An_Ode_To_The_Landlubbers
---
I could drown at any moment.
That is a sensible, rational fear. I am standing on deck, on an oversized tin can held up by nothing but the magic of density and diesel fuel. I am a city boy, four hundred miles away from anything remotely resembling a deli or a subway stop, and I do not trust this place. A wayward cable could snag my foot at any moment, and drag me down to an inky blackness so dark I won't even see my own limbs crinkling like origami in a stampede.
And the dolphins will just laugh. Because dolphins are dicks.
I find myself on a this, an oceanographic research cruise, because I am a dork. I am a dork who knows how to write a good cover letter, and polish my resume to a blinding sheen, and charm potential employers over vast distances. I am a dork who didn't feel like paying rent for a month, and who felt that seasickness was a small price to pay for three square meals a day.
I forgot that seasickness and square meals do not at all get along.
Oceanographers are a rare breed, like most field scientists. Offices are not their friends. Their nerdy insides are wrapped round with actual muscle, earned from long hours of lugging large crates of industrial hose and long strings of neon buoys. They stand out as comfortable but striking hybrids, like an unexpected pairing between a librarian and a longshoreman.
Behind the oceanographers stand, greasy and just as overworked, the oilers and mess attendants and chief mates that keep this tugboat churning along. One of the crew, an Alaskan, once traded a can of Coca-Cola for a piece of polar bear liver: this was a bad trade, because at least a can of Coke isn't quite toxic enough to kill you. There is at least one Romanian on this ship, and this is to everyone's benefit, because Romanians are amazing: they can sell vacuums, bake bread, and kick the ass of anyone alive. And they do it all while smoking cheap cigarettes.
When we leave port, the sea - not a lake, not a kiddy pool, a damn sea - is a several trillion ton looking glass, every minute little wave jutting out like a liquid razor blade, collapsing into a creamy swirl of photoplankton. The undulating is slightly surreal, like silk in a slight breeze. Dolphins tag along on our port side, in the aquatic equivalent of marching us out of town.
Ships are noisy. They do not tell you this. And you never realize it fully until you are sleeping down the hall from an engine the size of a dump truck, with bulkheads and earplugs as your only salvation. And for no apparent reason, you suddenly start having many, many dreams about bad heavy metal concerts that get interrupted by earthquakes.
And the rocking. There comes a time, late at night, when you realize your internal compass has been disassembled, soaked in acetone and kitchen grease, and reassembled ass-backwards. Everything in a ship is tied down, and every bottle is made of plastic, because a glass jug of hydrogen peroxide chucking itself across the cabin in rough seas would be a very bad thing. After a week or so you learn to predict the to and fro, and eventually you find yourself going from Point A to Point B more by falling forward than by walking.
And watch out for rogue waves, which come out of nowhere and tear apart oil tankers and fishing boats like Woody Allen in a mosh pit. But no one likes to talk about rogue waves.
Day in and day out, we trawl. Nets come up dripping with the guts of countless jellyfish, torn asunder like a flock of ibis in a sandstorm. We sift through the catch with our bare hands, separating vertebrates and invertebrates. I find my first baby squid, and I ogle its adorable little tentacles and beady little eyes as it gets its bearings again. I then fill the jar with formaldehyde.
We trash a piece of very expensive equipment because the bridge and the winch miscommunicate, and the whole contraption gets sucked into the propeller and gets beaten to within an inch of its data-collecting life. A whole pod of oceanographer pissedofficus stands around the thing afterwards, dreaming of lost chi squares and composing apology letters. And the Romanian grabs a fishing pole, heads over to the side, and says, 'I will get you your fish.'
This cruise lasts for a month, and that is as long as I would last before I jump ship and try my luck with Davy Jones. This is a profession built in part on isolation, and you will watch more DVDs in your off hours than Roger Ebert in traction. We are a village on the high seas, and I will leave this work to people who are happy to be villagers for Science.
One day, I am collecting the final water samples from an instrument tank. Everyone else is already in the mess eating dinner, and my stomach is busy bitching out my work ethic with angry growls. And then I hear a sudden thump, like a huge sail flapping taut in a strong wind.
There is a contrail above me, in a nearly perfect circle. Its perfection is interrupted only by a minute portion of its arc, where the exhaust seems to have been pushed aside. And a jet-black speck tears off towards shore, apparently just having gone for a run around the block.
I had to go four hundred miles out to sea, to hear my first sonic boom.
I could drown at any moment.
That is a sensible, rational fear. I am standing on deck, on an oversized tin can held up by nothing but the magic of density and diesel fuel. I am a city boy, four hundred miles away from anything remotely resembling a deli or a subway stop, and I do not trust this place. A wayward cable could snag my foot at any moment, and drag me down to an inky blackness so dark I won't even see my own limbs crinkling like origami in a stampede.
And the dolphins will just laugh. Because dolphins are dicks.
I find myself on a this, an oceanographic research cruise, because I am a dork. I am a dork who knows how to write a good cover letter, and polish my resume to a blinding sheen, and charm potential employers over vast distances. I am a dork who didn't feel like paying rent for a month, and who felt that seasickness was a small price to pay for three square meals a day.
I forgot that seasickness and square meals do not at all get along.
Oceanographers are a rare breed, like most field scientists. Offices are not their friends. Their nerdy insides are wrapped round with actual muscle, earned from long hours of lugging large crates of industrial hose and long strings of neon buoys. They stand out as comfortable but striking hybrids, like an unexpected pairing between a librarian and a longshoreman.
Behind the oceanographers stand, greasy and just as overworked, the oilers and mess attendants and chief mates that keep this tugboat churning along. One of the crew, an Alaskan, once traded a can of Coca-Cola for a piece of polar bear liver: this was a bad trade, because at least a can of Coke isn't quite toxic enough to kill you. There is at least one Romanian on this ship, and this is to everyone's benefit, because Romanians are amazing: they can sell vacuums, bake bread, and kick the ass of anyone alive. And they do it all while smoking cheap cigarettes.
When we leave port, the sea - not a lake, not a kiddy pool, a damn sea - is a several trillion ton looking glass, every minute little wave jutting out like a liquid razor blade, collapsing into a creamy swirl of photoplankton. The undulating is slightly surreal, like silk in a slight breeze. Dolphins tag along on our port side, in the aquatic equivalent of marching us out of town.
Ships are noisy. They do not tell you this. And you never realize it fully until you are sleeping down the hall from an engine the size of a dump truck, with bulkheads and earplugs as your only salvation. And for no apparent reason, you suddenly start having many, many dreams about bad heavy metal concerts that get interrupted by earthquakes.
And the rocking. There comes a time, late at night, when you realize your internal compass has been disassembled, soaked in acetone and kitchen grease, and reassembled ass-backwards. Everything in a ship is tied down, and every bottle is made of plastic, because a glass jug of hydrogen peroxide chucking itself across the cabin in rough seas would be a very bad thing. After a week or so you learn to predict the to and fro, and eventually you find yourself going from Point A to Point B more by falling forward than by walking.
And watch out for rogue waves, which come out of nowhere and tear apart oil tankers and fishing boats like Woody Allen in a mosh pit. But no one likes to talk about rogue waves.
Day in and day out, we trawl. Nets come up dripping with the guts of countless jellyfish, torn asunder like a flock of ibis in a sandstorm. We sift through the catch with our bare hands, separating vertebrates and invertebrates. I find my first baby squid, and I ogle its adorable little tentacles and beady little eyes as it gets its bearings again. I then fill the jar with formaldehyde.
We trash a piece of very expensive equipment because the bridge and the winch miscommunicate, and the whole contraption gets sucked into the propeller and gets beaten to within an inch of its data-collecting life. A whole pod of oceanographer pissedofficus stands around the thing afterwards, dreaming of lost chi squares and composing apology letters. And the Romanian grabs a fishing pole, heads over to the side, and says, 'I will get you your fish.'
This cruise lasts for a month, and that is as long as I would last before I jump ship and try my luck with Davy Jones. This is a profession built in part on isolation, and you will watch more DVDs in your off hours than Roger Ebert in traction. We are a village on the high seas, and I will leave this work to people who are happy to be villagers for Science.
One day, I am collecting the final water samples from an instrument tank. Everyone else is already in the mess eating dinner, and my stomach is busy bitching out my work ethic with angry growls. And then I hear a sudden thump, like a huge sail flapping taut in a strong wind.
There is a contrail above me, in a nearly perfect circle. Its perfection is interrupted only by a minute portion of its arc, where the exhaust seems to have been pushed aside. And a jet-black speck tears off towards shore, apparently just having gone for a run around the block.
I had to go four hundred miles out to sea, to hear my first sonic boom.