I love being in the water and surrounded by the water and anywhere near the water but let's be honest, it gets cold. Solution: Boats. Added benefit: you can take a nap. This past May I had the amazing opportunity to volunteer on a NOAA research cruise (Happy Birthday to me!). I spent 10 days aboard the 209' Bell M. Shimada helping them survey the Oregon and southern Washington coast. Being on a working ship, most people worked on 12 hour shifts. The science crew worked in shifts from 6 to 6 since most of the data either had to be done at night or during daylight hours. In order for me to get the most out of this experience and see both sides, I worked from noon to midnight (to start with). Each day I took note of the cool things I saw and some of the fun things we did.
May 28th: The first day was rough being as I got up at 7am to drive to Newport and then had to stay up until midnight when I'm normally in bed by 9:30pm. The boat left the dock around 4pm so first thing we actually did wasn't until 8pm. It was a neuston surface tow where we collected LOTS of V. velellas (pictured below). There were too many to count so we ended up counting by volume, counting how many it took to fill a small jug and then multiplying by how many small jugs worth we had. After the sun fully set (around 9pm) we did our first big net trawl. The net goes about 30m deep and collects anything in its path. During this time, two people are up in the bridge on mammal watch. They are stationed at the port and starboard sides of the bridge so that they can each see along the full side of the ship to watch for any dolphins or whales that could get caught in the net. When the net was pulled up, it appeared to have malfunctioned and only caught big jellies and squid. There was a massive sea nettle jelly as well as some moon jellies.
May 29th: We got 3 neuston surface tows in and caught more velella as well as some megalope (crab larvae). We started an experiment with the megalope (pictures 1 and 2), putting them in ice trays, one per cube. Sea water was added to half of them and estuary water in the other half. Pictures were taken each day to see how they progressed and if the water had any affect on the development. We also did a bongo net tow. This one is a vertical tow going deep and then surfacing. The big trawl caught lots more fish this time! There were still moon and water jellies as well as rex sole, pacific sanddab, speckled sanddab, english sole, corolla, krill, and two bigger fish.
May 30th: One of the neuston tows caught ctenophores (aka gooseberries)! The others (3 total) caught water jellies, velellas, and megalope. We then transitioned to a chlorophyll patch to use the Planktoscope. It's basically a moving microscope camera that weighs about 250lbs. It is carefully lowered into the water and then moves up and down in the water column as the boat continues to tow it so it zig-zags through the water. It can take anywhere from 1 to 20 microscopic images per second multiplied by the 90 minutes it's in the water (good image pictured below). We had it set to 10pictures/sec leaving us with 54,000 pictures (when it works right). We then did 3 more neustons, 3 bongo tows, and a big trawl.
May 31st: The planktoscope was put in around 11:30am and taken out around 1pm. We had a 6 hour transit to the next station which meant no time for neustons. I took a short nap during the transit since I was switching shifts with the other volunteer in order to help more with the big trawls (3 of the 4 happened after my shift most nights).
June 1st: More of the normal catch (listed on May 29th). The third tow saw dolphins so we had to move past them and wait until there were no sightings for 15min before starting. There was a Big Skate (pictured below) in the net which was extremely exciting! Good thing I have experience with them. I was asked to do all the handling of it since most of the science crew does work with juvenile fish and krill. The last trawl had huge diversity and took us over an hour to sort through. I couldn't last until noon so I bowed out at 9am (21hrs of work is long enough for me). We ended up skipping the last station anyways since there was now a 9 hour transit.
June 2nd: I finally adjusted enough to last through the whole shift but I did start early which was a mistake. There were tons of squid in all of the tows (short video below). Some curious dolphins cut trawl number 3 short. I watched Gattaca for the first time! The lounge on the ship has way too comfy recliners and a big tv with hundreds of movies to choose from including new ones that were in theaters.
June 3rd: All the trawls had much bigger catches. One of which dominated with ~7500 rock fish. The others were much more diverse including one with juvenile deep sea sole which are pretty rare. I learned how to play cribbage in our down time. Whoever isn't on mammal watch normally ends up playing while the trawl is happening. During the daylight hours of my shift (5am to noon) we did more neustons but they were pretty empty with mostly seaweed if anything. A big pod of dolphins came to join us with one over-energized one doing back flips. There were also quite a few whales around as well. Spent part of my day reading on the fly deck. It became my favorite spot on the ship. Sitting in the sunshine with a giant puffy coat to protect from the wind while I ate ice cream and read a book.
June 4th: There were two spiny dogfish sharks! I was only awake for one of them but it was adorable. We started a cribbage tournament and I was against Thomas first. I won 2 out of 3 times. It was my first time winning any round against Thomas. The planktoscope keeps acting up. We even had to solder a new battery for it at one point. One of the crew members showed me a parasitic isopod he found on a ling cod he caught. It's the size and shape of half a golf ball and peach colored.
June 5th: Very diverse tows are a pain to sort. There's a lot more difficult to identify species, more to count, and it often lasts right up to the time the next trawl is being brought in so we don't get much of a break. I think we got a record number of flatfish though. Pictured is not the largest tow but a diverse one. There's one more transect left to do.
June 6th: The last trawls were fairly small but the very last one was still pretty diverse. I got to thoroughly explore the bridge and ask what each button and dial did. The commanding officer even let me drive for a bit and turn the boat around! I made it to the finals in the cribbage tournament. It came down to me and Matt but Matt was in charge of operating our tows which meant that he was launching our gear during my free time and I was sorting through the tows during his free time. We ended up having to wait until we were on our way back to the harbor. Toby was rooting for me each step of the way and was more excited than I was when I won (he filled in the final bracket for me).
Ten days together in close quarters with nowhere to really escape, people were bound to butt heads but overall I loved everyone I worked with. Crew and Science teams put up with tons of questions from me and were very patient while I learned tens of new species names. I've forgotten some of them already, but others I will be able to identify for years to come.
As a final note, here are my favorite things about being on a ship:
Food - I've only been on two research cruises but both of which served me meals that are on my top 5 meals of all time. I mean having meals like steak, manicotti, crab cakes, ling cod, smoked brisket, etc. plus dessert at every lunch and dinner.
Ice cream - This is separate from food because it wasn't part of the meals. On top of having dessert at every meal, there was 24/7 access to ice cream. In the 14 days that I've spent at sea, I never saw the bottom of a box or carton of ice cream.
Getting rocked to sleep - Yes it makes walking difficult for a while, but every time you sit or lay down, you're getting gently rocked back and forth. It makes going to sleep way too easy (especially on top of all the physical work). The only downside of this is hitting some bigger waves and waking up having to immediately brace yourself so you don't roll out of the bed.
Waterproof - I'm a klutz on dry land so I don't know how I survive on boats but thankfully it's all waterproof! Anything that's not waterproof is normally covered or put away somewhere so I'm perfectly safe to walk around with a too-full cup of coffee while the boat moves the ground beneath my feet.
Good morning - My day started at noon, then it switched to starting at midnight and others started at 6am or 6pm. Because of this, nobody even thought twice when I would say good morning at 4pm. Also with these schedules, if you were ever bored, there was going to be somebody awake you could talk to but if you wanted to sleep at any hour of the day, the cabin areas were quiet.
Magnetic walls - I don't know if it was just this ship or if all ships are like this (since they are mostly made of metal) but the walls were magnetic! It was exciting to me. I may have spent an hour running around the ship testing a bunch of walls with a magnet I found..