more than half way!!!

Time passes really oddly while on a boat.  No one knows what day it is, what month it is, only when the next meal is.  Someone told me yesterday that we made it to the hump part of the cruise, and I didn't know what to think....wait, it's only half way?! yessss, it's already hallfff way!!!! oh shit, did I pack enough supplies for a whole other half of this cruise!?  were the basic thoughts that were swimming around up there....my days are spent filtering, dodging things the res tech throws at me (will explain later), filtering some more, hopefully sneaking out to play some hockey, and then titrating or running the spec - oh and then hot tubbing it at night.  Somehow, even on this cruise, I give the impression that I'm always smiling - so people are expecting that from me and things are getting a little more fun.  There's a lot more joking and fun boat games, and just all around fun.  At this point of the cruise, people will start to go crazy if you don't have fun while working.  Take the res tech for example, his fun is throwing different objects at me to see if my goalie reflects will let me dodge, dip, duck , dive, or dodge from the projectiles or if I'll just try to block them....I've been trying to block everything, which gets a little dangerous when he starts throwing fishing hooks at me...

hockey on a boat???? maybbeeee....

This has been a really hard cruise for me, and I haven't been as happy as I usually am on a boat.  There's another hockey player here though and she made herself a hockey stick out of plastic pipe with a metal plate for a blade - once she heard I was a goalie of course.  At first I strapped some pads we used for shipping scientific equipment to my legs and that worked amazingly....but then I realized that if I kept playing with them, they would be of no use for sending the scientific equipment back - I know, so responsible of myself, right?!  So instead I just grabbed some of the crew's extra pair of knee pads and am currently strapping those to my legs, so I can semi-butterfly....yeeaaa    BUT it's good to at least get back into the hockey motions, and it's been taking my mind off of more annoying, depressing, cloud of doom that never seems to disappear - it hides for some amount of time, but it always rears it's face up when I least expect it (now I'm always ready for it)....The science is going well, we are getting some good data, my days are very long....but hockey is good :) oooh, also, I'm making shrinking cups if anyone wants one and the store is gonna be open soon if someone wants a t-shirt...let me know

all quiet on the science front....

So we have steady schedule going, and this cruise is going to be a rough one.  We have a cast at 7:00 every morning, where we have to rush and get the water so we don't miss breakfast.  Then we filter until a little after lunch, which I have to take a break to help my boss deploy the spectroradiometer  (a kinda missile looking thing that gives us characteristics of the water).  After filtering we spend the rest of the day processing the samples from the day before.  I've been spending this time on the oxygen titrator everyday, because for some reason one of my bosses doesn't feel comfortable letting anyone else run "her" samples - and that takes me to dinner.  Every other night we are sampling from an incubation experiment that we are running, which means we get "free time" every other night - at this point we are so tired that our free time turns into an early bed time...speaking of which, I need to get up in 6 hours - time to go!
I'll try to give more details of the other aspects of the ship, and pictures tomorrow during my beloved (and hopefully existent) free time.....

avoid and conquer

We are kind of on a schedule now, half of our day will be spent filtering while the other half is spent processing the filters and water samples we've taken for Oxygen. This means I'm either sitting at the fluorometer reading my kindle or at the oxygen titrator reading my kindle. Either way it's a mindless activity., and I'm going to have very little time to go out in the sun - so much for being more tan than everyone else when I got back (I should have known that would never happen...). There are times during the day when things get a little tense in my lab, and the people working around us have been amazing. There are definitely people on this ship that are making this cruise bearable....and did I mention the food is ammaazzziiinngggg - sooooo goood. We had chinese yesterday, mexican today...the food is definitely making me happy. Oh also, forgot to mention that I can't skype this trip because they changed the rules so that only head scientists can get internet on their laptops, sorry mom.
We were supposed to go to Brazilian waters on this cruise, but their government won't let us so we won't be able to take samples at the mouth of the Amazon River - which was one of the main goals of this cruise. Funny how science works.....Instead we are sampling the line as close as we can get and trying to get an understanding of the waters coming from that area. That is all for now, I started taking some pictures but I'm not gonna post them until they seem worth it...so your just gonna have to wait a little longer :P

I'm gonna be a vet

There are somethings on this cruise that are really pushing me to going back to school sooner than later. I'm gonna try to be a vet, because apparently I'm too arrogant to be a marine biologist. Oh, and I don't know anything.....

We are doing a lot during this cruise. We are filtering at least 80 Liters of water - i.e. cleaning the ocean one liter at a time. And actually processing more than half of it - which we normally bring home. This cruise is going to be an exhausting one...that is all.

Where I felt like I got into a fight with a sumo wrestler last post, I now feel like a sumo wrestler sat on my head or beat my emotions out of me.....it's only day 4

sooo tirreeddd...and we JUST left port

It's so nice to be back on the Melville! The food is amazing, the crew are awesome, there is so much space, and I actually know what I'm doing! These last two days I was able to answer questions people asked me about how, when, and what I'm doing this cruise. I have two girls working with me so I've been teaching them everything we're gonna be doing, and so grateful that we're going to have these extra hands. Of course more hands means my boss can assign our group more work, which he did, but it would have been hell trying to do this all with just me and my two bosses. I don't know what it is about this cruise though, I'm more exhausted after these two days than I've been on any part of any of my cruises....
Last night was the final night on land before the science begins, which means everyone tried to drink more than their month and a half worth of alcohol. As with all the cruises, this is when the science party actually meets each other and the "I'm smarter than you" walls come down. It's pretty much the same way every time: the casual where are you from conversations (1st round), little more deep what got you into this field (2nd and third round), the laughing and story telling of previous cruises (4th round), dancing - or at least what you call it when scientists try to dance (what round are we on now??), and then the last and most interesting part of the night --> drunken scientists in the process of making their funny stories for future cruises. This is when I hiked my skort up to make them shorts so we could go swimming in the ocean and hop from speed boat to speed boat anchored on that shore.....needless to say my body looks like I got into a wrestling match with a sumo wrestler. There is more to this story, but I'm falling asleep typing this sooo you'll have to ask me about it later in life :) nighty night

Welcome to Barbados!

Just got into Barbados, and surprisingly I have no complaints from the travels coming here. Everything went amazingly smooth (and with that comment I just jinxed the next three days of set up...)! As I'm travelling to more and more places they are all starting to fuse into one, especially here. As we drove in the taxi to the hotel (which was also very uneventful - thank God!) every house reminded me of the different places I've been. There were small pink houses that reminded me of Costa Rica, there were outdoor bars and dives that reminded me of India, and there was even a house that reminded me of my old grandmother's house....I think that means I'm becoming cultured?!?!?!?!?

This is the one and only night we're on land, and then we're sleeping on the Melville (the boat I had my first cruise on in Costa Rica) for a very longggg time. We'll be in port for the next two days setting up, which means all our meals will be on land so I'll be able to stretch my legs...and then the fun begins! OK, it's way passed my bedtime.....pictures, complaining, adventures, shit show that is me all to come in the future!

next cruise dates

So my next cruise is from September 1st to October 10th in the Amazon. We will be staying in Barbados before and after the cruise....have a great summer!

back on land....if that's what u call this..

So we got into Dutch Harbor, but this really shouldn't count as land. I can't send texts unless I pay a rando server guy ten dollars and there are two restraunts....one at each of the hotels. I was gonna stay and hike, but it would be a lot more fun to do that if there was someone to hike with. I'm going to see if I can catch an early flight into Anchorage, because they at least have a town that I can go into and maybe buy some more souveniers...just what I need! If I can't catch an earlier flight, then I'll just make some friends in the airport bar....my liver needs to get back into shape for New York anyway...

Coming to a Close

Well, two weeks and two peices of equipment later, the cruise is coming to a close. We are still sampling, and somewhere between the 20 gallons of water I need to filter I also need to pack up all my stuff and figure out how to get it to New York. Since when do people consider me adult-enough to handle all of this??? I like it better when I'm not trusted with this responsibility and others just do it for me...does this mean I get a pay raise?? :)
So I was looking forward to getting into Dutch Harbor and maybe seeing some of the Deadliest Catch boats, but apparently this isn't their season. I was told there is nothing to do in this town except drink and buy porn...they never mention that on the Discovery Channel. If anyone wants anything from Alaska, this is your last chance for at least a year!!!

Holy Rolling Boat Batman....

Working on a ship is one thing. But I just looked out the window and the waves were so hight that I couldn't see the sky. As I'm sitting in a wheel-less chair typing this, I am sliding toward and away from the computer....this is crazy! I'm running late today because the person filtering on the same schedule as me woke up late. I just caught up, and now his boss isn't ready for me to do a station right now, so once again, I'm late! Not the happiest, thrown around, camper on this boat. Water's falling everywhere, my whole filter rig fell over....working when the boat is flying like this is just not the most accurate science - but I guess that's what you would expect in the Bering Sea. Add this to the list of experiences I won't miss....

70 meter line of death

My schedule - Wake up at 6:30 eat breakfast and then filter for four hours....eat lunch, and then filter for four hours...eat dinner, and then filter for four hours. In between all of this I'm trying to fix the FRRF that does profiles of the water - ridiculous!
We had a day off today because the boat was doing a search grid for a lost buoy, so I got to catch up on my sleep today! We have a CTD at 8:30 tonight, which means I won't be getting the water until 9:00, if you do the Math that means I will only get 4 hours of sleep tonight....gotta love the boat's timing. I'm really hoping the FRRF is all better, because I really don't think I have much energy left to fix it once again


* FRRF = Fast Repition Rate Fluorometer; basically a bench top machine stretched out into a canister that takes live samples as it goes down the water profile...

And it begins...tomorrow

Hi! I wasn't going to post this until the conclusion came about, but I love Alaskan people (is that the correct grammer?)! I left my Ipod at the hotel I was staying at and got my mom to call them...lo and behold my Ipod is being mailed back to my home. Any other state (not including Maine) it would be in a pawn shop right now - yaayy Alaska!

Ok, back to the boat. I'm going to get a full nights rest because when I wake up tomorrow until probably next Thursday, I will be working 18 hour days of nonstop water filtering and microscopy. And as scientific equipment usually goes on research cruises, I started with four instruments and am now down to two. The profiler is acting up, and I'm about to retire it if I can't get it to work in the morning. So now that I think about it, after those two instruments failed, I'll be doing the same amount of work even if my boss was here...so much for being able to handle a cruise on my own - blah

But I did get the new pictures on my blog...enjoy!

PICTURES

My blog won't let me put them on yet, but if you click on the slide show, you'll be able to see my pictures from Alaska...there are more, but I need to go take apart an instrument bc it's not working - so much for getting my nap in after an all nighter :/

same old same old

nothin new to report, we have our cast at 2 today and another cast every hour after that, so I'll be working til midnight probably...and it finally begins....

equipment problems

This post is boring, so if you're looking for excitement in the Bering Sea - come back at a later time :) I'm doing four things: filtering a hell of a lot of water, dropping an insturment to take a profile of the water, constantly having a flow through system with another instrument, and running a flow through microscope (that's my favorite). So far everything has been working except for the flow through system, which has been on and off and driving me crazy. Today the whole computer crashed and I gave it to the tech...out of sight out of mind, and I am loving life lol we are currently transitting to our next station and we won't be there for another 12 hours. In the meantime when I'm not making phytoplankton libraries from the microscope, I'll try to load on some of my pictures from my time on land....no promises though :P

blah...transit

Today I was in bed all day, because we are transitting to the next station. I tried to do some work, but transit means the ship's rolling so much that you can do nothing but sing "What do you do with a drunken sailor, what do you do with a drunken sailor?" when you walk around the ship. I don't even think I stumble this much on my Friday and Saturday nights :) ! So anyway when I tried to do work, my whole body cried out in sea misery so I just got back in bed and slept. We have our next station tomorrow morning and after talking to my boss I have a reasonable amount of work now (which is still a lot - but I'm on a boat and beggers can't be choosers) and I should be given the right amount of water from each depth in order to do it! YAY FOR DATA...or something like that, right?

So more about this boat

The boat I'm on is called the Oscar Dyson, and I've never seen so many female crew members on a ship before...I don't know if it is a NOAA (National Oceanographical blah blah) thing or just this boat. Also, the backround of my blog is literally the background of what I'm seeing - only we aren't near any mountains at the moment. This boat r0lls like none other I've ever been on (which is only two, but I still think that's saying something), and I'm considering downing the drowsy pills just to get through the first couple of days. I am the youngest one on this ship, with the least seagoing experience and am the only one in my group trying to do just as much or even more than other groups. I wrote my boss today to see if we could dim down some of the filtering, because I just don't think this is realistic.....
The food, like the Melville has been delicious so there goes my hopes of losing a lot of weight these two weeks - overrated....We are currently travelling to where the ice is (which will take about 3-4 days, because we are picking up and deploying moorings...) and then once we get there there will be a station every 10 miles, which means every 50 minutes. I am going to try to accomplish getting data from every 3 or 4 station...Ok, I'm off to bed...pictures later in the week but since it's only a 2 week cruise you might be able to wait until I get back home....

A week in Kodiak

So I've been in Kodiak for a week now and there are some things I have learned: there is no such thing as a lite salad dressing, there are 11 bars within 1 square mile of each other - so if you get cut at one bar there are plenty more, camoflauge (that's hard to spell) is appropriate attire, and although New York doesn't agree it is completly acceptable to look strangers in the eye and smile! The one day I expolored the island was more than enough to get some amazing pictures, and see a lot of wildlife! It was too windy out so we couldn't go kayaking with the otters and seals, so instead we searched for animals on land. I saw lots of mountain goatss cows, buffalo, bald eagles, and even a bear. We climbed a mountain to get an amazing view of a killer whale chasing two fin baby wales into the shallow waters to escapes, and lots of other spouts every 4 - 5 minutes or so. On our way home was where we saw the bear - a small-ish, brown, female bear! So we decided to go after it to get a closer picture (it seemed like the only logical explanation at the time...) By the time we got to the place where we saw it - which mean climbing through shrubs, getting stabbed by devils clubs (sneaky sticks that have very spiky, thorny tops), and getting hit by trees - the bear was gone. We saw it's den and got some cool pics of that too, but loading pics is gonna take a while, so I need to set aside some time to do that (if I ever get any free time after this). We are about to leave the port and head to the Bering Sea. I'll tell you more about the boat after our first cast....miss you all!

ALASKA

Here we go again! I just got to Alaska for my cruise in the Bering Sea. We are studying the change in phytoplankton with the melting ice in the artic. This is my first cruise where I'm going to be the only one from my group, so I'm gonna be really busy....Until then - the boat doesn't get to Kodiak until the 12th so I'm gonna go check out the area i.e. kayaking, and bear sight seeing - if I can afford it...I can see beautiful mountains and will be putting pictures up once I take them :)

OFF THE BOAT!!!!

We made it back safe and sound (and a little sunburnt..)! After we unloaded all the equipment onto the shuttle boat, all the other science groups just watched while me, my boss, and the workers unpacked everrryyything off the boat. I had to climb back on the shuttle to help the one kid on the boat lift the heavy packages off the edge. Apparently lifting heavy packages is only for the workers because all the other scientists were too good to help - even if that meant they would miss their flight....Now we're back on land and finishing up the inventory and other work we could only do on land, and then I get to catch my flight back to the US TOMORROW!!! yayayyayayayaya Over all this cruise was a great success. We found some pretty cool results, I sang the alphabet to everyone on the boat at an end of cruise party, and I learn a lot about this culture. Definitely would do it again....even if it meant I needed to hang out with the cockroaches for another couple of weeks!

mobile station (cough cough) I mean standard station..

This is probably the last post I'm going to write for this cruise, because it's just too pain in the butt to print out my blog, have the captain read it, and expect my friend to post it. We are currently at a coastal station that the crew calls a mobile station. Apparently we aren't supposed to know we're only here because the crew wants to talk to their family, so the chief scientist (who hasn't even touched a drop of water since we've been here) has claimed we've come to this station to compare a standard to what we are seeing out in the ocean.

We've been working our butts off, but seem to be the only group to be doing so. The other people here my age do maybe half the work, and can't understand why I am working so hard. When the chief scientist made the schedule for when our sampling would take place, everything comes to a halt during breakfast and lunch. They actually plan their work days around the meals, instead of doing the science when it needs to happen....I filter over 50 liters off water in the morning, run samples through our flow through microscope, titrate oxygen samples, and run/extract chlorophyll when I have time. Needless to say, I haven't had a chance to read too many of the books I've downloaded for this cruise.

I didn't realize how much sanity I gain by talking to my friends on gchat, or just being able to send simple e-mails until it is taken away. This cruise is definitely one of the more difficult ones if for that reason only. We get back to land on the 22nd, and I get back to the states on the 25th, so I will be able to catch up with a semi-normal life sometime around then. Ok, enough time spent on the computer...time to go count some cells!

First Research Station

We are on our way to our first research station!! All our equipment is set up and we are ready to do some science (what else do you do on a boat?!). There are many things I've gotten use to over the past week, such as lime juice at 10:30 (really salty and limey that apparently keeps us from getting scurby), tea time at 15:30 (which they bring to our room with some cookies), and the fact that I can't understand what half the people on this ship are talking about (really heavy accents). Also, at any meal where fish and chicken are involved, everyone's face goes into focus mode as they take very small bites and chew very slowly in order to not chew on any fish/chicken bones. It's actually quite funny to watch the people from the U.S. eat, because their face just goes blank in concentration.. We haven't gotten into a normal routine yet, but we are expected to arrive to our station at 0:00 Monday morning (13:30 New England time). If you would like to email me (mom, I know you want to), the email address is master@sagarsampada.amosconnect.com and make the subject ATTN: KELLY KEEBLER ROOM 104. They print out the email and hand it to me once they get it.

I'M ON A BOAT...and it is not pretty!!

We finally got on the boat and it is very different from the ship I was on in Costa Rica. The main and worst difference is the cleanliness - eeewwwww! When there isn't anyone in a room for some time the beetles and ants come out and crawl all over the floor (especially in the mess hall and kitchen). I'd really take a picture of it for you, but I don't want to see it etched into my brain! Besides that small difference, my room is amazing. I'm basically in a hotel room with two beds and a table.

There are three different science groups on this ship, and the other two are only doing 2 different kinds of experiments - we are doing 6. Needless to say, our group worked our a$$e$ off today and we are the first group that is ready to go. The only problem is that the workers on this ship are part of a union, and feel that they haven't had enough time off the ship. So (the reason why I can write this post) we are still on the shore, and will be until they decide they want to start working again. Of course they have brilliant excuses like the air conditioner isn't working (maybe turn it on?) and our engine needs some oil (really?!), but until they feel like they had an adequate break we will stay on shore.....great..

Leave port tomorrow!!!

So we are officially leaving the port tomorrow, which we have been ready for since last Wednesday - the boat wasn't here yet so we couldn't leave....This past weekend I we visited a museum and a spice farm. The owners of both places were related/went to college with my boss. The only thing my boss informed them about me was that I am an ice hockey goalie and know how to drink. So needless to say, they gave me a lot of booze for a very low/nonexistent price. At the spice farm, they treated us like VIPs with a special meal, playing with snakes, and sitting on elephants ( all in the pics...).

I'm uploading all my pictures now, because we are going to have very terrible internet access on the boat. In order to post to this blog I need to send them in e-mail form to Stewey (teammate in NYC) and she'll post them for me. I might be able to send out more e-mails, but still uncertain on that. I've also been given a warning not to talk/smile to the crewmen on the ship or they will get the wrong impression....So basically I just keep my head down and earphones in - great!

Still NOT on a boat....

We were supposed to board the ship on the 25th, but apparently someone more important than us needs to use the ship, so we are going to do our research on an actual fishing vessel (I'm praying every night that it won't smell like the lobster boats at Cook's corner...). We've been working 9 - 5:30 everyday at the National Institute of Oceanography, and those hours + humid heat = very tired Keebler....We've eaten at some gross restaurants, some great restaurants, and almost everything in between - I found out that it's really easy to tell the difference in quality. Hopefully, tomorrow we will have everything packed and ready to board the ship, so I can actually sleep in before my bosses take us out to explore India...I'll let you know when I get on the boat (with lots of pictures!!!)

Touch Down

So I just landed in India...15 hours later. Got to watch some fun movies on the flight and recover a little more from my adventures Wednesday night (still sore...). I left my stupid water bottle on the plane, and I'm kinda upset about it. The drive to the hotel was terrifying - he was legit a worse driver than I am (seriously!). Apparently you are supposed to drive on the left side of the road, but I've inferred from my taxi driver that that is a suggestion, because we drove allllll over the road, into incoming traffic, almost hit some dogs (which I was ready to fight the driver over), and honking at every moving object....but we got to point B, so I guess I can't complain too much! Got to the hotel and the view is amazing (I've already posted the pictures), and there's great TV on as well. We are right across the street from the National Institute of Oceanography, which is the institute we are working at before we get off the ship.