The Cold Hard Truth



This is NOT my boat, thankfully. But left unbroken, ice can pile up like this quite easily.


I get a lot of questions about the weather and "exactly how cold is it there?" Honestly, most of the time I don't notice how cold it is anymore. I realized I've been in the cold a very long time when I was walking to the "gym" thinking how it was a nice warm day for once ... and then I stepped in a puddle that was freezing over as I thought about the "warm" day. Sunshine can be deceiving.

That's not to say that I am always warm. It has been quite cold on some days. So I figured I should probably write about what everyone wants to hear, me being miserably cold on the high seas (why else do you keep coming back to this blog?  Morbid curiosity is totally human, I get it) The worst day was in early March. I woke up to an announcement that we we're hauling back (aka we're bringing the trawl net up and dumping the fish into our tanks), so went up to the wheelhouse to moniker the haul. Just FYI for anyone like me, who has no extreme cold experience, your first indicator that its colder than hell frozen over outside is when you can see a thick layer of ice covering every surface on the boat. Меня зовут Али и я люблю лед и снег!

The icicles were pretty cool (cool, haha, get it? Ok back to the story.). It's just as you imagine, there were long, thick blue daggers slanting away from the wind along all the eves of the house. I decided I should probably put on another layer of clothing at the point (thank god I have some common sense). When I stepped on deck to sample my fish I immediately felt the cold hit my face and lungs as a breathed it in. It almost hurt to breath. "Ok, once you get moving, and pushing fish around it will get better, like warming up at the start of a swim!" I told myself. Right?  ... Nope.com Actually the longer you're out there the more your face hurts and the cold starts to seep into your double-gloved hands.

 I got straight to work (well as soon as I broke up the inch layer of ice covering my science gear), which turned out to be a pretty good idea for a couple different reasons. One, the faster I worked the less amount of time I'd have to suffer this frozen nightmare. Two, moving around did keep my core warm and occupied my mind so I couldn't dwell on my discomfort (to put it lightly). And three, I realized as I was sampling, the fish were actually freezing solid to the deck around me! Yay! 

By the time I finished my work I could barely read my writing on my deck sheets, turns out its really difficult to write legibly when you cant feel your fingers! I had fish slime and water frozen to my rain gear. In short, I don't think I've ever been that cold before in my life. Luckily in the coming days the weather lightened up and the heavy freezing spray turned back into snow.

 And that's the cold hard truth of ice on the Bering Sea!















My only ice photo, taken in Akutan