Tag: flexibility

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Joshua Gonzalez: Sitting on the Dock of the Bay: August 18, 2025

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Joshua Gonzalez

Aboard NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada

August 11 – August 23, 2025

Mission: Integrated West Coast Pelagics Survey (Leg 4)

Geographic Area of Cruise: Pacific Ocean, California Coast

Today’s Date: August 18, 2025

Weather Data from the Bridge:

Location:  Newport, Oregon

Wind speed: 4.1 kts.

Wave height: 6-7 ft.

Air temp.: 15.5° C (60° F)

Sky: Clear

Science and Technology Log

Today we are heading back out to sea., emphasis on back. We had to make a brief stop back in Newport due to a malfunction with the fog horn.  Since it had been very foggy, it was not safe.  We had to wait in Newport for maintenance.

a view of NOAA Ship Bell M Shimada in port at night. it is low tide, so the hull is not very visible above the dock.
NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada back in Newport.

Therefore, we have not been doing any fishing since my last post.  However, now that it has been repaired we are on our way again.  It will take about 15 hours until we are back at the transects that we need to survey.  We are all very excited to begin fishing again.  In the meantime, in order to learn more about what it takes to be a full time NOAA scientist, I thought it would be a good idea to interview one of the scientists working with me on NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada about his role on this mission.  

Meet Gary Longo – Research Scientist 2 NOAA Southwest:

a man stands for a photo on the deck of NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada. we can see the port of Newport in the background.
Gary Longo in Newport.
  1. Why is your work important?  

My work is important because it helps inform management and stock assessors of population structure within federally managed fisheries, because understanding population structure is critical to effective management.

  1. What do you enjoy most about your work?

My favorite part of my job is getting to the point that you see results from data analysis, because often to get to that point it involves time in the field, collecting samples, extracting DNA in the lab, and preparing libraries for sequencing, analyzing the data, and finally starting to see the picture with the results of all your hard work.

  1. Where do you do most of your work?

Most of my work is done at the Southwest Fisheries Center in La Jolla, California.  However the species: pacific sardine, northern anchovy, lingcod, and various rock fish species, that I focus on in my work are generally distributed in the northeast Pacific.

  1. What tool do you use in your work that you could not live without?

My computer, for running analysis and writing up results.

  1. If you could invent any tool to make your work more efficient and cost was no object, what would it be and why?

An autonomous vehicle that hunted fishes and was non lethal but took tissue samples and sequenced each sample’s genome.

  1. When did you know you wanted to pursue a career in science or an ocean career?

When I was at the Monterey Bay Aquarium I realized that my heart wasn’t into medicine, which I was studying at the time.  I was a member at the aquarium and went there all the time and I thought this is what I want to do.

  1. What part of your job with NOAA did you least expect to be doing?

Extra paperwork. 

  1. How do you help wider audiences to understand and appreciate NOAA science?

I try to explain things that I would want my grandmother to understand.  Generally speaking when I am on hikes or birding I speak with curious people and try to engage with them.

  1. How did you become interested in communicating about science?

I became interested when I became a teacher’s assistant in grad school and an instructor in ichthyology at UC Santa Cruz.

  1. What’s at the top of your recommended reading list for a young person exploring ocean or science career options?

One of my favorites is Song of the Dodo by David Quamman.  That’s a great book about island biogeography and the importance of habitat connectivity

  1. What do you think you would be doing if you were not working for NOAA?

Using my dive masters to share my passion of diving with interested folks.

  1. Do you have any outside hobbies?

I enjoy surfing, birding, hiking, and scuba diving.

Gary and the other scientists working on board NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada have been amazing.  They are all very passionate about their work, and very knowledgeable about everything we are studying on this mission.  It is inspiring to work with people who care so much about their work.

Personal Log

Maybe some of you have heard the expression, “Hurry up and wait.”  I have heard that off and on at various times throughout my life.  This part of our mission has seemed to embody the sentiment behind the expression like few other times I have experienced. 

Getting ready for this mission seemed like a whirlwind with balancing my life at home with my family and trying to prepare mentally and physically for my time on NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada.  Once I was in Newport things slowed down a little while adjusting to life onboard and making our way out to our first transect.  Then business really picked up and everything was full of excitement and energy.  Processing our first catch was a time filled with enough adrenaline to make all of us forget that it was one in the morning. 

Then when the fog horn went out of commission everything came to a proverbial screeching halt.  Hurry up, now wait.  The initial feelings of frustration, restlessness, and even anxiety were pervasive.  There were even temptations to gripe and have a “woe is me” type of attitude.  Unfortunately, in life sometimes we have to deal with setbacks due to circumstances that are beyond our control.

I work through tough or frustrating situations in life by taking a step back to gain some perspective, and remembering that there are things outside of my life that are bigger and more important.  My hope is built on nothing less.  All other ground is sinking sand.  When I put my life in a better perspective, I know there will be brighter days, and the things that were bothering me no longer seem so pressing. 

Heading out to sea again has reinvigorated everyone onboard.  We are chomping at the bit, and I think we are just going to rip it.  Pull back and let the big dog eat.  There is an excitement that is palpable.  Being with people who care deeply about their work is a blessing.  I want to take back as much as I can from this experience to my classroom for my students, but I want to remember that desire to do my work and do it well most of all.  Hopefully, very soon we will be so busy processing catches and recording data that I will be nearly too tired to write, but when I do I’m sure I’ll have lots to say.  Let’s hurry up!

portrait photo of Josh wearing a Teacher at Sea hat and a sweatshirt that says I Survived the Polar Bear Plunge, Bradford Beach, Milwaukee. He stands at the railing, and in the distance we can see the port of Newport.
Heading back out to sea!

Did You Know?

An otolith is a small structure found inside fish which helps them detect sound and keep their balance.  Otoliths grow inside fish throughout their life and can be used to determine their age, almost like a tree, by counting the growth rings.  Pretty cool!

Can you identify this species?

a mola mola swimming on its side at the ocean's surface
Mola Mola, aka. Ocean Sunfish

In my opinion, one of the coolest fish names, mola mola.  They are also referred to as an ocean sunfish.  Mola mola have a jellyfish based diet and can grow to be very large, on average 2200 pounds and six to seven feet wide.  I spotted this one from the flying bridge on our way back to Newport.  I speculate it was a little more than half those sizes.

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Angela Hung: Flexibility, June 22, 2018

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Angela Hung

Aboard NOAA Ship Oregon II

June 22-July 5, 2018

June 19-July 5, 2018

June 23-July 5, 2018

Mission: SEAMAP Summer Groundfish Survey

Geographic Area of Cruise: Gulf of Mexico

Date: June 22, 2018

Weather Data from the Bridge

(Actually from weather.gov, the program in the bridge is off)

Conditions at 1454

Latitude: 30.46° N

Longitude: 88.53° W

Temperature: 34° C

Wind Speed: SW 12 mph

Science and Technology Log

Taniya Wallace-Chief Scientist, Fisheries Biologist

If you enjoy a good seafood steam pot or boil—overflowing with shrimp, crabs, clams and corn and potatoes mixed in, rounded out with fish filets blackened/broiled/fried to your preference—then you have to thank hardworking scientists like Taniya Wallace. Taniya is a fisheries biologist and is the Chief Scientist aboard Oregon II for this leg of the 2018 SEAMAP Summer Groundfish Survey. On top of assessing the health of the Gulf fisheries that feeds Americans across the country, she is busy coordinating the group of scientists that form the research party on the boat. The specifics of the research will follow in upcoming posts, but today, I’d like you to meet a scientist.

Taniya Wallace
Taniya entering data into the computer.

Taniya was certain of becoming a nurse. Her high school offered vocational coursework in nursing to give students an early start into college degree programs. She was on track, until it came to clinicals. Nursing clinicals are the part of the program where students begin their training in real work settings to apply what is learned in the classroom. More importantly, clinicals introduces students to the realities of the job.

Nurses are among the ranks of hard working, underappreciated sectors of the health field because much of what they do goes unseen. For many in pre-nursing and nursing programs, clinicals ensures that students are experiencing what they are signing up for. For Taniya Wallace, her experience during this class compelled her to make the difficult decision to pursue a different program of study.

Taniya was accepted in Mississippi Valley State University, a historically black university, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in chemistry. She began a position as a laboratory scientist until the 2010 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig that caused 11 deaths and the largest oil spill in history. Four million barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico over three months before the underwater well was finally capped.

Taniya has always loved the water, and had previously shadowed her cousin who is also a marine scientist. Her aunt builds boats for Austal Shipyard in Alabama and her father works at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, MS, the very company that built Oregon II. With an urgent need to study the critical impacts of crude petroleum oil on the Gulf ecosystems, an opportunity on Oregon II was a natural fit. Taniya signed a three month contract–she’s been here ever since.

Plaque aboard Oregon II
Plaque aboard Oregon II

What has kept her going for eight years? As a scientist on a ship, she sees “something new every day” on the boat and on land when they stop at different ports. With a love of water, working in a lab at sea is a win-win.

Personal Log

The Teacher at Sea Program emphasizes to applicants that “flexibility and the ability to cope with the uncertain is crucial to the character of those who go to sea.” Taniya Wallace demonstrates this quality by shifting to a research program in college, joining NOAA Ship Oregon II, and by working at sea.

It is no exaggeration that flexibility is a requirement for working on a boat. In fact, I was scheduled to participate in the second leg of the SEAMAP summer groundfish survey on June 21, departing from Galveston, TX on the 22nd. Unfortunately, the trawl winch broke during the first leg (the first time ever for Oregon II which has been sailing for 50 years!), cutting their trip short. To try to make up the time, it was decided that the second leg would get an early start from Mississippi as soon as repairs were completed in Pascagoula, MS.

What originally was a week to get packed, find a plant sitter and cuddle with my cats became a last minute scramble to find rain boots and mow the lawn in the middle of a heat wave—I boarded a plane to Gulfport, MS on June 18 instead. (It was explained that this was not the typical direction in scheduling shifts.) I got to meet some of the fantastic crew members of Oregon II, as well as from neighboring Gordon Gunter, who invited me to play corn hole for the first time. This is the game where you are trying to throw bean bags through a hole cut in a plywood board that’s set on an incline.  I spent the night on the boat in port.

 

 

 

The boat bustled the next morning as everyone arrived: crew, scientists and a couple of interns. [Find your internship here! https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/about/internship/  ] At 1400, we were off!

There’s the requisite training and safety information for the ship in general. Taniya took over the interns and me for science brief. I learn that I’m assigned to the day shift which begins at 1200 noon the next day. Night shift starts at 2400 midnight that same day. The operations of the ship are 24 hours. It’s a long wait to get started and I’m looking forward to it.

We spend a night out at sea and I’m up and ready to sort some fish and shrimp. When I get to the galley, I find out that we are in fact, returning to Pascagoula because the trawl winch wasn’t fully repaired.

While issues like this are rare on Oregon II, a vessel that is widely regarded as extremely reliable, the process of science frequently hits stumbling blocks. TV shows like CSI and Bones and movies like Jurassic Park feature futuristic laboratories with state-of-the-art, if wildly impractical, equipment with colorful liquids, holograms, and scientists in lab coats and goggles who complete experiments in mere minutes. In reality, science is a lot messier and SLOWER. While wiling away the time today, I learned about a new hashtag for scientists full of internet examples: #badstockphotosofmyjob.

Real labs tend to have old equipment, space is limited so rooms are often crowded with large machines and many computers, and most liquids are colorless, stored in small, like the size of your pinky, tubes in a refrigerator or freezer. Particularly if you work outside, aka “the field”, and even if you don’t, a lot of equipment might be jerry-rigged from things picked up at Wal-Mart or Home Depot. Not to say that science is unreliable or not credible, but that projects are unique and a lot of times, you have to be creative and build what you specifically need. Then modify it until it works.

 

 

Trawl nets being deployed.
Part of the trawling equipment on Oregon II.
Trawling machinery on the deck of Oregon II
Trawling equipment

 

 

So here we are in a typical day of a scientist. A piece of equipment isn’t working, we’re losing data collection by the minute, but remember, we’re going to be flexible.

Did You Know?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is operated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which is tasked with promoting job creation and economic growth by providing tools and programs for the scientific collection and analysis of data. NOAA is one of these scientific research agencies employing scientists to study the atmosphere to provide us with weather and climate data, and the oceans, providing information for the operation of fisheries, for example. Good policies are informed by basic research, making the work of these agencies invaluable to the US economy.