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.