10/31/11

Fish, Fun and Fright at the Aquarium

GOT divers donned costumes for the annual Halloween party for Aquarium members known as Fish, Fun and Fright on Friday, October 28. Per usual, the creative juices were flowing and we had a really eclectic cast of characters in the tank this year. Check it out!


Luigi is a Bruins player showing off his Stanley Cup with Maggie the sailor. Ahoy matey! (This wasn't the ot the first time the "Stanley Cup" was in the tank. Hockey fans will definitely want to see this video!!)


Chris the sushi chef returns for another attempt at catching some live fish. (P.S. He failed.)


Anna the lady pirate, argh!


Oooooooh. Jack-o-lanterns submerged in the tank are a big hit with the members as well as the tropical fish that like to nibble on the tasty pumpkins!


Mike as Skeletor and the lady pirate make their way to the top of the Giant Ocean Tank.


Christine the lady bug and Liz the Power Ranger, ready to jump in.

Happy Halloween from the New England Aquarium's Giant Ocean Tank divers!

See some more frightful favorites from the GOT and more in this Halloween video from your friends at the Aquarium. But wait, there's more! Relive the best costumes of past Fish Fun and Frights here. Who knows, you might get some ideas for your own trick-or-treating garb...

10/24/11

Eastport #5: All good things must come to a end

Senior Aquarist Paul Leonard normally spends his time at the Aquarium caring for penguins. Now, he's joining the Divers and Expeditions Blog from Eastport, Maine, where New England Aquarium scuba divers are plunging into freezing cold water and navigating extreme tidal currents in search of cold water specimens.

The last few days of this expedition were perfect. The weather was some of the best we’ve had in years. The winds diminished and the currents calmed. One day the bay was almost flat calm. Every once and a while ripples would form, but they couldn’t stop the divers’ bubbles from breaking the surface. I got lucky with the dive schedule and was able to partake in the last two dives of the trip. Both dives were some of the most memorable I’ve done. I must apologize for not having the pictures to portray what I’m about to tell you. My underwater camera housing starting leaking earlier in the trip and I didn’t trust it. I do have a picture that shows you how green and pretty the water is from the diver's point of view.

Back to the final two dives…I hope my words do them justice. For the first, we dove into the emerald green and as we descended the bottom slowly appeared. There were green urchins everywhere! We continued to make our way down ledge after ledge. The urchins started thinning out… sea stars, horse mussels, and a dark orange sponge began to dominate our views. My dive buddy and I continued to descend. Sixty feet down, daylight was struggling to break through the water. There was a field of stalked tunicates along the wall face in front of us. We used the current to drift for a little bit. There was life everywhere you looked. Horse mussels, sponges, stalked tunicates, snails, sea ravens, sculpins, sea stars…. it was really cool! We had forgotten that we were there to work. Back on the Lophius, all of the divers exchanged stories of what they had seen. The best way I can describe it is to imagine a child at a birthday party, seeing all of those brightly wrapped presents. Everyone was beaming!

The last full dive was one something I’ll never forget. My dive buddy and I were going to look for a certain type of sea star and stalked tunicate. When we reached a depth of seventy feet, we encountered large lobsters, sculpins, sea ravens, and numerous invertebrates. We sent our specimens to the surface and began exploring. We found several collapsed caves and a pinnacle with lots of life around it.

What I didn’t realize was that the best was yet to come. As we made our way back to the surface, we had to stop to decompress at 15 feet. Holding on to a blade of brown kelp, I wondered what it would be like to turn around and look out in the green abyss. When I did, there was a school of a hundred pollock only inches away from me. The bubbles from my SCUBA scared them momentarily, but they would return coming closer. It felt like they were using me for shelter and that I was in a bait ball. All of a sudden, the pollock moved closer. I looked past them and saw a school of mackerel sweeping in. These beautiful fish with their tiger stripes appeared from the darkness, skirted the pollock school, and swam off into the darkness. As a diver, to be in the middle of so much life was one of the coolest feelings I’ve ever had underwater. Lets just say that I couldn’t wait to break the surface to tell the rest of the team what I had seen. Again, I wish I had pictures.

Pack up day was completely different from the rest of the trip. We had what Bostonians would call a mini nor’easter. Eastport was trying to remind us that Mother Nature was always in charge and that we had been fortunate this year.

Our team spent the early morning hours retrieving and prepping the animals for the transport back home. Once all of our animals were tucked in for the trek back to Boston, we were off.


Please come to the Northern Waters Exhibits on the 3rd floor of the aquarium and see all of the new animals! Specifically, check out the Gulf of Maine exhibit. That’s our homage to this expedition.
It’s been fun! Now back to the penguins, hope they’ve missed me!

10/19/11

Eastport #4: Not all of the work is done under the water

Senior Aquarist Paul Leonard normally spends his time at the Aquarium caring for penguins. Now, he's joining the Divers and Expeditions Blog from Eastport, Maine, where New England Aquarium scuba divers are plunging into freezing cold water and navigating extreme tidal currents in search of cold water specimens.

The divers aren’t the only ones working hard. One of the toughest jobs on this trip goes to the surface support. All of the dives are done from our dive boat the Lophius. It’s up to the boat driver and the deckhand to make sure each dive team leaves and returns to the boat safely.





Once the divers have disappeared below the surface, it’s up to the surface support to keep an eye on where each team is. Here’s where it gets tricky. They have to watch each diver’s air bubbles! Yeah, sure that might seem easy. However, when you factor in waves, underwater currents, wind, and the depth of the dive teams it can be a little nerve racking. The reason why a divers' depth factors in is because the deeper they are, the more dispersed and separated their bubble trail, making it extremely difficult to keep track of things. Our boat crew is always there when you surface which is always comforting.







It's been an amazing week! We will have to pack things up soon and return to Boston.

For a more fun take on divers' bubbles, check out this classic GOT post on bubble rings!

10/18/11

Eastport Blog #3: And with the nice weather, comes diving fun!

Senior Aquarist Paul Leonard normally spends his time at the Aquarium caring for penguins. Now, he's joining the Divers and Expeditions Blog from Eastport, Maine, where New England Aquarium scuba divers are plunging into freezing cold water and navigating extreme tidal currents in search of cold water specimens.

The last few days have been great! The weather finally died down and we’ve been able to have full, productive days of specimen collecting. Since we have to dive on the tidal changes, we’re limited to how many dives we can do each day. It’s a great plan since after each dive we’re required to have “out of the water time.” This insures that we don’t have any dive related injuries. Since we missed out on getting a lot of dives in the first day, there is a little pressure for us to be successful. Everyone has to chip in. Some of dives even take place late at night!



We have a wish list of specific animals and invertebrates that are needed for the Aquarium’s Northern Exhibits, like the Gulf of Maine Exhibit. The hardest part is that these animals are always moving. Over the decades, thanks to the observations of the dive teams, we’ve been able to compile a detailed catalog of where the animals should be. The exciting thing is that you don’t know what is exactly on the bottom until you get there.

After every dive the animals have to be sorted out and cataloged.


Our work always seems to make the locals a little curious and they stop by to see what’s going on.

A gray seal

Paul--

Eastport Expedition #2: Interesting and short first day

Senior Aquarist Paul Leonard normally spends his time at the Aquarium caring for penguins. Now, he's joining the Divers and Expeditions Blog from Eastport, Maine, where New England Aquarium scuba divers are plunging into freezing cold water and navigating extreme tidal currents in search of cold water specimens.

The first day of diving was interesting and short.  We had to get an early start to the day.  Up and down to the docks by sunrise.


Good morning, Canada… yup that's them across the water.


Once our holding pens were setup and all of the gear stowed, we made our way out for our first dive of the trip. We were psyched for about five minutes. The marine forecast called for 25-35 wind gusts and 4-6 foot waves.  Everywhere you looked there were white caps. We had a following sea and boy…some of the rollers were intimidating!  Our captains said that this was the most seas they’ve seen while crossing the bay.  I looked around and noticed that there were no other boats out on the water.  Hmmm???

Our skipper was pretty frosty as always and navigated the surf masterfully. It took us a little longer than usual but we reached our destination. What an awesome dive! We went down about 50 feet. Bottom temp was 53 degrees F and our visibility was about 10 feet. We saw Acadian hermit crabs, green sea urchins, sea peaches, coldwater soft corals, snails and one large sea raven.

Our voyage back to base camp was just as exciting.  Unfortunately, our next dive was aborted because it was going to be at night and the weather was not going to quit.  It would have been too dangerous to attempt any crossings at night.

Well, it will be an early evening and we'll do it all again tomorrow.

10/17/11

Eastport Expedition: Amazing and beautiful scuba diving

Senior Aquarist Paul Leonard normally spends his time at the Aquarium caring for penguins. Now, he's joining the Divers and Expeditions Blog from Eastport, Maine, where New England Aquarium scuba divers are plunging into freezing cold water and navigating extreme tidal currents in search of cold water specimens.

Some of the most amazing and beautiful scuba diving around is not where you think!

Hi! My name is Paul and I’m a senior aquarist with the New England Aquarium. I spend most of my days indoors cleaning up after and feeding the Aquarium’s penguins. It’s a really cool job that has kept me pretty busy for the last 9 years.


Paul prepares to weigh a penguin chick born at the Aquarium.

People sometimes ask if I get a chance to do any other cool things at the aquarium and the answer is always, “Yes!”  I’m also an Aquarium scientific scuba diver. Being an aquarist has some amazing and extraordinary benefits. The New England Aquarium leads many different diving expeditions to some very remote and incredible locations. I’ve been lucky to travel with them to the crystal clear, warm, waters of the Bahamas to help collect specimens for the Giant Ocean Tank


Scuba diving in the Bahamas


Crystal blue waters of the Bahamas

They’ve taken me on several other great expeditions along the East Coast over the years. The most memorable has been the Eastport, Maine, Coldwater Collection Trip. For nearly 30 years, a small team of the Aquarium’s most elite scuba divers trek up to the most northeastern region of the United States to spend a week of what some call extreme diving. They setup camp at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy with hopes of collecting unique animals to display in the Aquarium’s Northern Waters exhibits.

This is my sixth trip with this team and I would pick this trip over any other. The water is cold, emerald green, intense, and beaming with life. Before for you even think of dipping your feet in out here, you better have a dry suit, thermal undergarments, wool socks, extra lead weights, lift bags, and extra safety gear.  The tidal changes here are up to 30 feet every 6 hours and all of the dives are performed the Aquarium’s dive boat, the Lophius.


The Lophius docked in Maine


Cold water scuba diving requires a lot of specialized gear.


Note the hood, gloves and puffy dry suit for cold water scuba diving

This year I wanted to share this incredible experience with you. Keep posted for some more exciting updates!

— Paul


Paul is no stranger to the GOT Divers and Expeditions Blog. Catch up on his post about the Boston Sea Rovers here. Another helpful link: Learn cold water scuba diving in this previous blog post by fellow aquarist Bill Murphy.