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Marine Biology Story of the Day #7

Whew, it’s been a little while. I’ve been out in the field for the last week collecting samples for my current research project--I’m exhausted when we get home, so I haven’t been motivated to write a post.

Today, we are going to talk about what it’s like to live on a working sailing vessel (Part 1).

So I’ve mentioned before that I was on a research trip that traveled from Hawaii to California doing research on open ocean ecosystems and marine plastics. It was an undergrad program called Sea Semester. If you want to learn more about the research we were doing on this trip, you can check out these posts here: https://teenyfish.tumblr.com/post/622213314459615232/marine-biology-story-of-the-day-4 and https://teenyfish.tumblr.com/post/622033107021873152/marine-biology-story-of-the-day

So the really interesting thing about this program is that they do all of their research from tall ships. Like super modernized pirate tall ships.

And on top of doing all of the science, we had to sail this damn thing across thousands of miles of ocean. Yes, we had first mates and a captain that knew what they were doing, but we were the crew.

And we had our work cut out for us.

We did a lot of prep “on shore” while we were taking some marine biology courses. We also took a celestial navigation course, in which we learned to use landmarks and celestial bodies to navigate outside of using a GPS, which is what most modern ships use.

Above: me learning how to use a sextant on the moon.

we also had to learn a lot of safety drills, including how to put a “gumby suit” on in only a minute in order to abandon ship--these are designed to retain body heat when submerged, similar to how a wet suit does. Another common drill we did onboard the ship was the man-overboard drill, where we would throw a soccer ball with a flag on it overboard and all 31 crew members on board would have to be pointing at the soccer ball so we would not loose sight of our man. In anything less than idea conditions, we could loose sight of that soccer ball in like, 5 minutes. It was important to be quick and efficient with these drills.

above: me goofing off in a gumby suit. I’ts harder to get on than you think.

Life on board the ship was structured with watches, similar to my NOAA shark trip, except there were 5 watches that you rotated through. We had day watch from 7 am to noon, afternoon watch from noon till 7 pm, evening watch from 7 pm till 11 pm, mid watch from 11 pm to 3 am, and morning watch from 3 am to 7 am. So my sleep schedule was SCREWED UP because we did not have set schedules AT ALL.

We were a crew of 8, with one chief scientist, and one mate, and then the 6 of us young dumb kids.

For each watch, we either served under the mate as crew, or under the chief scientist as assistant scientists. It would rotate every watch, so we could learn how to do it all. As a crew member, we were expected to set sails, be at the helm, be at the bow to watch out for floating objects at night so we wouldn’t hit them, and clean the ship (aka swab the decks). We used 100% nautical language.

Sails are usually set by two people, one hauling up on the halyard and the other letting out the slack. But occasionally, we would have to set the mains’l (main sail) which is the largest sail on the ship, and it would take like everybody on board.

Here’s me with the mains’l, so you can get an idea of how big it is.

So the cool thing about our ship is that we could set all the sails from the deck, so we didn’t have to climb into the crows nest/upper masts to set a sail. That didn’t stop people from doing it--in fact, even I did it, and I’m pretty afraid of heights. In order to do so, we had this harnesses that we are all wearing in the pictures--and you clip into the ladder as you go. Considering sailors in the 1800 did nothing of the sort, I think that was a major upgrade.

above: crew member out on the edge--i was too chicken for this.

below: a great shot my friend got of the ship from above.

So actually being at the helm of a 134 ft vessel is not actually as scary as you think it is when you are out in the middle of the ocean with nothing to hit. It was just a matter of keeping an eye on your heading on the compass, and making sure the ship stays within 5 degrees of your heading. Your heading will be a degree on a circle, for example, 0 is North, 90 is East, 180 is South, and 270 is West. The wheel (the helm) itself is sort of heavy, and it connects to a rudder below the boat, which on this one was HUGE, so you do need to put in some muscle when adjusting. Turning this thing completely around was a challenge, because it involved setting sails, adjusting sails, and involved the entire crew to accomplish--I would get into that a little bit more but that’s a whole ‘nother paragraph so if you want to know the deets, let me know in the comments.

Above: a cutie on the helm.

Below: the compass with it’s red glow at night.

It was a ton of work, and we were exhausted everyday. But, my favorite watch, and maybe my favorite thing about being on this ship, was mid-watch (11 pm - 3 am). Was it in the middle of the night? Sure. Do I have a chronic illness that makes this difficult? Yes. But it was the one time of day where everything was quiet, and you could just be on deck and enjoy the stars--and the stars were amazing, like you couldn’t even believe. You could very clearly see the milky way like you do in professional space photos, and sometimes the water would light up too with bioluminescence, so you’d have stars above, and stars below.

And, sometimes, if you got morning watch, you’d get a chance to see a sunrise and hang out with a pod of 300+ common dolphins.

as usual, I have so much more to tell you, but I’ll save it for part 2 next week when we talk about what it was like to be on the science crew! As always, PLEASE feel free to ask me any questions about our trip or our research or any of my other posts.

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