documentary  filmmakers,  educators,  diving  specialists  and  communications  experts  to  study  and  document  the  Conch  Reef  environment  (the  site  of  Aquarius  in  the  heart  of  the  Florida  Keys  National  Marine  Sanctuary),  and  to  share  the  findings  with  the  world.  In  addition  to  the  nine  aquanauts  who  lived  on  the  seafloor,  a  team  of  scientists  led  by  Brian  Helmuth  (FN  ’07)  and  Mark  Patterson  from  Northeastern  University  conducted  surface-­‐based  diving  research  studying  the  reef  health  and  specifically  the  impacts  of  global  climate  change  on  reef  organisms.  Helmuth  and  Patterson  are  both  veterans  of  multiple  previous  Aquarius  missions  and  thus  could  anticipate  more  easily  the  challenges  that  would  arise  during  Cousteau’s  record-­‐breaking  saturation.  A  team  of  graduate  students  and  technicians  (affectionately  dubbed  “surfnauts”)  worked  collaboratively  with  the  aquanauts  to  conduct  research  related  to  Northeastern’s  Urban  Coastal  Sustainability  Initiative  and  were  instrumental  to  the  ultimate  success  of  Mission  31,  in  a  manner  reminiscent  of  Jacque  Cousteau’s  topside  support  team  during  Conshelf  II.  

Sponge  Biology:  Graduate  student  Allison  (Alli)  Matzelle  led  a  study  of  how  giant  barrel  sponges  (Xestospongia  muta)  respond  to  changing  temperatures  on  the  reef.  These  slow-­‐growing  “redwoods  of  the  reef”  are  potentially  centuries  old,  and  serve  a  vital  function  in  their  role  as  filters;  every  24-­‐48  hours  all  of  the  water  on  a  coral  reef  goes  through  sponges  like  these,  and  so  the  health  of  reef  sponges  may  have  direct  implications  for  overall  reef  health.  We  instrumented  the  sponges  with  sensors  to  measure  the  water  chemistry  entering  and  leaving  these  filtering  organisms,  and  also  took  samples  of  water  to  understand  their  diet  of  bacteria  and  tiny  photosynthetic  algae.  The  combined  aquanaut/surfnaut  team  also  deployed  a  sophisticated  acoustic  instrument  to  measure  the  pumping  activity  of  the  sponges  over  a  two-­‐week  period.  These  measurements  are  providing  us  an  unprecedented  view  into  “days  in  the  lives  of  a  sponge”.  

Zooplankton:  Aquanauts  and  surface  divers  (led  by  graduate  student  Amanda  Dwyer)  conducted  daily  samples  of  plankton  to  document,  for  the  first  time  at  Aquarius,  how  this  vital  food  source  changes  over  a  lunar  cycle.  Corals  that  have  access  to  abundant  zooplankton  may  weather  the  stress  of  global  change  better  than  those  that  don’t  so  understanding  how  zooplankton  may  be  changing  on  coral  reefs  is  a  vital  project.  Zooplankton  were  also  sampled  during  Conshelf  II.  We  continued  this  tradition:  every  day,  for  a  month,  the  aquanaut  team  set  up  traps  late  in  the  afternoon  to  catch  the  night-­‐time  plankton  that  abound  on  a  coral  reef.  This  was  a  time-­‐consuming  activity  that  looked  like  a  slow-­‐motion  underwater  ballet  as  aquanauts  assembled  the  traps  painstakingly.  If  the  trap  bottles  were  incorrectly  installed,  or  the  nets  improperly  installed  on  its  weighted  frame,  all  would  be  for  naught.  Every  morning  the  aquanauts  returned  to  harvest  the  catch  and  prepare  it  for  transfer  and  subsequent  analysis  by  the  surface  team.  During  the  second  half  of  the  mission,  the  aquanaut  team  got  a  daily  aerobic  workout  by  swimming  a  plankton  net  at  set  heights  above  the  bottom  to  look  at  the  plankton  distribution  and  abundance  during  the  day.  (For  an  excellent  video,  see  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItsQfeQACkY).  

The  aquanaut  team  members  were  mesmerized  by  the  nightly  plankton  show  that  gathered  under  the  bright  lights  of  the  habitat.  It  was  a  delight  to  fall  asleep  in  the  bunkroom  as  innumerable  plankton  swirled  like  tiny  stars  in  a  sea  of  larger  organisms  that  came  to  gorge  themselves.  During  one  of  these  spectacles,  the  expedition  was  privy  to  a  nocturnal  territorial  encounter  between  a  great  barracuda  and  goliath  grouper  that  was  captured  on  video  from  the  bunkroom  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfqCxWY2ho0).  

Coral  Ecophysiology:  With  the  help  of  Cousteau’s  team,  Patterson-­‐  whose  coral  research  is  supported  by  the  US  National  Science  Foundation  -­‐  and  technician  Sara  Williams,  used  a  unique  microelectrode  amplifier  and  ultra  fine  oxygen  sensors  to  examine  how  corals  share  resources  between  the  polyps  of  a  coral  colony.  The  data  are  used  to  test  a  mathematical  model  that  predicts  how  different  species  of  coral  contend  with  environmental  change.  The  unprecedented  data  show  that  some  corals  don’t  share  resources  with  neighbors  within  the  colony,  compared  to  other  

species.    Also,  the  Mission  31  team  made  the  first-­‐ever  measurements  of  how  a  type  of  underwater  storm,  called  an  internal  wave,  affects  the  metabolic  rate  in  our  target  species,  the  large  star  coral  (Montastraea  cavernosa).  These  internal  waves,  first  discovered  by  prior  researchers  at  Aquarius,  caused  a  rapid  drop  in  photosynthesis  during  the  day  and  respiration  at  night,  because  of  how  sensitive  corals  are  to  temperature  changes.  These  data  will  be  useful  in  predicting  how  corals  will  respond  to  global  warming.  

All  of  us  were  outside  the  habitat  several  times  during  the  mission  when  these  internal  waves  passed  up  onto  the  reef.  Within  a  matter  of  minutes,  the  temperature  dropped  precipitously  by  many  degrees,  the  currents  picked  up  to  where  the  divers  had  to  struggle  to  move  around  the  reef  (on  some  days  flapping  like  a  flag  on  the  descent  line),  and  the  water  shimmered,  as  cold  nutrient-­‐rich  water  was  carried  by  these  powerful  waves  from  deeper  water.  The  Northeastern  science  team  is  now  unraveling  how  these  waves  affect  corals  and  sponges.  

Reef  Life  in  Slow  Motion:  Grace  Young  worked  with  fellow  aquanauts  to  deploy  a  unique  high  speed  camera,  an  Edgertronic  imager  in  a  Sexton  Underwater  Housing,  to  document  phenomena  that  will  help  scientists  to  understand  the  biomechanics  of  reef  creatures.  Compelling  footage  was  obtained  of  polychaete  tentacle  retraction  and  pistol  shrimp  feeding  strikes,  both  processes  occurring  at  the  scale  of  milliseconds.  Cousteau  noted  that  in  many  cases  this  required  several  hours  of  preparation  just  to  capture  the  footage,  something  that  never  could  have  been  accomplished  by  “the  unsaturated.”    

Environmental  Contamination:  At  the  start  of  the  mission,  the  aquanauts  deployed  a  low-­‐tech  but  novel  passive  sampling  system  using  treated  polyethylene  film  to  see  whether  toxic  compounds,  including  the  dispersant  released  in  large  quantities  in  the  BP  oil  spill  in  the  nearby  waters  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  are  present  in  significant  amounts  at  the  Aquarius  site.  Because  these  compounds  are  resistant  to  breakdown  by  microbes,  they  are  of  concern  to  both  human  and  ecosystem  health  as  toxins  that  can  bioaccumulate  in  a  variety  of  organisms.  At  set  times  during  Mission  31,  we  harvested  subsets  of  these  samplers,  and  preserved  them  for  sophisticated  processing  back  at  Northeastern  by  Professor  Loretta  Fernandez,  one  of  our  colleagues  who  developed  this  technique.  We  are  hoping  that  we  find  nothing,  but  Cousteau’s  work  with  other  researchers  who  looked  at  human  contamination  among  remote  peoples  found,  there  is  nowhere  on  Earth  or  Ocean  that  these  compounds  are  not  found.    

Living  and  working  underwater  Perhaps  the  biggest  experiment  of  all,  however,  was  what  would  happen  to  Cousteau,  Hulsbeck  and  LaPete  after  living  31  days  underwater?  The  challenges  were  many.  Nitrogen  narcosis  (“rapture  of  the  deep”)  made  living  in  close  quarters  easier,  but  also  made  checklists  and  daily  planning  paramount  to  keeping  everyone  focused.  Practical  jokes,  often  quite  elaborate,  were    played  with  increasing  frequency  on  fellow  aquanauts  or  visitors,  such  as  filling  scuba  booties  with  foot-­‐staining  Gatorade.    Skin  ailments  developed  from  the  long  periods  of  immersion  so  the  team  was  vigilant  for  infection.  Visitors  were  frequent  

and  welcome,  but  psychologically  the  team  did  feel  they  were  in  a  remote  outpost  despite  the  able  supervision  24/7  by  the  watch  desk  ashore  miles  away  in  Islamorada.  Cousteau  found  the  cacophony  of  constant  communications  from  topside,  the  snapping  shrimp  audible  through  the  hull,  and  the  in-­‐water  communications  during  dives  both  on  scuba  and  helmet  anything  but  the  Silent  World!  Because  each  hour  in  the  water  burns  hundreds  of  extra  calories,  aquanauts  were  constantly  hungry  and  consumed  many  high-­‐energy  foods  to  keep  body  weight  up.  The  team  became  tired  of  the  freeze-­‐dried  camping  food  that  serves  as  normal  fare  and  looked  forward  to  the  occasional  treats  such  as  homemade  lasagna  sent  down  from  the  surface  by  support  divers  using  pressurized  pots.    

Bringing  Exploration  to  the  Public:  A  key  part  of  this  exploration  mission  was  bringing  the  excitement  of  expeditionary  science  to  the  public.  We  employed  many  conduits  for  this.  Cousteau  connected  via  Skype  during  the  first  week  of  the  mission  with  members  at  The  Explorers  Club  as  part  of  Outdoor  Fest,  offering  a  virtual  tour  of  his  home  for  the  next  month  (for  those  who  missed  the  event,  a  tour  is  here:  http://www.northeastern.edu/helmuthlab/Research/gigapan/USFL/USFL.html).  

Four  major  live  outreach  events  were  held  in  collaboration  with  the  Boston  Museum  of  Science.  During  one  of  these  events,  the  Museum  devoted  half  a  day  to  special  exhibits  and  talks  by  marine  scientists  from  Northeastern,  with  the  highlight  a  live  broadcast  on  the  subject  of  sustainable  use  of  the  oceans  that  featured  a  roundtable  discussion  with  Cousteau,  Helmuth,  and  Northeastern  University  Provost,  Stephen  Director.  Other  outreach  sessions  featured  a  live  connection  to  the  habitat  with  subject  matter  experts  from  our  surface  team  visiting.  These  sessions  focused  on  sponge  biology,  coral  biology,  and  a  mission  wrap-­‐up  report  on  the  science.    

We  also  conducted  a  Google  Hangout  from  the  Aquarius  with  the  White  House  Office  of  Science  and  Technology  Policy,  and  ocean  experts  across  the  planet,  on  the  future  of  the  oceans.  Another  Google  Hangout  focused  on  the  status  of  reefs  in  the  Caribbean  and  involved  experts  on  Marine  Protected  Areas  from  Barbados  and  Grenada,  moderated  by  reef  conservation  expert  Stephen  Price,  an  Aquarius  veteran  from  Canada.      

A  series  of  blogs  by  aquanauts  Magee  and  Young  and  the  surface  team  proved  wildly  popular  based  on  Internet  traffic.    We  were  fortunate  to  have  a  nationally  known  correspondent  from  National  Public  Radio  embedded  with  the  surface  team,  Heather  Goldstone.  She  was  able  to  visit  the  wet  porch  inside  the  habitat  and  report  on  her  experiences  both  with  aquanauts  and  the  topside  team.  Because  the  second  half  of  the  mission  involved  so  many  women  in  science,  we  invited  teen  blogger  Morgan  Helmuth  to  the  field  site  to  offer  her  impressions  of  what  makes  (or  should  make)  science  exciting  to  young  women.  Social  media  were  used  heavily  to  inform  the  public  about  the  unique  value  of  saturation  diving  for  science,  and  some  of  the  unique  challenges  facing  the  global  ocean.    Mission  31  received  an  unprecedented  amount  of  publicity  and  interest  on  the  global  stage,  with  more  than  500  million  persons  aware  of  the  mission  before  it  concluded.  

Beyond  Mission  31:  This  mission  will  live  on  in  a  variety  of  formats,  including  a  documentary,  a  traveling  global  exhibit,  lessons  plans,  blogs,  and  the  numerous  scientific  publications  planned  by  Mission  31  team  members.  Our  team  is  exploring  how  best  to  advance  the  science  of  undersea  exploration  using  humans  in  the  loop,  a  unique  aspect  of  saturation  diving.  Although  Aquarius  remains  the  only  habitat  currently  available  for  use  by  diving  scientists,  we  envision  a  future  where  more  than  one  habitat  exists.  A  state-­‐of-­‐the-­‐art  future  facility  would  go  beyond  the  older  technology  that  began  with  Jacques  Cousteau’s  Conshelf  habitat,  still  embodied  today  in  the  design  of  Aquarius,  with  its  metal  hull,  toggle  switches,  and  hydrocarbon  fuel  source.  A  future  habitat  could  be  lightweight  and  mobile  for  use  in  different  habitats,  and  extract  the  energy  needed  for  life  support  directly  from  the  ocean  and  sun  in  a  sustainable  manner.  We  hope  to  return  to  Aquarius  to  test  some  of  these  concepts  in  a  future  expedition  where  we  can  continue  our  research  on  coastal  sustainability  and  the  impacts  of  climate  change  on  our  world’s  oceans.