The Albatross IV
We haven't written in a LONG time and we're far behind! We are skipping over our 5 week trip to the North Island of New Zealand to share the details of our experiences as volunteers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
We arrived at Woods Hole on Cape Cod on April 9 via bus from Boston. Woods Hole is the heart of a busy oceanic research hub – home to NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, the agency we are volunteering with), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Marine Biology Labs.
We had spent a full day in Boston exploring the Freedom Trail and walking the streets of the Back Bay, Charlestown and North End areas. We loved the blending of old and new, like the cemeteries from the 1700s sandwiched between more modern buildings or the historic meeting places of the Revolutionary War still standing amongst the skyscrapers. It’s a very attractive and pleasant city – even at this most unflattering time of the year (it is still winter here, as evidenced by the temperatures in the high 30s). I’m sure that when Spring finally comes that the city will be even lovelier. We finished the evening off with a mediocre Ethiopian meal in a very crowded restaurant.
The ship and the NOAA offices looked deserted on Easter evening, but we located the night watchman on board the ship (as well as a crew member who was carefully separating his satchel-full of herbal supplements and vitamins into daily packets. It felt a little bit like some elicit drug lair.)
We got a tour of the ship and found our berthing. We slept 3 to a room in single bunks and there is no co-mingling of gender. Each room had a mixture of day- and nightshift workers, so there were only ever 2 people at most sleeping in a “stateroom” at a time. A shared bathroom connected our stateroom to another bunkroom with 3 other scientists or volunteers.
The ship (the Albatross IV) is old and certainly the word “utilitarian” fits better than anything else. Since we are bottom trawling, the back deck is spacious and connected to a covered space used for weighing, measuring, sexing, and analyzing all species of fish pulled up from the randomly selected station. We were informed in an information session that surveys of the eastern seaboard from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina have been done since 1963 (the longest continuous stream of data of this kind anywhere in the world) Each survey’s chief scientist randomly selects about 100 stations in which to drag the ocean bottom with long nets. The net is pulled by the boat for 30 minutes – after which the contents are emptied onto tables for initial sorting.
Our first day was spent trying on foul weather gear – most of which we will wear whenever we are out on deck in this cold weather. We have rubber boots, jacket and pants and rubber gloves. We got a crash course in fish identification but were assured that we will be paired with experienced cutters and Watch Chiefs who will identify species until we can do it ourselves. They also slice open the fish to determine gender and remove otoliths (ear bones) to determine age (like the rings of a tree).
On the first afternoon at sea, we had a fire drill and an abandom ship drill, which requireed us to don an immersion suit (also lovingly known as the Gumby suit). Then, they did a test trawl to ensure that all of the gear was functioning properly (better to figure that out when close to port) and we were given instruction on the the software for collecting fish data.
the immersion suitsMichiel and I both worked the noon to midnight shift with 5 scientists (mostly they are actually lab technicians who work in the aging and maturity labs) and then we had 12 hours off to sleep and relax which included reading, watching movies or Direct TV, writing emails or exercising in a tiny room with broken equipment.
Over the course of the next couple of days, the weather began to deteriorate and the seas became choppier. Sailing comfort was also diminished because the boat often had to drive in circles or back and forth to find a half mile area with a bottom that wasn't so rocky that it would chew up the net as we had happen on the first tow of the survey. When the net got caught on the rocky bottom, we had to cut short the drag time and, depending on the length of time we were able to tow, we might have to re-tow the same station and, in the worst case scenarios, actually have to completely replace the net. The ship carries 4 nets, so only really bad luck would make all four nets completely irreparable.
So this morning, the boat was making many of us feel queasy. (I was secretly relieved that I wasn’t one of the people who got sick.) I tried taking some more medication (it was time for a new dose), eating more crackers and ginger tea (EVERYONE eats crackers in order to soak up the stomach acids created when you are feeling nauseous) and then going outside to the back deck, which was working great to help me feel better until a wave washed over the side of the boat and soaked my feet. Soon afterwards, we found smoother waters and more comfort for everyone - until the seas got progressively worse and the winds picked up to over 40 knots, which whipped the sea into a frenzy. We even ended up not processing one of the tows because it was simply too dangerous to be out on the back deck in the wind and waves breaking over the deck.
That night, feeling queasy and unable to even contemplate the hassle of trying to shower, I got into bed an tried to pad the bar on the side of my bunk. We spent much of that night getting thrown around. The watch on duty ended up not doing any tows because the seas were too rough (estimated 8-10 foot swells).
Afterwards, the seas remained choppy and the temperatures dropped as we continued north through the Gulf of Maine and further offshore into Canadian waters. We worked through the stations, freezing hands and feet in the process, but found some enjoyment in guessing which varieties of fish would show up in our sorting box and how big the tows would be.
Generally, we had about 1.5 hours between stations, but if we had to re-tow because of ripped nets or other problems, we could finish up with one session of fish processing and have just enough time to go to the bathroom before having to sort the next. Occasionally, we would have enough time between stations to watch a movie…but that seemed to only happen for the night shift. Depending on the size of the catch, sorting and processing time could range between 45 minutes to an hour and a half. The big catches were mostly made up of mackerel and Acadian redfish.
The FISH!
Mackerel and Longhorned Sculpin
Lumpfish and Acadian Redfish
Sea Raven and the ever-popular Shrimp and Lobster
Goosefish and Lots of Redfish
Most of our time on shift we spent playing cards, trying to read (it proved very difficult and tiring to focus on small words while the boat was rocking and heaving), doing Sudoku, making jokes, chatting, eating and napping…..pretty much the same thing we did off shift. I found the rocking of the boat to be very soporific and had a hard time staying awake even while on shift. Perhaps also due to the fact that I had stopped drinking coffee to reduce the acid in my stomach.
We felt like we had seen and done enough to sate our curiosity about bottom trawl surveys when week 2 started. The volunteer work is dull, tedious and cold and the software used to process tows is temperamental. We didn’t have much time to admire any new types of fish as the veterans were in a hurry to process fish and get back to doing more of the above-mentioned activities. We also didn’t find the full-time science/technician staff to be great at explaining things (like the diffences between species or why we do special sampling techniques on some fish at some stations and not others). We later learned that some real scientists join the surveys occasionally and we regretted that we hadn't had that kind of intellectual stimulation on our trip.
The most difficult part of the experience proved not to be the seasickness (those who spoke with me beforehand know that I was very worried about this possibility. It ended up being almost a non-issue, with only an hour here and there of discomfort.) but the boredom when we had to pull into a bay off the coast of Maine for nearly 4 days while a storm brewed off the coast. While we were anchored, the winds got up to 55 knots and the boat rocked from side to side. We heard that the ocean swells were over 25 feet, a very dangerous situation and one in which all boats are cautioned to return to shore. We were all very grateful about not being out in those kinds of seas, but were eager to get back to work once the seas calmed down.
On the last full day, we "surfed" back toward Cape Cod on 12 to 14 foot swells, which was a lot of fun and woke up right off the dock in Woods Hole. We were ecstatic to be back on land but discovered that it would take our bodies almost 4 days to no longer have the feeling of swaying or rocking (especially upon waking up).
