motion sickness – NOAA Teacher at Sea Blog

NOAA Teacher at Sea

Kiersten Newtoff

Aboard NOAA Ship Pisces

January 6 – January 29, 2025

Mission: Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS)

Geographic Area of Cruise: North Atlantic Coast

Geographic Area of Cruise: Massachusetts to North Carolina

Date: January 7, 2025

I’m finally aboard! Other than a fishing boat that was just barely in the ocean for a couple hours, I’ve never been in a ship this large, for this long, out in the open ocean. This is definitely a new adventure and really putting me to the test with the rough waters.

view of assorted plankton against a black background through a microscope — Examples of some of the plankton we may see! Credit: Dr. D. P. Wilson/Science Source

There are four scientific teams on the board: marine mammal observations, seabird observations, hydrophone for marine mammals, and plankton assessments. Since this trip is 24 days long, I’ll be bouncing around groups to learn about what they are doing. I’m starting with the plankton group, but we weren’t able to deploy last night due to weather. I’ll share more about each of the groups when I finish that “rotation” and in between I’ll write about other cool things – like motion sickness!

I’m one of those people that being in a car, metro, airplane, and boats gets me quite nauseous. My brain is like “nu-uh, not today!”. And I’ll totally admit, that was one of my concerns about joining the Teacher at Sea program because being in a boat in the ocean, especially with less than great weather, was not going to go well. Although I do not like having motion sickness, I still find it fascinating and so I went down a rabbit hole to learn more about it.

a scientific illustration of the vestibular system in the inner ear. there is a wider scale drawing of an ear and ear canal, and then a magnified view of just the vestibular system. parts labeled include the vestibular nerve, semicircular canals, utricle, vestibule, and saccule. the image is credited to the Cleveland Clinic 2024. — The vestibular system in this picture refers to the parts of the inner ear that help your brain understand where it is in space. Your brain interprets how the fluid inside the inner ear is moving so it can understand what is going on physically with the body. Credit: Cleveland Clinic.

Our bodies use lots of senses to understand the world around us and make judgements to what is safe, normal, and okay. The main players in motion sickness are your brain, your inner ears, and muscles. Your inner ear has a fluid in it and as your body moves, the liquid moves a certain amount and direction within your ear and tells your brain how much you have moved. But, if you are looking at something stationary such as reading a book or typing on a computer, your visual processing system thinks you are sanding still. When you are in a vehicle, whether it be a car, train, boat, or bus, you become more likely to develop motion sickness because your brain is confused. This trip started off with some big weather causing the boat to rock a lot. My ears and body recognize this movement and send signals to the brain about what’s happening. However, my eyes are deceiving my brain. I’m staring at this screen which my eyes are interpreting that everything is still, which it communicates to the brain. Now the brain is just confused because it’s getting mixed signals and starts assuming the worst.

a simple illustration of a brain, with an interior area highlighted in blue. there is a small green dot at the base of the brain stem, circled in red, labeled Area postrema. — Anatomy of the brain; note the small area at the base showing the area postrema, the part of the brain responsible for making sense of the signals from the body. Credit: W. McGinnis, T Audhya, & S. Edelson

There’s a couple of theories behind what exactly is happening to cause nausea, but one in particular I found interesting was the Defense Against Poison hypothesis. There is a region in the brain called the area postrema that is responsible for deciphering between conflicts in what is seen versus what is felt and it is also the area that triggers vomiting when it detects a toxin (such as food poisoning). The hypothesis is that when your brain is getting mismatched signals, your brain thinks it’s hallucinating and wants to induce vomiting because it assumes it’s a toxin causing the mismatch. Essentially, our brain is smart but it can be such a diva if things aren’t perfect.

To help prevent or lessen the impacts of motion sickness, it’s best to sit in the front of the vehicle and look out the window so that your brain feels like it’s moving too. This also means avoiding reading while on the move since keeping your eyes fixated on something stationary is what caused the problem in the first place. This boat trip I was prescribed scopolamine patches to address my motion sickness and it’s worked so wonderfully. So wonderful in fact, I decided to write a poem singing its praises.

Ode to Scopolamine

by Kiersten Newtoff

The sticker behind my ear is none other than scopolamine.

I have to take it because these treacherous waters are mean.

Without it, misery would set in.

And I’d always have to be cautious of the nearest bin.

Inside our brains is a neurotransmitter, acetylcholine.

It likes to tell on us and make our body go green.

But scopolamine is here to save the day!

You need to put it on without delay.

It blocks those transmitters in the brain,

So even if mismatched, it can’t communicate and cause you pain.

So here’s to you, my friend, scopolamine,

You are making this trip so much more serene!

view over the ocean toward he horizon at sunrise. the sun peeks through golden clouds, casting some visible sunbeams. the ocean, blue gray, has distinct waves; the image focuses on one in particular in the foreground. — A view from this morning. The waves look deceptively small, but trust me — you will feel *every* dip.

NOAA TEACHER AT SEA
CATHRINE PRENOT FOX
ONBOARD NOAA SHIP OSCAR DYSON
JULY 24 – AUGUST 14, 2011

Personal Log
Every year on my birthday my Nana sent me a card with a $20 bill tucked into it. Her written instructions were: “do something nice.” Without fail, the entire sum would be spent on ride tickets at the Dutchess County Fair for the roller coaster, tea-cup spin, high swings, pirate ship and the ’round-up’ ride (an old fashioned gravitron). Evidently, I assumed that she meant “do something nice (for yourself).”

I still love a good stomach dropping roller-coaster ride but as a scientist I have grown curious about the biology of balance. Why is it that I occasionally suffer from motion sickness but other times can eat funnel cakes, ride the spinniest amusement park ride and have no fear of the aftermath? Furthermore, when I was on a ship in high seas of the North Atlantic Ocean around the Hebrides (west of Scotland) I didn’t even have a stomach quiver… …once I put foot on shore though, my body decided that land was moving alarmingly.

The most frequent question of all Teacher at Sea Blogs that I have read in the past two months is a variation on this: “Are you seasick?” Since the word ‘Nausea’ stems from the Greek ‘naus,’ or ship, I think it seems very appropriate to address this question through Issue 3: Why are we seasick? (Again, if you click on the cartoon it should open in another window so you can read it more easily and magnify.)

Motion sickness in general seems to arise from the brain’s inability to resolve a conflict between the senses of balance. When input from the eyes, fine motor muscles, skin receptors and the organs of the inner ear don’t add up, your brain assumes that something must be adversely effecting the body. A cascade of events takes place: cold sweats, the pyloric valve of the stomach closes up, letting no food pass to the intestines, dizziness, vertigo, nausea and sometimes…well, you know. The most common theory is that the brain thinks the body’s discordant messages mean that it is hallucinating and has ingested a poison. Response? Get rid of it.

Techniques to help resolve your brain’s conflict include napping and snacking (which I happen to be excellent at!), avoiding greasy or acidic foods and simply keeping a visual reference point on the horizon. Although I am bringing some OTC meds in case I get desperate, I have also stocked up on ginger chew candy. Ginger loosens up the pyloric valve, letting your stomach empty out, and making it less likely that you will “chum the waters.”

If the Oscar Dyson gets into waves anything like these onboard the Discoverer in the Bering Sea in 1979 (yes, I know, very unlikely), I don’t know if ginger and snacking will do me any good.

Whatever the result, at least I will have something to ponder if I have to take a few trips to the rail.

Until our next adventure,
Cat

Tag: motion sickness

Kiersten Newtoff: Ode to Scopolamine. January 7, 2025

Cathrine Fox: Issue Three: Why are we seasick?