Wonders of being a Wallflower

One of the more interesting things about this whole experience is working with a crew that doesn’t speak your first language regularly. I recognize that for non-English speakers this might be something commonly experienced, but for me this is a first. This has led to dramatic alteration of my personality. As you might have been able to tell from this blog, it’s hard to get me to shut up. But on this voyage I have been uncharacteristically taciturn, shy even. I know it’s hard to imagine. Honestly even after 4 weeks, I haven’t yet come out of my shell and haven’t yet figured out how to behave most social situations. I suspect most people here think I am psychotic. You’re there, 15 people are talking at a rapid pace in French, talking about something, you have zero idea what although you did catch one word, your name, and then everyone laughs. They all then look at you. Um. What do I do? What do I do? Do I laugh too? ‘Oh yeah! Ha, ha, ha. Whatever it was that you said was hysterical!’ Do I maintain the somewhat blank-faced half smile I normally carry around, that probably looks like I once had a lobotomy, on my face? Or do I just keep staring at my pancakes and pretend that I wasn’t paying attention and hope everyone stops looking at me? Depending on how tired I am and who is sitting next to me, I pick at these choices randomly.

Now while this has its drawbacks, I have found that this alteration in my personality (aka not being an insufferable know-it-all and blabber mouth) is quite beneficial. First, you get to experience your inner voice in overdrive…hence this blog. I generally find topics to write about while immersed in long self-induced silences when a) its meal time and there are 15 French people speaking about various things simultaneously b) long boat rides while everyone is speaking French and c) on the deck while getting ready to dive when everyone is speaking French. Now I know some of you said that a great way to learn French is direct immersion. I’ve been deeply immersed for the last 4 weeks, and I’d say emphatically this is not true. Whoever said this has never truly been immersed I think. It is really hard to understand a language while its spoken rapidly by many people all about different things and not always with any context. Also this is a language that doesn’t pronounce most of the letters in the word, so even if I might have seen the word in the books I am reading in French, I’d never even know if anyone even said that freaking word. After many weeks immersed I’d say I can get maybe a few words if there some context or if people gesticulate. Otherwise I just get the noise the peanut characters make when talking on the phone “whan wha whan whan wan, Becky, hahahahah.” They’re making fun of me in French again aren’t they?

I’m a spring breaker on the Tara

But other than my internal monologue being tuned to high, being quiet, I found, has been useful for another reason. I am totally not in charge. No responsibilities really. Nada. I am so incompetent language wise, I basically just sit around and wait for people to tell me to do stuff. People who know me…ponder that for a couple minutes.  Me…waiting patiently for other people to tell me to do stuff. And even more shocking…then me doing it without offering an alternative opinion or making a wise crack about the plan. I know…. it’s hard to imagine. I too keep marveling at my ability to keep my trap closed. I have to say this has been awesome. I don’t have to make any choices! I don’t tell anyone what to do. I don’t have to make plans. I don’t have to drive the boat or trailer, badly. I don’t have to cook dinner or remind people that is not the way you cut onions. I don’t need to wake people up (cough, Rory) or make sure they (he) gets on the (his) plane. I don’t have to tell anyone to put on sunscreen (cough, Ryan), to stop cheating at cards (cough Stephanie), or to stop eating all our week’s worth of food in one sitting (cough Adrienne). All I need to do is take directions and try not to screw up too often. I am essentially a very well paid undergrad! Best thing ever! I should do this more often. I had planned to seriously learn French over the next year because we’ll be living part time in Moorea and because I want to wow the future crew with my language prowess on the next Tara cruise. But maybe I should say !@#$% it. If I don’t learn French, I will be back in the same place next year with zippo responsibilities. Tough choice.

Two heads aren’t always better than one

But all blessings sometimes are a curse, and sadly there are times when my reticence to speak up ended up biting me in the ass, or in this case, hitting me in the head. I suspect you all know where this is going. Becky gets hurt again. Yep that’s right people. Yesterday, when our new boat driver (name omitted to protect the guilty) decided that the best way to travel, no matter the weather or wave conditions, is at full throttle. On the way out and then again on the way back to Tara my PI brain was screaming inside. “What gives man, slow the hell down.” “Tell him to take it easy, Becky” “Tell him that someone is gonna get hurt and that it’s better to get there slowly than not at all.” But then I look around and eyeball everyone else getting ragged dolled on the boat and they all seem just fine with it. So then I feel like the old lady, tisk tisk tisk. “Slow down, sonny!”  But, alas, I should have trusted my instincts and wagged my finger and made a stink. Instead I now have a shiner on my left eye to match the bruise (which now everyone agrees looks like an atoll) on my leg.

To make a long story long, we went over the top of a particularly large wave at the speed of light. We then landed very hard in the next wave’s trough. Monche (our normal mellow and sane boat driver and DSO) and I both got thrown head first into the bow (we both managed to stay mostly upright and holding on to the side lines). With terrible timing and placement our heads found themselves in the same place at the same time. So I guess that ‘someone’ ‘who was gonna get hurt”… that was me…also Monche. Joy. To be honest I was more pist off than hurt. In fact, even though everyone saw it, and the DSO was asking me if I was okay the driver didn’t even stop. I had to tell him to stop to make sure I wasn’t bleeding or had a concussion. Luckily the wet and hot I felt on my face wasn’t blood, just seawater and pure rage. I’d say it was the first time this whole trip I was actually angry at someone. When we got back, we found that the gash on the right side of my left eye I received from Monche’s noggin was quite minor and was only a small impact cut. My sunglass took a majority of the of the force away from my eye socket and cracked. Monche is bald, and like sailor feet, he has sailor head, a sunburnt nugget covered in bruises and cuts from hitting his head on stuff all the time. So the new lump he got was a nice addition to the rest, and we have officially bonded, perhaps too literally. In the end I got a nasty head ache and a small black eye as well as vindication that although most of the time it’s good to keep your mouth closed… in this case I should have said something. Damn you, hindsight!

-Becky

Mangareva

Arrived into Gambier yesterday, and it’s been busy busy since then. If Ducie was a postcard atoll this place is the poster child for French Polynesia. Amazing azure waters in between huge mountains of volcanic rock with sheer cliffs. Palm trees and white sand beaches. I’m currently eating coconut harvested from the local beach. My roommate Elsa decorated the back deck with palm leaves, and we are all currently festooned in our tropical wear. Hello, Jimmy Buffett dreamscape. Except sadly no margaritas. God I really need a drink.

Yin and Yang reefs and the MMM

So while the above water sites of Gambier are astonishingly good looking, what about the underwater ones? Hmmm well that’s tough. Yesterday’s reef was, as Pete described, “all sorts of bad.” While there was a lot of diversity and good 3D structure, the corals were mostly dead, bleached, diseased, and in the process of dying. Even the evil fire coral was sick and mostly dead. If one was to stick their head underwater and then above it three times in a row it would sound something like “ugh,” “oh!”; “yuck”, “ahh!”; “eeek” and “sigh!”  Yeah I know that’s a weird thought, but I thought it.

But today’s dive was a very different story. This site was on the outside of the barrier reef and the corals were the healthiest we’ve seen on this expedition.  Plus, it was right at the edge of very deep water, so we were in some amazing fish company: huge schools of blue, pink, and marron parrotfishes (Scaridasomething) along with monstrous unicorn fish and surgeon fish. We were also blessed with several pelagic animals including three different kinds of tuna, giant trevally, and several sharks. It was awesome! Plus, it was a scouting dive so we could just look and watch. The down side of this site, is that it did take us almost an hour dingy ride to get there but I thought ‘hey no worries, it’s prime whale watching time.” Right? But any whales? No. Apparently there isn’t a single freaking whale in the entire Southern Hemisphere right now. I mean seriously, ocean, we’ve travelled 1700 miles, and you can’t put out 1 goddamn measly marine mammal? Sorry about the goddamn, Mom, I know how you hate that, but SERIOUSLY! JUST ONE! Come on! I’m not asking for a whole pod of breaching blue whales (although that would be nice). A dolphin maybe? Porpoise please? Seal sir? Walrus? ANYTHING? No… well fine. Be that way. Keep your whales to yourself. See if I care…. Okay I care, and I’m gonna be pist if I traveled half way across the planet on a sailboat and didn’t see even a whale spout.

I am a marine biologist goddess, beotches!

From some of my posts you might think I am pretty clumsy (true), that I spell bad (totaly true), and that I’m a somewhat of an incompetent marine biologist (incontrovertibly true). But as I think back on the last three weeks I want to present some evidence to the contrary and highlight some of my prouder moments during this sailing adventure…moments where I totally nodded my head, put my hair behind my ears, pat myself on the back, and thought to myself… ‘dude you just rocked that! You are a kickass marine biologist.’ So the following are just a few snippets of random things that have occurred where I owned it.

1. Pencil meets a sharp ‘end’!

When Emilie (me dive buddy) and I were diving one day our handy-dandy pencil’s ‘end’ met a sad ‘end’ (see what I did there…snort laugh) against a rock. Emilie was distressed, but I looked her in the eyes, wagged my finger, pointed to her knife, and sharpened the shit out of that pencil, old school style. Both Pete and Emilie remarked on my quick cleverness underwater. +1 marine biologist point.

2. Tied some wicked knots!

Had to attach some weights to my fancy PVC gear and tied some killer knots I learned rock climbing. When one sailor came by and asked to make sure I did it right, his shocked face at my ropey awesomeness was priceless. +1

3. Taught French sailor guys to speak California girl.

Nothing is more fun than teaching Frenchie sailors weird surfer slang like “cashed” “dude” and “wicked”. Now all the sailors say in a french accent (imagine an accordion is playing in the background) “it is as, Becky, says….casssshhhed” as in “my tank is cashed” “I am cashed” and “the soap is totally way cashed…dude.” No points but hysterical.

4. Only used 200 bar during a 70 minute dive! +1

5. Used my emergency responder training. 

‘Annie, Annie, (really Emilie, Emilie) are you okay? No? Did the first mate smash your fingers under a scuba tank? Yes? Okay, I am, sort of, maybe, trained in first aid. Can I assist you? … and I make the most amazing finger splint ever! +2 points

6. Giant stride off a 103ft sailboat, 15 feet off the deck.

Perfect 10! Threw a “wheee” into it. +1, although the DSO just hung and shook his head. ‘A-mer-i-cans! What show offs.’

7. Can now identify a total of 3 coral species (well, genera really), sometimes. YES! +3

8. Peed in my wetsuit. And admitted it. +1

Even though I was informed that it was not allowed because we wear ‘communal’ Tara wetsuits, I peed in that baby. Many times. You really expect me to go three hours without peeing after I drank five BOWLS of coffee this morning? Right. All you people lie. I know you peed in there. What, the French have giant bladders of steel? I don’t think so. Fess up.

9. Informed the crew that the English name for that bird we just saw is a “boobie.” Lots more snort laughs. +1

10. Gave a fish a kiss.

Remember those annoyingly friendly fish? Well while we waited at a 3-minute safety stop, I took my reg out and literally gave one a kiss. +1, although he/she didn’t like it and swam away. -1

Till next time land ‘lubbers!  -Becky

You know you are procrastinating writing that paper when you spend a good two hours making mix tapes… yes, I know they are called ‘play lists’ now, kids. But this week while steaming to Mangareva I did just that, made three play lists for the crew. I did this because for the last few days I’ve done some unofficial DJing in club Tara. But as to be expected my POS laptop has been acting weird and would only play music in iTunes format and refused to connect to my external hard drive for some unknown reason, so I was limited in my selection of appropriate music for this international audience. But when I finally fixed those issues I had at my disposal 50Gig of sonic bliss. Now we are ready for everything: a euro-style dance party, a chronic mellow chill session, a tropical breezy feel good jaunt, or classic rock sing along festival. With the traverse, it’s nice to just laze around the galley or back deck of the boat and listen to some tunes ’cause reading and writing can induce the heaving (see second half of this blog).

BIRDS! And the Shark Hallows

Oh, I forgot to catch you all up on the sharks at Ducie. Recap! So we did end up seeing a ton of sharks, but really only in the lagoon of the island. A super scary amount as previously predicted. To get to the lagoon we had to traverse the island and literally step over a baby Murphy’s petrel every 3 feet. I’ve never seen so many birds before; it was a veritable bird mine field. Someone described it as a real life video game where you had to step in the right spot or lose a life. It was pretty crazy, and every chick seemed to think we were gonna give him food cause when we got near they opened their beaks and squawked at us, “raaaaaaaa!” I got’s nothing but love baby bird.

Baby Murphy’s petrel

When we got to the lagoon things got even more wildlife crazy. We suited up and stepped in the lovely blue and green lagoon. (Cross off that digital camera from the list cause apparently even though it said it was water proof, it wasn’t.) The lagoon had two parts, a very shallow (1/2 m) step made out of compressed and fossilized coral bits that was about 100 meters wide. It looked and felt like someone took a gazillion pounds of Acropora branches and melted them together to make a rip rap beach. The water was clear and blue, beautiful and welcoming. Then there was the lagoon itself, a different beast altogether. The edge of shallow area dropped off into deeper and darker water that had a menacing feel. And the place was pretty darn creepy, dark green water with tall 5m pillars of coral that formed a maze. Shark maze! That’s a maze I did not want to go in. If the outside was an advertisement for the loveliness of tropics then the inside was like an advertisement for a bad B-horror movie. Perhaps I felt this way because within seconds (I am not exaggerating) we were quickly ‘approached’ by 12 grey reef sharks. Big fatty sharks, not those little pups we saw on the forereefs. Mama and dada sharks, 2 meters in length and girthy. And when I said ‘approached’ I really meant they swam straight at us, like a pack of either a) happy puppies (preferable really) or alternatively angry pit bulls. Now it’s hard to read the face of a reef shark, but based on their twitchy swimming I decided it was the later and hid behind Chris. Actually all three of us quickly retreated back to the shallows where the sharks didn’t seem to want to enter but from where we could watch them swim around and around. It was an intense experience. After the sharks patrolled the entrance to the lagoon for a good 3-5 minutes they retreated back into the depths where we couldn’t see them and to where we didn’t really want to follow. My impression of the whole things was that the sharks were telling us… “No no no people… I don’t think so. This place is ours, so STHO.” So we did. While I cowered at the edge of the lagoon, I nicknamed the place the “shark hallows.”

On the way back to the ship I got to see even more sharks. I saw more sharks in that 2-hour trip than the rest of the trip combined. As we snorkeled through the remarkably beautiful shallow reef adjacent to the boat we saw a tons of huge monstrous lobsters and 3-4 sleeping white tip sharks. I actually think it was one of the prettiest sites I saw on the island, although it’s hard to be a tourist when you are working underwater. But as I swam from the reef over to the deeper water where the ship was anchored, I saw a small baby white tip (1.5ft maybe) take off from the bottom and high tail it towards me. Now a shark is a shark no matter how small, but I was only a little concerned ’cause this thing was so little. Well at first. But this shark was making a bee line to me like you couldn’t imagine, and I thought “what the hell does this baby shark want from me?” A hunk of flesh? Or a cuddle? Well I picked up some speed and grabbed Chris who’s more than 6ft tall and 230, showed him the shark, and hid behind him again. He makes a conveniently large barrier. When we both faced it, it sort-of slowed down, but it was still heading straight for us, like it was on a mission. Then another person came over and the shark finally changed its mind. It turned and started to circle us. We swam around each other for a while and I started to realize this animal just really wanted to check us out. It was curious beastie! We were probably the first humans it had ever seen and it, like any kid, wanted to play. Or least I hope that’s what it wanted. But it was an experience that really stuck with me. I can imagine that shark’s face in my mind’s eye very clearly, and I sincerely hope that he/she gets to live a nice long sharky life at Ducie. I thought it was a very appropriate last water experience at Ducie Island, and it left me with a good feeling instead of the sadness I experienced on the first few dives. Thanks, little buddy.

Homesick Seasick Mesick

After we left Ducie we started our 4 ½ day journey to Mangareva. When we are underway this is usually when people suffer from seasickness. Luckily thus far I have had only three minor bouts of seasickness. One with the blue cheese pasta in the big seas and the other when we weren’t really moving at all, but when someone showed a shakey handcam video reel of sharks in the lagoon. It was Blair Witch yackatude all over again. Although to be honest, I haven’t actually spewed chunks at all this trip.  Just wanted to really. And then there was yesterday. Since we collected the bleaching data at Ducie the other scientists and I have been very motivated to wrap up our analysis and write a paper. The bleaching we recorded was around 30% and the more coral there was the less bleaching. So while I attempted to make some Excel graphs I got super motion sick. Now Excel graphs usually just make me metaphorically sick, but in this case they made me literally sick. Haven’t really recovered yet, and had been feeling pretty horrible all day yesterday and all last night. That’s why this blog is so late in the coming. Also, laying in bed all day can make you feel physically better but unfortunately it’s not good for the soul. Add super homesick to that seasick and you have a sad Becky. I guess its par for the course after three weeks away, but I am really missing my family, friends, and my students right now. I’m having a hard time knowing that its still two more weeks before I am home. In a funny twist, when I was feeling angry at Microcoft and then sick afterwards, my roommate Elsa quipped “it’s actually nice to see you angry and sad, because it shows you are human.” And I was very human yesterday. A tad too human for my taste. So to cheer me up, please send me emails (becky@tara5.oceanbox.net) and tell me what you are up to these days, what you are currently thinking about, or how much you love or hate my blog. Till next time, salty dogs!

Current position: 24 26 886 S, 125 29 376 W

# miles to Gambier: 529

Wind speed: <15

# of times hit head on hatch today: 0, but made up with it by hitting back of head on a low hanging ceiling. Cried a little.

# of gallons of diesel fumes consumed: 12,583

IQ score: -2

# of completely intact toe nails: 7

Avast me hardies. It’s time to trim the main! Baton down the hatches! Flibber the gibbits! We are off to sail the ocean blue. Actually… don’t do any of those things I just mentioned because there is no wind, and once again we are using the engines to make it on time to our next island, the Polynesian island of Gambier. In truth, its Polynesian name is Managreva and only the French call it Gambier. But I’m sailing with a French crew so I will continue to call it Gambier unapologetically. We left Ducie Island this morning and should reach our destination by the 20th. Then we will have six days to complete our mission on this portion of the Tara Pacific expedition. For today’s longish blog, however, I will recap some of the events and issues of the last few days of work at Ducie.

Ducie got all scienced up

In all regards the past trip to Ducie, it was a remarkable success. We did all the things we aimed to with the exception of collecting a coral core because we couldn’t find any coral heads big enough. Along with the things we aimed to do, the coral team also managed to conduct two additional unplanned projects. Given the remoteness of this location, only a single study has ever been published about it. So we reasoned that since we were here, let’s science the crap out of this place. So we (one microbiologist, one phylogeneticist, one physiologist, and one biogeochemist who doesn’t study corals at all) did it to the best of our abilities. We conducted a coral biodiversity study were we basically took tiny bits of everything we could visual distinguish as a coral and put it in some buffer for genetic and microbiological analyses. We also conducted a bleaching prevalence and severity study. That means this microbiologist got to wear her ‘marine ecologist’ hat, which in this case took the form of a transect tape and stuff made out of PVC with holes drilled in it, duct tape, and zip ties. Definitely zip ties. Can’t forget the zip ties.

So with our quadrats and transect tapes, we did 18 bleaching transects across three sites on the island. And there was a shocking amount of bleaching, although again the reef is insanely beautiful. But to our knowledge, this will be the first report of bleaching in Ducie. And how weird is that? Well one way to tell you how weird that is, is to give you the water temperature I endured for 70 minutes yesterday in my 5mm wetsuit. 19C (66F, ‘Mericans)! I was so cold by the end of that last dive at Ducie I could barely write on my slate. After I got on board and finished all my clean up duties I spent two hours under my goose down comforter to warm up. Shit was Arctic down there.

So if it’s so damn cold here then why are ~100% of the Pocillopora and 50% of the Montipora at 10-15 meters water depth bleached, you ask? Good question, the one person reading this entirely too long blog. In truth, I have no good answer, and we will likely never know. But I suspect it’s because sometime in the recent past is wasn’t so cold and was hot enough to bleach the corals. Now remember kids, this is the Southern hemisphere so its winter now. But in just April there was bleaching in Moorea, also in the Southern hemisphere. But Moorea is also 12 degrees north, while its 24 at Ducie. So much farther south. Nevertheless, perhaps during the summer months it got warmer than the sub-Antarctic waters we experienced this week. And I guess if that was true, then most of the corals have recovered but a few sensitive species have not. Now I am no bleaching expert, so I just don’t know, but that’s what collaborators are for.  So when I get back, I’ll consult with them (Adrienne Correa I’m looking at you). Everyone will have to sit tight on this story until then.

Sailor feet and dishes

Now if you were paying attention, then you’ll note the title of this blog. We are now three weeks into the five week trip and stuff is seriously starting to falling apart. The boat. The gear. People. Everything has a breaking point, and at sea, that point is left of center. Right now every crew member is trying to fix stuff before we get to Gambier ’cause too many serious things can go wrong when stuff falls apart. For example, the first concerning thing to break was the desalination machine. Water. We need it. Not that salty stuff we’re sailing in, but fresh, sweet water. To drink. To cook with. And to clean stuff in. But no desalinator and no fresh water. Luckily we have a crew that can fix almost anything. So now it’s sort of working but showers are short and we clean our dishes in salt water.  

Speaking of dishes. Another thing that seriously inconvenienced our life was the discovery that “we are sinking.”  “Sinking!” At least that is what I was told by the first mate and captain in a very flat tone when I discovered about five people huddled around the galley sink the other day. My reply… “excellent…” and then I went on to finish up my duties. Apparently the kitchen sink hasn’t been flushing into the bilge area but instead into the hull of the ship. So we were taking on water, or we HAD taken on a lot of water. Days’ worth. Days’ worth of sink-water. Think about that for a moment ’cause it’s gonna be important later. But the engineers were back to the rescue. It took them two days to fix it. Unfortunately, one of those days was when I was on dish washing duties.  So I had to haul, and then wash, dishes and cookwear for 16, on the back deck, in the dark, in the rain. Both ways. No me gusta.

Importantly, when I was crouched down in that rain that night, I started to notice a strange phenomenon among the crew that I deemed “sailor feat.” Yes… sailor feet.  As each member of the crew showed up to the back deck with even more dishes, I was in close, intimate proximity to their feet. Thus I started noticing just how jacked the feet of sailors are. They are all sorts of messed up. There are toes pointing the wrong ways. There are lumps and bumps where there should be no lumps or bumps. There are cuts and bruises and scars galore.  I guess it comes with the territory where even the most seemingly innocuous part of the boat is a weapon of mass bodily destruction waiting to happen.

So fast forward a couple days to last night when in reflection, I looked at my feet and thought “yep, sailor feet, here I come.” Cause my feet now look like raw meat.  My whole left foot is mangled. I lost half my big toe nail, cut my little toe down the middle, and my foot is all black and blue half way up to my instep. Oh and did I mention my leg? Well remember that broken sink and the water in the hull? You might have wondered, “how does one get rid of water in the hull?” I thought it would involve some fancy smancy equipment but nope, just a vacuum. Wet/dry vacuum to the rescue. This precise activity was a quite a sight to behold. The engineer deftly held the hose and the first mate expertly turned on the vacuum, and whamo!, a tub full of the most disgusting old sink water from dinners, lunches, and breakfasts past… mixed with oil and grease for maximum disgust. Yummy. After I watched them do this seemingly mindless task I remarkably, stupidly, asked if I could help. I thought I could handle that turning the vacuum part on pretty well and would get super awesome cred for being so helpful. Instead, I was unceremoniously handed said bucket of yuck and told to haul it upstairs and pour it overboard. I looked at the bucket and thought, hmmm, this seems like a more than I was bargaining for… but hell yeah, I can do that! Also I didn’t want to look like a wuss, so time to get that bucket cleaning done.

What then transpired was a lesson in knowing one’s limits but then ignoring them entirely. I did manage to make my way up the stairs of a moving vessel holding in both hands a couple gallons of filth. Got to the top and onto the deck. I thought “that wasn’t so bad. I so got this.” Then for the harder part, I had to traverse the assortment of metal-thingies, ropy-thingies, with no hands to hold onto stuff, and then make it to the edge of the boat to pour bucket of yack out without falling in myself. Sadly, albeit not entirely unexpectedly, I made it only half way and slipped on the rainy wet deck. Me, bucket, and 10 liters of the most impossibly disgusting assortment of mostly rotten human edibles landed on said metal thing. Nailed it!

Lucky for me only one sailor was witness to my shame and sudden filthiness. To make matters worse I had just literally showered and changed into clean clothes which I had just gotten cause the washing machine had been broken for days. But pride being what it is, I said “I’m fine. It’s nothing. I’ll just pour the 300 mL’s left of this bucket over the gunwale and clean up the deck.” After I did, I went sheepishly back to the galley a good ten minutes later to give the bucket back to the first mate without looking him in the face and went and took another shower. So how bad was it?  Well, I didn’t break anything, but see ‘sailor feet.’ And for maximum gore I’ve attached a picture! You’re welcome!

Really, you’re welcome.

But I’ve had worse. And the whole thing has given me a great excuse to lie around and tell all my horrible injury stories to anyone willing to ask. You all know I love to tell a “once when I was blah blah blah, I got blah blah blah…”. Plus, drop one injury story at dinner with a bunch of people with sailor feet and you’ve got an evening to remember. And since it was our last night in Ducie, we celebrated by having dinner on the deck with some wine and good music to dance and limp to.

Ahoy, mateys! As you can see from this blog, I was not consumed or mortality wounded by an elasmobranch. In fact, we just completed a third dive at Ducie Island and I have seen a total of 0 sharks. I did see a freaking sailfish and that was awesome, but alas no sharkie sharks.  Now normally this wouldn’t bother me and in most places I wouldn’t think anything of it. But this island WAS known for sharks.  Perhaps a little too well known I guess.  While I didn’t see any sharks I did find evidence to why.

As scientists we seek answers to perplexing observations. Past reports said there would be sharks, so our hypothesis was that we would see sharks. Our hypothesis was rejected by a replicate of three dives across three very different sites on the islands. So we formulated several new hypotheses. 1) The sharks are gone because its winter. 2) The sharks are really there but we just haven’t been to the right place or dove at the right time. 3) The sharks aren’t here because someone or something made them go away. Well on my first dive I found pretty strong evidence that is was the latter hypothesis.  

While looking at the corals, Pete, the dive photographer (who BTW filmed Steve Irwin get killed by sting rays and has hung out with Patrick Stuart OMG) and I found two ‘shark clips’ connected to some brand new rope. My guess is whoever left that tackle did it not but one week ago because those clips were brand new and the line had no algae or anything on it. So there was some data to suggest that the sharks were fished recently. (Please note…if you don’t want to be depressed skip to paragraph that starts “To end the blog on a good…”)

But what about the other hypotheses. In my distress of not seeing any sharks, yesterday I emailed a colleague, Alan Friedlander, who was the first author on that paper about the unusual amount of shark biomass here on Ducie Island. I asked him if he only saw the sharks in one place on the island. He immediately responded and said no, the sharks were everywhere and they saw lots on every dive. Thus hypothesis 2 was rejected. I guess we will never know if the sharks simply come here only in March (hypothesis 1) when the last survey was done unless someone comes back in a future March to document that.

So most of the evidence and rumors about fishing boats in the area suggest that the sharks were poached. Yes, poached! This is a British Island and they don’t fin sharks here. For those not familiar with finning, it’s the process of catching a live animal, namely a shark, and cutting all its appendages off while it is alive and then throwing it overboard to die from a) suffocation b) bleeding to death c) being eaten by other animals or most likely d) all of the previously mentioned combined. Personally I think it’s a brutal and savage way to kill an animal…any animal. Clearly I’m upset. In fact I’m truly depressed about this. I came here thinking (see blog #1) that we would see an unspoiled habitat, one somewhat untouched by humankind. But clearly that was a fantasy and there is no such place anymore. As most of you know I’m a pretty positive person, but this really makes me sad and extremely angry.  I was up all night thinking about it. I don’t have any answers, but I do know that as a society we should fight finning as much as we can. Sharks kill a handful a people a year, but we kill millions upon millions. Sorry for the grim post, but unfortunately a lot of marine biology is sad news these days.  

To end the blog on a good note, despite the sharks, we had a wonderful last two days here at Ducie Island. It is a postcard island with amazing breaking waves on one side, a huge lagoon on the inside, and several sets of motus filled with trees and birds. The weather is fair and cool with onshore breezes refreshing us during the day and night, but mostly sunny and clear during the day. It feels a little unfair that we get to experience such perfection. I can certainly understand why those guys on the Bounty wanted to stay because this is truly a tropical paradise.

All the science teams had successful collections of corals, fish, water, and video.  All the crew worked tremendously hard to make a flawless day on the water and on Tara. The fish here are shockingly friendly and a tad annoying as they follow us very closely (dude, fish, get out of my face) as we dive and collect. Now we also have some resident fish who’ve taken up living under the boat and who’s days are likely numbered given the spear fisherman on the boat.

We plan for more sampling tomorrow and hopefully more shark sightings and encounters. We hope to find a way to enter the lagoon which remains shrouded in mystery. Alan told me that they sampled inside it, and that’s its very different than the forereef. I asked him how they made it in, and he replied “crazy kiwi.” Well we don’t have a crazy Kiwi. We have some crazy Frenchies but none that are willing to be that crazy. It’s like Jaws on the outside, barrels 10 feet tall that break on the reef. We’ve watched the tides and even at high tide it seems semi-suicidal to attempt getting a zeppelin in there. And if you did make it in, how the hell would you get out? So right now the plan is to find a way to venture on foot. I am particularly excited about this because I’d like to see the very populous bird colonies that are all over the tree and ground. There are masked boobies, white terns, tropics birds, and Murphy’s petrels. These petrels are special here. 90% of the total world population live at Ducie. So if we travel across land we need to be very careful not to disturb the birds or trample on their nests. So we likely try and stick to the beach and give the birds their space. But still…BIRDS!!!    

Date: Sunday September 16, 2016, 14:57 (now on PST)

# days since arriving on Tara: 16

Current Location: 25 05 408 S; 121 31 631 W

Current Speed: 9.5 knots using both engines

Max Wind Speed in the last 24 hours: 12 knots

Current wind speed: 4.5 knots hence the double engines

# of hours before we reach our next destination, Ducie Island: 23

# of times my head hit my hatch today: (0! But, there is still time)

# of Nautical Miles Tara has gone since it left France: ~11,000

# of Marine Life Animals Seen in route to Ducie Island: 11 birds, 5 flying fish (4 alive, one dead on the deck), 3 jellys, and 1 green plastic jug mistaken for a turtle

# of other boats seen on the radar: 0 since Easter Island

# of pots de crème I have eaten in 24 hours: 4

# of papers written since arriving on Tara: 0

Amount of science in last blog: 0

Amount of science in this blog: 0

Amount of science in next blog: Undetermined. Likely 0

# of French words learned in the last 24 hours: 8

# of French words learned in the last 24 hours that I can repeat on this blog: 0

Hi everyone,

So it’s Sunday. Sunday Sunday Sunday! A few things are different on Sundays. We get to eat meat, and it is drill day (fire drill today at 16:15). And yes, I said we get to get meat today. Meals on Tara are almost 100% vegetarian (vegetarian being no animals with four or two legs shall be consumed) with Sunday as the exception. Strangely enough I hadn’t even noticed that the food lacked meat until last Sunday when someone pointed it out. That is how delicious and amazing the food has been, that it’s so good, meat is not necessary at all. Although, I will admit, after a week with no protein other than cheese, fish, and shellfish I was super excited. So today we ate an insane lunch of braised and herb crusted pork in duxelle (mushroom) sauce with roasted potatoes and carrot salad. Oh and coffee pots de crème. Wheeeeeee!!

Now I thought I was gonna come home thinner and tanner than before. Ixnay that first part for sure. So given the 10,000 calorie meal, after brunch I led an impromptu yoga class on the deck. Since the seas are so light and following it wasn’t an impossibility. In fact, it was quite a success, and several others of the crew and science team want to do it tomorrow too. Ideally in two days we can find a remote beach and even get the whole boat to Downward some Dog at Ducie Island. Namaste, people. Namaste.

In other news, last night I was on watch from midnight to 2am. Sounds tough but it was actually one of my favorite parts of the day because it’s so rare to see the skies at night in a place where there is literally NO light pollution other than that from the moon. Also how often can you see the sky in 360 degrees? Every star is brilliant and any meteors that streak across the sky are breathtaking. Sadly, I think we are going to just miss the new moon, but I can only imagine the sky around here in the middle of the ocean on a completely dark night. I’m off tonight but will definitely stick my head outside after dinner to see if the skies are clear again.

Tomorrow, we reach our second sampling site, Ducie Island (I know it’s a super weird name), which is in the Pitcairn Islands, some of the most remote places in the world. A recent paper by Friedlander et al. (I guess there is some science in this after all, whoo hoo) suggests that this island has some of the largest top predator biomass of any island in Polynesia, with ~33% of all the biomass being in the form of large bitey things. How nice. It is also home to many more species of reef-forming corals that take up another 33% of the biomass. So sharks and Scleractinians will be found in abundance, and I mean abundance. Or so we are told.

Now fish stories are fish stories, so I’m trying to keep my expectations low which is a nice way to live cause you are always pleasantly surprised. I think in this case I’ll be pleasantly surprised no matter which way the fish story goes. Basically I’m also trying to keep my apprehension about the bitey things at minimum too. But just this morning one of the French sailors aboard, Fanch, said that when he was there 4 years ago, there were so many sharks that everyone GTFOed from the water.  Then, in a somewhat sympathetic tone, he said, “but it will probably be fine for you though.” Probably. Oh good. Good old… “probably!” A favorite word of mine. Goes nicely with “well maybe” and “likely” and “who knows if” followed by “you’ll get eaten.” So if you don’t get a new post by tomorrow night…. “probably” was more like “actually” or “certainly” or “I’ll put money on it.” So sailors, wish me fair winds tonight and recently well fed sharks tomorrow.

Like most of the sailors and science crew, I’m currently covered in bruises and cuts and abrasions. A sail boat is a veritable ER doctor’s dream because literally almost everything on it can hurt you due to the fact that the floor is moving and there is lots of stuff everywhere to fall and slip onto, whack your noggin on, crunch your fingers and toes in, and basically disfigure you continuously. So here is a little summary of the most notable injuries I or others have sustained since I’ve arrived.

1. The Hatch

This mini door that allows fresh air to be exchanged with stank in my room is the bane of my current existence. It hangs down from the middle of my ceiling in my cabin, which is often where my head is also located. I’ve stopped counting now the number of times I’ve hurt myself on this jerk, but I’ve hit basically every part of my head on this thing, the front, back, sides, and even poked my eye on it. F-bombs galore.

2. Doorways

I’m lucky enough that with my height this is less of a problem for me, but every day I see someone whack the front or back of their heads on these. I am more prone to hitting my arms on the sides when a big wave hits.

3. Steps

Toes and feet beware, as there are many of these to stub yourself on. Some are wood and some are metal, but all hurt.

4. Dishes

When this boat is a rocking those dishes and knives can go flying. The trick during meals is to gauge the period and height of those waves and get your mitts ready to grab whatever flies off the table. Yesterday in the middle of the night I got so sick of listening to the dishes smash into the side of their storage space I got up and stuffed the dish towels around them. Surprised this wasn’t standard operating procedure before, although it seems to have been adopted now.

5. The Deck

Actually this was my first introduction to the pain inflicted by the boat. On my first night watch I tripped on a line (see #11) while checking out a strange noise in the dark and wham….the whole left side of my body was strongly caressing the deck of the boat.  Ow.  But I somehow managed to not hit any of the random metal things on the deck so I think that’s a win-win. Plus it was a good lesson to learn….always be aware of what’s near your feet.

6. Scuba Tanks

These are some of the more scary items on a moving vessel. 20-30 pounds of steel that contain pressurize air waiting to come out. In tall cylinder form, these tanks are not stable and warrant severe caution while managing them. The tank holder set up they have here works on three tanks at a time so if you release one you release them all. That means your toes and feet could get crushed if you don’t mind the other two while working on yours.  

7. Other People

Throwing your fellow sailors and colleagues under the bus is looked down on in any good crew, but seriously we all seem to find ourselves hitting or hurting each other, physically and emotionally. For example, Marion is cutting onions at this moment and I can’t see anything as a result. But on the super small dinghy, this is especially rampant. I must have clocked or gotten clocked by someone putting on their gear like 3 times already. I had someone put a tank on my foot, and I managed to elbow Chris in the face.Sorry dude. Also since my French is so bad this is where I tend to get teased. During our dive at the super big swell site, I was on watch for the other divers. Two Taranauts, Nico and Monche were waiting with me when I said “Over there guys.” In a not-so-flattering and highly nasal voice (Do I really sound like that?), both French dudes immediately said “Over thereeeeee guyssss!” and then giggled. Hmmm. Interesting. It’s the fact that they both did it simultaneously that suggested to me that this reply was practiced behind my back late in the night when I was asleep. But it’s all in good fun and I’m thick skinned. Next time I will make it even more annoying and high pitch to add to the fun.     

8. A Random Box on the Floor

While labelling the other day, (see last blog) I managed to destroy my shin on a plastic box filled with samples. I then realized that the stupid person who put that box right where my leg goes, was my very own self. Nice.   

9. The Bathroom Door

Really the bathroom doors should count as two because you can get hurt on both sides, where it latches and where the hinge is. The doors are always kept closed for a reason but if you are unfortunate enough to try to get in one of these small coffin-sized potty rooms and a big wave hits, you better hope your finger isn’t in the hinge (did this yesterday) or on the latch.

10. The boom

It’s called this for a reason. Keep your head away from it.

11. The lines/ropes

While lines (sailors’ term for ropes) will trip you up easily (see ‘the deck’) they can also do all sorts of other horrible things to your body.  They can give you a burn and tear small parts off of your body, as Chris and his toe nail found out a few days ago. Chris was moving his scuba tank to secure it when he managed to clip a rope on the deck and bent that sucker right back and then off. Cue cuss words and squeals about the blood. Definitely the biggest ouch since we got here.

12. The boat as a whole

As I mentioned, she rocks, she rolls and she shudders, especially when in big seas. Yesterday in our 15 foot waves and 35 knot winds she rocked, rolled, and shudder half the science team into their beds. Barf city. I was all good all day until the chef served a delicious pasta with blue cheese sauce that sent me on the vomit comet. No one wants to spew blue cheese, believe me.

Panoramas don’t work too well when the ship’s rocking like crazy…

13. A sponge

This one was unexpected, but Guillaume my cleaning partner managed to throw a soapy sponge straight into my face while attempting to toss it to Monche during cleaning time. Soap + eye = sad Becky, but hysterically laughing French sailors (see #7).

14. Your laptop

Besides the induction of seasickness while reading and writing on this, I managed to somehow pinch my leg skin in between the screen and back of the computer while writing on my lap. What is my deal, really?  

15. A pineapple

Before we left for Ducie island, Marion our chef had to go shopping on Easter Island for enough supplies to feed 16 people three 3-course French meals for 20 days. That is a lot of food. So I offered to help put the food away. I hauled, packed, and lifted hundreds of pounds of food across the ship. Mostly I managed, but I did end up damaging one orange, crushed one box on a door way, and slit my right wrist. The culprit of the cut wrist was a freaking stray pineapple. In revenge, Marion immediately cut the bastard up into pieces for fruit salad. But there remains one loose pineapple. I got my eyes on you, Pineapple. Come any closer and it’s piña colada time.

Still having good time, though!

Right now it 5:45pm. We are underway to a new mooring because our last one was too rough. The swell was considerable, I’d say 3 meters, and relentless. We were getting beaten up and stuff on the boat was falling and breaking all over the place. Yet with the transit I have some free time to write this blog.

One question I had been asking myself (and so maybe have you) since I found out I’d be on this ship was what an average day would be like. So here’s my first week’s impression of life on Tara. Overall it’s remarkably busy but oddly relaxed. I never feel too rushed like I often do in the field. I do often feel like I am in people’s way, but I guess that comes with living on a boat with 16 people.  Hallways and stairwells can really only hold one person, and I am constantly say “Pardon” or “Excuse moi” to get past people when I am on my tenth trip to the stern to get something I ran out of or forgot.  Despite this everyone is generally agreeable and pleasant despite my running around and always being in the way.

A day in the life of a Taranaut

An average day consists of 1) eating, 2) cleaning, 3) diving, 4) sample processing, 5) cleaning, 6) eating, 7) dry lab working, 8) more eating, 9) more cleaning, and 10) sleeping. This is a French boat so the eating part is very important, and amazing. Meals are not to be rushed and they are surprisingly formal given the very relaxed nature of the crew. In fact, I got some tut-tuts and stink eye from the crew for trying to finish putting away the samples during lunchtime. Breakfasts are self-serve (lunch and dinner are served) and usually consist of coffee and tea with bread, jam, butter, fruit, and cereal. The French use bowls for their coffee and dunk their bread, butter, and jam into it. A BOWL OF COFFEE! Yes! It’s like my favorite thing ever, and I don’t understand why we American’s have never picked up this tradition. I mean a BOWL of coffee, people! Also Marion, our chef, makes her own jam and butter. Wowzer. I can’t get enough of her passionfruit spread and feel guilty every time I eat more of it cause I know there is not much. In fact she also brought homemade cheese and honey from France along with many other French products.   

Dive time; and yes its winter in Easter Island

After breakfast we clean up the kitchen and then prepare for the dive and coral- and water-sampling. This entails packing our sampling bags of five main things: camera, quadrat, sampling bags, hammer/chisel, and slate with underwater paper for sampling notes. We also get our dive gear ready and don our wetsuits. The water here is unusually cold for Polynesia, so we are wearing a 3mm long john suit under a 3mm hooded top. That’s six mm chest and 3 everywhere else. Despite this everyone is cold. After 1 hour underwater in 20°C water you are pretty darn cold. Then we put out the “dinghy” or zeppelin boats and load them up. On day one, I called the dinghy a “zodiac” but was quickly chastised. Apparently this company who makes these inflatable boats is “zeppelin” not “zodiac” and I was warned not to make the mistake again. Um. Okay?

Scientific Tangent:

Fun fact… rapamycin, the commonly used antibiotic, is named after the place where it was discovered, Rapa Nui! This drug comes from a strain of Streptomyces bacteria previously isolated in the soils of Easter Island where we are sampling now.

The dinghy boats are quite nice and feel really sturdy in the water even though they only have 70 horsepower outboard engines.  Once the dinghies are launched and the dive gear loaded by crane, we can climb down the ladder into them.  This is an interesting experience every time as Tara’s deck sits about 15 feet above the water. Today the swell was about the same height so it took quite a couple of tries for the captain of the zodiac, I mean zeppelin, to get everyone on board unscathed. Getting out was actually more interesting today.

Captain Sam on the dinghy

These dive boats have one captain and can fit another 7 people on them. We work in teams of three underwater so that’s two teams and one “watcher”: a person (our dive safety officer actually) who floats in the water and looks for the divers. The captain follows the watcher as we cannot anchor these boats, and in these seas we would never even try. Once we are onboard, we head out on our heading to the GPS point.  Today that consisted of a rock motu (island) off the west side of the main harbor of Easter Island. So it was … BIG … out, today. I think that is probably the biggest seas I have ever dove in, although I was never worried about my safety in the least. This crew is not phased by 12 foot seas, and they exude so much confidence and are so relaxed that they make you relaxed and confident too. Plus, I knew that once we were under the water we’d be fine. One issue with these boats, however, is space! It’s hard to put on your gear next to the other divers in such a small boat, so we go one-by-one. This is kind of annoying in big seas, cause if we could all go in at the same time that would reduce seasickness and air use, which seems to be my problem this trip. But it’s all good.

On the dives, we hunt for two very different species of corals, Pocillopora and Porites. These two corals are very different. Pocillopora is small (~20cm across) bushy, bumpy, and hard as diamonds. The other, Porites, is massive (we saw one that was 2 meters across and 3 meters tall), pillared, and soft. They also have different reproductive strategies and grow at different rates. Basically they represent very different spectrums of corals, which is why we chose them. At each site we need to collect small samples of 10 colonies of each of these species for the variety of analyses we aim to do (which will be another blog post). This is not a problem at all here because those are the ONLY two species we could find anyways. But in other places, it will be difficult to find them among all the coral diversity. Easter Island, like many remote places, has very few species and 25% of its species are endemic (meaning they exist here). Since this research cruise is to evaluate corals across the Pacific we had to pick two species that are pan-Pacific. Thus another reason we chose those two species for this study.

Diver job: find coral, take sample, photograph coral, fin.

To be as efficient as possible, underwater, each diver has a specific task. One person finds the proper specimen, confirms its taxonomy (easier said than done) and then takes some data about the specimen including taking a photograph of two. A second person cuts small fragments of the coral and puts it into some bags that the third diver is holding along with all the materials divers number one and two might need. This sounds really easy huh?  Well today my job was the camera person and I sucked at it, literally and figurative. Personally, I blame the swell.

Now 12 foot seas are fine if you are diving deep but this site wasn’t deep (12-15 meters), and we were close enough to the shore that it was like being in a washing machine underwater. One second you were above your coral and the next you were 30 feet away on the other side of the reef. Wheeeee! I actually think this is kind of fun, like an underwater rollercoaster… but not when you are trying to photograph something or sample it. So we ended up holding onto the substrate as hard as we could and sometimes getting slammed into the rocks around us. Some places were better as the surge was less, but for the most part it was a bit ridiculous and most importantly frustratingly slow for sampling.

Again I want to reiterate that I was never scared or worried that we were in a dangerous situation. It was very safe, just hard sampling conditions. My biggest issue ended up being air. I use a little tank. I’m a shorty and these are steel tanks and super heavy and anything bigger and I’d be unable to swim. These tanks generally only have 200 bar in my tank (or about 2000 psi) when everyone else has 300 to 350. So after fighting the swell for 40 minutes, I was at my limited 50 bar and needed to go do a safety stop and get in the boat. Emilie and Gullaume, my buddies, swam back to the boat with me but still had air so they managed to go back down and finish up without me. So I sucked my air. When we got back to the boat and checked out the photos…. we also realized that somehow I manage to take videos and not photos of the individual corals. So I sucked at taking pictures too.  Nice. I am so “that” person right now; the person who runs out of air first and didn’t even do a good job at their job which was pretty darn simple. At least I didn’t get seasick on the boat too which can’t be said for all the divers. And luckily I have a few more dives ahead of me to redeem myself. Lastly, I asked Monche (our dive safety guy) for a bigger tank, so I can suck more air and not worry about it.

Pocillopora

Once back on the boat we have to weigh and count all the pieces of coral to confirm we followed our permit and then process all the samples. Here in Easter Island the authorities actually watched us do this every day. While normally we’d do this the moment we get aboard we have added an additional step to this pipeline here in Easter Island… shower and warm up. With the wetsuits and exertion from fighting the swell no one was really cold at the end of the dive. But add a 40-minute boat ride to that and everyone was cold, really cold. So most of us stripped off of our gear and headed to the showers. After warming up in a three-minute shower (our allotted fresh water for the day) we tackled the samples which takes about 1 hour with six people.  Sadly, we won’t have six people at our next two stops so it will take longer.

Porites

4 hour lunch

After sample processing and cleaning up we head to lunch, which is usually consists of very large portions of food including a salad, a grain or pasta, and some vegetable and/or cheese dish like a stuffed pie or stew or curry. There is always a French dessert of cake or pots de cream or fruit and yogurt at the end too. Yum. Oh and more coffee of course. As I said everyone takes time with their lunch which often goes more than an hour. People generally do their daily chores then too, like vacuuming the floor, washing the showers, or the worst job, cleaning the toilets.  

After the boat is cleaned we start working on the next aspect of science, LABELING.  Labels, labels, labels. Even more labels: Making labels. Sticking labels on tubes. Sticking labels on bags. Sticking labels to sheets. Sticking labels to labels. Lots and lots of labels. Think… four people and 1.5 hours of non-stop labeling. But labeling is somewhat meditative actually, and it’s a skill every scientist should have. That and making stuff out of PVC, duck-tape, and zip ties.  

So after all that, it’s around 3 or 4pm and many of us take a nap. I napped on the first day of the dive and it screwed my night sleep up bad I’ve been skipping the nap since. But as you’ll see on the dinner section, napping is important for not falling asleep in one’s European dinner. While people nap, I’ve been reading emails or writing comments on papers or writing a blog, ha. I’ve also been trying to make sure all the science stuff is cleaned up. It’s easy to leave stuff around and sailors don’t like things lying around. Also the dive gear needs to be cleaned and put away. Our dive safety office often does this while we process the samples, but there is always more to do.

Taranaut Pascal

European dinner… late.

While we were processing samples and labeling, the other dive team was out collecting plankton and doing the benthic transect videos. Given the lateness of these dives that team often isn’t done with stuff and back on the boat until around 5. Then people are basically finishing cleaning up and the crew get everything ready for the evening around 7. Since they are French, dinner often doesn’t start until 9pm.  Plus, while the food is served no one touches it till everyone is sitting down which can sometimes take quite a while because the crew is in charge of a lot of things. Dinner is again three courses and people chat often until 10:30. If you are on dishes that means you are washing and drying till 11pm. The night watch starts at 11pm but most of the crew stay up for another hour or so. So it’s a long day but a good day.  

Rock me mama, like a wagon wheel  – or like an 83-foot schooner.

Even though she can rock pretty hard, sleeping is not hard here, at least not for me. In fact, I rather like the swaying; it feels like being rocked to sleep, and it’s even sometimes hard to not get sleepy from the constant rocking when you are just sitting around. Also my bunk bed is quite large and comfortable. I did, however, get the short end of the cabin stick. My room is the one closest to the galley so it’s a tad loud. But that’s not too bad. The main issue is that it’s also unfortunately above the gas and bilge. Think stinky. Super stinky. Stinky enough that I have to cover my face and even gag sometimes. Each night I turn on my fan, open my hatch, and open my door to get the fumes to dissipate enough that I don’t get brain damage from sniffing gas. If we’re moving I can’t have the hatch open and therefore I try to stay out of the room. I’ve spoken with the crew and they are aware that it’s the stinky room but someone has to sleep in it ‘cause there is not enough room on the boat otherwise, every bunk is taken. Hopefully I can convince the captain that this is a minor form of torture and that I should get to switch to a new room after a week or so. For now, I will keep my complaints to myself and suffer the stank in silence.

So what does one need to pack for a 5-week scientific trip, 4 of which are on a sail boat? Clearly I couldn’t bring everything I would have liked. Also much of the dive gear I would need is provided (regulator and BC) as are the materials for sampling and storing the coral samples were to collect. But still, in packing for Tara, I was highly concerned about space, so I devised a plan under the assumption that I would have no access to civilization for 4 weeks… oh wait that’s true. So here is a list of my gear and comments on many of them. Noticeably lacking is a rain jacket (face palm), but thus far I think I this was a good standard list and would have been even appropriate for a longer trip.

Electronics

Can’t really travel these days without a ridiculous assortment of things that can get fried in seawater and are really expensive. I tried to limit mine to just a few but it kept adding up so in the end it’s just 10 things. Had this been my husband’s blog it would be considerably more, so I am feeling smug.

1. Laptop with charger. Ahh my lemon Mac lap. Clearly I had to bring it but this POS has windows office crash relatively commonly and its key board loves to stop working for no reason…see spare mouse. Had to buy this POS last year when we were in Curacao and mine was stolen by some a****** who broke into our house and took all the electronics and my wallet from the main room.
2. Hard drive for backing up all my stuff from Tara and that includes all my stuff from my desktop back home sans my Next Gen Sequencing libraries. So I can work and complete all those papers and revisions that are outstanding….yeah time to work on papers!
3. iPad for reading in bed mostly, with many recently-acquired YA books about various kinds of magicians and mythical creatures! Downside…doesn’t help with finishing those manuscripts.
4. iPhone which apparently now is just an expensive paper weight in my gear cause I have no service. Will be important again when I return to the US I guess.
5. Two USA-to-Euro converters ’cause why pack one when two are better?
6. Noise cancelling headphones with extra batteries and cords for engine noise and French lessons. C’est bon!
7. Dive watch with the necessary instructional manual because last time I dove in Hawaii all it said was “wet” the whole time and didn’t record a single dive. To the company who made that computer…really?…really really?.. why is that even a setting?  
8. Headlamp for walking around at night. Shit’s dark in the middle of nowhere.
9. Spare mouse for crappy laptop (see number 1).
10. Digital camera. An oldie but a goodie. Ended up donating my flash card to the Tara underwater cameras so currently is useless. Hello iPhone.

Luggage and Gear

Like any good expedition, this trip was a great excuse to buy even more kit and gear to take up space and collect dust in my garage and lab for 11 months of the year. For example, item #one was an item I have wanted for many years, but had no reason to plop down the $140 (actually $98 thank you end-of-the-summer sale) in cash for. But hey…I’m on a boat so any gear needs to be water proof and relatively small right?, so cha-ching!  

1. One super hot and stylish 45 liter ‘Bottomless Pit’ duffle bag from Patagonia (cue hand wringing). Fully water proof! Shoulder backpack straps for easy carrying through airports! Sea blue and oh so shiny! Got a crap ton of stuff in it, including my full size fins, people. Its name ran true as it did seem bottomless.
2. Timbuktu personally designed laptop case. Had one of these given to me in 2005 by my father in law. It never died and was still is in amazing shape after spending some time at the bottom of the sea (whoops) and in a cooler filled with fish (double whoops). So this last year I got a new one that I designed myself. Note to future buyers, go with the Velcro covers…my clothes and my couch are destroyed.  
3. Mask, fins, booties, and gardening gloves for diving. While most the gear is provided, I’m just not comfortable diving without these very personal items. I like to know that I won’t have a leaky and foggy mask or weak-ass fins that are gonna give me leg cramps or worse fall off in any current.
4. 3mm Scuba Pro wetsuit. Had to get a new one after 7 years of wearing the other one and constantly complaining that I needed a new one cause mine was jacked from hundreds of hours underwater. Now I can’t complain about it, right Ryan and Deron?
5. Two pairs sunnies (sunglasses, mate), croakies (to keep said glasses on neck or afloat), and a case to store them in the event I throw something on them or have my bag unceremoniously thrown on the boat.
6. 1 pair eye glasses that if they break I’m screwed.
7. Mechanical pencils and sharpies (required science gear).
8. Blue nitrile gloves (see above parenthetical statement).
9. Hair brush and many hair ties to lose in the ocean (ladies and dudes with man buns you know what I am talking about).
10. As Zapphoid recommends, 1 towel to dry oneself and double as a blanket and other things (see Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

Eating dinner with the crew

Toiletries

1. Sunscreen for keeping the cancer at bay.
2. Hippie biodegradable toothpaste for keeping the bad breath and cavities at bay…tastes horrible.
3. Face lotion, which I probably won’t use till Moorea.
4. Lip balm.
5. A thousand kinds of decongestant and anti-diarrhea meds cause well…the tropics…see section on viral diseases below.
6. Body lotion, which in retrospect is likely unnecessary given the humidity.

Clothes

1. 5 pairs Patagonia travel chonies (underpants, gringos) which are washable and easily dried. Don’t travel without these ladies.
2. 3 swim suits, two of which are Patagonia-made and they should sponsor me ’cause I buy all their stuff and even though the stuff’s expensive it’s really worth it. I buy the same damn swim suit every field season and it rocks for serious underwater work. No messy or uncomfortable straps and can take my hard wear and tear.
3. 5 t-shirts (probably too many).
4. 3 tank tops (ditto).
5. 3 pairs of shorts: 1 nice, 1 water use, 1 for daily wear.
6. 2 pants: 1 nice for meeting with important people, 1 for cool nights and morning.
7. 1 pair of tights. I found that traveling in these is very comfortable, warm, and easy.
8. 1 skirt for fancy night and attempting to look respectful…probably failing.
9. 2 long-sleeved technical fabric shirts for cool nights and bug repellent.
10. 1 Patagonia R-1 technical fleece jacket. Have worn everyday since I got here.  
11. 1 old manky Stanford sweatshirt. Can’t go anywhere without this baby, even though its older than most of you reading this blog. My dad bought it for me in 1998 when I got into Stanford for graduate school. It’s like my safety blanket and has been to every continent sans Antarctica with me. Many photos of me in the field show me in this POS. It’s ripped to shreds at the cuffs and is not warm at all anymore, but it does serve as a shield from the tropical cold after a dive and keeps the mossies (mosquitos, people), sand flies, and other nasties that want a piece of me from getting a bite.  

Moai and Tara

Scientific tangent: Zika virus

Since I am a scientist that studies viruses, perhaps this blog should have something useful in it. So here’s an educational tangent, about Zika. Zika virus is one of the diseases that I aim to prevent by wearing long shirts and pants while working in the tropics. I’ve already got a few tropical diseases (amoebic dysentery being the most recent and wow did that suck) but for the most part have been lucky. Yet many researchers who travel to and of course the people who live in the areas we work are exposed to many serious tropical viral diseases, the most currently notorious of which is Zika virus. Zika is an arbovirus in the viral family Flaviviridae that includes Dengue and West Nile.

Zika virus was originally discovered in African monkeys in the 1940’s by people looking for Yellow Fever. Although all the most recent discussions of Zika have focused on Brazil, and although the origin of the disease is Africa in where there were small outbreaks since the 1950’s, the first major Zika outbreak was on the island of Yap in the South Pacific in the late 1990’s where it infected a large majority of the inhabitants. Since I don’t have access to the internet I can’t give you any numbers; clearly I’ve become too dependent on Wikipedia. But this major outbreak outside of Africa was probably due to transmission of the virus from its native African mosquito (Aedes egypti) to other more urban-style and broadly prevalent mosquitos like Aedes albopictus.

But the second outbreak was in Moorea, the French Polynesian island that Tara will land at in October and where my lab’s recent research on coral reef viruses and bacteria is focused. When the outbreak occurred in Moorea, it was first thought to be a nasty strain of dengue fever or West Nile, two other mosquito borne viral diseases with the similar symptoms of high fever, rash, and severe nerve and joint pain. Again, like on Yap, a large portion of the population got the disease in Moorea, and it was severe enough that people sought treatment at the local hospital, which was overwhelmed. It wasn’t until the 2015 Brazilian outbreak that people realized in retrospect that the outbreak in Moorea was not dengue.  

Effects and Treatment of Zika

Two major complications of this nasty disease are birth defects and neurological issues that are long-lasting. One of the researchers I met in Moorea had been afflicted with the virus in 2009 (I think) and she still suffers from partial paralysis in her left leg. My cousin in Dominican Republic got a similar symptom from West Nile. This is symptom is called Guillain-Barré (French pronunciation) disease and includes a variety of neurological signs and symptoms. For those who are curious, a sign of a disease is something that is visual like a rash, but a symptom is something that is recorded like fatigue or malaise. Anyways, remember, at the time of the Moorea outbreak, Zika was not rediscovered yet and so data were not taken on the number of children and adults or their signs and symptoms that were associated with this outbreak. But just last year, however, the World Health Organization started using the local doctors on French Polynesia to determine if the outbreak then also caused an outbreak of microcephaly in Moorea and Yap as it has been shown in Brazil. Since the population of these small Polynesian islands is very low, the doctors generally know almost all the local residents, so this kind of work can be done. To my knowledge it is unclear what the results of these outbreaks were in those two islands, but based on the 4 different and very large signs I saw at the Easter Island airport, it’s very clear people are concerned here. And they should be, as this new disease can be very serious to adults and pregnant mothers. Scientist have also found that it can be transmitted in bodily fluids such as blood and also sexually transmitted. Research on Zika has been very fast paced, and just recently a receptor that is unique to the virus was discovered, so hopefully we’ll have a vaccine soon. At the same time, methods to prevent spread of the virus have been using symbiotic bacteria that infect the mosquitos has not only been developed but actually used in urban areas in USA. However, taking personal protections to prevent breeding of and bites from mossies are the most essential way to keep Zika at bay.