Irish scientist speaks by live link from 20m below sea surface

With exotic fish swimming by his porthole, an Irish "aquanaut" has "phoned home" from a Nasa sea station 20m below the sea surface off the US east coast.

Dr Marc Ó Gríofa from Clonee, Co Meath, is a member of the Nasa extreme environment mission operations project located 6km off the Florida coast.

The biomedical engineer spoke to medical students and members of the public by a live link hosted by NUI Galway-based clinician Dr Derek O’Keeffe, who is flight surgeon for the Nasa mission.

Dr Ó Gríofa is now halfway through his eight-day stint on the mission, which aims to replicate the space environment for research projects. He is one of six on board the Aquarius capsule, which is the size of a bus, on the seabed.

Dr Ó Griofa gave the audience a virtual tour of the capsule, describing how he had seen barracudas and stingrays from his porthole earlier that morning.

He also showed off the “moon pool” or transition area, where participants don diving gear and embark on “extra vehicle activity” as in subsea walks outside the capsule for several hours.

On one such “space walk”, the scientists built what may be the world’s deepest “nursery” for coral.

Unlike a submarine, which is like a pressurised canister, the Aquarius mission aims to adjust to subsea conditions, allowing its inhabitants to become saturated with nitrogen after their descent in diving gear.

To surface, the participants have to spend 15 hours in a decompression ascent to avoid getting the the “bends”.

“We are creating building blocks for future missions to Mars,”Dr Ó Gríofa told the NUIG audience on Friday.