Fathom this: The parrotfish and lobsters that live on Conch Reef are getting some new neighbors -- of the human kind.
Scientists on a mission to learn more about Florida's endangered coral reefs will work, eat and sleep in a capsule 70 feet underwater during the next three years.
Life in the capsule will be curious: a VCR, running hot water, catered meals for the scientists, who will live in the 43-foot-long, 13-foot-wide chamber for 10 days at a time.
But the venture itself is serious: a quest for knowledge to save the reefs, which have been battered by boaters, poisoned with pollution and, scientists suspect, choked by upland development.
"Resources in the Keys are a national treasure," said Dr. Steven Miller, a scientist involved.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington hope to submerge Aquarius by the end of the week. The underwater habitat will be nestled on a sandy patch within Conch Reef, about six miles east of Tavernier Key.
"It's like having a university lab bench on the ocean floor," said Miller, Florida science director for the Undersea Research Center at UNC-Wilmington.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration owns Aquarius; UNC manages it.
Miller's group is waiting for calm seas to launch Aquarius, which now sits on a barge at the Port of Miami. Once above Conch Reef, the 82-ton habitat will be lowered with winches through the barge's two pontoons.
Miller said technicians will spend two months making sure Aquarius' systems are working. The first scientists should dive down in August -- just in time to watch the corals spawn, a one-time event each year.
Scientists will enter Aquarius through a hatch on the bottom. The hatch keeps the air in and the ocean out, like a cup placed upside down in a sink full of water.
Inside Aquarius, scientists will find a shower with hot water, a toilet, a microwave oven and six bunks. They will also find a little of what they would find in a typical lab: sinks, workbench, freezer and refrigerator.
Their lifeline will be a cable reaching up to the barge, which will remain anchored above.
Generators on the barge will power the habitat. A desalinization machine will purify seawater and supply a steady stream of fresh water. Pumps will ensure a continuous supply of air.
A cook on the barge will prepare meals daily. Dinner will be delivered via airtight containers.
The key feature of the habitat is that it will allow scientists to dive for much longer periods of time than they could from a boat.
Traditional divers can carry only so much compressed air and must limit the time they spend at deeper depths, because nitrogen builds up in their blood. With Aquarius, scientists will be able to spend full days diving. Aquarius is a decompression chamber.
Living underwater is nothing new. Scientists have been doing it since the 1960s.
Past projects include Tektite, which was submerged at St. John in the Virgin Islands between 1969 and 1971. Tektite was followed by Hydrolab in The Bahamas and St. Croix, Virgin Islands.
Aquarius was submerged near St. Croix for three years in the late 1980s -- a mission cut short by Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Aquarius may be the most comfortable underwater habitat ever made. In Hydrolab, for example, the toilet was the ocean. Scientists had scant storage space and had to haul wet diving gear into their living areas.
"We had a hot plate that we boiled chicken tetrazini, turkey tetrazini, beef tetrazini in, and that's about it," said Walter Jaap, an associate research scientist with the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg.
"When you're down for a number of days and you're doing hard work and then you come up and look at peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, it's pretty demoralizing."
Miller said likely studies include drilling into the ocean floor to study the quality of ground water below and examining water quality around the reef to help determine the effects of sewage pollution. Another plan is to set up monitoring stations that can be revisited to gauge the changing health of the reef.
Some scientists have ques