Days at Sea 88: Home Sweet Home

I finally got the email telling me that it is my turn to go home. It came just in time because the scientists who got sent home a couple days after me had to sit in Dutch Harbor for 3-5 days waiting for the fog to lift and planes to fly.

My trip home took a very long time but I did make it. Here is what my itinerary ended up looking like.

4am: go to the ferry dock for the 5am ferry from Akutan to Dutch Harbor
7am: Ferry arrives, the anchor had fallen off at the last stop so it was several hours late
11am: Arrive in Dutch Harbor and get a ticket for the next availible flight
7pm: Fly from Dutch Harbor to Anchorage, AK
midnight: Fly Anchorage to Seattle. I was pretty tired at this point, I dont even remember the safety briefing happening
5am: Land in Seattle and my dad picks me up.
6:30am: 26 hours of travel, 88 days at sea and I am finally HOME!

Days at Sea 82: Choose your friends wisely

It keeps growing and growing

and growing I am up to 7 right now.

I LOVE good fresh local produce, I mean go out of my way, dream about it all winter love the fruits of Eastern Washington and Oregon. So I was sad to have to give it up this summer but oddly I am actually getting a bunch of nectarines up
here.

They ship them up here but there is not enough to give to
everybody but...I have a boyfriend in the galley, in addition to my
forklift boyfriend, bar boyfriend, and sorting belt boyfriend, I hope
they all don't meet each other some day:) (note they all are probably old enough to be my father and from either Mexico or the Philippines and have very limited English so these relationships consist of me smiling and nodding) My galley boyfriend is in charge of all the produce and he started wooing me with 2 nectarines everyday, when I come up to the line for breakfast they call him from the back and he brings them out to me.

They feel like apples so I say 'thank you these are great' then take
them back to my room and wait a week or so, I am acquiring quite a
collection. Yesterday he only brought me 1 and he apologized he had
set 3 aside for me but I was an hour late for breakfast, normally I am
there when the doors open, he couldn't protect them for that long so I
only got 1. This morning he did save me 3 but I told him that was too
many and he let me get away with only taking 2.

Even with these mass produced ones (that are better than I thought
they would be) I still cant wait for a good Yakima nectarine where
the juice is running down my face

Day 73: A Short Hike up a Steep Hill

View of the Plant from the top of the hill



All of the Aleutian Islands are essentially nearly vertical mounds of volcanic rock that go straight into the sea and spread out across the North Pacific. The highest point on a lot of them are between 1,000 and 2,000 feet, so a hill to anyone on the West coast and a mountain to anyone on the East Coast. After looking at the sea for 2 months they look huge so I will refer to them as mountains for the rest of this post.


A lot of observers like to hike, I hate walking up hills for just about any reason, so I have never gone along. Until yesterday. The mountains take off from right behind my bunkhouse and they look very daunting, but yesterday my friend from training, Laurie, and another observer waiting for his boat to show up, Jack, decided to go and since I enjoy spending time with both of them, I decided to go. Also I thought since I had such good company the mountains did not look quite so daunting that day. We started the hike and we were almost to the top when we broke through the low fog. It was at that point that I realized that the fog had been hiding the top half of the mountain, it was an optical illusion not good company that made the hike seem more doable. Since they had slept all morning while I had been working, I got them to take a picture with me, called it the top and then climbed down the moutain by myself to go to bed. On the way down I slipped on some mud and landed on my bum in the grass, nobody was around to see so I just got up and kept going.

When I got back to my room I reached in my pocket to find my keys and they were not there, I assumed they fell out when I fell but I really needed to go to sleep. The next day when I was working one of the other vessel observers who is really into hiking was going up the hill (there is only one path). As a joke I told her to look out for my keys and when she came back 2 hours later she had a big smile and said "look what I found" and pulled my keys out of her pocket! Case and point...everything always works out it Jessicaworld.

Oh and I cant find the cord to my camera so I cant post the pictures of the hike

Days at Sea 67: My job is thankfully not a brain surgeon

My cubical:


This is what I do when I am not watching a conveyor belt of boats offloads. I look inside the fish to figure out if it is a boy or girl and then length it and weigh it.



For a couple of lucky fish I get to dig around their brains for their ear bones called otoliths. Fish otoliths are filled with information very similar to tree rings. They can tell someone with the right equipment if the fish grew a lot in one year and not so much in another because of food supply. This is a sablefish and their otoliths are tiny and very hard to find, I only managed to find 2 of the 5 I was suppose to get. I secretly think they say 5 hoping we would get 2or 3. As I kept missing the right part of the brain and had to dig around with my forceps in the brain I thought it is probably a very good thing I have no desire to be a brain surgeon someday.

Days at Sea 66: too much time on my hands

I have to wear hearing protection and a hairnet in the factory and they are HUGE so I decided to create an experiment. Hypothesis: I can fit my whole head into the hairnet, not just my hair. Conclusion : well you can see for yourself




My mother has requested more pictures of me smiling so here you go...

Days at Sea: 65 The Week of Jellyfish

One boats totes of Jellyfish that are lined up to be loaded back on the boat to be discarded at sea.


It seems like every week we have a new theme in the form of bycatch. Pollock is the cleanest fishery in the world meaning that when you mean to catch Pollock that is normally all you catch. Last week everybody caught a bunch of salmon with their Pollock which is a major no no. It also means a lot of work for me because I have to count all the salmon and take scale samples and genetic samples for the labs back in Seattle. This week all the boats were coming in with jellyfish instead of salmon. It means the boats take a little longer to unload since there is a bunch of sorting that has to happen but at least I don't have to count all the jellyfish. That would be a nightmare.

Day 58: More Pictures

This is the pump that they put into the refrigerated saltwater tanks on the boat then the fish get pumped up though to pipe into the factory where I sit and watch them go by.



This is what I look like walking around the plant. In the process of taking this picture I realized that I had been walking around for 10 hours with my shirt misbuttoned, hence the uneven tails. Looking like this I get hit on about 3 times a day. And most girls think they have to very painful things for men to notice them (i.e. waxing, plucking) nope men really don't care is what I have learned out here, it is other women that judge you. [that last bit I learned at college :)]



More pictures of a beautiful sunrise on the harbor.

Day 58: Random Pictures

This is a really huge scary machine that carries the cargo containers around the plant. When ever I have to walk to 'town' I am always looking over my shoulder, it moves much faster than you think it would. I always feel like that movie from when I was little "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" all I remember was a huge ant that always scared me and that is what I think of every time I find it chasing me down the road. Behind the machine you can see a bit of sunrise, the sunrise this morning was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I had 20 minutes off and I could either eat breakfast or run up the road to watch sunrise and take a bunch of pictures. Lets just say that there are no pictures of breakfast.



The machine that unloads the cargo ships in Dutch Harbor..



There are Bald Eagles all over Dutch Harbor there are a bunch of nests up on the cliffs. I always thought that Bald Eagles would have a very majestic cry but they make this high pitched chirping noise. It is a good thing that the US government did not know about Hallmark talking cards when they decided to go with the Bald Eagle for our nations symbol.

Day 57:Life on Akutan Island

The entirety of the inhabited part of the island.


I am living at the processing plant on Akutan Island. The only thing on this island is the Trident Seafoods plant, and a native alaskan village of about 90 people. Native Alaskans are from an Asian and Native American background, and they don’t mind being called Eskimos unlike what most of us have heard in the lower 48.
There are several hundred people who work at the plant. I get my own
room that connects through a bathroom to the other observers room. I
have been assigned to work with a really cool lady in her mid forties.
Her name is Julie so people leave notes addressed to us as J&J.
Which I found pretty funny since I have been getting notes addressed
to me like that for my whole life :).

Instead of counting and sexing a third of each haul on the boat I was
assigned to, now I just have to watch offloads from several different
boats and then count their salmon at the end. The absolute best part
is that I don't have to put my rain gear on 4 times a day, which was
the part of the job I hate the most. If there aren't a whole lot of
boats that come in, I have a super easy shift but if there is a line
of boats I am running back and forth between buildings for 12 hours.
I only have to watch the conveyor belts for 2 hours at a time and then
the scientist who is assigned to the boat covers for me for 2 hours.
So in a big day I could end up just watching a belt full of Pollock go
past be for 6 hours. Luckily I have access to the internet and can get new podcasts.

Day 51: More on The Goose.

I got to fly in a Grumman Goose from Dutch Harbor to Akutan. It was about a 20 minute flight since it is like 2 Aleutian Islands east of Dutch Harbor/Unalaska. The Grumman Goose was designed in the 1930’s for wealthy Long Islander's commute to New York City. They used them a lot in World War II and there are only a couple left flying and I think that the Dutch Harbor goose is one of the only ones left in the United States. Akutan is getting an airport strip soon so this goose won't be flying for much longer. I was a real treat to ride shotgun in a plane like this very few observers get a flight on the goose since most of them are picked up by their boat in Dutch Harbor or another boat will take them back and forth. When I got to Alaska I made a wish list of things I was going to find a way to do, I got ride in a sea plane checked off in May and ride in the goose checked off in July. All that is left in the Aeronautics section is ride in a helicopter.

Day 50:Good thing I am flexible

As we came into port I we knew that Mary (the other scientist on the boat) was going home and I was going to get a different partner. I was assigned this 65 year old guy who didn’t notice that the 70’s were over. Right as we got into headquarters I called the scheduler and she said ‘oh I am glad you called, actually……’( I have been told that ‘actually’ with a pause always means that you are getting moved) She told me to pack up and get to the airport the goose was flying at 3 or 4. I had no idea what this meant so I walked to the airport and stood there looking helpless until a really nice lady helped me out. She said the goose was supposed to fly at 4 but because of fog they were going to go at 3, it was 1. So I jumped in a cab back to my boat packed all my clothes and sampling gear. It was probably the worst packing job I have ever done. Got it all off the boat into the boats car they drove me to the airport and I got there with 5 minutes to spare, when they told me that the fog bank was holding and they were delaying for an hour and a half. This whole job is hurry up and wait, so I waited. All the prior observers have told me that I NEED to get the copilots seat if I ever get to take the goose, I should be pushy and demanding, it is worth the view. They lady who runs the ticketing for the goose was great though, she took one look at me and told the captain that she was calling shotgun for me and then told all the men on the plane that I got to ride shotgun don’t bother asking. I still had very little clue what is going on till I heard “well girl get on the plane, you have to go first”. In total today I have been called ‘darling’ ‘girl’ ‘babydoll’ ‘baby’ apparently the message got lost somewhere between Mount Holyoke and Alaska that women have names.

Day 48: Salmon Everywhere

We are done with this trip. In the very last haul we accidentally ran into a huge school of salmon with our net. Unlike everything else salmon are federally managed by number instead of weight. This means an unbiased person has to hand count each salmon that their boat pulls up, also known as, me. There were just under 1,000 salmon that I had to ID to species (there are 5 species of pacific salmon) and count. Then take genetic samples from 35 of them. By the end I decided that salmon were not worth the effort required to manage their populations, I don’t think the higher ups at the National Marine Fisheries Service will agree with me but they have never counted salmon for 4 hours.

Day 47: Words of Wisdom

Hung: I have been fishing for 16 years, I am on this boat 300 days a year and I have been married 10 years! One wife, second wife is too expensive.

Most of the guys on the boat are on marriage number 2 or 3. Someone told me that there was a slew of divorces on the boat last year and now they are all trying to find else to marry them. When I asked the girl in the galley who is about my age why they wanted to be married when they were only home 60 days a year. We both thought there were much better things to spend their money on then a wife, divorce, child support, wife, divorce cycle.

Days at Sea 46

One of my new favorite "This American Life" podcasts is a bunch of stories from people about childhood ideas that you learned much later to not be true. So I will tell you all a story from my childhood... my grandfather had surgery on his leg when I was about 5 or 6. When I asked why all I remember was being told it has something to do with rebar (the metal bars that reinforce concreate). Taking this bit of information into my 6 year old mind led me to give our rubarb plants a wide bearth for the next 5 years until my brother set me straight.

DAYS AT SEA 45!!!!

Happy half a contract to me, happy half a contract to me... yes today marks the half way point of my deployment. Not much to say, today was pretty slow. As I watched on of the nets come onboard a fish was caught by the cheek and managed to get free. Then he got free and was splashing around in a puddle on the deck. I really wanted to take my foot and scootch him to the scupper (the whole at the level of the deck to let water run off)and back out to sea but he was a little too far out of reach for a rescue to be possible. I named him Benny in case you were thinking, that fish needs a name.

Days at Sea: 44 Fun Facts

Everything about this boat is Super Sized.
The boat is 300 feet long.
The mouth of the net is the size of a football field.
The net is as long as a football field.
The 2 wenches that pull the net on board are 5 feet across.
There are 2 cranes on board.
There are 2 huge main engines on board
The boat has 5 levels
We process 400 metric tons of fish everyday. Think about a two car garage full of fish, now multiply it by 8.
It takes 2 weeks of 24/7 fishing to fill the freezers.
They serve a meal every 4 hours around the clock
122 crew members (114 men, 8 women) + 2 scientists live on board
They crew work 16 on, 8 off shifts for 10 months a year
On board scientists (ME!) work 12 on, 12 off 3 months at a time, until you decide you have enough money for the year.

Days at Sea: 39 Different Cultures One Boat

Whenever I leave the factory I always try to make sure it is not when the whole factory breaks at midnight for 15 minutes and at 8am. Today I waited in the factory for 15 minutes while they had their break. I feel bad because it is the only time they get to sit down and as soon as I show up they all scatter from in front of my locker and normally 3 or 4 of the processors dont get to sit down then.

When I headed out of the factory the whole line of 50 men and 1 women were heading back into the factory so I stepped aside out of the main aisle. It was interesting how all the men treated me as they walked past. They are from all over the world, some from Africa who are Muslims (they pray outside my door when the sun goes down), some are from Central America and others are from Vietnam. I tried to smile at the ones who smiled at me but as soon as I made eye contact they immediatly looked away. Some gave me a small shy smile, some a small head bow, some looked really unsure so when I smiled at them they gave me a really quick one in return. Some inquired about the size of the fish coming in, they know that I get the first look. I have learned to always say BIG even if I dont know.

I have a solution to the Debt Ceiling problem, smaller shopping carts

We had mechanical problems and had to go back to Dutch Harbor before the boat was full. When the boat broke we were right up against the international date line and the Arctic Circle so it took us 2 days to get back to port. We were in port for 3 days getting everything fixed and then taking the boat out for 'sea trials' before going back to port to offload all the engineers and mechanics that had been flown up from Seattle just to fix the boat. We are back on the fish and so after a paid week off I have to get back to work. Dutch Harbor has one small World War Two 'museum' a small library and a hill to climb. I had already done 2 of the 3 so I explored the 3 aisles of the Dutch Harbor/Unalaska Public Library.

This picture is taken in Safeway. To limit myself to spending $25 I shop in my hardhat when it is full I leave. Yeah a hard hat full of groceries costs $25.

Around Dutch Harbor

Days at Sea 32: The actual question

I became aware of the phenomenon of trying to figure out what people were actually asking when I moved from the West coast to the East Coast for college. There are the words coming out of the persons mouth "where are you from" and what they want to know "are you weathly". I will admit that there might be a similar west coast duality but I don't notice it since I know exactly which question they are asking. Alaksa fishermen have their own set of questions that only later I have figured out what they are actully asking. Here are a couple of examples...

Question: How long have you been observing?
Real Question: We have a bet going on how long you have been observing, I said that your hair was so uncontrolled you must be a long time observer cause you dont care about it anymore.

A note on this: I worked REALLY hard to look like I wasn't new. I took my brand new shinny Xtra Tuffs and went hiking in them and walked through as much dirt as possible to make them not look shiney and new. I only packed 35 pounds for the whole summer so I didn't look like a new observer which are notorious for overpacking. In the end it was my 20 mall haircut.

Question 2: Are you on the boat for the whole season?
Real Question: What is the likelyhood that we might get assigned Chuck this season.

Note: Chuck is a long time observer that EVERYBODY knows. I know all about him and I have never met him. He sticks to the rules like glue, smells and does not leave warm feeling behind him.

Days at sea: 31 Types of Boats

MY BOAT!!!

I have been getting a lot of people who point out that they still don't get what it is that I am doing up here in the Bering Sea. I have been avoiding them as I tried to figure out what I was doing. So now I will begin with some basic facts, kind of like a college tour intro into what it is that I am doing.

There are 2 types of boats I can be put on Catcher boats and Catcher/Processor Boats.

Basically Catcher boats are about 120-200 feet long and have 5-7 man crew plus 1 scientist. bunch of fish stuff the boats tanks and then deliver it to an on shore processing plant. This is the best assignment for a scientist because when the are traveling between the plant and the fishing grounds you don't have any responsibilities.

Catcher/Proccessor (what I am on) take the factory to the fish. They spend 2 weeks at sea and then empty their freezers full of compleated product when they get to land. We have a crew of about 120 and the boats are just under 300 feet long.

Days at Sea: 31

Another question from the audience: What is my favorite "This American Life" podcast so far.

I really liked one that is pretty old but it was about this brother and sister who grew up secular Jewish and then when the brother was at Berkley he became a "born again christian". Then he moved to an island in Alaska called "the farm" to join a Christan commune sort of a thing. I thought it was funny that every time his sister mentioned his new life she always said "born-again christian" never "protestant", "christian" or other much shorter names. I thought it was like meeting a Muslim and always referring to them as a "non extremist Muslim" and how funny that would sound over and over in the course of a 10 minute story.

Other favorite line that I just say over and over in my head cause I still think it is funny is "while Jim was living the life of a B-list celebrity". It was on a podcast about the collapse of the housing market in 2008 and Jim was going on and on about how he was making tons of money selling mortgages that he knew were a bad idea but the money he made let him party at clubs with Tera Reid, Christina Aguilera and buy $1000 bottles of champagne. He thought he was the coolest guy in the room and then Ira Glass used the transition "while Jim was living the life of a B-list celebrity Mike was losing his home" delivered with just a subtle hint of mockery.

Day 29: How this all works

To answer a question from the audience, this is how my job works.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (the people who use my data) only allows their scientists to be deployed for 90 days before they have to come back to Anchorage, AK or Seattle, WA and get their data 'debriefed'. Apparently this entails them asking you about every number you have written down over the past 90 days so they know how accurate each piece of data is.

The joke among observers is that we have a 90 day work week with a weekend that lasts until our money runs out. At that point you call up your company and tell them you would like to work again.

My 90 days started June 7th so I am expected to be shipped back to Seattle at the beginning of September. After that I am spending the fall in Friday Harbor, WA doing biological research at Friday Harbor Laboratories.

Day 30

Internet in Dutch has been down for a week so I was unable to post more pictures.

So I have been in my bed holding on as we have been in some pretty bad weather. It is not scary it is just horrible being seasick for 3 days straight. I have not eaten or slept in 3 days but what has made it better has been that the factory has not been running so I dont have to get out of bed. Everytime I stand up all I want to do is lie back down. But the wind has let up so I am back to normal.

Days at Sea: 24 Indignation

Some of my readers have known me since the day I was born (shout out to the grandparents), some have lived with me all four years of college but none of them probably know the background to this post.

Preschool was traumatizing. Okay so now that you know this I will get to how it relates to life on the Bering Sea.

I wear 4 layers of clothes in the factory and 3 in the rest of the boat. Every time I come out of the factory (about 5 times a day) I wash my hands. Even though I was wearing 2 layers of gloves my hands still manage to get really gross. I never manage to get all 3 of my long sleeved layers pushed up far enough so as the day goes on the ends of my sleeves get wet. I HATE having wet sleeves and go to great lengths to avoid it in "real" life. So I was walking through the boat with wet sleeves getting more and more indigent and then finally I thought to myself "ERRR this is just like preschool" "Woah where did that come from". I only have a couple of memories of preschool but I do distinctly remember thinking that when I got old enough to reach the sink by myself I would never get my sleeves wet, and I have managed to stick to my promise for a solid 20 years.

Then this got me thinking about the other traumatizing experiences of 1992. Going to the Puget Sound sitting down in front of a rock, lifting it up and having tons of baby crabs crawl up my shorts. I did not wear anything but spandex shorts until the 4th grade when they were mandatory for our soccer uniforms. Also that year my older sister told me that she did not like sausage and in my 4 year old mind that became "all things from pigs are inedible". I stuck with that one until I was 20 years old sitting in a cafe in Vienna, Austria starving and I what I ordered included a big slam of ham, and hunger beat out 16 years of obstinacy. P.S. I learned that year that bacon is one of the best things humans have ever created and have never looked back.

Days at Sea: 23 A Day In the Life

So instead of figuring out what day it is, which is harder than it sounds I now mark time based on how many days I have been at sea. Mainly this is because if I take that number and subtract it from 90 I get how many days I have left, a much more important number. I am having a good time but working 12 hours a day then shutting myself in a dark room for 10-12 hours while trying to sleep with my bed moving all over the place lends itself to the thought "didn't I just do this". Here is a day in the life of a fish observer who got stuck with the sucky shift.

11:45PM Alarm goes off
11:50PM Convince yourself to put on several layers of clothes
MIDNIGHT: Report to the factory and start taking data
1:30AM Watch the sun go down
3AM Eat Breakfast
8AM Leave factory (which I have been in since midnight)
8:30AM Start entering data into computer
10AM Run back down to the factory to get more data
11AM Run back up to the wheelhouse to enter data
NOON: Skip lunch and go to room
12:15PM Shower (possibly depending on many factors)
12:30PM Go to sleep

And repeat this day after day so that you think that you dont remember any part of the day not spent in the factory watching fish go past or cutting them open to find out what sex they are.

June 28th:Shower via fire hose

On almost all fishing boats there are an infinite number of uses for their high pressure fire hoses, the least of which is fighting fires. They use them to hold fish onto incline belts when they are slipping down, they use them to move large amounts of fish by blasting one edge in a bin and to clean anything in sight. Today we had a couple of huge halibut and the only way that I can hold on to them (they are super slimy) is to body hug them and put them in my basket. At the end of the sample I was covered in slime guts and scales and every time I tried to wipe it off it just smeared to a new place on my rain gear. So Hung (the back line guy who helps me sort) took his fire hose and just hosed me down like dad used to threaten when I was little. I have put my rain gear in the laundry a couple of times and it never comes back completely clean but Hung's fire hose wash was the cleanest it has been in a couple of weeks.

Wildlife Viewing

A couple of cool things I have seen this week... a sea lion came up to the boat, luckily it came to the bow so I got to see it from the wheelhouse. And if it would have gone to the stern of the boat looking for fish I would have had to fill out a bunch of paperwork stating that the fishing industry interacted with a marine mammal. Later that day the deck boss came to find me in the factory to tell me there was a shark on deck (they are required by law to tell me if anything is too big to go into the factory). So I am thinking this is huge shark and I get all excited. It turned out to be a baby sleeper shark that was only about a yard long and sleeper sharks don't really have teeth. Still cool but not as awesome as I was hoping.

Dutch Harbor Earthquake

Just in case some of you were worried...I know there are a couple of you. We left Dutch Harbor the day before the earthquake hit. I am currently safely straddling the international date line far from Dutch Harbor. In case there is another one, don't worry I am an old pro at earthquakes, this would have been my 3rd earthquake. It is driving in snow that scares me to no end not Bering Sea storms and earthquakes.

Trying to Find the Fish

We were suppose to start fishing today but we can't find any fish right now so my 12 hours shift is filled with books, podcasts, movies, and studying for the GRE (Graduate School Entrance Exam). I downloaded 50 hours of "Stuff You Should Know" (The best podcast ever created) and "This American Life" thinking that this could last me the summer. I think I am already 30 hours into them so the end of the summer might be a bit rough. I have started a conservation policy I call the "listen when you are seasick, read when the seas are flat" policy. I think I have already read 5 books this month.

The boat has a huge database of movies that play in the galley (cafeteria). Since the factory is not processing I found myself eating breakfast at 3am with 50 Vietnamese and Guatemalan factory workers while watching "Remember the Titans". This led me to the awkward task of getting out of the galley past all of them without letting them see that I was crying (it get me every time I see it).

Well I have to go watch haulback, they are pulling up the net and I have to monitor for whales and sea lions. There are never any but I have to say that I looked.

Leaving Dutch Harbor

We had some delays so we were in town an extra day but now we are headed back out to sea, it will take about 20 hours to get to the fishing grounds. I left my camera at headquarters yesterday but luckily one of the crew members had to go into town so she swung by and picked it up. Life is like that out here, on shore yesterday Joel and I were walking out to his boat, which was like 1.5 miles each way and on the way back into town a lady stopped her pick up asked us where we needed to go and so I hopped into the bed of a strangers pickup and got a ride into town. This was my first ever hitch hiking experience, I like to imagine this was what living in a small town in the 50's was like. There have been several experiences in Alaska that are like going back several decades.

Around Dutch Harbor

A walk about town:

Oh how far I have fallen

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. One is from Summer 2010 the other is Summer 2011. As one of my close friends put it "Alaska is ruining my masterpiece"

DUTCH HARBOR, AK

So most of you think that I would be happy to see land after 2 weeks at sea. You would be right, except when I got back to Dutch I was what I guess you would call "landsick" after being seasick for 3 of the past 14 days. As I am sitting here writing this at headquarters the whole room is doing a subtle swaying motion and I am actually getting kinda nauseous. So luckily I have stashed Dramamine in every conceivable place and found some in my bag. Here are some pictures. I will put some up and write the captions later, some I will add to previous posts so go back a couple of pages if you want to see them all.

June 19th: On Fashion

These are my Xtra Tuffs


It has come to my attention that a couple of my readers may not be from the Pacific Northwest 1) Welcome 2) I will give a little bit of background so this makes sense.

In Washington and Oregon it is never hot, rarely cold and almost always a little bit damp. So most people wear sandals year round, if your feet are wet, they dry quickly but if you are wearing socks and shoes you are stuck with wet feet for hours. In the winter it can get a bit chilly so it is acceptable to wear socks with your sandals if your feet are a little bit chilly. You might take some crap for it but for the most part it goes unnoticed. I grew up in Washington so I think this is perfectly normal. I went to college in Massachusetts, were I learned that what I think of as perfectly normal may not always seem that way to other people.

So how this relates to life on the Bering Sea...
There are two distinct areas on the boat. The house where you have to wear sandals of some sort and deck/factory where you have to wear your Xtra Tuffs. (Pictures to come, they are about the ugliest boot you have ever seen). Since you are switching back and for between the two you normally have wool socks on with your house sandals. I happen to have come down to dinner one night without my socks on, just sandals and the head cook came out and told me that I HAVE TO wear socks with my sandals when I am in the galley area.

So to all my college friends who tried to teach me about 'normal' fashion, by health code law, my socks and sandals are a prefered method of footwear. I guess that makes me the normal one!

June 17th: On G forces

My room on the boat, I have the top bunk and the lead observer has the bottom


In normal life one does not think about G forces much, unless you are a physicist, a jet pilot, or race car driver. I have learned the hard way how little changes in G forces make a large difference on a boat. After many days of flat calm seas the wind has picked up to 30 knots and the sea height is now around 10 feet with some bigger swells popping up every once in a while. That feeling you get when you drop really fast in a roller coaster, yeah try having that every 5 seconds.

So on to how daily tasks are effected by changing G-forces...I was sitting on the toilet and I tried to stand up just like I have been doing for 20 years and all of a sudden I couldn't stand. It happened to be right as the boat was going down and there was more force on my body than my muscles had anticipated for this common task and so I did not go anywhere. Finding this odd and not thinking ahead very well, I tried to stand up again, which happened to be right when the boat was on an up swell. This resulted in me being launched from the seat and i almost flew into the shower stall. So I have determined that pre planning is not only essential when it comes to laundry but also to timing my standing attempts, and I am sure there is more to come.

June 9th: On Reality TV

One of the docks in Dutch Harbor from the up a mountain


I was sitting in a bar in Dutch Harbor and they had Deadliest Catch on the TV and all I could think was, that is a code 3, or that incident would be a lot of paper
work, it kinda takes the fun out of the show. Almost all the bits of the season that make it through the editing project require a lot of paperwork from the observer :)

In case you were wondering there are scientist observer on the Deadliest Catch boats, but the Alaska Department of Fish and Game will not allow the observers to sign the waiver to be allowed on TV. Apparently the observers and the cameramen are not the best of friends because they have a great shot and then the scientists walk through the shot doing their job and then they can't use the footage.

I am one of two scientists on board my boat we each work 12 hour shifts because the boat has a 120 person crew so they fish 24 hours a day. I am the junior scientist because this is my first contract but my lead observer has been around for like 12 years, she has some great stories about drinking with Sig Hansen before he was famous and then the next day he came into the processing plant and telling everyone tall tales about how she drunk him under the table.

June 16th: Changing life philosophies

Sunset on the Bering Sea

My favorite saying is "go big, or go home" whenever I am faced with a new opportunity I just ask myself if I would rather go home. This type of thinking is what leads you to finding yourself in the Bering Sea and other random places. There are a lot of people worried for my safety up here so i have added a slight twist to keep my more extreme ideas from seeming like a good idea: go big but come home.

June 14th: Very Important Person

This is from a mountain on Dutch Harbor before I shipped out, I told the other observer to "quick take a picture of me with the Bering Sea while I still think of it as an adventure, not a cold miserable god forsaken place"

By law the boat has to tell me 15 minutes before they start hauling a net on board. The Deck Boss normally comes down to the factory to find me but sometimes I am on my way to the wheelhouse when he comes to find me. I can hear over the radio as they track my progress through the boat. I hear the deck boss talk to the factory manager who mentions that the cooks saw me walk past the kitchen and then they radio up to the Captain who says, "she just walked in, over" "Jess we are hauling back in 15 minutes". It makes me feel like I have a bodyguard that is tracking my progress through rooms like the president. I spend 12 hours a day in a room by myself and the other 12 with hearing protection on gesturing to the factory worker who controls the speed of the convayer belt. I get my kicks where I can.

June 14th: Laundry Day

A friendly reminder in the wheel house of the ship


So in training they warned us that a lot of female observers find that their underwear goes missing when they do their laundry. Apparently this if funny to fisherman especially on the smaller boats. I am one one of the biggest boats in the fleet so we have a full time laundry guy. Talk about a sucky job, doing 120 fisherman's laundry for 16 hours a day. Today is Tuesday which is my assigned day, I was unsure if I was going to put my underwear in my laundry bag but then the Vietnamese guy who does all the laundry told me to "Bring here, put there, I take care" and for some reason that made it seem okay to risk my underwear in the boat laundry. I got it all back in case you were wondering.

Here is something they did not teach us in training...You get off a 12 hour shift in a fish factory, you have to get your nasty clothes off, into the laundry bag, take the laundry bag 2 levels down past 50 fisherman eating lunch and into the laundry room. Then you have to make it back to your room to shower without your new clothes smelling like fish. It took some definite pre planning.

June 11, 2011

Captain: if you hear that beeping just push that red button to make it shut off, it is warning us of a hurricane in Miami

Me: this red button

Captain : NO! that one will have the Coast Guard all over us, the other one.

June 14th, 2011

June 14: It seems that in Alaska...1) zipties can solve almost any problem 2) 'Shit ton' and 'huge ass' are standard units of measurements

First trip on the Bering Sea

I just spent a month in training and am now deployed on the Bering Sea as an on board scientist. I can only post pictures when I am in port becuase of the slow expensive internet availble on the boat. I also dont have a ton of time to post but I do have a lot of time to think since I stand and watch hundreds of tons of fish go by for 12 hours a day so some of my posts will be more in the form of status updates.

A brand new start

Hello!
If you are interested in keeping up with my summer in Alaska you have come to the right place. I am packing like a fiend whittling my life down to a small backpack and duffle. On Friday I will be flying from Seattle, Washington to Anchorage, Alaska for a month of training and then from there I will deploy out to the either the Gulf of Alaska or the Bering Sea. Check back for more details as my trip unfolds.

Jess