Daily Journal

July 2, 2010

By David M. Lawrence

This morning, I enjoyed a perk of being junior steward – a full night's sleep afterward. While A Watch assumed dawn watch (0300 hours to 0700 hours), I sort of slept in, awaking about 0600.

I got another break because we also rotate watch leaders today. As a result, each watch will have the chance to work with all mates and all scientists over the duration of the expedition. As with last time, leaders of A Watch will rotate to B, leaders of B will rotate to C, and leaders of C will rotate to A.

I will rotate, too, but in the opposite direction. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, because of the official timing of the watch change, I've essentially been "off-duty" until I join C Watch during dawn watch. I'll get to work with first mate Tom Sullivan and third scientist Skye Moret in addition to the members of C Watch.

Just because I've been off-duty doesn't mean I've been sunning myself on deck, however. This morning, after helping A Watch with dawn cleanup, I went on deck to report and shoot what was happening. I ended up helping B Watch with a neuston tow and some sail handling and talked to Skye about what types of critters I should write about next in the Daily Journal.

After class I switched gears, seeing whether or not it is worthwhile to apply some ecological analyses I know from a previous life to our 100-count data from the neuston tows. It took me awhile to get the spreadsheets set up and the analyses running, but I succeeded. Now I need to show my demo work to one of the scientists to see if they'd like to explore the techniques a bit more in depth, so to speak. I may get patted on the head and told to go play in traffic, but it was a worthwhile experiment – for me – in any event.

The weather has seemed to change little the past few days. Partly cloudy skies, squalls that build during the day, maybe a bit of rain here and there. We've had some terrific swells during the day, but haven't had a clue what storm system is generating them. The tropical easterly winds that we planned to catch on our westward trek haven't disappointed – it's been days since we've had to run the engine.

We had two interesting encounters this morning. While I slept and the rest of A Watch worked, two ships came upon us from two different directions. We have not seen other ships in days, but now we had two ships, a tanker and a container ship, approaching. In both cases, the automated identification system (AIS) gave a closest point of approach as zero – in other words, they were on a collision course with us.

Our third mate, Jeremy Dann, talked to both ships by radio, explaining to them that we were an oceanographic research vessel on station and, therefore, with limited mobility. Dann got the tanker to change course astern of us. The container ship passed ahead of us – leaving less than one nautical mile between us.

Right now it is after dinner. A crowd has gathered in the main saloon for a game of whist. There seem to be more and more people playing games or music during off hours. In the past few days I've witnessed cribbage games and chess matches break out. I think I overheard a blackjack game one night, but I was too busy to look at the cards to confirm. I suspect my fellow crew are getting used to the routine, their bodies are getting used to the workload, and they are finding more energy to do something other than work, eat, and sleep.

The last couple of weeks of this expedition look to be livelier than the first couple, and I think that is a good thing.

--------  

For more from sea, listen to an interview with Chief Scientist Giora Proskurowski on the July 2, 2010 Science Update podcast, produced by AAAS.