Author: Maia Garcia

The last week aboard the Sharp was a mix of light and hard days of work. The first two days of the week (Fri and Sat) were mostly Habcaming with the occasional light dredging. One dredge in particular though on Saturday had a huge boulder, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. It had to be craned off the table. Other than the boulder, the days went quickly and had a light load of work. Sunday on the other hand was brutal. Science made the call to end the cruise early due to the weather and we had to offload everything while in Woods Hole Sunday. I was exhausted as I had to start the hard process of switching over to being diurnal.  When we arrived in port at 5:20 am, the weather was overcast and very windy but it soon worsened into hard rain and the occasional lightning. We worked in our full foul weather gear to offload all the dredges, the keel pod, and all the wire cages filled with science’s equipment via crane. Loud Fuel arrived an hour and a half late and began refueling at around 8 am. It took several hours to offload and refuel but things in general went smoothly. By noon, the last the gear was off and it was time to begin the 30-hour steam back to Lewes. The rest of Sunday and the whole of Monday was spent heading home and cleaning the ship. The dry lab, wet lab, vestibule, staterooms, and the heads all had to be cleaned before arrival.

We docked in Lewes by early Tuesday morning. It was brutally hot that day but we worked hard in the morning to crane off the scallop table, scallop ramp, Habcam deck, Habcam ramp, and the two small hydraulic winches. A small boat was added to the deck for the upcoming cruise in the Bahamas. Wednesday was much nice in comparison. The weather cooled off after thunderstorms in the night. In the morning, the two keel pods were removed, the van was removed, and after lunch, a new van was installed. This was a slow process as it was difficult to crane such large and ungainly things while also staying safe. Max and I finished the day by installing three new fridges and freezers and a fume hood. Today, we finished off the rest of the work. I spent most of my time helping install the new keel pods before the crew had to attend an important staff meeting. While the crew was in the meeting, the new intern arrived, Amber. I got her settled and showed her around before it was time to get back to work. Right at the end of the workday at 3pm, the SMS computer decided to act up. The next couple of hours were spent collectively trying to troubleshoot the hardware for the setup. Finally at 5, the stars aligned and the computer was working. Amber and I ate dinner downtown before we headed back to the ship for the night.

Sadly, this will be the last post from me. These past weeks have been incredible and life changing. I will be sad leaving the ship tomorrow morning for the last time while heading to the airport. Thank you MATE so much for giving me this opportunity.

Signing off,

Maia

The start of the week was uneventful. We Habcamed for a day and a bit until it was time to start dredging. Saturday, the first day of dredging, was marked by hauls filled with sand dollars and some huge monkfish. Sunday was more interesting. The first few dredges were full of shell hash and one in particular was so muddy and huge I had to help sort for twenty minutes. After breakfast, science decided to change out the dredges so that the one currently on deck and the one currently in use switched. They needed to do some repair work to the inner lining of the dredge. That took a good while to maneuver and crane the dredges into place. However, once everything was figured out, the dredges after it were rather fun. One haul had lots of baby monkfish (over ten), one haul had a huge lobster and a seahorse, and one haul had a little, bitty octopus (as pictured above). That little octopus made my week!

Monday was quiet in comparison. The hauls were small and the runs between stations were long (30-60 minutes of downtime). A large, thick haddock was caught in one of dredges and was cooked up for lunch. It made for a good fried fish sandwich. Unfortunately, Tuesday was probably the hardest day of the week. Fog moved in, there was constant precipitation, and the swells had grown. It never graduated into bad weather but it was enough to make the work long and chilly. On the bright side, I saw a mola mola right up next to the ship and some species of sea bird landed and hung around the deck where we were working. It took off after a few minutes before anyone could take a picture. By Wednesday we only had a couple of dredge stations left. I only had to do four dredges before it was time to pull the dredge up and place the Habcam in. We Habcamed all of my Thursday watch as well but by Friday we will likely be back to dredging.

Plans are up in the air for the end of the cruise. We don’t have enough fuel to make it to the end and weather is supposed to get nasty for Sunday. The tentative plan is to refuel Sunday morning and wait for the weather to die down before heading back out. By tomorrow (Friday) there should be a final decision.

Until next week,

Maia

This past week been exciting! On Friday we dredged the whole day but this time we were getting lots of scallops. For one memorable dredge, there were so many scallops that they overflowed the net. The scallops were the size of dinner plates and were covered in muck. The dredging however was interrupted the next few days due to weather. Bad weather was supposed to move in where we were for the weekend. In particular, the wind was supposed to pick up to around 20-30 knots. In order to stay safe, we spent the first half of Saturday steaming over to the water near Nantucket. The idea was that instead of being stuck over 100 miles off shore in bad weather, the area around Nantucket was close to shore and could buffer storms. Once we arrived at Nantucket we continued to dredge as to not waste time. Personally, most of my watch that day was spent waiting for arrival but I did have some rock filled dredges towards the last few hours of my day. While waiting around, I noticed that there were many, many whales. While in the past weeks whales were not uncommon, that day in every direction I looked I could see at least one whale. There were more than whales as well. I saw seals, dolphins, and sharks too. It was incredible and time flew watching them. Unfortunately, I was unable to get any good pictures.

The next few days were spent dredging around Nantucket and the occasional Habcaming. On Monday we had particularly bad luck with dredging.  There were multiple hauls that consisted of huge mounds of sand dollars or brittle stars. Anything other than scallops, fish, and one species of crab is considered trash and is duumpted over the side. One dredge broke the record for bushels of trash with 49 bushels of sand dollars. Those types of dredges and the dredges with rocks are the hardest and most backbreaking type of haul so Habcaming was a well needed break.

On Tuesday we pulled up the Habcam and steamed back to Woods Hole. We arrived at around 6 pm and I grabbed dinner at a local café. We spent the whole of Wednesday mobilizing. Most of the time was spent trying to install a new washer and dryer as ours had broken down a couple days prior. This was a large undertaking since the laundry machine didn’t fit through the doorways. Instead, they had to be craned through a hatch. Like all days on land, we worked from 7 am to 3 pm. At the end of the workday, I took the ferry over to Martha’s Vineyard to visit a friend from college who lives there. Bright and early this morning we left Woods Hole and started Leg 3 of this scallop survey. Today was entirely spent steaming out to the first station. I have to look forward to over 100 dredges by the end of the trip as science wants to do 70% dredging and 30% Habcaming.

See you next week,

Maia

         The dredging has set in full force. We dredged for three days nonstop save for the occasional repair to the dredge. My job is assisting in bringing a dredge up out of the sea onto the table, dumping the contents, and setting it it back out again. Once a dredge is completed the deck has to be washed down with the seawater hose as there is a surprising amount of organic debris left from the dredge. A dredge takes around an hour to complete depending on what we catch. The ease of the dredge entirely depends on what is hauled up. Those that are filled with large rocks, are sandy or muddy, and those that are extremely large in quantity are the hardest to shovel and sort. I’ve seen all sorts of amazing creatures that were caught in the dredge. Not only have there been scallops, but I have seen octopuses, squid, mussels, monk fish, skates, hermit crabs, sand dollars and sea stars at the top of my head. The first few days of the week were consumed by continuous dredging and made for quick but arduous watches.

         Shortly into the beginning of my watch on June 1st, we did one last dredge before we secured the dredge on deck. It was time to head into Woods Hole, MA to refuel. We steamed into port at around 9:30 am and had a couple of hours off until it was time to head out again. Before I could go and explore the town, we had to dump the garbage. This was a fun process of chucking trash bags over the side of the Sharp onto the dock where the bags were then brought to the trash bins nearby.  I enjoyed wandering the town and in particular enjoyed the food and coffee at a cafe called Pie in the Sky. All too quickly, it was time to head back to the ship and we were off by noon.

            The next watch, the midnight since leaving Woods Hole, the sea had picked up considerably and there were strong winds. We were not able to dredge in this weather and all we could do for hours was wait for the weather to die down. By daybreak the seas had calmed and we were able to place the Habcam in the water. As Habcaming requires nothing of the techs, the day was spent peacefully and quietly up in the bridge. The peace was broken by the time my next watch began on the 3rd. When I woke up we were back to dredging since the one of the computers of the Habcam had broken. One of the dredges we pulled up that early morning was of note, we had caught ourselves an old lobster trap, two lobsters included! After breakfast we got great news from science saying that they fixed the computer and the Habcam was ready to be put back in. Once it was deployed, there have been no further issues and we have been Habcaming up until today. Tomorrow we will be back to dredging but we had a certainly had a nice break.

See  you next week,

Maia

            In the past week, the R/V Sharp has transitioned from Leg 1 of the scallop survey to Leg 2. While Leg 1 almost entirely used the Habcam (as pictured above), Leg 2 and Leg 3 are a hybrid of dredging and Habcaming. As such, the last days of Leg 1 were spent with the Habcam in the water. We pulled the Habcam from the water on Sunday so we could steam back and make Monday’s 3 pm high tide in Lewes. We were doing well for fuel so we started up the third power generator, thus increasing our speed. The Captain wanted a large cushion time for arrival since he did not know how bad boat traffic would be on Memorial Day. We arrived at Lewes before the tide was high enough to let us in so we had to lurk outside for roughly 30 minutes before moving in. It was pretty funny to see all the Memorial Day weekenders out on the beach staring and taking pictures at us. We spent two nights docked in Lewes cleaning the ship for the next leg and changing out the crew and scientists. Of the original twenty of us, only three (myself included) would be staying for Leg 2. Most of my time was spent helping prep the ship by vacuuming, taking out the trash, and changing the linens. The crew wanted to take advantage of being on land so the workday would end in the afternoon. I spent my free time wandering around Lewes and enjoying the nice weather.

            All too soon, Wednesday at 4 am we left dock. Since I was rooming with a volunteer scientist, I had to be put on the science watch schedule. My watch changed from 6 am to 6 pm to midnight to noon. Adjusting to new times had been difficult and I have been experiencing seasickness despite the nice weather. However luckily, both Wednesday and today there was minimal work for techs and I have been able to work on recuperating. There was some Habcaming done but the real work, dredging, begins this afternoon while I sleep. I will be kept very busy with the dredging schedule for the rest of the leg.

Here’s to fair weather and yummy scallops!

Maia 

         The first week on board the R/V Hugh R. Sharp has gone well! I was picked up at the tiny Salisbury airport by KG, one of the technicians that will be on the second and third leg of the survey, and his visiting friend. They drove me from Salisbury, Maryland to Lewes, Delaware. Along the way we had lunch at a local diner and bought some heavy-duty foul weather gear, including a pair of rubber steel-toed boots. Sharp was docked next to another vessel and an associated administration building. The building had offices as well as workshop space to maintain the ship. I was given a tour of the Sharp and was introduced the crew. Afterwards I was given time to unpack, grab dinner in downtown Lewes, and have an early night to recover from my 5 am flight. Tina moved in that night as well. She’s an independent contractor technician that is with us for night watch of the first leg. On the second day, we started work at 7 am and I mostly followed Max around, the technician that will be on all three legs of the scallop survey. The ship was already prepped and ready on the tech side of things so I mostly watched the scientists ready the fiber optics cable, learned my way around the ship, and learned the daily duties aboard the ship. We had lunch on the ship and the crew went home about 3 pm to pack and get ready for the upcoming cruise. I had dinner again in Lewes. It’s a nice mile or so walk into downtown from where we were docked.

         The next day, everybody was loaded up and we set to sea. During the day we test deployed the Habcam, the CTD, and the dredge. The Habcam is a giant apparatus that has  cameras and various other equipment attached to a frame. It is dragged behind the ship just above the sea floor and it takes pictures of the sea floor, including scallops. The dredge on the other hand scrapes the sea floor, collecting everything there, and dumps out the haul on a massive metal table to be sorted through by the scientists. The scientists are transitioning over using the Habcam more than the dredge to lessen their environmental impact. Another vessel is dredging the same area as us so the first leg uses only the Habcam while the second and third legs will alternate between them. However sometime during the test deployment, one of the main power connectors to the ‘brain’ of the Habcam flooded from an imperfect connection. We went back into Lewes that night as it was unclear whether the Habcam’s ‘brain’ would work once dried out. We docked for a couple of hours until it we found out from science that the Habcam is fully functioning. We headed back to sea and continued on track.

            In the following days, I’ve fallen into a routine. Watch is from 6 am to 6 pm with breakfast at 5:30 am, lunch at 11:30, and dinner at 5:30 pm. I spend most of my time in the bridge with the rest of the crew that’s on watch. I have been reading (finished 4 books so far) and chatting with the crew. Everyone is very friendly and science will enthusiastically talk about what they’re currently working on. The Habcam does not require anything from the techs so days can be slow. There have been some equipment issues that keep us on our toes but other than that, we only have to do a daily check on the systems. The daily check includes cleaning a filter, washing down the CTD, and double-checking that the weather readouts are accurate. All in total, it only takes 20 minutes or so. Today, we tested the dredge again and got some sea stars, sand dollars, fish, crabs, and scallops. During a dredge, Max and I are in charge of attaching the dredge to the winch and assisting getting the dredge back on board. We have to shovel the catch into piles so that the scientist can sort it and wash everything down once finished. All in all, I’d say that things have gone well. The weather has been calm and the trip has been fascinating. See you next week!

– Maia

Hello!

Tomorrrow is the big day, the day I start my internship aboard the R/V Sharp! It has been a whrilwind few weeks with the end of finals and packing but it has been worth it. I am honored that I was selected for this opportunity and am so excited for it. I want to thank Nandita for all her help in getting ready and making sure all the paper work is in order. 

See you next week,

Maia