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The captain will head north from Fort Lauderdale after the final submersible dive. The sub just returned -- it's a big deal to head out to the deck and watch the horizon. First, when the sub is about 100 feet below the surface, the pilot lets out a big bubble to alert the technicians to its location. Then, upon receiving permission to surface, they bob up. The ship then motors toward the submersible. which is drifting with the currents. Once the ship moves so that the sub is on the starboard side, a diver dives into the water and attaches a thick rope to the sub. A huge crane then pulls it toward an even bigger contraption that brings it on the boat.

Before we set sail at around 14 to 17 knots, according to the captain, there's a training submersible dive planned. Frank Lombardo, who was the sub technician who rode in the aft compartment with me, will drive. He said there's a lot of training involved, because the pilot has to be prepared to drive in strong currents.

In the meantime, scientists just collected a bunch of new Lophelia corals for research. The rest of the crew -- and me, for that matter -- are planning on watching the basketball finals. Let's go Heat!

So, with that ... thanks for all those who have been following the great week Sarah and I have had on the R/V Seward Johnson. Thanks also to the ship's crew, the sub's crew and the scientists who have all been so accommodating and kind to a bunch of curious journalists.

I hope Treasure Coast readers got a better understanding of the life aboard a research vessel. I know I learned a lot and really had an experience of a lifetime! Now, bosses... do I really have to go back to my desk on Monday??

Yesterday, the currents were so rough under the surface that they couldn't find The Eye in the Sea. Today, the R/V Seward Johnson's second mate Jack Greenberg positioned the ship so the sub landed exactly next to the camera! They picked it up with no problem, and Ericka Raymond, a scientist with Ocean Research & Conservation, was there when the sub came back on board.

It's a big piece of equipment with a huge metal frame. The bait box was filled with raw snapper and other fish.

Ericka was able to hook up her computer to the computer inside the camera, and she saw within minutes a really big six-gill shark swam up to it and poked it with its nose! She feared it would turn the camera over, but it didn't. Dozens of crabs quickly appeared, crawling all over the bait box and nearby corals to get at the box's contents. Then a meter-long conger eel swam into the black-and-white, dimly lit picture.

Ericka said it would take hours to download the information, so she can start to analyze it. Wonder what else the camera captured? Meanwhile, the submersible's battery is charging and scientists are preparing for their last dive of the trip!

But that wasn't true at all. Last night, Ed Wells, the steward, and Ronnie Whims, the steward's assistant, served up BBQ ribs, salad, potatoes, steamed broccoli and some kind of delicious-looking pie. And Ronnie even cooked me up some BBQ tofu! It was delicious. For lunch, they served tip sandwiches, fries and veggies along with a salad and rice pudding. There's everything you'd want to eat here -- including Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream bars -- but not cola. You have to supply that yourself!

It's a good thing everyone fueled up today, because it's a busy one. They weren't able to drop a submersible last night because the underwater currents were so strong. When the currents are strong, the sub's battery gets drained trying to fight against the water and they're not able to accomplish much. So today, after a net deployment this morning, they're planning three submersible dives. One of them is a training dive for the sub crew.

Captain George Gunther just announced over the P.A. system, "Attention all hands, pre-dive meeting in the lounge, pre-dive meeting in the lounge." I might as well join in!

See, because of the major pressure change as the submersible heads toward the bottom of the sea, someone figured out that all the air would be pressed out of a styrofoam cup. So the big -- well, in this case little -- reminder of the trip is a cup that you can write on. They put it in a mesh bag, attach it to the outside of the sub (the inside is pressurized), and check out how it changes upon return.

Mine didn't shrink perfectly. It's perhaps the most curvy little cup I've seen ... but it's still really cool. It shrunk to about the size of a thimble. It's going right on my desk, next to my bottle of St. Lucie River algae and the shell that came from the ancient Ais Indian burial mound discovered on Hutchinson Island after the hurricanes ... you know, right under the peacock feather.

Seas are expected to calm tomorrow, but the currents should still be rough. The scientists hope to dive three times in the submersible tomorrow, but the schedule will be tight. I'm lucky they scheduled me for an early dive! An experience that will be easy to remember, and that's not just because of my new, tiny cup.

But there it is again! What is it? Turns out it's the submersible pilot talking to the folks on the ship's bridge. See, there's a hole in the middle of the ship -- yikes, there's water in that chamber! -- and when the sub's down, there's a tower that is lowered about four feet below the ship's haul. That's what is used to pick up the sound waves from the submersible 1,000 feet or more away.

That sound then reverberates throughout the ship, and rumor has it you can hear the sub pilot talking if you're low enough on the deck. My stateroom is on the bottom level, but I was too sleepy to remember if I understood what they were saying. But I hadn't actually heard it until yesterday when I went down to the ocean floor, anyway.

The sub pilot is always checking in with the technicians on the bridge because there are no directional instruments on the sub besides a magnetic compass ... so the pilot relies on the bridge crew to direct them to pre-determined sites of interest. Then instead of saying "Roger that," the bridge crew will send a little beeping pulse through the water. You can hear that on the ship too.

Privacy isn't an issue anyway -- everything they say in the submersible is recorded!

While he's briefing the officials, I took advantage of being close to shore (cell phones are ringing!) and talked with Doug Phillips from WXEL Sun-Sentinel News. He asked me about the submersible and the ship, and will use it in an upcoming news broadcast. He said he'll also be sharing the tape with WQCS, another radio partner of Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers which is based in Fort Pierce. So listen in for that report!

But -- and maybe this is the power of suggestion after a conversation I had at breakfast yesterday -- I had some weird dreams last night. Marine technician Keith Martin told me that when the ship really starts rocking and rolling, passengers have nightmares. He once dreamed that he was being eaten by a shark!

Despite the rough seas, the researchers are still deploying the nets this morning to see what they can collect from the water. They want to see what's living where -- and, here's the tricky question -- why. The net is actually a pretty big piece of equipment, so hopefully it will go off without a hitch!

Meanwhile... some of the same researchers who were working when I went to bed are up this morning. These people really don't sleep!

But what's really making news right now is the rain pouring over the boat -- right when the submersible was docking back on the ship! Tess Geers, an intern at Harbor Branch, just came running into the laboratory soaking wet. She was watching the sub come up and couldn't get out of the rain fast enough.

"I heard it coming over the water," she said. "But I couldn't make it!"

While she dried off, the other scientists continued their work indoors. Rachel Horak, a scientist with Georgia Tech, was watching a video taken yesterday from a nighttime submersible dive. She was in search of fish to identify and report. Marsh Youngbluth of Harbor Branch was doing work on his coral experiment in the cold room. John Reed was finishing up work before he departs the boat early tomorrow.

Everyone else who's awake is rushing outside -- after putting on rain jackets -- to collect everything that the submersible brought up. I think I'll head over to the wet lab (the very wet lab tonight) to see what they have!

We just returned from a three-hour trip along an unexplored section of the Miami Terrace, about 15 miles directly off Dania Beach. It was completely different from other areas that were previously mapped, said John Reed, Harbor Branch's lead scientist who led the expedition.

There were miles and miles of barren, broken asphalt-looking bottom, which small corals sticking out like weeds. Then there would be a steep ridge that would have Lophelia corals, sponges and little crabs and fish. They deployed crab traps, look videos and gathered samples.

It was like another world down there.

Inside the aft compartment of the submersible, it was pretty darn cramped. Good thing I'm petite. The senior submersible technican who was in the back with me, Frank Lombardo, is 6'3" with bad knees. Poor guy! We were cross-legged most of the time -- he read a book while I leaned down to get a peak out of the porthole. It got really cold -- the water was about 40 degrees -- so we had blankets and sweatshirts.

When we returned to the main boat, I made a pit stop and got a glass of water. And then I saw -- the cook, like a angel, had put out freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. A delicious way to end an awesome experience!

But then this morning, when I was learning about the echosounder -- a device that measures ocean depth using acoustics -- I noticed, again, that clock was four hours fast. What gives!?

Turns out the entire ship runs on Greenwich Mean Time, or Universal Time Coordinated for you Anglo-phobes out there. GMT is a universal time system, which isn't affected by daylight savings or different local time. By recording data in that manner, they're able to ensure accuracy when comparing information from different research cruises in different parts of the world!

And here I thought I had missed lunch...

Today's going to be a busy one. After breakfast, they're going to be deploying a five-chambered net called a mocness off the side of the boat. They want to catch plankton and other little things that the corals and fish eat.

What's so interesting is that it's all science all the time on the boat. There's no alcohol allowed, just lots of coffee and bodies slouched over microscopes and tiny portable video recorders. The boat's crew is really nice -- and they're always working too!

The sun's about to rise. Everyone have a great day!

Turns out the skyscrapers from Fort Lauderdale and Miami are visible because the boat heads closer to shore when they're charging up the battery on the submersible -- which is heading underwater for the second time today as I type. And as soon as the cell phone signal came, it went. Such is life on a boat!

But I also received some exciting news. I'll be heading out in the submersible tomorrow! Unfortunately, there's only one seat available in the small aft compartment -- Sarah's out there right now, as the cables are lowering the Johnson-Sea-Link into the water, taking pictures. I'll be heading down with John Reed, the chief scientist on board, so I'll be learning a lot and will be sure to pass it along to you!

Ed Killer, I saw your comment -- how did you know the submersible was yellow?

Good night everybody! I'm off to my bunk in my tidy stateroom.

Along with videotaping pre-determined sections of the reefs and setting a few crab traps under a ledge, he was able to obtain samples of big-eyed crabs, sponges that resembled cotton balls and stark-white coral called Lophelia.

As the sub became visible in the water, a diver hopped on top to attach a thick rope that allowed the ship to pull it in. There were about a dozen sample containers. Some just had dirt from the bottom and water -- both extremely important for the researchers to understand the overall habitat. It's wild to think that just moments ago it was a fifth of a mile below the surface!

Unfortunately, the crab wasn't put in the temperature-isolated container -- so it was "cooked," said Harbor Branch's Tammy Frank. The corals were also dead because of the rising temperatures (it's about 9 degrees down there), but both samples were still usable, they said.

Reed said he saw lots of "wreckfish" and barrelfish cruising along the reef ledge. What else could be down there? That's exactly what the researchers want to find out!

SARAH GRILE sarah.grile@scripps.com
Dr. Tammy Frank, Head of Visual Ecology at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, from left, Mark Schrope, Harbor Branch's Science Writer , and Erika Raymond, who is a grad student at Johns Hopkins University and works for Ocean Research and Conservation, admire the Lophelia coral after it was brought up from 1100 feet below the water surface on Monday about 15 miles east of Fort Lauderdale. Scientists from Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, students, and other research agencies are studying the unexplored deep coral reefs of the Miami Terrace.

But not me so far! They just launched the submersible into about 925 feet of water. It was quite a production to get it in the water -- but with four people inside two separate compartments into the 14-ton piece of equipment, I understand why safety is a necessary.

Phil Santos, the sub pilot, and six other crewmen guided the sub -- which features a glass sphere, robotic arms and collection tanks -- into the royal blue surf. It was a popular event for the rest of the scientific crew, who crowded the deck in life jackets while the sub disappeared into the water.

The entire trip on the Miami Terrace reef -- which is logged by Santos and Jim Sullivan, the submersible electronics technician -- will take about three and a half hours.

While the sub crew worked on the bridge, the scientists were huddled around their computers on the deck-level labs. Members of the ship's crew finished up cleaning the dishes from lunch -- penne pasta, salad, lobster bisque and rice pudding, thank you very much -- while others gathered in the lounge to watch "Killer Waves," a documentary on the Science Channel.

I may pass on the "Killer Waves." I'd rather check out the video streaming live from the submersible!