Hello from the Bering Sea! I’m breaking from my weekly update plan to monologue a little bit about the quiet beauty of the ocean and the little things that make being at sea an experience like no other.
I’m in the process of waking up earlier and earlier to adjust to my 6 AM – 6 PM shift, and this is the first morning I wake up and start my shift before breakfast. I haven’t quite figured out a direct indoor route from the stateroom I share with Cora to the STARC computer lab, so I usually step out on deck and descend a stairway that feels more like a ladder to the correct deck. This early in the morning, the sun hasn’t risen yet, and it’s completely dark. The Healy goes dark at night, which means no outdoor floodlights or illuminated walkways save for dim red lamps, which are so subtle it feels like my approach to the lab relies more on muscle memory. The ship is enveloped in fog, blocking any moon or starlight or reflection from the seawater, and as I descend the staircase, the inky blackness might as well be space. And I, my center of gravity rising and falling as the ship heaves through the waves, could be floating out there in the vacuum.
Even in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness or Arizona desert, the darkest night is a cramped storage closet, full of leaves or sand or small creatures or just life compared to the sense of pure emptiness you get in the sea at night. It’s a feeling of complete aloneness, utter freedom, where it feels like the borders of reality are a little bit fuzzy, and maybe we’ve accidentally traveled a millennia and become a ghost ship in some distant future.
Descending the steep stairway, I near the water level, and from here the splashing of the waves dominates any lingering engine/exhaust/fan noise from higher decks. I try to discern a rhythm in the splashing, but though the rise and fall of the ship is uniform, every contact, every wave, every splash is unique, and the task is fruitless. Further aft, away from the prow of the ship, the splashing turns to hissing, as the roiling water churned up by the prow surfaces, fizzing like the Healy is a giant Alka-Seltzer tablet, bubbling away in the sea. This sound is consistent, waiting to encompass you the moment you get close enough, and it’s comforting, like holding a seashell up to your ear. I wish I could record this sound to fall asleep to every night, but the moment I leave the ship I know I’ll forget that ephemeral hissing, just strong enough for ears but too subtle, too blurry for an iPhone.
My first cruise, that planted the seed that led me to the UNOLS-MATE internship, was in the Bering. As my first watery love, something about it feels like home. I know halibut and cod drift tens of meters below us, crabs and brittle stars sifting through silty sediment. People on the coast are chasing the salmon runs, stocking chest freezers to feed themselves through the winter, and I’m sure we’re passing distant commercial fishing vessels, manned by college students and drifters and seasoned hands. This sea is cold, merciless, and unforgiving, and I know that will only intensify as we continue our journey north, to seas new to me. I know I’m just another speck in this sea, here just a moment in its aquatic eons. But the hissing bubbles whisper welcome home, and the dark, depthless night wraps me in its embrace.
I hit the deck, and am getting a little spooked by my inability to distinguish shadows from structures. On that first cruise we pulled up massive, 30+ foot jellyfish tendrils, and I’m not quite convinced there isn’t a gigantic, gelatinous leviathan waiting to pluck me from the ship as vengeance: This is for the sea nettles and moon jellies you keep yanking up on your multicore, punk! I fling myself through a door and spin into the lab, where my people, others who grasp the sea in its infinity, await, who also welcome me home.
Cheers, Wil