Life on the Ship

Greetings, friends!

It has been a quiet few days on the ship, as we finished our second site a couple days ago and will be in transit for the next few days to our next site off the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. In contrast to where we've cored thus far off (off the coast of NW Australia), Papua New Guinea is chock full of incredibly active volcanoes. The sediments we bring up will likely contain a lot of ash and look different from what we've seen so far, so we're all looking forward to seeing something new.

Since things are pretty relaxed at the moment, I thought I'd take the time to tell you more about what life on a ship is actually like. After all, the first questions that come to mind for many folks are not about the science that we're doing, but about the more biologically necessary and day-to-day sorts of things: What do you eat? Do you have your own room on board? What are the bathrooms like? Etc. So, here we go.

The food on the ship is actually quite good. Since all of the scientists and drillers are divided into 12 hour shifts such that the boat can operate 24-hours a day, 4 meals per day are served on the ship. These happen at 5-7 am, 11am-1pm, 5-7pm and 11pm-1am, although most folks are theoretically asleep for at least one of the meals (the 5am-7am one for moi). We typically have our choice of three main dishes plus 4 or so veggies and side dishes at each meal, and a fruit bar and salad bar are also available. The fruit and salad bars will remain operational for another week or so (the kitchen has a special ozone refrigerator that keeps perishables fresh much longer than your typical one), but I'm told that eventually they disappear. To top it all off, there are always cookies, soft-serve ice cream, and other assorted desserts. Everything is basically all you can eat, so you can either think of it as heaven or an impending crime scene where your body fat % is the victim. I'm definitely eating a lot more here than I typically do at home (#gradstudentlife), so I've been having to exercise to compensate. But that's more of a compliment to the kitchen than a complaint, as it certainly could be much worse.

Almost every person on the ship shares a room with another person, as there are two bunks in each room. Every two rooms also shares a single shower and toilet, so you might imagine that things could get a little crowded. However, the organizers of each expedition make sure that your roommate works the opposite shift as you, so you are rarely or never in the room at the same time as your roommate and are generally only sharing a shower and toilet with one other person. I'm told that before the ship was renovated in 2008, there were actually four people to a room and still a single shared restroom for every two rooms. The ship apparently had some unsavory nicknames during that time, but things are cushy now in comparison.

The toilet system on the ship is a vacuum system much like that used on an airplane. Since carrying a two months worth of fresh water on board would be very heavy and a bit unfeasible, the boat is also equipped with a distillation and filtration system to make freshwater from seawater. The water tastes great, but it's so salt-depleted that many actually need to take vitamins or drink Gatorade once a day or so to compensate for the lack of electrolytes. Still, it's a bit funny to think that I'm drinking water so clean that I would normally have to pay for it back home.

Although the days are long and filled with collecting samples, running analyses in the lab, and writing, we still find time to step outside and enjoy some fantastic views of the sunset (or, every once in a while, of land) and stars from the ship's deck. Life is good!

Gotta get back to work, but until next time!

Cheers,
Dan