There’s nothing quite like the combination of fog, rain and a big swell at sea
to really limit your options for photography! The weather yesterday and today
has been too poor to put the ROV in the water and too foggy to get any decent
photographs so we’ve had a quiet couple of days to catch up on some writing and
data processing in the labs. But, all work and no play makes scientists at sea
go crazy, so I thought today I’d write a little bit about a typical day on a
research cruise and what we get up to out here to maintain some semblance of
sanity!
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| Bet you can't spot me! |
I’m writing this during my third offshore cruise, and during
each one the scientists have been put on (usually 12-hour) shifts so we can
keep working around the clock. The RRS James Cook costs about £50,000 per day
to hire (including fuel, consumables and crew wages etc.) so it’s important to
try and make the most of every hour we can get on board, especially since the
chance to participate in a research cruise often represents a one-off
opportunity to get your data. Unlike other fields, with deep-sea research it’s
not like you can just pop 300 miles back offshore if you forget something or
lose a sample! With that in mind, even working for 12 hours or more through a
night shift doesn’t seem quite so bad.
So regardless of what time you actually wake up, a typical
day will start, as it does anywhere, with breakfast and a coffee in the ship’s
galley before checking in with the shift leader to see what the programme of
work will be for the day. The shift leaders are responsible for keeping things
running through their shift and will liase directly with the expedition’s
Principle Scientist and to make sure that everyone gets the samples they need
from the trip. They are also the ones who will be at the forefront when plans
need to change to allow repairs to be done on a piece of kit or if bad weather
comes in and forces us to rethink what we’re going to do for the day.
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| Nothing like a giant bucket of mud to keep everyone happy! |
Since every research cruise is designed with a particular
purpose in mind, the type of work being done will depend very much on what the
aims are. The cruises I’ve participated in have mostly focused on ecological
surveying using ROVs, towed cameras or trawling for example, but we’ve also
done plenty of mud sampling, box coring, water collections and acoustic mapping
as well. Regardless of what type of cruise it is though, one of the things I
really enjoy about working on these ships is the real sense of camaraderie that
develops from joining in with the deck work in particular, whether it’s carting
buckets of water around for the on-board aquaria or being up to your elbows in
abyssal mud at 2am on a pitching ship!
But like I said, you can’t work for 14 hours a day for 4
weeks straight without needing some downtime, and fortunately the cruise ships
I’ve been on have been well-supplied in terms of entertainment. The James Cook
for example has a video room for watching films in, a small library full of
novels, a good-sized social area for watching TV and even a Wii with a few
games! For me as well there’s also the photography to keep me busy, whether
it’s shooting the wildlife or shooting photos of the work that we’re all doing.
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| Wii tournaments can get pretty intense |
So that’s more or less it really for a typical day at sea!
The weather has just kept on getting worse and the captain’s ordered the decks
secured now while we head to our next station through a 3-4m swell (about 10-12
feet I think), but the birds seem to be thoroughly enjoying themselves so I’m
off to try and get some shots of the stormy seas!
Thanks to Karl Attard and Millie Sharkey for providing today's photos :)
