Hello again!
I have finally returned from my hiatus back at home in Minnesota and
now come to you all the way from sunny Bermuda. Being home was quite
a nice and unexpected break, especially after nearly 7 weeks at sea on
my last cruise in Hawaii but it feels good to be back on the water
again. I am now aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer (AE) where I will
finish out the last 3 months of my internship.
It has been really interesting to see all the differences between the R/V Kilo Moana (KM)
and this ship and the most obvious one is the size. The KM was very
distinct in that it was a double hulled ship which made it over twice
as wide as the AE. It could carry over 50 people (crew and
scientists), had a very spacious back deck, a large galley, big
storage spaces, etc. The AE has about half of all of those things
which has affected many different aspects of my time here already!
First and foremost of these is that I really haven’t been lost at all
on the ship (yay me!). I spent the first couple of weeks in Hawaii
trying to figure out the very bizarre layout of the ship. Even when I
knew my way around it pretty well I still managed to turn a corner
every now and then and end up someplace I didn’t even know was there!
So far I have found the layout here to be a little less confusing
which I am always a fan of.
Another thing that is very different is the positioning of one of
the most commonly used pieces of equipment in oceanographic work: the
CTD. On the KM everything went into the water from the back deck
because of the ample space available there, the layout of the ship,
and because that is where the A-frame is. Here on the AE the CTD goes
into the water from the side of the ship. They have a large A-frame
across the back deck for most pieces of equipment, but they also have
a smaller A-frame and launching site along the starboard side that is
used basically just for the CTD. It calls for a little bit different
procedure for deploying the CTD than I was familiar with but it easy
to see how convenient it is to have an isolated position just for that
and how streamlined it makes the whole thing. It’s pretty nice and
definitely more to come about that.
Already I have been out on a very short cruise to put some incubating
chambers into the water (they will stay out about month so we haven’t
recovered them yet) and done some CTD casts. This was basically a one
day cruise so we didn’t divide up the schedule into strict shifts like
we normally would have. Eventually most of us ended up being awake
all night doing CTD’s and wow was it intense. We were right on the
edge of a tropical storm and the waves were rocking. Also…another
minor difference that apparently has a big impact between ships is the
distance from the deck to the surface of the water. I would say the
KM had maybe 10-12 feet (ish) and the AE has maybe 2. The back deck
is considered a “wet deck” and boy was it ever. Waves came over the
side like crazy. One almost knocked me down and another one managed
to knock down another tech. The water just kept coming! It was hard
to deploy and recover the CTD because the waves were pretty large and
led to a ton of motion from the ship. Crazy adventure but I was
soaking wet by the end of it. Glad it was a short one?
I will surely describe more differences and adventures as I go but I
will digress from that a little bit now. I want to show a little
appreciation to the people I have been so fortunate to meet so far.
The crew and scientists aboard the R/V Kilo Moana were SO good to me
for the whole time I was there. I was a little nervous to go into
this unknown world of marine technician-ing with no specific
background in it and very little direct experience and everyone
treated me so kindly and with ample amounts of patience. I learned
new things every day from the techs that were training me but also
from the AB’s that worked on the deck, the engineers that kept
everything running, the officers that ran the ship, and even the
scientists that were gathering samples. Amazing and wonderful people.
I have no doubt that I will get the same here in Bermuda. Already I
feel like a member of the team here and have been so welcomed! I
manage to feel a little bit more lucky every day.
Well I am currently on a cruise now and will fill you in more about it next week but for now that is all the time I have. More to come later!
Elizabeth