Thursday, January 9, 2014

Eat, Sleep and Dream Fisheries

Location: Seattle, WA
Temp: 48F

Commercial fishery observers can be out at sea for a maximum of 90 days, it's in our contract. What they don't tell you is that 90 days of isolation is the point at which all previous studies pretty much agree that you will go crazy; really, actually, clinically insane. So naturally they structure the training course to simulate that. It must be working too, for the past few days I have had some over the top bat-crap-crazy dreams. Compounded by the fact that I hardly ever dream at all, I have been thinking twice about what I eat or read before going to bed. 

The first few dreams were your average-grade odd-balls, like talking to fish, wandering on the beach with nowhere to go, or ending up in the "I'm on a boat" SNL music video. But last night's dream takes the crazy-cake. It started off in Long Beach Harbor with my day camp, (fun fact: I used to direct a day camp!) on the harbor cruise tour boat. It was an enjoyable field trip, until I spotted a very large orca (killer whale) charging right at us. The whale was pissed and coming for us. Obviously everyone looks at me, the marine biologist, to do something ... so I do the first thing that comes to mind,  I jump in the water. Oh yeah, my subconscious is a bad-ass apparently. I swim towards the shore to distract the whale, while hopefully getting help, because dreams contain no logic and no cell phones. I looked back and all the sudden the tour boat is now a sinking school bus! So I sprint back to them. (I wish I could swim in real-life like I swam last night.) I dove down to save the kids from the sinking bus, in the middle of the harbor. The orca, obsessed with the bus, dove down to spoon with it as it sank to the bottom of the harbor, which apparently was several fathoms deep (60-70ft). When I arrived on shore all the kids broke out their lunch pales for snack time. Problem solved. No biggie. And the best part was that I didn't really see anything out of the ordinary until I woke up thinking "Why was there an orca in Long Beach Harbor?" 

When my alarm went off this morning, I leaned over the mattress to turn it off and found my marine mammal interaction reports laying on the floor. I had fallen asleep right after finishing them. I figure at least I'm sleeping well enough to dream, and getting in some good marine mammal identification practice. It's official, I now eat, sleep, and dream fisheries management. 



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