Goin Fishin' 8/12/10

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Today was awesome. We ran 6 trawls between 630am and 730pm. I love the time when we are actually sampling. It takes about 30 minutes to run the trawl, 15 minutes to get it in. Then we get all the fish on a table and sort them by species, and then we weigh the total biomass of each species caught. Then for the species of interest, we take weight, length, sex (by looking at their internal organs), and we preserve their stomachs in ethanol. Today we caught mostly goosefish, which are gnarly angler fish, lump fish which are super cute, hake (silver, white and red), cod, plaice, herring, alewive, a few kinds of flounder, cancer crabs, illex squid, lobster, orange sea anemone, spider crabs, shrimp, scallops, and sculpin. We decided to eat the squid and larger lobster, not a bad deal! The calamari was a bit tough, so we didn't eat too much of it. The lobster was cooked into delicious fresh lobster rolls (my first), they are really just a hoagie roll with lobster salad on them, Between trawls, we had a lot of downtime. So we just read, talked, cooked and ate all day. It got a little boring with all the down time, so we will see how interesting it is trying to keep my sanity on the next few trips. I just realized I've already become fond of this ship and crew. I hear on the larger NOAA ships, the crew and scientists are all separated. Here, perhaps because there are so few of us or perhaps because of close quarters, everyone gets on very well. I've realized that I do really like to be at sea. One of the scientists, Alicia, has been on the Gloria Michelle and other ships tons of times. I think that sounds like it could be a fun idea. Today when we would throw fish overboard, or throw parts of cutup fish overboard, we had a strong following of seagulls and other waterbirds. It was cool. On the last tow, the net must've gotten stuck on the bottom because the whole boat shook and it made a loud noise. Turns out the net was fine aside from a small tear. The sunset tonight was gorgeous- this trip is the first time I've seen the sunset over the Atlantic. The stars were also awesome, saw a handful of shooting stars, which I hear are remnants of the perceid meteor shower. Here is the description of pictures: The top two are a basket of goosefish also known as munkfish, and our trawl net. This diagram shows how a trawl net works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Benthictrawl.jpg. The smaller photos, clockwise from top left: Alicia with Illex squid as fingers, a basket of Codfish, Julie with a sculpin, me with squid and Steve with a lumpfish. All these photos are courtesy of Julie Neiland (I left my camera-computer adapter in Maryland).

Setting Sail 8/11/10

"Today we left port about 10:30am. We sailed around Cape Cod and through the Cape Cod canal before making it out to sea finally. I decided this today about Cape Cod people: while I had an initial feeling of disdain for them, I can sympathize with them because they are ocean people, and ocean people must be good, right? The crew is very agreeable, besides myself, there are 4 scientists from NMFS, ranging in age from 25 to 33 (yes, I'm the youngest). The NOAA corps (http://www.noaacorps.noaa.gov/) is the group responsible for navigation operations. We have two officers onboard, Carl and Anna Lisa. Bill is an older very friendly gentleman from Maine. He has been the cook all day - treating us to delicious yankee pot roast for lunch, chocolate cake from scratch, and reubens for dinner. I decided that I do like reubens after all. We have literally been steaming (moving) all day, not doing any work besides for reviewing the sampling protocol, learning the data management system, and working on some fish IDs. SO literally I just read all day on the deck and talked to my fellow crewmates. They are a fun group, down to earth. I feel a bit left out since they often reference people from NMFS, but the stories they tell are funny anyway. It really takes away my worry about having to be overly professional and hiding the "real" Nikki". Mostly Im excited to just be around scientists again, I relate to them well. Tomorrow should be a long one, workingsun-up to sun-down. I hope to learn a lot about fish classification and processing. I've been doing fine as far as seasickness goes. I am laying in my bed now and it is an odd but enjoyable feeling to feel the bed rocking me to sleep.

Coming to Cape Cod 8/10/10

This is the first in my brief series of blogs about my trip to New England and sailing on the NOAA research vessel Gloria Michelle. The journalistic nature of these entries is due to the fact that I am literally just copying the journal entries as I wrote them in my notebook. Here it is:

"Today I arrived in Wood Hole for my cruise. Driving from the airport in Providence, I thought that Cape Cod was quite busy for my tastes. Woods Hole is a very small town, whose main economy seems to be marine research. There are three institutions in Woods Hole: the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, more commonly referred to by employees there as "NMFS" or just "NOAA." I spent most of the day just hanging out in Woods Hole because the ship was out doing some test trawls. NMFS sits directly on the harbor in Woods Hole, and is where the Gloria Michelle and other NOAA ships (like the Delaware) are berthed when they are in port. Across the harbor from NMFS you can see Martha's Vineyard. Huge ferries regularly leave from Woods Hole to take tourists to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. My inititial thought about the staff at NMFS its that they are very friendly, from helping with my fingerprinting to showing me around Woods Hole. When I first saw the Gloria Michelle, I was somewhat intimidated by the size and very mechanical looking features. As it turns out, the Gloria Michelle is just an old commercial fishing boat that was acquired by NOAA due to the fact that it was seized transporting tons of drugs! The boat is small, but not as small as I imagined. There is one bathroom, an outside shower which seems dangerously close to the edge of the ship, and the galley consists of a tiny cooking area with one small booth table that fits maybe 6 (there will be 9 of us onboard). That table seems to be the only indoor place where you can go to relax. The "state" rooms are smallish with two bunked racks on either side of a small isle. It will be a challenge to have 4 women in here getting ready during the first leg of the cruise (the second and third leg will be only myself and one other female so we will move to a two person state room). The scientific processing station is fancy and makes entering data very easy. It uses a magnetic board to measure lengths of fish, which are automatically uploaded into a database and labels are automatically printed for preserving specimen stomachs. After hanging out in Woods Hole tonight ( I got an awesome shrimp and scallop pizza and cool t-shirt and yummy local beer), I realize how much this experience helps me to relate to what Dan went through in his sailing years - from sleeping in tiny coffin-like racks, to climbing steep ladders, to being excited to be in a port off the boat at night. I am also getting a taste for Woods Hole, Cape Cod and New England in general. Being here, feels like the epitome of the east coast. Houses in Cape Cod look exactly as you would suspect - grayish cedar shingles on most all the quant houses with perfectly manicured lawns. I don't really know what to make of the people yet, I guess I am just totally unfamiliar with the New England money culture sort of people that vacation here. I put on my motion sickness patch for the first time tonight, and it made me feel a bit off, like maybe it messed with my equilibrium or something, but I can't exactly put my finger on it. Tomorrow leave around 10am and are steaming all day to Maine to be in position to begin fishing on Thursday.

"terra AUSTRALIS," the great southern land

I arrived in Australia on Sunday the 17th of August, 2008. My flight was long and trying, with a delayed flight, lost baggage, and missed connection flight. But eventually everything worked "all right" as the Australians say. Despite those things, I really got a shot of Australian hospitality as soon as I got into the Los Angeles airport terminal, talking with friendly Australians on every flight or stop along the way, and the Qantas airline staff were really great in seamlessly fixing all those problems that arose for me, including driving my luggage to my residence in Brisbane when it arrived.
My first impression of Brisbane was that it reminds me a lot of a US city, especially like San Diego, except with a bit more construction. My host home is a best case scenario, for me at least. My host mom's name is Sue, she is single, 45, and works as a dental receptionist. When I arrived, there was myself, Lauren from UC Santa Barbara who is also on my program, and 3 other international students living there. They were Tanya (22) and Paul (23) who are from Russia and studying at an English school, and they were recently married, and Eric (23?) from South Korea. Eric, however, decided to go back to South Korea to live with his parents for a few months, so he doesn't live there anymore. The house is really cute, Sue really seems to have a hippyish mentality and style of decoration. She doesn't seem uptight about anything, and is just very agreeable and accommodating. We live in a suburb of Brisbane called Coorparoo, and we take the very efficient public transportation system (buses for us) to school. My first impression of Australia is that everything was just upside down, backward, and weird. I left San Diego in high summer, skipped a day of my life (I never lived August 17th 2008), and arrived in Australian winter. The cars drive on the wrong side of the street, the toilet flush swirls in the wrong direction, there are large bids that fly around looking sort of like swordfish which are the Australian equivalent of pigeons, large potato looking structures hang from the trees, wild turkeys run around my campus, etc. The first week I spent exploring Brisbane a bit, including going on a really (and I mean really) cool tour of the Four X beer factory, and the Queen street mall. We had lectures for a few days at the University of Queensland St. Lucia campus, from our amazing professors specializing in marine biology and land ecology (especially botany). Their lectures helped me make sense of the geological history of the country, and helped explain why Australia being so weird...actually makes sense. And we get tea time at lunch everyday :) After a few days, we were out of the city and off for our first Marine Biology adventure at the Moreton Bay research station on Stradbroke Island...

Scuba class

Tonight I finished the swimming pool session of my NAUI open water diver certification.  The class was/is being offered through navy MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) and taught by staff from IB divers (Imperial Beach, to the San Diego uninformed).  In the past week I have made great progress in my comfort with scuba diving.  I was initially frightened to descend into the depths of the 14 foot swimming pool, relying only on my scuba unit as a life source.  Now, I am feeling much more comfortable in the underwater environment, and have learned the proper techniques for handling emergency situations.  I have overcome the initial fright, and I am really starting to enjoy my time underwater, even looking forward to these sessions. Tomorrow is my first open water dive.  I am excited as well as humbled, anticipating the beauty, complexity, force, and sheer power of the ocean.  By keeping a calm, collected manner, and remembering all of my training, I feel confident in handling the prospective perils I may encounter, yet I hope for a rewarding, memorable experience.  

Tomorrow we will be diving at La Jolla Shores, entering the water from the beach.  This site has been one of my favorite San Diego destinations.  Due to the clarity, cleanliness, and calmness of the water, this is my favorite San Diego beach for swimming by far.  Just up the shore are some really great tide pools at Dike rock.  Also on the beach sits the Scripps Institution, where I worked my favorite job thus far.  I have also passed a handful of evenings along this shore enjoying myself at such events as barbecues, picnics, bonfires, and the solo drum circle I attended at Black's Beach.  Thus, it is only natural that on this beach, where I have learned so much from, and greatly enjoyed exposure to many things oceanic, that I will take the next step into my encounter with the marine realm...