Tag: central pacific

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Chris Harvey, June 14, 2006

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Chris Harvey
Onboard NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette
June 5 – July 4, 2006

Mission: Lobster Survey
Geographical Area: Central Pacific Ocean, Hawaii
Date: June 14, 2006

Science and Technology Log 

Some of you are about to begin your day, and mine is dragging on for a little while more.  Today was a bit more full of wind and rain than yesterday. In fact, the seas have heightened to the point that we are in a continual state of bouncing back and forth like a ping-pong ball (or a rag doll, if you prefer the cliché). That would be ok if we were in fact a ping-pong ball. Instead, we are a 240-foot steel sailing vessel. The Pacific has definitely had her way with us today. Although we are all still healthy and the Sette continues to push back on the waves crashing at the bow just as hard as they are pushing on Her. Tomorrow is bound to be substantially worse than today according to preliminary weather reports from the bridge (remember, we are NOAA, the weather source!). As the French say… Yeah I caught myself before I quoted the French! The only French person worth quoting is Napoleon, who himself claims that he was not French! (I am only harassing France because Carole, one of our researchers, is French and I have not given her a hard time in my journals yet! I was treated very well by the French when I was in France, and I am also hoping to one day work with a man whose last name is Cousteau, so I better be kind to the French!)

I got to sleep in a little longer as the “runner” today than the last two days when I was a “cracker” and bait cutter.  Having this job didn’t keep me any drier than the crackers. Nor did it keep me very far away from the smell of day old festering mackerel. But it was a nice change. Tomorrow I go back to my favorite job- that of a stacker. Being a stacker keeps me as far away from the science of this mission as possible. It puts me on the fantail with good music and good crew to keep me company. If you can’t tell, these two things have become some of my favorite aspects of the cruise. But now I am sounding redundant of past entries.

Today we lost eight more traps to the coral reef below.  Good for it! Except that those traps will be there for some time. It is kind of ironic the way this mission and the next will work out for the Oscar Sette. On the next cruise, the Sette will be hosting scientists specializing in coral reef protection. Perhaps we should have their chief scientist and our chief scientist talk next time before anyone goes out to sea. Then maybe we wouldn’t tear down the bridges that they keep building!

Bob says that fishermen have a saying about losing gear to the sea: If you put it in, do not expect to get it back. I’ve thought about it all day long, a kind of sailor’s koan, and have only been able to conclude that fishermen who think this must have very little respect for the sea. But that is not my position to say. As a wise man has advised me, some battles are best not fought. The sad reality of this trip is that despite how much effort we put into protecting any or all species of marine animals, someone in some part of the world is doing his part to remove as many of those animals as possible to put as much money in his pocket as possible. Again, no negativity. Only reality.

On the lighter side of things, I found enjoyment in two particular marine species today.  The first was a monk seal that passed by the port side (left side) of the ship between hauling strings of traps. It didn’t stop to give us much of a show, which is good because that is not its purpose in life. Instead it just dipped itself into the waves and moved on past the stern (rear) of the ship and out of sight.

The second was an albatross that didn’t seem to mind the fact that the wind picked up to about 30 knots today. In fact, it took advantage of this wind to perform some acrobatic maneuvers that I am sure any pilot would love to imitate in any aircraft. At times I swore that its wing tips were in the crest of a wave as it raced about just above the waves. It couldn’t have been more than six inches above the water at times. Which is remarkable because the waves were so sporadic an unequal in size that I expected it to wipe out at any point. Just when it seemed the albatross was going to crash into the water, it would tilt itself upwards and rise into the sky cutting the sky into two pieces as quickly as a warm knife through butter. The flight was so graceful and perfect in its form. As cliché as it sounds, I thought of how wonderful it must be to be that albatross today. It didn’t seem to be scavenging for food or drink. And it never seemed anxious that it was lost. It was just playing in the wind and waves, perhaps taking a day off of the trials of yesterday and the worries of tomorrow. Perhaps it too can say mooo!

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Chris Harvey, June 13, 2006

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Chris Harvey
Onboard NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette
June 5 – July 4, 2006

Mission: Lobster Survey
Geographical Area: Central Pacific Ocean, Hawaii
Date: June 13, 2006

Science and Technology Log

Today was the longest day of hauling traps since we have been out here.  I guess that is partly due to the fact that the wind picked up this morning and made the ocean very choppy. We have been experiencing swells of around 5 feet for the last few days.  But with the wind cutting into them, the waves smashing into the boat have the strength of the swells but the misdirection of a thousand firecrackers.  It made navigating the ship very difficult for the bridge. If our winch (Yes, the Captain corrected me on my use of the word “wench” in a previous entry. A “wench,” he said was a servant girl of the Dark Ages. A “winch” is a machine used to haul lines up and down.) receives the trap strings at angles larger than about 30 degrees to the ship, it is very difficult to use.

A second reason why we had such difficulty hauling the traps this morning is that we set them on coral heads at the bottom of the ocean.  The traps are made of sturdy, yet flexible plastic and are connected to each other with rope about a half inch in diameter.  Further, there is a fair amount of rope between each trap, which is left to float and dangle in the current, frequently catching itself in the coral and making our job of hauling the traps to the ship extremely difficult.

Twice today the coral won decisive battles against us, and forced the rope to break.  We lost a total of 7 traps to the ocean. Bob says that this is a minor loss. I wonder what is to become of the traps once we are gone.  Yesterday we lost 9 traps while setting them because instead of attaching a float to the end of a string of eight, a crewmember attached a ninth trap. Instead of having a buoyant float to mark the string of eight traps, nine traps sank quickly to the ocean floor. There was talk this morning of diving the site to retrieve the floats.  Then there was talk that the traps were expendable, and that the risk of shark attack was slightly too high. So after today, there are 16 traps on the bottom of the Pacific, full of bait, lobster, sharks, hermit crabs, eel, or anything else that had the misfortune to crawl inside.

I am still greatly enjoying the people. And the sunsets here have been some of the most amazing things that I have ever seen. Even the “full” moon rising the last few nights has left me in pure awe of the world and all its wonders.  Last night, while sitting on the deck outside of the bridge, Sarah, an Ensign officer, showed me the Southern Cross rising in the horizon.  She also pointed out several other series of constellations that I had never been aware of before.  My father warned me about the beauty of the stars in the open sea.  He was certainly right. Constellations that I could never begin to see back home in Jacksonville stuck out in the night sky like the ancient sailors’ visions of old. But even with all of the constant beauty of nature around me, I still wake up each morning with apprehension over what my work will bring.

I must move forward, regardless of how I feel towards the science–or rather methodology of the science.  And maybe that is what I am supposed to learn through practice over the next three weeks. Usually when I run into something that tastes bitter at first bite, I back away from a second bite. I cannot back away from future bites in this situation. So I will be forced to move into a new realm of patience, perseverance, understanding, and personal growth. I have already given up on the thought of eating fish and lobster anytime soon. Lobster has never been a favorite of mine, but after spending the last four days staring into their fearful little eyes while I pull them from traps, or spread them across a table to take measurements, I have come to love the lobsters for their simple, yet perfect existence.

I hate reaching this point, where I feel as though I am guilty for being part of the human race. I am not about to make such a leap as in Walden, and presume that humans are supposed to act in such a small part in nature as everything else.  I know that there is something special about us that gives us the right, perhaps out of desire rather than necessity, to remain at the “top” of the food chain…for now (I say “top” because as soon as I fall into the water during shark feeding time, I guarantee I am NOT at the top of the food chain anymore!).  Still I feel as though part of this mission is to see how the lobsters live without the interaction and interference of man in their natural habitat.  Then we come along in our ship with our traps and our scientific instruments and rip them from their homes, probe about them for a while, throw them into a bucket with so many of their likes that they would probably not have ever come across on the ocean floor had we not caught them in our traps, toss them back into the sea in a different location from where we pulled them, and then expect them to grow and multiply.  I am sorry for the analogy, but in the tradition of practicing perception from different perspectives on this cruise, as I was probing lobsters in the wet lab yesterday I kind of felt like I was an alien in a space ship scooping up human beings, performing horrific torture on them as I took my measurements, and then throwing them back down. In a sick kind of way, I hope that aliens do come along some day (if they haven’t come already) and abduct some of our scientists. I don’t mean them any harm, but sometimes I feel very guilty for our egocentric belief that we can are supposed to analyze and break down everything in order to “fix” nature.

I am afraid that I am getting a little deep in my thought, and it’s not yet time for sunset (my drug of choice for inspiration while onboard the ship).  I think that there are a lot of things in nature that we can seek to understand.  But I think that we should take hint after hint from Mother Nature as she continues to bombard us with hurricanes in the Atlantic, volcanoes in Indonesia, and the melting of the icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica (and so on, and so forth of course!). Yes, it is truly wonderful to be a human being instead of a fat moo-cow!  Do not get me wrong about that!  But maybe a fat moo-cow doesn’t suffer so much as it goes about its life because it never thinks that it can control the type or amount of grass it eats, the temperature in which it lows each night, the cleanliness of the water that it drinks, and so forth.  It just does what it is created to do, and offers its life as a perfect sacrifice to the Great Beyond by doing this most simple task to the best of its ability.

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Chris Harvey, June 12, 2006

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Chris Harvey
Onboard NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette
June 5 – July 4, 2006

Mission: Lobster Survey
Geographical Area: Central Pacific Ocean, Hawaii
Date: June 12, 2006

Science and Technology Log

The hardest part of this job, aside from waking up around 6:30 in the morning, is keeping track of the events of the day through my journal entries.  Yesterday I didn’t feel like writing much, so I skipped an entry just to make it harder on myself today.  I’ve been told that I don’t need to write about everything each and every day, but I know from all of the journals that I have kept during my travels, writing is as much for me to look back on as it is for those of you keeping up on my experiences here.  So this entry is a bit of a hodgepodge, smorgasbord, or mishmash of sorts.

I have read through my last entry a half dozen times and I am still amazed at the experience. It seems premature of me to say that I’ve had my turning point in this trip already. But it sure feels that way.  It is a struggle to work now.  I feel like a man on a great pilgrimage to some Holy Land who has found Enlightenment midway through his journey, and so longer needs to travel–but does so for the sake of sharing his experience along the way. And on a ship at sea, one does not really have the luxury of turning the ship around and going home.  That’s how I know that there is quite a bit more in store for me.  And so I will go another day, awaiting what will be.

A common theme of the voyage is the regular showing of “Groundhog Day” at 8 PM each evening.  I have not taken to watching it yet, but I love the idea of showing it again and again. I was warned, after the ship left the harbor of course, that the lobster cruise becomes Groundhog Day after a few days.  And so far, this must be true.  Yesterday I was back in the wet lab measuring lobster all day.  Nothing much happens there, and I am in the air conditioning rather than in the sun, so I should be grateful for that.  However, I am starting to wonder if the costs involved in this research expedition are worth the results that we are getting.

I have been asked by some of you to share the results of our catch.  I don’t have all of the numbers next to me right now, but the general trend is that the lobster catch in the NWHI really sucks. We are pretty much right on par for the last few years of data, which for the most part averages less than one lobster per trap.  In some cases, such as today, the catch rate is much, much lower than that.  Which leads me into explaining part of the reason for this mission to exist.  I will do my best to explain this, as it has been related to me thought my prying and probing.

Part of NOAA’s purpose for existence, as an extension of the US Department of Commerce, is to conduct surveys to promote the use of sustainable fisheries for the US.

What this means is that the US government has recognized that fisheries provide the economy a fairly sizable chunk of change, employment opportunities, and the likes, and would like to continue to improve the industry.  The Hawaiian Islands are some of the most protected land areas in the United States, governed by up to three different organizations. Since the year 2000, commercial fishing of lobster in the NWHI has been completely eliminated.  Commercial bottom fishing is still permitted, but on a very restricted basis. There were concerns that, for the 100+ years that commercial lobster fishing was legal in the NWHI, the lobster population was suffering a serious blow and was unable to recuperate itself year after year.  For this reason, various government agencies, particularly during the end of the Clinton era, gained a greater control over the environmental protection of the NWHI and the waters surrounding them.

We are here now as part of a study to document the growth, or lack thereof, of two types of lobster native to the Northwest Hawaiian Islands: the Slipper Lobster and the Spiny Lobster. Scientists have been interested in the growth rates of these two lobsters because, for the most part, growth has been very, very slow over the last few years.  Determining the age of lobster is extremely difficult, as is left to best estimates based on size.  Over the last few years, thousands of lobsters have been tagged, and we are on the prowl for such lobster so we can document their growth over time.

The best place to see what is going on in the lobster community is to spend time in the wet lab measuring the specimen with Bob, the Chief Scientist of the ship, who has spent over thirty years working out of Hawaii. Although he probably gets tired of my probing, most of what I have come to know about our mission has come from the last two days I have spent in the wet lab. There we take measurements of each lobster, and after we are through, Bob crunches the numbers and spits out data for us to compare to previous years. As I said before, we are right on par for last year’s numbers.  Perhaps slightly higher, at best.

If we are not catching more than one lobster per trap, and the lobster that we are catching are only slightly larger than the year before, if that, can we open the waters to commercial lobster fishing again?  Think about that for a minute, and then come back to me…The answer seems to be, no.

As scientists, we must move further into the issue and ask ourselves why aren’t the lobsters growing?  In a time where every scientific question seems to be answered with “Global Warming,” we must take into consideration many other factors as well.  Water temperature and salinity may be changing over time.  But there is also the issue of food supply for the lobsters. Is the quantity or quality of food decreasing?  What about predators?  There are many times more white tipped reef sharks present in these waters now than ever before. Could this be influencing lobster growth (how is the marine food chain in the NWHI changing?)?  Are the lobster stressed for other reasons? Are the coral heads in which the lobsters take shelter growing, or dying?

With so many variables, we must do our very best to keep our constants in this investigation constant. Such constants include: location of traps, type and amount of bait, and measuring points on the lobster.  Bob has done a very good job of keeping these things constant over the last few years, despite how easy it would be to change any of them at any other time.  If he were to do that, he would essentially be throwing out years and years of previous work.

So what are we doing here?  I ask myself that every day!  We are here to make evaluations of the sustainability of the lobster fishing industry–not quite as “treehugging” of a mission as I had first anticipated, but important nonetheless, if the Hawaiian Islands’ fisheries are to significantly contribute to the US economy.  Whether or not we are justified in spending the time and money we are spending is still up in the air for me, but maybe that is why I am just an “observer,” and “scientist,” rather than head of some government agency.

Today I switched jobs and became a “cracker.”  Yeah, according to some of my students I already am a “cracker.”  But in this use of the word, I was paired again with Amee in opening the traps as soon as they were hauled onto the ship.  I tell you, the only thing worse than smelling dead mackerel is smelling dead mackerel that have been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for a day growing more and more putrid.  I was very reluctant to begin the job today. I have resigned myself to simply stacking traps.  This gets me away from the lobster, shark, crabs, and dead fish of the traps and allows me to listen to music on the fantail while small-talking with the crew about anything and everything.  As I have made reference to already, I am very undecided about my involvement in the research we are conducting. Since I signed up for the job, I will do it to the best of my ability.  But it is already difficult for me to do jobs, such as cracking, because I see some things that do not sit well in the stomach.

Amee and I sang Disney songs all day long to pass time, to the chagrin of the others around us. In all, we were finished rather early.  I threw the bait overboard to the waiting sharks (one of my undecided arguments), and took a nap (never an undecided argument!).  I am about to head outside to watch another Pacific sunset, followed immediately by the task of setting out bait to thaw overnight.  Tomorrow is an early morning, since I have to wake up at start cutting bait by 6:30 if I want to eat breakfast (another undecided argument, breakfast is NOT to be missed!).

Not to be forgotten, last night was another first for me.  Doc, Amee, and I were sharing conversation over a cup of tea on the weather deck when the moon rose like a flame over the ocean. For a moment I thought we were drinking hallucinogenic tea.  But we were all having the same trip.  I pointed out what looked to be an island on fire, perhaps a volcanic eruption. Amee said it was a Viking ship of old.  Doc said it was the moon.  I didn’t believe any of us, so I ran towards the bridge to ask more experienced sailors what it could be. Then the fire spread into the sky, outlining the shape of a mushroom.  So this is the end! The Nuclear Holocaust has begun, and Honolulu is gone! My love story with the sea would soon turn into one of survival, with no one left to read about it!

Then the curve of a red/orange moon nudged itself above the clouds.  And with each passing second I could see Her rise, red and rich as fire.  And full.  I trembled at the sight of a red moon and thought of any nautical expressions that might predict the outcome of such a sight. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.  No, that wouldn’t work! It doesn’t say anything about red moons!  And that was the only nautical expression I knew! In my trembling, I eventually grew comfortable at the sight of something amazing.  I stood there in silence for the next hour as I watched the blazing moon shed its color as it rose into a darkened sky.  The few stars that were bright enough to hold their own light in its presence seemed to glow red and orange in its reflection.  Rising still into the night, I went to bed again truly impressed at whatever forces allowed this moment to be…again.  When I thought I had seen it all, something like this comes along. What a Beautiful life!  Have I said this before?

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Chris Harvey, June 10, 2006

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Chris Harvey
Onboard NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette
June 5 – July 4, 2006

Mission: Ecosystem Survey
Geographical Area: Central Pacific Ocean, Hawaii
Date: June 10, 2006

Science and Technology Log 

Have you ever wanted to create something so Beautiful, but didn’t know where to begin? I have. It happened last night just before sunset, and lasted until about midnight when I finally closed my eyes.  I tried to capture the moment with my words and with my camera, but both failed in every attempt.  Here are the words anyway.  Pictures will have to wait.

“I don’t know if I have ever seen anything as Beautiful as the sunset tonight.  I can’t describe it in words. Nor should I even try. They wouldn’t do it justice.  All I can do is try to describe myself right now, incredibly inspired to live in this one moment–and take back every other one, just to remain here now.  A nearly full moon arises as the sun retires for the evening. White cumulus clouds of different shapes and heights scatter themselves across the sky and then fade into colors as they meet on the horizon.  Every color exists right now. And with the setting sun, a flash of green to outline the furthest clouds. The depth my eyes perceives exceeds the depth of the ocean.  Dolphin dance quietly in the waters around us to the sounds of Coltrane to make the evening complete. If I don’t wake tomorrow, I know where I shall be–forever in this moment.  Remove the people. Remove the steel from this ship.  Remove my pen and paper and camera and lenses. Leave nothing but me in a dinghy to drift about through this lovely sea and sky.  And let me go here in quiet moments, if I wake in the morning and this is no longer real. And let my soul reside in solitude among the gentle rolling swells and mirrored moon upon their hills and valleys. Keep me here, where I know that Everything that belongs here is in its right place. Let me sing along in wordless song to the music in my heart.  Let my senses overwhelm me.  I am here, right now.  Not dreaming.  Or am I?  Will I wake tomorrow morning worn and weary, awaiting another breath, wishing and wondering when I–if I–should ever see a moment so still as now? Unimaginable. Love. Beauty. Life. All the same right now.  All in front, behind, beside, within me.  Love and Beauty and Life, forever in this moment.  Until I close my eyes, and wake again…”

I would have painted the moment for you if I could paint.  Or I would have sung it to you, if my voice could describe the colors, depth of perception, taste of salt in the air, and slightest feeling of air pressed from the wind against my skin.  Not even Monet could paint it though.  Nor could a church choir reach the solemnity of such a peaceful moment.  And I fail with my words again and again.  So I’ll stop.

I spent a good part of the morning recounting the evening with everyone on board.  Many of the crew agreed that they have never seen such a night before.  All of us scientists, who are just along for the ride this one time, believe much the same.  Last night was incredibly spiritual–on so many levels.  I expect them to peel away from me over time, like layers of an onion.

The anchor was broken this morning, so we did not begin work until about 9:30.  In the meantime, I sat on the fantail of the ship watching the sun change the colors of the sky from pastels to brighter primary and secondary colors.  Joe put some Grateful Dead on the PA, and we sat in silence for a good while taking in the scenery around us.  Except for Necker Island, we are entirely surrounded by water and clouds and blue sky.  The Pacific remains so calm, and keeps the crew knocking on wood at every mention of Her stillness. It is becoming taboo around here to speak of the gently rolling swells.  Though not quite as comparable as the Great Nor’easters that menace sailors off the coast of New England in a matter of minutes, the Pacific is known for turning on a dime and changing such silence into a terrible mess.  I have grown to respect her Peace with us.  I pray for it each morning in my own stillness.  The birds also welcome such moments and offer their best unto the sea and sky with their graceful flight throughout the clouds. Everything is truly in its right place.

As for work, I was inside the wet lab today measuring lobster.  I saw a side of science that did not seem to fit my picture of what it should be. Not that it was bad, per se.  It just was not what I expected it to be. Though I should know from traveling time and time again, my expectations of what should be will never fully match up with what really is.  I am constantly reminded of this.  And I constantly forget it.  And my heart has been stirred, to say the least, to consider the nature of science and all of its implications.  I am still a scientist.  But I am learning that perhaps I am not a scientific researcher.  Perhaps I will remain on the other side of science for a while, until I can sort out the disparity between my heart and my head in this matter.

It was an easy day, full of air conditioning and fluorescent lighting.  I saved my skin from an ultraviolet beating, and kept myself fully hydrated.  I didn’t even break a sweat, and almost started feeling bad about it later in the day when I saw how exhausted everybody else seemed to be.  Then I reminded myself how spent I had been the last three days, and how I would be again on Monday when I left the lab and returned to the deck of the ship. I have trouble slowing myself down sometimes, and feel as though I should be thoroughly involved in anything and everything that happens.  So I intentionally withdrew myself after work into the Rec Room to watch a video with some of the other scientists.  I need the down time.  I need the break from reality.  I take everything so seriously all of the time. And I wonder, shouldn’t I? Can I afford to take these breaks? There is always something that I can do, something that I can write, some song that I can play. And there is always that drive in me to create something so Beautiful, and to begin doing it sometime soon…

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Chris Harvey, June 9, 2006

NOAA Teacher at Sea
Chris Harvey
Onboard NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette
June 5 – July 4, 2006

Mission: Ecosystem Survey
Geographical Area: Central Pacific Ocean, Hawaii
Date: June 9, 2006

Science and Technology Log 

I actually woke up on time for work today (though my muscles, or lack thereof, were extremely sore)!  I dreaded the idea of stacking again today, though yesterday I thought I would volunteer my services as a stacker for the entire trip.  Due to the tremendous amount of physical labor in the sun, I thought that working as a stacker would be great for me to get back in shape (what shape that is, is yet to be determined!) and give me a chance for a good tan. As it turns out, one must first know what shape they would like to be, before they can pursue getting back into it.  For example: Homer Simpson would prefer to be in the shape of a beer, so he practices by drinking beer.  Presently, I am in the shape of a Dunlap. That is, my belly is so big it “dun lapped” over the rest of me!

I stacked again today, though we were much more efficient as an entire ship.  The bridge (control part of the ship) seemed to get us to our strings of traps in a timely manner, and our trap-hauling assembly line was wonderfully efficient.  We finished our strings of eight early enough to have a full hour for lunch (yesterday it was only about 20 minutes), and our twenties were out of the water by 1:30. We continued on and re-set the traps in their new locations and were completely finished swabbing the deck by 3:30.  All in a day’s work!

Some highlights of the day were: feeding the sharks again (or course!  I don’t know if that will ever get old!), throwing a small white-tipped shark out of a trap and into the water where the larger Galapagos sharks consumed it in a matter of seconds (yes, sad but incredibly fascinating to watch.  Sharks seem to me to be a nearly perfect species–aside from the fact that they eat dead animals, have a brain about the size of a walnut, and do not have opposable thumbs! They are incredibly agile and flexible–being made of cartilage and not bone–very swift, strong, and efficient in their use of energy.  Plus they look very sleek, unless they are trying to bite your arm off, in which case I am assuming they look extremely frightening!), catching a decent number of lobster, crab, eel, and other such marine life that is fun to see up close, and not having to work with Amee.

The Pacific has been eerily calm these last few days.  Today we had some gentle swells, but nothing I couldn’t handle. My “sea legs” seemed to have turned into “S legs,” because when I try to walk a straight line with the ship rocking, my line looks more like a curved “S”! We have been dancing around Necker Island, never staying further away than eyesight. She stills looks like a Dragon at times, and a Sperm Whale at others.  But she is company in this voyage.

I had some incredibly insightful thoughts while meditating earlier this morning.  Thoughts come much clearer when you are surrounded by such beautiful scenery.  One of my favorite things these days, besides trying to count the different shades of blue between the open sea and sky, is looking off in the distance where the clouds meet the sky. In places they seem to gently “bubble” up out of the sea.  Joe says that this is where the world ends. I asked him if we could go there, but he says that it is an insurance liability thing with NOAA.  I asked if I could take a life raft and check it out myself, since I enjoy life on the edge. He said “No!” I’d still like to know if it’s the end of the world or not. Whatever it is, it is one of the many things that I am noticing at sea that I have never noticed about the world before. Strange, this recent talk of perspective–my entire journey is from a different perspective.  I am growing so much every day.

I have come across two ideas that I hope to expound upon over the coming weeks.  The first is the human condition, and how hard it is to diagnose, treat, and remedy the human body, mind, and soul.  Lots of people are making lots of money off of books and videos and CD ROMs that promise to do just that.  However, I have good reason –via the scientific method and the perspective of science I am gaining out here–to argue against such media.

The second is the human element in science.  Science is our way of understanding the world around us. Ever since someone had a question about something natural–from astronomy to gravity to cells to atomic particles–someone else has come up with a process of answering that question through science.  That is why I love science so much. I have so many questions about the world around me; I know that science is the only way to learn how to answer my questions. But science is no living creature.  It is no solid set of information, or database with solutions to every riddle.  Humans have invented “science” as a process through which we ask questions, design controlled experiments, collect data, and interpret that data.  There is a whole lot of room for error there.  Especially since the first word in that sentence is “humans.”  (I hope that I do not offend anyone by saying that humans, whether by nature or by nurture or by neither, have a tragic flaw instilled in their perspective that tends to cause error of some degree in nearly everything. Call it “Original Sin,” “human nature,” or what have you- the one thing we are great at doing is screwing something up.)  I don’t mean to sound pessimistic; just realistic. And again, I will return to this idea later.

On the drama side of things, some tension has been created between Eric, a student at the university, and myself.  He wanted to help us set traps yesterday afternoon and I asked him to leave the deck so I could finish the job.  I didn’t mean to offend him by asking him to leave.  It is just that I worked hard from the beginning of the job, and I wanted to see the project through to the end. I am terrible with finishing things well.  So I am continually trying to practice this when I can. It is kind of ironic, but we were partners today in the stacking job. I don’t think he said 10 words to me all day.  But we seemed to get along all right, and the work was done well.  I am not the kind of guy to go and ask him if I offended him.  And he is not the kind of guy to tell me if I did.  So as long as this lack of communication between us does not create any future problems, it will be all right for each of us to remain the type of people that we are.  Otherwise I will come forward and address the issue. Everyone is working far too well together for conflict.