Friday, February 21, 2014

Open Water




Location: Bering Sea
Temp: Cold
Swell: Enough to make it difficult to walk in a straight line. 10-ish feet?


Firstly, these are a few shots from dawn on 02/19/14

Good morning from the Bering Sea! And good news, I now know how to do my job- sorta!  I had forgotten how much I like doing science, its fun.

A few things to note about life at sea:

I could be 400 miles away from shore, I could be half a mile from shore, I could be traveling east, west, north or south … Everything looks the same if you can’t see land. Monster waves, white caps that highlight the turquoise blue water, occasionally spray over the bow, mostly dark grey water meets light grey or black sky. The only thing that changes is light to dark. But that gets confusing, not only because dawn is around 10 am, but also because my bunk is so dark. I continuously wake up thinking it’s the middle of the night, and usually it’ll be 10 in the morning. Everyone on the crew must think I’m so lazy!

I know you all are probably wondering this, no, I’m not seasick, and I haven’t puked yet! The first day I didn’t feel awesome and it was getting late so I took one Dramamine and passed out! That’s right, I spent my birthday passed out in my bunk, even skipping dinner. But I made up for it and had a celebratory drumstick last night after finishing my first two samples! The rocking of the ship mostly just makes me really sleepy, which, I’m sure, adds to the “the observer is super lazy” factor.

On land I’m a side sleeper. On a boat you have two options, stomach or back. If you attempt to lay on your side, firstly you get a great ab workout, but more importantly you strain your neck, back and legs so much to keep yourself in the position that its no longer comfortable. Just as you're about to fall asleep the boat pushes you onto your back or stomach and wakes you up. So instead, I’ve decided to take up sleeping on my back with both arms out perpendicular to my legs and bracing myself against the side of my bunk. I still slide around a bit, but its good enough to keep me asleep till “morning” … whatever THAT means anymore.

Regardless of where we are, I’m amazed that there’s BIRDS! They’re everywhere, in the middle of the ocean! And they fly so close to the boat. Mostly western gulls and northern fulmars (Fun Fact: Western fulmars have a giant tube on their beak instead of nostrils, it looks hilarious, & makes me feel like they’d make a honk noise for a call.) but I’ll keep a lookout for an endangered short tailed albatross!

Not much else to tell for now. Have a nice day shoreside!
This is the view headed in to Akutan today! (02/21/14)


1 comment:

  1. Cool!! I love the pictures! We were all thinking of you on your birthday. I'm looking forward to celebrating with you when you get back!

    ReplyDelete

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