FLORIDA (11 Nov 2003) -- AN underwater laboratory, the size of a school bus, will house a Georgia Tech research team over the next 10 days as members study how to save threatened coral reefs in the Atlantic waters off the Florida Keys. The 77-tonne chamber that the four-member team will enter today is known as Aquarius, the world's only underwater lab. Squatting at a depth of 19m, it rests on the sandy seafloor at Conch Reef, about 5km off Key Largo. During their 10-day mission, the scientists will study how a certain class of fish known as grazers - including parrotfish and surgeonfish - affects seaweed growth on coral reefs. Scientists believe that excessive amounts of nitrogen and other 'nutrient pollution' washed into Florida Bay from farms, sewers and other sources onshore, are possibly enriching seaweed, which takes over coral reefs. The researchers will try to determine which grazers are most efficient at eating seaweed, and whether the fish could be manipulated to control the growth. The findings could help 'repair damaged and threatened coral reefs', said team leader Mark Hay, a biologist. Several recent studies show that coral reefs all over the world are in serious trouble. Pollution, climate change and overfishing could kill 60 per cent of reefs by 2030, according to studies published in the journal Science in August. The situation might be most urgent in the Caribbean, where a region-wide decline has reduced the coral cover of reefs by 80 per cent over the last 30 years, the studies said. Professor Hay said that Aquarius will give his team 'an ideal platform' from which to set up experiments and make coral reef observations. | | Twenty years ago, he used the forerunner of Aquarius, known as Hydrolab, to discover how certain seaweeds avoid being eaten by fish by producing toxic chemicals and growing only at night. 'That work had implications for strategies of protecting terrestrial crops and for developing drugs from the sea,' he said. Hydrolab, though, 'was a very poor cousin' compared to Aquarius, billed as one of the world's foremost scientific labs, he said. Despite its remote locale, the 13m-long, 2.7m- diameter Aquarius boasts many of the comforts of home, from air-conditioning and a microwave oven to broadband Internet. Bunks for sleeping are stacked three to a side, separated only by inches. On the surface, a buoy houses power-generation and air-supply equipment for Aquarius as well as wireless telemetry links to shore. During their sojourn, the team will eat mostly frozen food heated in a microwave since no open flames are allowed in the lab. At the mission's end, the 'aquanauts' will undergo a 17-hour decompression aboard Aquarius to ready them for a return to the surface. Aquarius, owned by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is managed by the US National Undersea Research Centre at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. SOURCE - Straits Times |
