Life on the TRACERS
Cruise
On a research vessel there is no defined line separating
“work” from “life”. Life is work and
work is life. Nine to Five doesn’t exist and you can’t just stop and go do your
own thing. We don’t have our usual creature comforts to retreat to when we want
to unwind and take a break. Obviously a person cannot work 24/7 indefinitely.
At some point we all crack. This cruise is a long 53 days and it is important
we don’t burn out. The first 29 days were devoted to near round-the-clock
sampling from the CTD. No evenings. No weekends. Few breaks.
The only structure we have are meal times and weekly
“fire/abandon ship” drills.
11:30am-12:30pm Lunch
5:30pm - 6:30pm Dinner
12am – 1am Mid-Rats (midnight rations)
My life went something like this:
7:00am alarm goes off. Hit snooze. Think to myself, noooo not yet! 7:15am alarm goes off. Hit
snooze. Toss and turn. Turn on the TV monitor in my room to see if the CTD is
being deployed. Still hasn’t been put in the water. Good, I can sleep more. 7:20am
alarm goes off. Grunt. Hit snooze. My subconscious is trying to see how much
sleep it can get down to the minute since I had been awake until 2am the night
before! If I skip breakfast I can sleep longer. Just a little longer. Okay, it’s
time. CTD is going down in to the water
and I have a meeting before it comes back on deck. I jump out of bed (I’m on
the top bunk), throw on pants and a fleece, put in my eyeballs (contacts) and
brush my teeth. I race up 5 flights of stairs to the Bridge where the Captain
and the head scientists are gathering for the morning meeting.
The meetings start off with pushups. Every time the CTD hits
the water or comes out of the water we are supposed to do 25 pushups. Most of us
are behind. I have extra motivation to keep me ahead. Photo credit: C. Brooks
We then discuss the plan of the day: Where we will go and who
needs to sample for what. The meetings usually close with someone telling a
joke. I don’t know how this happened, but I have somehow become that person who
closes with a joke. Typically a bad one. I’ve been demoted multiple times but
when no one else speaks up, a bad joke is better than no joke?! We then head off to start science!
Check out this 60second time-laps video Cassandra Brooks
made at this address:
Duties may include: sampling from the CTD, filtering water, measuring
certain properties of water, taking
shots of espresso, running out on the deck to see icebergs or wildlife
float by, washing bottles, labeling bottles, looking under the microscope,
entering data, conducting experiments, as well as many other activities.
Around 2am, I have to force myself to head to bed, take out
my eyeballs, brush my teeth and crawl under the covers. My brain is wired. I’m
not tired. I’m exhausted yet mysteriously awake. And I get to do it all again
the next day.
Every week we
practice Abandoned Ship or Fire drill. The alarm sounds and we immediately grab
4 things: 1. All of our Extreme Cold Weather gear (big red parka, hat, gloves,
scarf, socks, thermals, etc); 2. Ditch Bag (in mine I have hand warmers, books,
my wallet and chocolate bars), 3. Life Jacket and 4. Floatation Full Body
Immersion Life Suit (should we have to actually get in the water—see photo). If
you show up to the meeting without these, it’s been threatened that Captain
takes you outside and makes you stand there until you freeze so you understand
the importance of being prepared in an emergency. If we hit those waters, you
have 3 minutes before you're dead. Captain had us practice getting into the
life boats. It’s very tightly cramped. After 3 days of being stuck in the boat,
if no one has come to rescue us, our chance of survival drops to less than 50%.
Each day after, it drops even more. It’s amazing to imagine the early explorers
surviving MONTHS at sea in just wooden rowboats! How DID they do it?
This week we had our own fire scare. The alarm went off unexpectedly at 5:30pm.
Word started to spread that one of the labs was smoking. We all mustered and
they shut down the main floor. The thought of a fire burning on our only refuge
in the middle of nowhere is a bit terrifying. The crew responded quickly and
luckily only the oven was harmed in the burning. Turns out, the company that
shipped down these glass bottles that were being sterilized didn’t indicate
that they were lined with shatter proof plastic and this plastic started to
catch on fire.
By the time day 29 arrived, we were all ready for a break.
We called this Hump Day and had a liquid nitrogen icecream party to celebrate.
The following 10 days were devoted to penguin operations at Cape Colbeck.
During this time we were able to catch up on sleep, regain our motivation, help
tag penguins, ride snow mobiles, and get out and play on the ice.
The last 20 days we will spend breaking out of the ice,
packing up samples, analyzing remaining samples, giving and hearing lectures,
taking a biogeochemistry class taught by Dennis Hansell, catching up on any
work, doing yoga, playing cornhole, watching Gilmore Girls, Community, Modern
Family or other sitcoms and movies, socializing and taking 10 days to cross the
Southern Ocean.
Amanda adjusts Rachel during a yoga session. Amanda is a
certified instructor back in her home town. Jack DiTullio has elegant form in
the game of Cornhole.
Jacob is not only a scientist, but also a musician. He took
two nights to play for us. In his home
town he plays at bars and has over 270 songs memorized.
We catch rests when we can. Jacob grabs some zzzzs in the computer room.
During these last couple of weeks we have also been going
through 8 time changes. Every day we lose an hour. 8:30am morning meetings have
been cancelled, there are no casts, and most of us can barely get out of bed to
make the 10:30am biogeochemistry class. The sun doesn’t even rise until 11am!
Its like we are experiencing prolonged jet-lag. Because the time changes have
thrown our internal clocks off, most of us attempt to go to bed at 1am but lie
there until 3am or 5 am before finally falling asleep. Now that we are back in
high-seas, we are again battling sea-sickness. It is very difficult to operate
at full functioning level when you’re either vomiting or hopped up on drugs.
Let’s just say, while I’m loving the transit across the Southern Ocean to Chile,
I cannot WAIT to be on land!!
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