Aquatic Life Management is one of the Grounded 2 audio logs tied to Brookhollow Park, and it sits in a place most players swim straight past. The recording is a cassette tape parked on a desk inside a Ranger Outpost that is fully underwater, so you have to dive and enter from below rather than walk in.
Quick answer: Dive into Skunk Pond and enter the submerged Ranger Outpost through the hatch in its floor at roughly -22° N / 11° E. The tape is on the desk with the old computer monitor.
Aquatic Life Management location: Ranger Outpost at Skunk Pond
The log lives inside Ranger Outpost: Skunk Pond, a structure that sits under the water rather than on the shoreline. Open your map and move the cursor to roughly -22° N / 11° E, and the outpost label will come up as the marker you want. Set that as your target before you get in the water, because visibility drops fast once you are swimming and the entrance is not visible from the surface.
The outpost is a small office space, not a sprawling facility. Once you are inside, there are computer monitors, desks, and very little to search, so grabbing the tape takes seconds.
How to get inside the outpost and grab the tape
If you are unsure you are in the right building, open the map again from inside. Your marker should sit squarely on the Ranger Outpost at Skunk Pond.
The tape blends into the desk clutter. Look for the vintage monitor first and the cassette will be right next to it.
How to confirm you collected Aquatic Life Management
Playback starts the moment you pick the tape up. Sloane Beaumont’s voice comes through with subtitles on screen, welcoming you to the park program and explaining that the pond has thawed and the safety improvement effort is now underway. She frames your job as protecting Ominent’s scientists and assets by “managing” the pond’s wildlife, then makes it clear that the word is a euphemism.
Travel safely—when our paths cross next, we’ll share some koi sashimi, yeah?
Once the log finishes, the entry is stored permanently. Aquatic Life Management is filed under Key Items in the Audio Logs category, listed as found in Brookhollow Park, and you can replay it from there at any point.
Aquatic Life Management vs. the AQUATIC Optical Disks
These are two separate collectible types with similar names, and both cluster around the pond. Aquatic Life Management is an audio log with no gameplay reward beyond the recording itself. The AQUATIC Optical Disks are redeemable at a Ranger Station terminal for Raw Science and unlock recipes. There are three of them.
| Optical Disk | Where it is | What blocks you |
|---|---|---|
| Bridge AQUATIC | East side, near the Bridge Gnome | Mini-boss Mess Officer Funk |
| Gnarly Bark AQUATIC | West side, tree root chamber | Crane puzzle, earwigs, roaches |
| Pond AQUATIC | Ominent’s Diving Station, under the pond | Deep water, Toe Biters |
Bridge AQUATIC Optical Disk
At the pond’s eastern wooden bridge, locate the O.R.C. transmitter marker beside the Bridge Gnome. Ascend the wooden beam route to find Mess Officer Funk, an O.R.C. Green Shield Bug mini-boss. Defeat it, then loot the mini-boss and the nearby body; the latter also contains Cattail Fluff and a Worn Pamphlet.
Gnarly Bark AQUATIC Optical Disk
On the west side of the pond, flip the controller switch to activate the yellow crane excavator. That creates the path up into an elevated rock cave.
Continue by riding through the webs into the tree tunnels, dealing with Pincher Earwigs and cockroaches across the moss-covered branches. Exit onto the tree’s outer fungi and candle-wax shelves, climb to the root chamber’s upper entrance, and drop onto the misty cave floor. The disk lies there with a note titled A Big Huge Scary Popo.
Pond AQUATIC Optical Disk
This one needs prep. Koi Scale Armor helps with Water Chill Reduction, the Rusty Spear handles underwater fights, and a Blazin’ Brew made with a Gum Nugget at the Smoothie Station extends your chill resistance. For breathing room on the descent, the Gill Tube and the Merteen mutation are the pieces that matter.
Use the green park bench at Skunk Pond as your landmark. Sprint beside it, plunge into the water, and trace the submerged structure downward, passing the pond plants on the way to the white poly pipes.
Descend along the white pipe’s elbow, then turn until a red light reveals the underwater opening for Ominent’s Diving Station. Go through the airlock, climb the ladder, and proceed along the red-lit corridor inside.
Take the central floor ladder down into the lower lab with the workbenches and robotic arms. The Pond AQUATIC Optical Disk is sitting on a metal cart next to a whiteboard. Feeding it into a Ranger Station terminal pays out 1,000 Raw Science and unlocks the Diving Helmet, the Croakwurst underwater mine, and Underwater Cooking recipes, with diving suit gear and Toe Biter Buggy recipes appearing in the Science Shop as you turn in the rest.
Both trips start from the same stretch of water, so it is worth clearing the Ranger Outpost tape on your first dive and saving the Diving Station run for when you have chill resistance and a breathing item sorted.
