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.