Tammy Orilio

June 18, 2011April 28, 2021

Tammy Orilio, Life at Sea, June 18, 2011

NOAA Teacher at Sea: Tammy Orilio
NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson
Mission: Pollock Survey
Geographical Area of Cruise: Gulf of Alaska
Date: 18 June 2011

Since we haven’t yet arrived at our first fishing spot yet, I’m going to let you all know what life has been like onboard the NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson. I am on the 4 a.m. – 4 p.m. work shift, but since we haven’t been doing much in terms of trawling/collecting fish, I haven’t had to get up at 4 in the morning yet! Another day or so (definitely not tomorrow, I’m told) and I will have to re-adjust my sleep schedule so I can wake up at 3:45 for my shift! But for the time being, I’ve been waking up around 9:00. Breakfast is served in the mess hall from 7-8, but I’m a cereal junkie, so missing the hot breakfast is no big deal for me. Speaking of cereal, I just had Life for the first time and love it 🙂

The teeny tiny head. Smaller than any dorm bathroom I've been in! — The teeny tiny head. Smaller than any dorm bathroom I’ve been in!

Back to my day. When I wake up, I have to be very quiet moving around my stateroom because my bunkmate works the 4 p.m. – 4 a.m. shift and is still sleeping. I first head down to the acoustics lab one deck below my sleeping quarters to find out what’s on the agenda for the day. So far, it’s been a lot of trials/test runs to see if all the equipment is working properly. I’ve also spent some time with the other scientists that are on the day shift with me, and they’ve been great at explaining how they use sound to help them locate fish. When I’m not with the science team, (which so far, has been fairly often!) I’m usually in the lounge and/or conference room watching movies or reading. There are over 1000 movies on board! I try to stay out of my stateroom because my bunkmate is asleep, so I try to take everything I might want for the day with me- Kindle, camera, computer, iPod.

After my shift ends at 4 p.m., I either read some more or go to the “gym.” There are actually two gyms on board, each with a treadmill, elliptical, stationary bike, etc etc. I definitely need to go after all the great food I’ve been eating on this trip! Adam and Joe, our stewards, always make sure to have a variety of delicious foods out at every meal. Here’s what was on the dinner menu tonight: bacon wrapped tenderloin steak, shrimp & crab St. Jacques, twice baked potato, green beans, and focaccia bread. In addition, there’s always salad fixings to choose from. I’m eating better here than I do at home, so stopping at the gym is necessary.

After dinner, I head back to my stateroom to shower and update my blog 🙂 Showering on a moving vessel is quite an experience, and tonight was actually the first time I had to hang on to the handle in the shower- makes it very difficult to wash your hair with one hand! Then I read or watch a movie, and head to bed. I’m on the bottom bunk (because I got to the ship 2 days before my bunkmate!), which is better in terms of the motion of the boat. Less of a chance to fly into the air and fall out of bed 🙂 Our bunks have a little curtain that wraps around them, so we can block out as much light as possible- remember, way up here in Alaska it doesn’t get dark until well after midnight, so I need that curtain!

That’s about it for my shipboard life so far. I know I keep saying that we’ll get to work in another day or so, but I promise, we’re starting tomorrow! Be on the lookout for more science-y logs from me. We are back in some rough seas again, so I’m taking some Dramamine and hitting the sack!! Let me know if you have any questions about ANYTHING!

June 17, 2011April 28, 2021

Follow the Ship!

I just found out about a great tool for those of you that want to follow the path that we’re taking on this expedition. Go to http://shiptracker.noaa.gov/ , choose Oscar Dyson (DY), and the resulting map will show you where we’ve been, as well as our current location.
Looking at the current map, you can see why it’s taken so long for us to get to our first sampling location. We departed from Kodiak on Monday night, and spent all of Tuesday at Three Saints Bay- that’s the little “dip” back into Kodiak that you see. From there, we’ve just been sailing towards the western Aleutians. Today, we cut through some of the islands to the northern side because the seas were pretty rough (I was feeling a little seasick for a while there). Last time I checked, we were scheduled to arrive at our first location tomorrow (Friday 6/17) morning, and will be conducting our first trawl shortly thereafter. Science logs are soon to come, along with more of my entertaining personal logs 🙂

June 14, 2011April 28, 2021

Tammy Orilio, We are Underway!, June 13, 2011

NOAA Teacher at Sea: Tammy Orilio
NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson
Mission: Pollock Survey
Geographical Area of Cruise: Gulf of Alaska
Date: 13 June 2011

: Three Saints Bay, Alaska

: This is what the window in my stateroom looks out to. It’s a waterfall!

After being in Alaska since Friday June 10th, our ship has finally set sail! The last of the crew and science team arrived this evening, and we immediately left port. Our first stop is a calm bay so we can calibrate the acoustic equipment to establish some baseline data. Once we got underway, we had a meeting with the science team, and I found out that I’d be working the 4 a.m. – 4 p.m. shift. I’ll take that over the night shift any time! I don’t have much to do for the next day or two, since we will not be trawling for fish yet, so I’m doing a lot of reading and napping. Rough work. I know the easy life will be over soon enough, so I have to take advantage while I can!My goal as we’re making way to our first sampling station is to not get seasick. I’ve been out on two other research cruises, but they were on much smaller ships (R/V Bellows and R/V Suncoaster), and I was fine on those trips, so hopefully the same can be said for this excursion. However, the Gulf of Alaska is a little more foreboding than the Atlantic Ocean between Florida and the Bahamas, so that’s definitely something to consider! I just took one of my pills and put on some special wristbands that are supposed to help. I have no idea what these wristbands actually do- my guess is that it’s all psychological and I just paid $10 for a placebo 🙂
I almost forgot to mention- my bags are here! The science team checked them when they finally got their flight over to Kodiak from Anchorage. It will be so nice to have real clean clothes- not new from the store clothes- to change into!

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Penguins and alcids (a group of birds that includes auks, murres, and puffins) live in similar habitats and ecological conditions, but are found in two completely separate geographic areas. Both groups of birds evolved to have similar characteristics. What is this phenomenon called?I’m asking because I saw some murres today…but didn’t get any good pictures 🙁

: We’ve been anchored here all day Tuesday 6/14/11.

June 12, 2011April 28, 2021

My Travails Thus Far…

I left for Alaska on the morning of June 10th- my flight out of Ft. Lauderdale was at 11:50. Being the smart packer I am, I had a carry on bag with an extra change of clothes, some toiletries, and my heavy jacket. This was going to be a long trip to get to Alaska, with lots of opportunities for my checked luggage to get lost, so I thought I’d be proactive.

No problems getting to Houston, and then on another plane from Houston to Anchorage. Once I arrived in Anchorage Friday night around 7:45 their time (which is 4 hours behind us), my short flight to Kodiak was delayed by an hour. Then two hours, three, then canceled altogether. Apparently, the weather is very overcast in Kodiak and no planes are flying in or out. So now, I’m in Anchorage (with all my bags, yay!) and have to find a hotel room, which was no biggie. I go outside to wait for the hotel shuttle, and it’s about 10:45 p.m. and it’s bright sunlight! Kind of weird, think about it- you’re getting ready to go out on a Friday night, and leave the house at 11:00, and it’s still light out.

My flight to Kodiak is re booked for Saturday at 9:45 a.m., so I get to the airport at 8:45, and my flight is already delayed due to weather. One hour turns to two, two to three…I’m making phone calls to make sure the ship doesn’t leave without me(!) and I find out that most of the scientific party is stuck in Anchorage as well, so that makes me feel better. My flight is now rescheduled to 7:20 p.m., so I just hang out at the airport all day. What fun.

7:20 rolls around, and flight is delayed…until about 9:00 when it finally clears up enough in Kodiak for the pilot to land the plane. So yipee, I’m finally getting on the plane to Kodiak and will be getting on the ship!! I arrive in Kodiak and no bags show up.

Leaving Anchorage (at 9:30 p.m.) on my way to Kodiak finally!

Remember when I was bragging earlier about how smart I was, bringing my carryon with extra clothes in it? Well, I checked it for this leg of the trip b/c I was lazy and didn’t feel like carrying it anymore 🙁 So now I’m in Kodiak with just a backpack of electronics and money. Great. One last flight from Anchorage arrives about 20 minutes after mine, and I barely want to look at the bags on the carousel. Of course neither of mine are there. They’re still in Anchorage, and will arrive on the first flight Sunday. Keep in mind that as I’m writing this, it’s 3:20 p.m. Sunday, and no flights have yet to arrive because of the inclement weather. I hop in a cab and speed to Wal-Mart (b/c it closes at midnight, and it’s 11:30 by the time I get in the cab) to grab some sweats to sleep in (I’ve been wearing the same jeans and t-shirt since Friday morning) and toiletries. My bags DID get on a plane to Kodiak around 7:00 this morning, but the plane had to return to Anchorage b/c of the bad weather here. Luckily (for me, not them), some of the scientific party is still stuck in Anchorage, and they’ve gotten my bags and will bring them whenever they get here. So at least I know (hope) the bags are in reliable hands. I’ve spent today just hanging out on the ship, because it’s been raining all day, and I have no raingear to protect me, so I can’t even go out exploring some of the hiking trails around here without fear of soaking the only clothes I have.

The harbor where the Oscar Dyson is docked. Just a bit overcast.

This has been quite an eventful trip thus far, and we haven’t even left port yet. We’re scheduled to leave at 0900 Monday, but the rest of the science crew and some deckhands aren’t here yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see.