My first week aboard the R/V Sikuliaq has flown by! After arriving in Seward, Alaska, I leapt at the opportunity to do a bit exploring. Seward is a beautiful town with a lot of history, but it’s quiet this time of year as the tourist season winds to a close.

The R/V Sikuliaq is visible through the haze of mist at the UAF dock.
Through a starboard window I could see the steep pine tree-covered slopes of the mountains Seward sits at the base of.
The Seward library was a pop of color against the overcast sky!
The fog makes the snowcapped mountains on the other side of Resurrection Bay look distant and dark. This picture was taken at Mile Zero of the Iditarod Trail.

The weather cleared up as the Sikuliaq got underway! The extended maintenance period at the dock in Seward turned out to be a blessing in disguise: the delay prevented us from sailing through an intense storm cell in the Bering Sea. So, we began our transit that would take us through Unimak Pass, along the western coast of Alaska, and eventually through the Bering Strait and across the Arctic Circle.

This is my first time being in Alaska; it is just as beautiful as I'd always heard!
A range of gray, snowy mountains in front of the twilit sky.
A bird flies across the blue sky as we leave Resurrection Bay. The mountains are very distant on the horizon.
A view of the jewel blue water over the side of the ship.

Today is day 8 of our transit. Winds around 30 knots have been whipping up the waves and slowing our progress towards the Bering Strait– and the turbulence was enough to knock my sea legs right out from under me! I have noticed that the color of the sea has changed the further north we have gone; I have some theories but if anyone happens to know why this is, I would love to learn!

The water has gotten choppier and colder, and the sun rises much later in the day this far north. Here, the sun through the clouds makes everything look monochrome.
A picture of some very frothy, frigid waves.

During the transit, I have been getting acquainted with the ship, the crew, and my duties and responsibilities as a Marine Technician. Some projects I’ve tackled so far are installing and calibrating sensors on the CTD array, replacing batteries in universal power system banks, and learning the daily maintenance of tools like the uncontaminated seawater system that allow for the continuous collection of valuable environmental data. In the next week or so, I expect that we will have crossed the Arctic Circle and reached the operations area; I hope to see some ice fields and maybe a polar bear (from a distance.)