Back at the dock now, The connectivity would hot have made blogging practical, over the last couple of weeks, so I am writing this after the fact. We left port in a gale and the first two days were pretty darn rough. Everybody did just fine though, once they got their sea legs – me included. The mission was to emplace and retrieve Ocean Bottom Electromagnetic Receivers used by Scripps Researcher Kerry Keys and his coworkers to map the resistivity of the Cascadia Plate and to use that data to interpret how water moves in the descending crust. It was a pleasure to watch his team in action. They were better than the military – the same precision, but with more continuity and fewer “oh drat” moments, so often caused in the military by high turnover. These guys had this down to…well, a science:)
I injected myself into the noon to midnight watch and helped them on deck with the placements and recoveries. It was an education. The first few nights we had some real “Deadliest Catch” moments, with 10-foot seas breaking over the fan tail! Everything was done safely though and the ship’s crew was very patient and professional.
The weather moderated after that and we got a break. It was fascinating to see the development of the routine of the watches, the division of labor, the interactions between the ship’s crew and the science party (all very productive and professional). The rhythm of life aboard ship was interesting: the importance of meals, the value of a good cook, the watch-sleep-watch cycle, the pattern of resting, eating and working that form the entirety of your day at sea. This was compounded by a near complete lack of connectivity so, barring slow emails, there was very little contact with home.
It was funny to see the news, “Hey, I have two bars.” race through the ship when we passed near land and got cellular contact. Everyone made time to call home, check Facebook and emails, and text loved ones. I was probably the worst, since I was hungry to hear from my family.
In the interim, between times on deck, I was working on a project for my mentor. He had me construct a microcontroller based spray wash system for the CTD cable, with a webpage interface. I am no programmer, but I know a darn sight more now than I did two weeks ago. Staring into a computer trying to figure out how to break a string into a separate array at the first carriage return in rough weather is a recipe for an urpy stomach. I had to take routine breaks to get fresh air. But I was able to get the thing working, and I learned a great deal in the process.
In the last three weeks I have used many of the skills I have learned already; soldering, electrical circuit construction, basic programming, cable management, deck operations, to name a few. But it is clear to me that I have a lot to learn about networking computers and advanced programming. Fortunately, I have several more weeks to work with these folks and sharpen those skills.
