Time: 1025

The little Alvinellas are bigger than I expected. They look like little slugs with fur. Now that there have been two dives, the scientists on board are doing their RNA and DNA work on them. This morning I watched Barb, Laura, and Amir dissect them and start some work on them. Being someone who works on horseshoe crabs, I have only a vague idea of what they are doing. Standing there in the lab with them, I understand about half of what they are saying. All those technical terms flying around. But I'm learning. Hopefully, you'll be able to see what the worms look like in some of the pictures I'm sending back today.

How about those underwater pictures from Mark Spear? Pretty cool, huh? We're lucky he is letting us use his pictures to post on the Web site. It's a view that only the swimmers get. I have decided that I would love to have that job for a day, a swimmer. I want to get to ride standing on the sub as it is lowered down into the water. It looks like so much fun, standing on top of the world like that. That's kinda what it feels like out here, like we have our hands around the world.

I finally got my hands on some video from the first dive. There are some cool shots that I will hopefully send out today. I seem to be having some problems converting it from Quicktime to Imovie, but hopefully with the help of the SSSGs and some time, I'll have it out by the end of the day.

I have my first match of the ping-pong tournament today. I'll let ya know how I do. We also started a foosball tournament. I'm getting pretty good at that. Yesterday, Bekki Helton and I played Craig Cary and Amir right before our emergency fire drill, so we were wearing our life vests, which are pretty restrictive. It made the game quite interesting. Bekki and I beat the guys pretty badly. Hopefully, that's a good sign of my prospects in the tournament. I'm playing on a team with this guy named Catfish. You'll hear more about him later. I don't know what his real name is, but everyone calls him Catfish, and every article of clothing has his name "Catfish" on it. Hepsi wants to do a photo series of him and all his clothes. It's pretty funny actually. Speaking of Hepsi, she is down in the sub today. They should just about be hitting bottom if they haven't already. I'm sure she'll be writing the daily log tomorrow and telling you all about it.

We've had some pretty decent weather since we arrived on station — a refreshing change from the effects of Kenna. The clouds and the sky out here are incredible. I really can't even begin to imagine how to describe it to you all. Hepsi got some good shots yesterday that I'm going to send out this afternoon that will hopefully give you a good idea. I've never seen anything like it out here. Sometimes I feel like it's too spectacular to be real and the ship is actually in a movie studio and the water and clouds and sky are all a blue screen. I'm pretty glad it's all real though. Okay, off to work on this video stuff. Talk to ya soon!