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MISSION DISPATCH 1 August 20, 2005 | Brian Cousin - @SEA Correspondent It's Saturday morning around 9:00 am EST. We are steaming towards our first site for submersible operations - estimated to be a 49 hour transit from our home port at Harbor Branch in Fort Pierce, Florida. We left the dock Friday morning around 9:30, and made our way slowly south 6 miles down the Indian River Lagoon to the Fort Pierce inlet and the Atlantic Ocean. The shallow lagoon is the most biologically diverse in North America. It is home to more than 4,000 species of plants and animals. 
We are reminded of one of its most famous inhabitants, the endangered Florida manatee, by signs advising boaters to proceed slowly through "no wake" zones where these placid animals congregate. The Research Vessel Seward Johnson , with its 11 foot draft, stays between the red and green channel markers that define the narrow Intra Coastal Waterway - a dredged passage for boat traffic that resembles a bowling alley down the middle of the lagoon. The weather is oppressively hot and humid, and the seas are flat calm. Last night we were treated to a brilliant full moon shining on the ocean's surface, lightning flashing periodically in the distant west. Now we are about 20 miles off Key West in the Florida Keys as we proceed to our first site - an area of deep sea lithoherms about 80 miles west of Naples, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico. Found in 1987 through dredge and seismic survey, the area was first seen using an ROV (Remotely Operated 
Vehicle) camera during a 2003 NOAA Ocean Exlporation cruise with Harbor
Branch's Biomedical Marine Research team. More dives in 2004 using the
Johnson-Sea-Link I (JSLI)
submersible indicated this area to be habitat for a large
number of species, and an ideal site for the Deep Scope team's studies.
The hours in transit are by no means "down time" for any member of the mission. Scientists, post doctoral fellows and students set up their workspaces in the lab with an array of computers, sensors and other electronic devices. The sub crew prepares the JOHNSON-SEA-LINK I for a schedule of 2 to 3 dives per day. All submersible systems are checked and double checked for safe operation, and rigging and deployment accommodations are made for the scientific payloads the sub must deliver to the bottom. 
Those payloads include chief scientist
Tammy Frank's deep water
traps and a special insulated "bio box" that will bring subjects for her
vision studies back to the surface unscathed by light and warmer
temperatures found at shallower depths as the sub ascends. Dr.
Edie
Widder's Eye-in-the-Sea
camera system is being deployed again this year,
after a highly successful Deep Scope 2004. Left on its own in the dark of
the deep sea, the "Eye" made intensified video recordings of some
astonishing animal behavior, and even recorded a previously unknown
species of squid, this specimen about 6' long. Dr.
Sonke Johnson from
Duke University, Dr.
Justin Marshall from the University of Queensland,
Australia, and Dr.
Mike Matz from the Whitney lab prepare special filters
for camera lenses and lights that will further their work in determining
how the phenomena of fluorescence and polarization may influence the way
creatures see and are seen in the deep sea. Deep Scope 2005 is an
integrated, multi-disciplinary mission that will cast fresh eyes on vision
in the depths. Rather than looking in the traditional "white light" way at
vision, they will attempt to see the way the animals do at depth, shedding
new light - polarized, fluorescent or otherwise - on this fascinating
area of study.
Remembering Jay Grant Early this afternoon, work stopped for a short ceremony to deliver to the sea the ashes of Jay Grant, who served as steward aboard the Seward Johnson until 1998, and who passed away in July. There are many aboard who remember Jay well, and all of us aboard extend our condolences to his family and friends. 
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