Hi all! It's been a while - I've been up to some all-day adventures aboard the work boat we have on the Launcher which has definitely left me with minimal time to be writing. At any rate: working on a boat that is deployed off a bigger boat is such a TRIP! I thought parallel parking in Miami was a tricky business, but getting a small boat that is influenced by waves back on a bigger boat that is only kinda influenced by the big swells is WAYYY more hardcore than that! I have a daily reminder that offshore life is so much more complicated than my day-to-day onshore - it's CRAZY. Another note on being in a small boat - you really feel the ocean moving beneath you. In the Launcher we tend to roll with the swell, which has been significant a couple times this trip (read 5-6 meter swells OH GOSH) but even 2 meter swell feels GIANT in the work boat, though the nice part has been that it's JUST LIKE being on whale watching boats as a kid - and I KNOW that I look exactly the same as when I was out on those boats - beaming from ear to ear as my hair gets tangled in the wind. There's nothing quite like it. An update on our favorite plastic-eating U-shaped Wilson: he's been put through a couple week of Pacific Trials, and there are a few more things that need to happen before we can move out to the Garbage Patch, so we're keeping on keeping on and going through the tests so that we can go and try to catch some plastic!
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Well, we have been sitting for a couple days with REALLY BIG swells and honestly it sometimes feels like I've been out here for hours rather than days! I think of these swells as really big because they are rocking the boat a LOT more than they have in the calm days we had when we first got here - I'm sure that REALLY BIG waves make these look really small, but everything is about perspective so we're HANGING OUT IN BIG SWELL. Now there's been quite a bit of stumbling around on my part and some days it just feels like I'm a toddler stumbling around confused by gravity - for example, I'll be on deck talking to some of the Maersk crew and as the swell lifts the boat I'll end up "falling" a few steps in the direction the boat is tilting only to return to my original place as the boat rocks back. The offshore crew, of course, stay in the same location through all of these exchanges, which leaves me to be moderately flustered (to really flustered if I've really miscalculated the size of the swell), but at any rate, I laugh at least as much as I stumble around the boat. XD Something that is dramatically IMPROVED by having significant swell is movies that feature boats and/or space ships! I hosted a movie night with Star Wars Episode 4 and WOW IT IS INTENSE WHEN THE SHIP YOU ARE ON IS SHAKING WITH THE SPACE SHIPS IN BATTLE!!! Who needs 3D movies when I can just watch them offshore??? We're looking at a nice weather window for the next couple days so I'm hoping for a mellow spell and am crossing my fingers for another day off soon! Let's take a second to appreciate how BIG the Maersk Launcher really is. There are THREE BOATS ON THIS BOAT!!! This boat is BIG ENOUGH TO HOLD THREE SMALLER BOATS LIKE ITS NOTHING!!! I'm still reeling at the concept. Y'all I went a full WEEK not knowing where the third boat was HIDING?!?! WHAT??? Anyway. I think it's pretty cool. Moving on... Yesterday I got to go out in the workboat to help conduct some tests during the Pacific Trials and WOW! Even the Launcher looks small in comparison with the rest of the Pacific out here. I thought I had a concept for how big the ocean was, but let me tell you, being out in it on a relatively small boat is truly humbling. The swells are no joke and even Wilson seems like a small speck in a HUGE body of water (which is exactly what he is but STILL). The ocean is HUGEEEEE. It brings to mind Douglas Adams, only instead of space it's the ocean...The ocean is big. Really big - it's just so big you can't wrap your mind around just how big it is... Today has been a rough day on the water so I've mainly been inside crunching numbers for thesis things, though this morning I did get to spend some time on deck. It takes BIG swells to rock the boat like this, so seeing them and feeling the wind on my face was enough to convince me that being inside all day may be worth it. Looking forward to helping conduct more tests in the Pacific Trials when the weather calms. Hoping for some calmer seas tomorrow! Last night at a group meeting we were informed that today would be a day off – a much needed break, I might add. So what’s a girl to do on her day off? Well first of all, I had the luxury of sleeping in ALL THE WAY UNTIL 7:45 before my body was like LET’S GET STARTED. Not one to miss out on a cup of coffee over the water, I made my way down to the mess (where there’s access to coffee 24/7) in my manatee pajama pants and poured myself a BIG OLE CUP of black coffee and climbed the you-guessed-it 75 steps to the bridge where I could enjoy the coffee looking out over the blue water. I don’t know what it is about spending time at sea/out in nature but it always somehow brings out the deep down love I have for black coffee. It’s odd. BRUNCH was served at 10:00, which I learned later was a real treat since apparently normally Sundays are days off but meals usually occur at normally scheduled hours. After brunch it was such an odd feeling to just putter around the boat, but that’s what I did! It was MAGIC!!! I got to read on the bridge WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY of not doing anything BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE DAY WAS FOR!!! After reading in the sun and fearing a sunburn, I bought another bag of Salt and Vinegar Chips and watched a big chunk of Disney’s The Princess and The Frog. After the fun of watching a movie, I got to help set up for the BARBEQUE WE HAD ON THE MAIN DECK!!! We got to go digging around in the working part of the boat looking for chairs and tables and setting them up on the deck and scrubbing them down. It was a great team effort and the barbeque was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon because it started at 4, when the sun was still high in the sky. It was really a treat because we got to pass around a rugby ball – what’s a barbeque without backyard (or in this case back deck?) sports?! Also, who else gets to say they played (sorta) rugby on the open ocean? NOT MANY I CAN TELL YOU THAT! The day was rounded out with a couple hours of playing cards with both other The Ocean Cleanup crew as well as Maersk crew. It has been a much-needed day of rest after almost 2 weeks of going from morning to (sometimes late into) the night! Even rewarding work requires a break on occasion, and today was the perfect day to recharge and reset for this week! Looking forward to what the week will bring! How the time has FLOWN! It's been a week of sailing aboard the Maersk Launcher and it feels like almost no time has passed at all! Though there have definitely been some marked improvements in offshore life for me. Highlights include:
However, we have also experienced some things not getting better - low points include:
Overall, life has been good to me aboard this ship. This morning actually started with my alarm going off at 5:50am (ughhh) with some Rice Crispies and black coffee all before our meeting at 6:15am. We are happily at the beginning of the Pacific Trials for Wilson/System 001 so today and the next few promise to be long but rewarding ones. Though getting up super early offshore has its drawbacks (see smashing face into reading light because I thought I slept through my alarm...), the sunrise this morning was absolutely SPECTACULAR! I'd also be lying if I said I didn't like it just a little (okay a lot) that I get up before the sun to put in WORK! It's really tough work because a lot of what we've been doing on the vessel has been largely physical labor, but it's super rewarding. So far life has been work, work, work - which is why I haven't been updating the blog as much, but rest assured I'm out here living my best offshore life and trying to do science-type things, though my research project for my thesis doesn't start for some time yet. At any rate I'm happy to be helping out with any and every aspect of this project I can! I had the pleasure earlier this summer to go offshore sailing with two friends. We sailed from Miami to North Carolina and I got to experience the Atlantic Ocean at its finest: just our little boat and blue water as far as the eye could see. There's something so amazingly peaceful about being out on the water in this sense - the water goes on and on but your home for the moment is softly rocking beneath you and everything feels right. This could be proof that I've totally and completely lost my marbles but being back out here on the water I get to share this feeling with a whole SHIP of other people. Truly it's something I would absolutely recommend to anyone and everyone because the moments you get are unforgettable.
We have an evening meeting with our crew each night to check in and followed by this meeting we usually have our knot class (today we learned the bowline y'all - I'm gonna be a salty sailor sooner rather than later!) and tonight I made it up to the bridge before the sunset, which was a real treat. Without the light pollution or buildings or ANYTHING to get in the way of the sun creeping closer to the horizon allows for the entire sky to change from blues to brilliant pinks and oranges that fill an ENORMOUS part of the sky that remains unobstructed (except for clouds, of which today there were relatively few)! Tonight I was reminded that we are not alone on this immeasurably big ocean as a gigantic container ship passed us by, floating along the horizon. It was funny to see something else man made and feel that the container ship was the intruder on my view, because as I sit here and type this I can look out behind the ship and see the friendly (functional, but friendly to look at) lights on Wilson bobbing up and down behind our boat. When things are peaceful on the ship, the time out here is honestly pretty serene. My project and the project being tackled by System 001/Wilson are centered around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a region of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Famous in the media as the "trash island in the Pacific", the garbage patch is not an island! Though this is not news to those that are intimately familiar with the details of the region, it isn't common knowledge, and since I started this blog to share what it's like to be a scientist, I thought I'd start by debunking the pop-culture explanation for the area I'm studying! Conveniently, The Ocean Cleanup (and collaborating groups) published a paper in Scientific Nature Reports on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (from here on I'm going to call it the GPGP okay? perfect, thanks for the input)! If you want to read the paper, you can access it here. Otherwise I'm going to summarize and focus on some of the takeaways that are important to know moving forward. This image is taken from Lebreton et al., 2018 and shows the concentrations of mass in the GPGP. So as you can see, the estimation of the GPGP is based on concentrations per area of the surface waters, which at the maximum is 100 kg (or around 200 pounds) per square kilometer (1km is almost half a mile). So I guess to the untrained eye estimating concentration of debris by surface area could LOOK like a trash island, this really is just not what's occurring. What we actually end up with is a really gross slush/soup of plastic that not only occur at the surface, but permeate the water column as well - extending down and sometimes sinking and settling on the ocean floor or getting taken up into the food chain. The paper predicts that there is an estimated 79,000 tons of plastic floating in 1.6 million square kilometers. In addition to this, the paper estimates that there are 1.8 TRILLION INDIVIDUAL pieces of plastic floating in this area!!! That's CRAZY! Though this is the largest of the 5 major ocean gyres THERE'S FOUR OTHER GYRES THAT ALL HAVE MORE GARBAGE FLOATING IN THEM!!! THIS IS THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM WE ARE TRYING TO TACKLE! Well this problem is isolated isn't it? If The Ocean Cleanup succeeds in getting the plastic out of the ocean that solves it right? WRONG! In conducting my literature review for my thesis I've found some alarming numbers in papers that I really want to take the time to share. One paper (Geyer et al., 2017) found that 79% of all plastic ever made has accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. 79%?!?!?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?! I thought it was recyclable??? But when it's sitting in a landfill it is taking up valuable space AND also poses the potential for leaching toxins into our natural environment (thanks AP Environmental Science)! But the problem continues as we continue to explore the problem. Some of the plastic that enters the oceans are buoyant and float along the surface to reach the gyre - creating the GPGP. We have seen on multiple occasions (Gregory, 2009; Rech et al., 2016) that these floating "rafts" of plastic offer surfaces for marine organisms to hitch a ride to different parts of the ocean. These rafts can introduce non-native/invasive species to new environments, which can allow them to out-compete natural and native species and can potentially change the ecosystems where they land. There is a slew of other problems associated with marine plastic, I hope this has been a good opening case for why we should do something about marine plastics. The Ocean Cleanup, Debris Free Ocean, and 4Ocean, are all organizations dedicated to the removal of plastic from the oceans. In addition to removing the plastic, we need to prevent it's arrival at sea in the first place. With both of these tactics, I believe that we can begin to move forward towards oceans that are plastic free. :D (I couldn't end on a downer note so let's try to be positive). I cited a few papers in my discussion, and I've included a works cited here because I cannot explain how frustrated I get after reading articles in newspapers and such that make claims and give me nothing to back them up so below please find my works cited (all from peer-reviewed scientific journals). If you want to go and read them and dispute my claims feel free - it's all part of the process! I think you should be able to find them via Google Scholar and if you can't, then feel free to send me an email and I'll send you a PDF. At any rate, if you don't take anything else away from this post: IT'S NOT A TRASH ISLAND PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! Works Cited
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to run on a top that isn't spinning well? Because that is approximately what it feels like running on a ship that is in decent swell - and most certainly what I experienced this evening, it being the first time I've run while we've been in any height of swell. I've personally looked at the handrails on a treadmill and thought "Why would I use these if I'm running?" Well, I found out why - when the boat pitches and you're in the air and you come down partially on the not-moving part of the treadmill - THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE THERE FOR!!! ...in case it wasn't clear I had 3 close calls on the treadmill tonight and WOW the adrenaline rush from thinking that you're going to go FLYING off the back of a treadmill is a GOOD one!!! The gym on the boat is basic and functional and tonight I got to share it with crew from both The Ocean Cleanup AND the Launcher which was fun because I got to workout with people (as opposed to alone) and I got to see that EVERYONE loves them some good "Another One Bites the Dust" while working out because Queen is ALWAYS called for. I was also convinced to push harder during my workout by the crew from the Launcher which was fun too! Knowing that on board there's a community that is active is great and gives us more to talk about since we're all gonna be on this ship together another 6ish weeks! Guess what - I CLIMBED SO MANY LESS STAIRS TODAY! Life is good - I found the people I needed to find, I only almost fell on the ground due to wave swells like 5 times AND I helped conduct a part of an oceanographic study today! We are KILLING IT!!! Luckily for me, there was more down time today than yesterday which allowed for one of my favorite past-times - getting to know the people around me! Everyone on this vessel both The Ocean Cleanup crew as well as the Maersk Launcher crew has wonderful insights into sailing, the ocean, and/or myriad other topics that I don't even think to ask about but get to learn about anyway! This afternoon was spent sitting in the sun shooting the breeze with one of my fellow crew mates where we talked and talked about environmentalism, fisheries, and the funny qualities of life - like how you can plan and plan for things to happen but in the end you end up somewhere else entirely, or get there circuitously. Another wonderful experience was getting to talk to our cook, who is also a woman working in a male-dominated industry. We talked about that for a while and what it's like to work on a vessel like this - the people working offshore work on for 6 months out of the year and spend 6 months of the year off, though usually this is separated into chunks of time. On the Launcher that means 6 weeks on and 6 weeks off, though where you get dropped off the boat might be a completely different CONTINENT from the place you call home. I don't think I'd ever thought about how the shipping industry works, but I think I'll take my relatively stable academic calendar with set breaks over this schedule. We shall see. Speaking of spending a long time on boats, I'm hoping that by the end of a week I will adjust to the constant rolling onboard - this morning I almost fell into my trashcan in my room as I was putting my shirt on for the day because the boat pitched in an unexpected direction as I had both my arms tangled up in the relatively simple task of putting on clothes. :D I laugh a lot because I find it amazingly funny to have everything I've known turned on its head (at least that's how it feels for now). Showering for the first time as the boat was rolling was a very funny experience - they have bars for you to hold on to in the shower and I remember looking at them in port wondering if I would use them. Now the name of the game is mostly trying to wedge myself into the corner of shower and try to work up a lather on my bar of soap with my hands before the boat pitches the other direction. Like I said, I laugh a lot - these situations are just not normal in my day to day life! Honestly all of this craziness has made me wonder more about how astronauts do it - at least there's mostly normalcy on the boat - in space EVERYTHING has to be different! It's a crazy world we live in! WOW WOW WOW!!!! I just experienced laundry aboard the Launcher for the first time today and wow I can't get over it - the process is silly easy: you just put your laundry into smallish laundry bag and upon filling said laundry bag, you simply place it outside your door and within a few hours LIKE MAGIC it returns to outside your door folded. I'm getting spoiled out here - I don't have to cook for myself, I don't have to wash my clothes myself, heck I don't even do my own DISHES! What an existence this is. Losing my sense of house skills and duties frees me up to spend time doing important things (like updating my blog ;p) such as learning how to tie knots like a sailor! One of The Ocean Cleanup's crew has spent 16 years working on the sea as a fisherman and has taken it upon himself to teach us the skills necessary to secure loads and tie off containers. Amazingly practical considering that almost everything we are using to do our research out here is stored in shipping containers on the deck, which I feel the need to remind everyone is constantly rolling back and forth with the movement of the waves. Though we've only gone through two knots, the passing on of this skill gives us time to bond and spend time on deck - last night just as the sun was going down we were on the deck tying knots and taking in the views. Happily my stomach decided to buy in to the whole "being at sea" thing and my brain no longer tries to throw itself into a crazy Disneyland Tea Cups spin! I feel like I'm well on my way to becoming a salty sailor - which was the goal (aside from my thesis research and, you know, contributing to an amazing project, obviously) of coming on this ship in the first place! Yarghhh! In case anyone was wondering, it is 75 stairs between the main deck and the bridge (the place where the captain steers the boat from). Ask me how many flights of unnecessary stairs I've done today? Too many. The stairs also have the fun quality of being remarkably steep, something I've noticed when visiting the The Ocean Cleanup's headquarters in Europe. Not sure why the US has super flat short stairs but this whole climbing thing is a WORKOUT let me tell you. It's also a fun dance to get in and out of the boat - to be on deck we wear our personal protective equipment which translates into me sliding in and out of coveralls, safety boots, eye protection, gloves, and a hard hat say, 5 or 6 times a day because "work clothes" stay outside and away from our living quarters. I am totally for having a safe and clean living environment but I have taken my boots off and/or put them on unnecessarily around 3 times today and the rage is palpable. I may just be tired...to be determined. I'll let y'all know how I feel about unnecessary boot removal tomorrow. For the moment let's talk about sleeping on a rolling boat. Now about 90% of the time it's like being smoothly rocked to sleep like a baby (or at least as close as I can imagine because my memory of that time of my life is nonexistent). For about 10% of the time, the sense I have laying in bed is that same one you have where you're falling in a dream, only instead of waking up either the boat slowly begins to roll the other way or I sit up FAST against the crazy forces I've only experienced on boats or on roller coasters. It's super bizarre. I wish I had more to say about life at sea but today a lot of my day was just going up and down stairs and continuing a (never ending?) literature review for my thesis. OH I do have something of interest: some of the crew on the Launcher have a little "candy shop" that sells candy and convenience items. You guessed it. I caved. TWO DAYS ON THE OCEAN and those Salt and Vinegar Pringles were calling my name. Salt and vinegar never tasted better than that first chip in my room this afternoon/evening. My concept of time is messed up because I changed my clock to ship time AND 24 hour clock and I'm all kinds of turned around. Anyway, check back in whenever you feel like it - I read/heard somewhere that the key to keeping your readers interested is to be consistent, so I'll probably be posting to this daily(ish) depending on my responsibilities! Cheers to those that are reading! On the Restorative Quality of Neil Gaiman's Voice and Other Tricks Learned After 1 Day at Sea...9/9/2018 Alrighty folks it's been more than 1 full day at sea and let me tell you...staring at a computer screen makes me feel greener than just about anything. This is a fun concept because I'm definitely supposed to be writing more of my thesis and you know...generally be keeping up with the world but I'm sure everything will be fine. As someone who has spent almost every opportunity that she's been presented with on the water, I found it truly disheartening when after the elation of passing under the Golden Gate Bridge had passed, I was left with a VERY upset stomach and a confused mind - how was it possible for me to be feeling seasick? ME?! At any rate, I tried to go about my day as planned, which was to say I waited and waited until dinner time by successfully sneaking some cookies and coffee around tea-time (which I am fresh back from right now, thanks) and waited feeling green as all get out. Hoping to keep things light and easy for dinner I grabbed what I thought was soup. So what I grabbed turned out HOT and SPICY enough for me to question every life decision before one of my crew mates gently asked if I had grabbed sauce instead of the soup. Wishing I could just put my face into my plate I gingerly ate everything else I had grabbed hoping that and some Sprite (the closest thing I can find to ginger ale,) would settle my stomach. It worked for all of about 10 minutes before I gave up on feeling good and decided to try reading in the recreation room on the vessel. Tragically the rec room is where the smoking room on the vessel is and the wafting scent of cigarette smoke did exactly nothing for my already trashed stomach. Upon returning to my cabin/stateroom/room/whatever I'm going to consistently call it, I felt like questioning why anyone would ever work on a vessel to go overseas for shipping/research purposes. Miserable I tried watching a movie and came to the conclusion that the rolling of the vessel along with the weird location of my bunk (I'm perpendicular to the bow rather than the bed being pointed toward the bow) that movie-watching would be an impossible task without something resembling someone reading me a bedtime story like I was a child. It came to me in a flash - I have Neil Gaiman reading his Norse Mythology on my computer! My night was saved! Listening to the voice of one of my favorite authors reading a story that took me anywhere that wasn't on my rolling bunk was like MAGIC. I fell asleep within one story and woke up about half and hour later wondering where I was when the ship rolled and I remembered that I was at sea. However, rather than the atrocious stomach ache of seasickness, I was left with just a slight feeling of dizziness akin to drunkenness that followed me into this morning. Luckily for me, the work I had to do today was out on the deck, which was an absolute blessing compared with being cooped up in the two hours following breakfast. I've spent maximum time outside today, which in my book is always a win and even though the conditions today are pretty trash (it's been confirmed by both the crew of the Launcher as well as my fellow Ocean Cleanup crew members that have spent time at sea), I could go about my tasks in helping set up equipment for various research projects without a HITCH y'all. I am looking forward to the day that I don't feel entirely sleepy/dizzy all day but I think for now I'm just thankful for a big boat to combat the wind waves that are hitting us from the Pacific. She's my favorite ocean but she has been unforgiving today. OH and I almost forgot: our boy Wilson is doing GREAT today - last night they changed the configuration of how closely he is following the Launcher so when I went out on deck today I had a good little scare thinking that everyone was super calm EVEN THOUGH WE'D LOST OUR SYSTEM THAT WE WERE TRYING TO TOW! but then I found him farther back than I expected. Wilson is a CHAMP. Onwards and upwards, and if you've made it this far in following my journey thanks for following! I can't believe it but it's 15:00 and that means tea-time aboard the Maersk Launcher, though I haven't found my way to the Mess just yet. I am still reeling because WE DID IT!!! You can (re)watch the Live Stream of the launch of Wilson (see original post if you don't know who that is) here. And the absolutely crazy part is I get to have him in my sights ALL THE WAY until we arrive at the testing location for the Pacific Trials (more information on what that means here,) and then on to the Garbage Patch (which is located in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre about halfway between San Francisco and Honolulu) where he will begin his job as passive trash collector! So to begin, I woke up this morning and ate breakfast like any other day aboard the Launcher - you know that good morning shuffle until you can wrap your hands around a mug of steaming hot coffee and then around 8am (or 0800 if I'm really being annoyingly precise with this boat stuff) the anchor was raised. Steel transmits noise like NO OTHER so it was a relatively noisy process which culminated in us moving towards the Bay Bridge between San Francsico and Oakland. After lunch I donned my PPE (personal protective equipment for those not in the know ;p) and was greeted as I strolled out on deck by the San Francisco Fire Department spraying water like a fountain/boat as we passed under the Bay Bridge! It was totally crazy! We spent the two hours between lunch and passing under the Golden Gate Bridge at the top of the bridge (this bridge being the place where the captain can see everything and essentially the mission control center for the boat....SHIP...[gotta work on that offshore lingo and also finding out how to format my blog so I can strike through words]...). The way got really breezy after we passed south of Alcatraz AGAINST SHIPPING DIRECTION I MIGHT ADD BECAUSE we were approved to AND WE'RE JUST THAT COOL!!! But as we approached the bridge the ship had a lovely companion for the span of a few minutes - a great big male California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus [only because I know that one off the top of my head...])! It was great to have that reminder of home as we were getting ready to get out onto the Pacific Ocean proper. For those wondering - no there are no pinnipeds (the biological group of seals, sea lions, and walruses) in Florida due to the human-driven extinction of the Caribbean Monk Seal. Tragic, but that's how the cookie crumbles, and in this case it means I get WAYYYY too excited upon seeing the beloved pinnipeds of my home state. Anyway... We passed under the Golden Gate Bridge to much cheering and festivities - the captain even honked (tooted? blew?) the horn of the ship! He definitely almost scared the entire crew of us standing on top of the bridge overboard! With the rolling sea underneath us and the absolutely incredible view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Wilson behind us we were in a celebratory mood when DOLPHINS came jumping into our line of site! Just at the start of a journey? What better luck could we ask for? And then as we continued past Baker Beach (which I had been to just last Saturday) we spotted a WHALE!!!! Good omens for the journey indeed. I'm going to wrap this up because I think there are goodies associated with tea time and if nothing else I could use a banana because its definitely two hours to dinner and I need something to get me there! One last moment: WOW! I'M A PART OF THE BIGGEST OCEAN CLEANUP IN HISTORY! Hi! My name is Bree and I am studying the possible fish aggregation effect on The Ocean Cleanup's System 001 aka "Wilson" (which he will be exclusively called for the rest of my blog) as they attempt to remove plastic debris from the largest garbage patch (2 times the size of Texas**) in the world! To be specific - I am a biologist studying fish that are hanging out AROUND trash. But I think trash scientist sounds WAY cooler so that's what I'm sticking with. More on my project later, because we haven't officially left the Bay yet so in the mean time, I'm going to fill you in on how a SoCal girl from a sleepy marina town got to work with one of the best-known organizations to come out of the Netherlands for her Master's Thesis. So I'm not convinced anyone other than my friend that convinced me to write this thing is going to read it but here's my shot: I applied to grad school in a crazy haze the last quarter of my fourth and final year of undergrad, because what else is a bored Bio major to do? Well, fast forward to the summer and getting interviewed by my advisor from the coffee shop in Powell's bookstore in Oregon a week before I pack my car up and move to Florida, and honestly this project sounded like a dream come true! The opportunity to use fishery applications with a marine conservation project - sounds like a DREAM come true!!! The first year of grad school flew by, with two trips to the Netherlands sprinkled in because I needed to meet my collaborators and do some work at The Ocean Cleanup Headquarters, along with getting to know my fellow students, scientists, and new state of residence! All too soon, I had to pack my life up (for the second time this summer because I had to move out of my original place but I live with HOMIES so its chill) YET AGAIN! Hurricane Bree struck my (still new to me) room and all of a sudden I had a checked bag, a duffel bag, and a backpack to my name and was on time to my flight back to California! Who is this woman who makes flights with TIME TO SPARE and arrives in style (or something resembling it) back to her home state? Where did the frazzled girl who packed up her car last minute and moved to Florida without a second thought go? She definitely was just hiding deep inside because let me tell you, packing up all my stuff to live on a BIG boat for two months when you're not at all sure what exactly your responsibilities aboard are, or what the temperature of the boat will be in the living quarters, or whether you will have your own room, or how often you'll have access to laundry...the list of questions goes on and on but I CAN say I packed and repacked my bag at least 5 times in leading up to the actual boarding of the vessel (including once that day...). What do you do in order to prepare for going to sea for two months, especially when it's almost say 6 times as long as you've been offshore before (maybe more but I'm gonna give myself the benefit of the doubt here) - YOU GO TO SAN FRANCISCO A FEW DAYS EARLY TO STAY WITH YOUR CHILDHOOD BEST FRIEND AND HER SISTER! See I apparently itch to keep on the move, even knowing that I'm going to be on the move pretty much for 7 weeks straight (and counting), I couldn't resist the opportunity to go and see the city that I will be sailing past TOMORROW!!! Our weekend consisted of lots of walking around a city simultaneously somewhat familiar and yet just outside of my comfort zone - exactly the way I like a city. My friend had to work on Friday and her sister and I went to the California Academy of Science - WHICH IS THE BEST PLACE EVER - ITS A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, AQUARIUM, AND A PLANETARIUM!!!! What more do you need??? NOTHING EXCEPT MAYBE A BOTANICAL GARDEN NEXT DOOR AND GUESS WHAT IS A FIVE MINUTE WALK FROM THE ENTRANCE??? Anyway I spent the rest of Labor Day Weekend like anyone else - I had a robot make me hot chocolate, I cried as I watched "Crazy Rich Asians" because it was just so dang poignant, and went to an Urgent Care that was out of my insurance's network. #justlastweekendashorethings amiright??? I am writing this blog post from the comfort of my cabin (we are aboard a big ship so I'm doing my best to use ship lingo - ya feel?), getting ready for anchor up at 8am - guaranteed to be the loudest thing inside the boat I've heard yet, but I'm ready to put the shore behind me and see some blue water! Also ready to cruise out of the Bay straight underneath the Golden Gate Bridge BECAUSE WE ARE JUST THAT COOL! Thanks for sticking with me this far, LETS SEE HOW THIS GOES! Anchors aweigh and I'll see what I can do to write from the ocean! |
AuthorBree Gibbs, here. I'm a recent Master's Grad just trying to share what it's like to be a trash scientist (for those who aren't in the know, I'm a marine biologist). Categories
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