Woke to the happy little tinkle tinkle of my alarm, followed shortly by the “clunk-rattle-clunk-world-is-ending-death-rattle” of gear being deployed. This ship is not a place to sleep past 7am.
But its really ok, because there is an awesome coffee machine (well 2) which can deploy moccas whenever required, and happily there is no shortage of tea. Much worse things in the world.
The first day, went as well as one can tell.
We got onto the ship without being brained my any cranes, which was considered quite a possibility.
But its really ok, because there is an awesome coffee machine (well 2) which can deploy moccas whenever required, and happily there is no shortage of tea. Much worse things in the world.
The first day, went as well as one can tell.
We got onto the ship without being brained my any cranes, which was considered quite a possibility.
Had the safety briefing, got introduced to the muster point and the location of the safety suits (which apparently are more realistically referred to as “body recovery suits”, honestly, waiting for something not to be about death). And then the good stuff started and we were introduced to the food roster. Each of the groups is broken in half so that only half of us goes off for dinner at any one time. I approve of the level of detail that was applied to the discussion of food.
We learnt all about the exits too.
We learnt all about the exits too.
We were then introduced to the next few days schedule, which includes the deployment of a range of scientific equipment which will be described in its turn. Although, being on the sea, everything is likely to change at any point. So far things have changed because we have to pick up someone from the land, and one of the key scientists on board cracked his knee and now is significantly less able to function. You know when they say “worse things happen at sea”? Well, occasionally, they do. After all the doom and gloom we got a little bit of spare time, and just to be stereotypical we watched some Big Bang Theory on TV.
Our group is better known as group 2, or the Australian group, they grouped us together to avoid us teaching all the Norwegians bad English. Through the fortnight we will rotate throughout a couple of different projects, to start with we are the hyperbenthos group and will be looking at the little critters hanging out just above the sea floor. There seems to be some discussion at the moment as to what we are specifically looking at. Sadly, a) our “gear” (the trawl trailer) is deployed last, so we had to wait for all the other guys to collect samples before we got to start work, and b) the first trawl trailer is broken so we had a few less successful attempts at sample collection.
However, when the sampler did work we got some awesome stuff. I’ve tried to photograph it, but it was getting dark, so it hasn’t all worked. But! Possibly the coolest thing was a trawl that pulled up a bunch of little creatures (polychetes) that fluoresce! Blue! They look like a little disco in the mud.
That was exciting, and the occasional fish was pretty cool too. Check out the little blob fish, which looked a lot like what you would get if you asked a child to draw a fish called “Google”.
There were also a bunch of crustaceous that almost look like prawns but aren’t prawns! They’re like the prawns ugly cousin. We had to separate the big ones out in the sample to try and avoid them eating all the little ones, which would probably skew the results (well.. it would skew the results, no doubt). By the time we had finished getting things out of the trawl and then getting things out of the mud it was midnight, so we decided we wouldn’t start trying to identify them, which was a massive relief to me as I’m still having a bit of trouble working out what a worm is, what a decapod is and whether that can be a crustacean as well as a decapod. There was a lot of excitement though, and I suspect we are instructed to wear hard hats so that when we all get excited and try to look at one thing we don’t all concuss each other.
We did have to sort some of the samples and that was a bit distressing, having to pick up these little little squishy fellas with tweezers. I know I wouldn’t want to be picked up by giant tweezers by a Klingon, but I think a little bit of empathy goes a long way. Even if it doesn’t make you particularly quick, efficient or any less squeamish. Oh, and there was the occasional squeal when a crustacean attempted to make a bit for freedom from a previously apparently uninhabited patch of mud. Kind of like a Dracula shrimp.
Oh, and for anyone who was thinking that “benthic ecology” sounds a bit glamorous, this is what it looks like.
That said, we’re in the arctic circle, where relatively few people live, we’re in the water, where no people can really live, and these critters are then living in the mud. Kudos to them. It’s not an easy place to be, we aren’t there for sure. And all credit goes to them, they might be funky looking, they might be slightly creepy, but they’re living somewhere I’d never ever want to go.
I think I’ll start referring to people not on ships as “landlubbers”, then I can feel like a science-pirate.
And yes, my dreams were full of little squiggly creatures falling out of buckets and getting lost in the ship.
I think I’ll start referring to people not on ships as “landlubbers”, then I can feel like a science-pirate.
And yes, my dreams were full of little squiggly creatures falling out of buckets and getting lost in the ship.