Well folks... it’s almost halfway through the cruise (crazy!) and I’m finally safely in my routine. I think I’ve gotten my “sea legs” at this point, though I am a little worried about getting re-nauseous with the inevitable onset of rougher seas... the forecast looks good, so hopefully we’ll stay calm for at least a few more days.
Since my shift is 8 am to 8 pm, I thankfully have pretty normal, regular hours (and they key there is, I overlap all three meal times). A typical morning starts with me getting up at around 7 (although, I was a bit late for my shift the first couple of days due to a variety of unfortunate circumstances so I’ve upped the wake-up time to a little earlier). I’ll shower pretty much every day, sometimes the night before, sometimes in the morning. It’s a little bit tricky because my roommate Jenny is on the midnight to noon shift, so she’s usually sleeping when I get off at 8 pm. If I shower at night I’ll do my best not to wake her up while moving around grabbing my stuff.
A note on showering: Depending on the wave height, it can certainly be an interesting activity. The first time I showered after leaving the dock, I was a mess – soap and shampoo were falling everywhere, I needed to lean into the wall, and the floor was 100% puddle by the end of the whole experience. When the waves are calmer, however, it’s not so bad at all, though you do need to do your best to conserve water. I’ve gotten my showers down to about 5 minutes (impressive if you know me), and less than that of running water time since I turn it off to lather up.
Anyway, after showering and getting my stuff together in the morning, I’ll head to the mess for breakfast, usually consisting of a delicious combination of scrambled eggs, French toast, regular toast, pancakes, bacon, sausage, potatoes, hot cereal, juice, and an assortment of fresh fruit. From there, it’s straight to the lab for a day of work.
Sean has divided our 12-hour days into thirds: the first four hours we do seismic processing, the next four we’re on watch, and the last four we do multibeam processing. Since we all overlap each other by four hours, there should theoretically be one person on each task at any given time. This system took a few days to get fully into place as we started collecting data (and it’s still somewhat loosely enforced), but now we’ve all got plenty to do during the day and it’s getting busier and busier as we continue to collect data. I know I’m in the right field, because I honestly look forward to going to the lab every morning to learn new things about geophysical data.
We’ve been collecting lots of data, but not all of it without issue. We’ve been shooting the airguns (collecting multichannel seismic data) almost constantly since we left port, and the data are looking good, for the most part. We had some pretty serious issues with the sound velocity profiles for the multibeam (I will NOT bore you with the explanation of what that is) but we finally got it figured out today! Unfortunately, this means re-processing all of the data we already spent hours processing, but overall it could be worse.
We’ve also had several shutdowns for whales. If you’re not familiar with marine seismic acquisition, this may come as a surprise. To collect seismic data, we literally have “air guns” trailing off the back of the boat. I put them in quotes, but that’s literally what they’re called. They shoot high-energy “puffs” of air every minute or so, and there’s been discussion that it’s destructive to surrounding marine life (whales, dolphins, etc.). So, to prevent this, we have these people called protected species observers (PSOs) on board who stand at the top of this tower (the highest point on the boat) all day and look for whales. If they spot one close enough (or hear one... they’re listening in the lab, too) we have to shut down the guns for 30 minutes. It hasn’t been much of a problem so far, but one of the lines has a few gaps in it because of this.
The people on board have been consistently very friendly, funny, and personable. There are really only a few crusty old sailor types; for the most part everyone is pretty much normal – their job just happens to be on a boat. I’m almost positive I’m the youngest one (by a margin) on board, but thankfully there are plenty of other women around so I’m not a minority in all counts. There are two others on the science team (one is chief scientist) and all five PSOs are women. It wouldn’t bother me much if there were more men (as is typical on these cruises), but it gives everything a bit homier, more comfortable feel with the additional women.
An additional, slightly random note: I’m becoming legitimately concerned that I’m getting fat. I’m getting three full meals a day and there’s an unlimited supply of snacks. In addition, I’m sitting for 12 hours a day in a lab and don’t really have time to work out. I keep checking daily to see if my pants are any tighter. Oh well. It’s all free, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment