DIVE TIME By Tim Grollimund
Aquarius habitat is unique in the world
Undersea lab gives scientists a research platform
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Posted - Friday, August 19, 2011 11:57 AM EDT
A view of the Aquarius where divers enter and exit, just above the platform. The main section of the underwater habitat off the Upper Keys is about the size of a school bus. (Photo by Tim Grollimund)
Kids have dreams. If you live your dream as an adult, it’s called pursuing a passion, or living life with a purpose. This week I met a man who is passionate about what he does, has a definite purpose, and is living his dream. Meet Dr. Chris Martens, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Martens grew up in Marathon, and his love for the ocean is evident in his life’s work.
He is leading a mission called the “Ocean Acidification Project” at the Aquarius Reef Base. Commonly known as “the Habitat,” as you slide south from Molasses Reef towards Tavernier, the habitat is marked by a large yellow platform about four miles out on Conch Reef.
My friend Frazier Nivens arranged for me to accompany him to an interview he was shooting with Martens, and I jumped at the chance to watch the filming and ask a few questions of my own. You can see the interview by searching YouTube for the title “Aquarius Mission, Chris Martens, August 2011.”
Inside the bubble
And to top it off, I got to dive with the mission crew and go inside to visit with the scientists and technicians. What a blast. I have been fortunate to be able to dive the habitat a few times since I’ve been here. It’s an amazing place, and it requires special permission to drop in on what is a truly unique spot on the planet. But going inside was the icing on the cake.
There literally is no other place like this. It is the only operating undersea research laboratory in the world. Imagine that. Something else the rest of the world does not have that we do. Like the only coral reef system in the continental U.S. and our very own coral reef state park, and the great nonprofit organizations based here that are making a difference.
As a dive site, the Aquarius is sensational because the animals that live underneath and around the habitat are used to divers. It’s pretty easy to get close to the resident goliath groupers and swim among the schools of snappers that are always there. It also lends itself to some unique photo opportunities. The most challenging setup is shooting reflections by the entrance portal and trying to keep the reflective surface smooth, all the fish aligned, and stay still enough not to disrupt the scene.
The first time I dove there I was with Stephen Frink, during his Digital Immersion class. We had a humongous grouper between us, and we both clicked our shutters within a second of each other. A true reciprocal view, and loads of fun. Wall-worthy stuff.
But important things take place there besides being an incredible dive site. Check out the website — aquarius.uncw.edu — to get a feel for the scope of projects that are conducted here. Everything from testing the newest technology to training astronauts is within the purview of the Habitat.
The Ocean Acidification project is measuring changes in the pH of the ocean in new ways. Martens has partnerships with several companies that have designed real-time equipment that measures a wide range of chemical changes that take place. Fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say. And quite ocean tekkie, to say the least. In this undiscovered world of the sea, Martens is making innovative advances that tell us more about how the oceans react to changes in carbon dioxide levels. As the ocean absorbs more CO2, the pH changes — it becomes lower, more acidic.
Just what is ocean acidification? To understand that, we need to get a sense of pH values. The lower the measure of pH of a liquid, the higher the acidic properties. A pH of 7 is neutral. Gastric acid is a 1, milk of magnesia is a 10. Seawater is around 8.1, and has been declining over the last decades. Why is that important to us in the Keys?
According to Martens, “The drop in pH is lowering the concentration of dissolved carbonate ion, one of the two ingredients organisms need to make calcium carbonate. As pH drops by 0.1 units, carbonate drops by 10 percent! The drop of 0.4 predicted for the end of this century or sooner should lower carbonate ion concentration by about 40 percent. If you are a calcifying organism like a coral, this change makes it hard to make limestone skeleton material. Since corals make reefs, this makes life tougher for many organisms and others might take over, such as sponges.”
Bad news for hermit crabs. And for everything else that uses calcium carbonate minerals — including lobsters. Since Monroe County supplies most of the lobster catch in Florida, this is real serious stuff. Although some would argue no “mini-season” would be a good thing, no regular lobster season would be beyond belief.
Declining ocean pH is already having a detrimental effect on oyster harvests on the West Coast. See the website of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory — www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/ — for a site devoted to ocean acidification.
On this mission, the team will examine how respiration in an area called the near-bottom-benthic boundary interacts with global acidification. This is the local component of acidification caused by residents of the reef. They are looking at the respiratory process of what happens normally on the bottom, and what happens when that meets the increasing CO2 level coming from the top — the part absorbed by the ocean in seemingly ever-increasing levels. Their objective is to understand this impact and how it affects the growth of coral, and includes measuring the role of sponges in the chemical change process. Before now, the equipment to conduct this type of research did not exist.
World-class research in a world-class destination with world-class people. For a small town, we really do have a lot going on. Again, Key Largo is at the top of the chart. This island is much, much larger than its land mass.
