Rime of the Modern Mariner

[This post written 6/27/08; position: lat -55’31”, long -54’08”; temp 1C; wind chill -7C]

We’ve had excellent weather luck today — very little wind, and quite a smooth sea. As a result, we are traveling a little faster today than yesterday, about 10 knots. We are making for South America. How strange to think of myself on a ship making for South America. I feel an odd new kinship with Charles Darwin, who also spent time in a ship headed for South America and never got his sea legs.

Katie and Phil, my shipmates have been warning me to get prepared for the adjustment to solid land. I said, “But if I’m still on meclozine, and I never really got my sea legs, maybe I’m still adjusted to land.” But they shook their heads and said it doesn’t work that way. OTOH, I have spent time on sailboats, and a week on a ship in Alaska, and never had any problem adjusting to land afterwards. I guess time will tell.

Katie and Boby, alas, the final CTD of the trip was cancelled because we’re not making enough headway to arrive on time and still stop for additional science. So all of those meticulously decorated Styrofoam cups are destined to remain ordinary for the rest of their short lives. Here is the secret, revealed. In much the same way as you will find hideously deformed marshmallow peeps (it’s the microwaves, my dears) in the offices of horror writers, you will find decorated miniature Styrofoam cups (about the size of shot glasses) in the offices of oceanographers. It is traditional to send a mesh bag of Styrofoam cups into the abyss with the last CTD of the trip. The pressure of the water at those depths squeezes all the air out of the Styrofoam, leaving a hard plastic miniature. (This does not work with Hostess Twinkies, according to someone who swears they tried it, which come up looking utterly unchanged.)

Sandy, I’m sorry to say I haven’t been able to get any pictures of salp chains. But briefly, salps are small, transparent organisms that live in the sea. Here is a picture of a single salp taken by our shipmate Stephanie Bush, close to life-size. Imagine several dozen of these attached end-to-end in a beautiful, transparent chain. The pink shrimplike things were krill, a favorite food of baleen whales.

In addition to spending some time on deck today taking a couple of hundred pictures of petrels (two of which are worth keeping, ah the joys of digital photography), I went downstairs to see what was happening in the labs. Things were pretty quiet. The researchers are carefully packing up the equipment they so carefully unpacked and arranged in the ship’s labs just a month ago. They are also preparing their samples for shipping, which is complicated by the need for temperature control and customs paperwork. To my surprise, I found the hydrolab and the hallway outside it pretty much completely occupied by the nets of the MOCNESS. And what would these nets be doing spread out on the deck? Ah. The nets get holes in them in the normal course of things — from snags in the water, from being hauled on board filled with their catch, etc. And these have to be meticulously repaired before the MOCNESS is stored away for safekeeping.

So this was the scene I came upon today. As fishermen have done for time out of mind, our fisherfolk are mending their nets. In the top picture, Marko examines the net for holes. In the bottom picture, Stephanie repairs holes by hand with a big needle and an awl while Stian repairs bigger holes with a heavy-duty sewing machine.

And now I am off to listen to my iPod for a while. One of the wonderful things about this adventure has been the sudden lack of distractions. It’s been a long time since I have done anything with undivided attention, and a very long time indeed since I have listened to my favorite songs with my whole self. I’m finding it a wonderful treat, like getting to know old friends again.

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