July 9, 2010
By Ellie Kane
My time is measured in minutes watching the neuston tow bobbing among the waves. It's measured in days left until I can get an ice cream cone, in hours until LAN (local apparent noon), and in seconds while shooting evening stars. It's measured in moments with friends on the foredeck as we trade stories and strum guitars, and in eternities cleaning the galley at 0200 hours. There's the movement of the sun behind the sails, bringing much needed shade to the deck; and the rise of stars in the east that bring new constellations for bow watch. The summer solstice came and went as we looked at our tiny shadows and greeted the sun at 0430 with yawns and excitement for breakfast still three hours away.
As JWO (junior watch officer), my time is spent fidgeting as I pace the quarterdeck and think about where the wind is coming from. We have four sails to strike, one CTD, and a neuston tow before this watch ends and I can hand responsibility off to someone else. As dishwasher, I count the hours by the stack of plates and pans next to me. As lab assistant, I tally the time by the number of Halobates we pull from a sieve and by the stack of data sheets we need to enter before we can justify a hot chocolate break.
Thinking about 2000 hours on board (time to finally get into my bunk) versus 8 p.m. at home (who wants to hang out?), I'm struck with how time plays out so differently at sea. It's not just the juxtaposition of ship life to my routine at home, where I would never consider cleaning any floors before 8 a.m., but time in terms of the ocean itself – whose waves beat on as they have ceaselessly through time.
We caught a plastic bucket in our net a few weeks ago. It started who knows where – a dock, a house on the shore, on the deck of the ship – but it ended up here in the Sargasso Sea. It was already cracked and beginning to break down. The sun which daily beats down on our shoulders during watch weakens it; wind and waves hammer and tug at it until it fragments into the tiny pieces of plastic we usually find in our nets – pieces that we pull out of a sieve with tweezers, count, and record as tally marks on a data sheet. We spent hours and hours pulling and counting, but when we thought we were through, we would hear a snort of disgust from whoever was doing the hundred count at the microscope, "Guys, there's plastic in here."
It is those moments that give me pause. What starts as a bucket, or a water bottle, or a shopping bag ends up under our microscopes, or it is eaten by fish, sea turtles, or birds. When it's too small for them, it becomes fodder for zooplankton and passes beyond our sight and into the minute workings of the ocean itself. It is always there, tow after tow, day after day, as we go on with our watches and our trip draws to a close.
I'll step off the Cramer in less than a week, leaving the deck to the students who come after me. My bed will continue to move with the motion of the waves for a few days and I'll enjoy having ice water again while my tan lines fade and I rejoin my life at home. I'll take my pictures, new friends and memories of a second trip with SEA, but I'll leave behind the plastic in the ocean, floating under the stars as an unrelenting reminder of our presence in such a remote corner of the globe.
