Boing Boing 

A journey to Aquarius—the last underwater research lab

Brian Lam—former editor at Gizmodo, current editor at the ocean-centric Scuttlefish blog—got to visit the world's last remaining underwater scientific research station. Aquarius was built in the late 1980s and launched in 1992, but it was preceded by a huge 1960s-era boom in underwater laboratory development. Conshelf, Sealab, Tektite—these should all be familiar names. But they're all gone now. Which sucks, because having a place where you can study the ocean from inside the ocean is pretty damned useful.

For instance, if you study fish behavior, there's only so much you can learn from watching them in captivity or going on short dives in nature. As Sylvia Earle—grand doyenne of oceanography and the leader of the current Aquarius mission—told Lam, it's actually surprisingly uncommon to see one fish eat another (living, breathing, not-being-tossed-into-a-tank-as-food) fish. And understanding those predatory relationships can be really important to understanding species and ecology.

Aquarius sits on the sea floor, just off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. In a Gizmodo post, Brian Lam describes what's inside the 20-year-old research station, and what it's like to be a visitor there.




Read the rest of Brian Lam's tour story at Gizmodo

And check back here later this week for more from Brian Lam about Aquarius, Sylvia Earle, and the science of the ocean!

The magic of exploration

Brian Lam, quoting Lorie Karnath on exploring the past: "Many who venture into the field to conduct dinosaur paleontological research never or rarely have the chance to even see let alone find and touch a bone from millions of years ago. And yet, here was this chance find within minutes of arriving at the site. The realization that I was holding something from an ancient landscape sent shivers down my spine and made one realize how short man's time on the planet has been." [The Wirecutter]