Life on board

“Three years in prison with a chance of drowning”, this is how Andy, one of the British guys of the autosub team, described the time has spent at sea in the last couple of years. This made me think: why did I want to go so badly on this trip? Away from home and loved ones for two months. No skiing, hiking or biking, no Thursday night at Gordon Biersch. No Sunday morning breakfast with Thijs… Instead working till 3 am, when you started at 7 am, being in the cold room (3 C) for 6 hrs per day in low light with a fan blowing over your head, no private cabin, bad coffee, grumpy people because of lack of sleep (of course I don’t suffer from that last one J) and a lot of complaining. Of course, there’s icebergs and penguins, but is that enough to make up for the discomforts? I don’t think so!

So what is it that makes life on board so great you want to sacrifice all the above? Partly, it has to do with the people on board. Before I started on the previous cruise, I had the impression that sailors are the though and rough kinda guys, you know, though on the outside, with a good heart buried somewhere deep inside. As it turns out, however, everyone is pretty mellow and friendly. We have to stick it out with the people on the ship for 8 weeks, so everyone tries to keep things workable (of course there are some exceptions). Also, working on these research vessels selects for social folks, who like to chat, joke around and are really interested in their fellow seafarers and the reasons for their research. Almost everyone tries very hard to do their work as well as possible, and enjoys the work (of course there are some exceptions). This holds true for the scientists and officers alike. The officers take pride in steering the ship in the best possible way through the ice and keeping the scientists happy. They would earn more money steering a supertanker as fast as possible from A to B, but they seem to enjoy working on a research vessel. And it’s quite easy to work around the exceptions.

The other part of being here is the Science (with a capital S). All worldly worries are in the background and one is totally focused on research (I heard Obama will pour a lot of money here and there in the US, including in science, but I haven’t bothered to find out more). Since there are people with different backgrounds on board, you get crash courses in various areas of science. It also allows for getting input on your results from very different angles which can be clarifying or confusing. In some cases you can try out some new, interdisciplinary ideas, because the people and equipment are available and people are always willing to measure some extra stuff if it can lead to some new ideas. Within our DynaLiFe team the collaborations are blooming and for me it is the first time to work together with a team of 6 smart, nice, and experienced people on a project. Because we all tackle different aspects of the phytoplankton productivity down here, it’s exciting to compare results and shed some light on different parts of the puzzle. It’s even more exciting to try to fit the different pieces together and see how comparing results makes sense in some cases, but creates more confusion in other cases.

Meanwhile, the autosub is back on board. It came back from it’s second long mission under the Pine Island Glacier. They picked up an emergency signal, but it was waiting for us at the surface of the site where they put it in last night. Apparently “it got scared” (these are the exact words of Andy) and then returned to it’s home where it was waiting for us, just like it’s programmed to do. Next time I’ll try to write something about the how and why of the autosub.

Take care everyone,

Anna