It goes fast

I'm sitting at gate C16 at Boston Logan airport right now waiting for my flight home. I have another 90 minutes or so, then it's off to California for two days before making the trip to Hawaii. Once I leave for Honolulu I will no longer have cell phone or internet access. I do intend to keep a journal for the whole month-long voyage from Honolulu to San Francisco and post some excerpts from that when I get back on land. But for the next month or so I will not be posting anything. If you are interested in updates from the Robert C. Seamans, you can find out about our current position at http://sea.edu/voyages/index.asp or look for daily tweets at http://twitter.com/sea_seamans (I loathe twitter but luckily I'm not the one updating it!).

The past four weeks have been amazing. In a very short time I have greatly expanded my field of knowledge into fascinating areas I never thought I would study, challenged myself with exciting field work and research projects, and made an incredible group of friends that I know will only become closer as we all become shipmates in less than a week. Despite the schmooey weather Cape Cod was beautiful, and I am sad to be leaving the quirky little town of Woods Hole. Dean Paul Joyce advised us all when we first arrived, "It goes fast." He was right.

One of the highlights of the experience was the exceptional faculty. We had three professors, each of whom was always passionate and excited about both their subject and their students. Sadly, our Maritime Studies professor, Liz Fisher, told us from the start that she would not be sailing with us because she needed to finish her dissertation this summer. Monday we tried to take this into our own hands. In Liz's lecture on pirates that morning we learned about the means for pirate crews to address grievances on their ships—the Round Robin. Rather than drawing up a standard linear petition, the crew would sign their names in a circle around the statement so as to disguise who signed first and ensure that the message was coming from the people as a whole. That afternoon we decided to adopt this strategy, and we drew up a Round Robin requesting the presence of Liz Fisher on our cruise, signed by the whole class.

Liz had joked that morning that she had thought about talking to her boss about coming with us, so we presented our petition to Paul. He said he would absolutely support her coming, and that SEA would even buy the plane ticket. So we took our petition to Liz herself, and told her that we didn't want to pressure her if it would jeopardize the work she needed to do, but we wanted her to know that the whole class would love to have her come with us.

At our final meeting this morning President Bullard told us that the unprecedented act of a class presenting a grievance in a historically accurate manner had brought the matter to the attention of the highest level. We were given no confirmation one way or the other, but we all have our fingers crossed to see Liz in Hawaii.

The duties I am about to embark on include setting and striking sail, deploying science equipment and analyzing samples collected, navigating across the Pacific by celestial navigation, serving as assistant in the galley and engine room, and being as helpful and encouraging a shipmate as I can be. The experience is guaranteed to be unforgettable. I am ridiculously excited to get on the ship.

Field Trip

Wednesday we went down to the MBL dock and went out on a boat into Vineyard Sound to do a bottom trawl and a plankton trawl. Under the guidance of Bob the biologist, we dropped the heavy bottom trawl net into the water and motored on at about two knots for a few minutes before raising it back up. Bob intentionally suggested that it might be too hard for the women to pull back in, so of course it ended up being only women who did. When we got it on deck I was shocked at how much was in it—a hundred or so sea urchins, a couple dozen spider crabs and lady crabs, a handful of starfish and brittle stars, and couple sea cucumbers and hermit crabs. The crabs weren't too happy with us. We examined a few, tossed some back in the water, and kept most for the research tanks (no one got injured).

It was a great boat ride. We learned how to take ranges by watching for when two buoys pass one directly in front of the other as we go by. And we got some nice views of Woods Hole and the east side of the Cape. When we got back we went over to the MBL lab and took a tour from Ed. He was one of those folks who absolutely loves what they do, and loves to talk about it even more. He let us hold a squid, a sack of squid eggs, a lobster, several horseshoe crabs, and live clams. Then went to the large squid tank and watched the males chase around and fight for the females. When the tour was over we went upstairs where a neuroscientist to whom we have subsequently as Einstein (on account of his hair) showed us several different types of zooplankton (mainly copepods) with the projector microscope. Apparently ours was the first class to go on this field trip, and it was really fun.

Last night a bunch of us went to the Woods Hole contradance. There were a lot of beginners, but it was still a blast. Everyone in our group stayed pretty high energy the whole time, and I managed to teach a couple of the guys to swing and waltz. The band, which I believe was the Woods Hole Folk Music Society, was amazing. They played a lot of tunes I don't know and the main fiddler was great.

And today was the first real day of summer. It was sunny and beautiful, and I now have a lovely sunburn owing to me being outside for literally the whole day. We had breakfast sitting outside at Cape Cod Bagel Co. It wasn't Absolute, but they were pretty good. Then I did some work outside at the picnic tables back on campus. Then we went out to the beach and went swimming along the crystal clear water of the sand bar, where I realized how much I love being salty. Then we migrated to Coffee Obsession in the village and sat out on the deck doing some more studying, followed by some gymnastics and antics on the grass on the water. It was wonderful.

An update for those who were concerned: Oscar got a bigger bowl! We've been trying to take care of him as best as our google searches tell us how. But apparently you're supposed to have 10 gallons of water per goldfish...

Saving the World

Almost every conversation I have had since I arrived on the Cape has been about something deep. We've talked about the origin of inequality, the applicability of academia to the modern world, and most of all, what the feasible solutions are to the impending global climate change.

Earlier this year I went to one of Columbia's World Leaders Forums with President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, currently holding the rotating presidency of the EU. A fierce capitalist, Pres. Klaus made a point of expressing his conviction that "Global Warming" is little more than a scare tactic used by socialists to justify inappropriate government interventionism. While I certainly don't subscribe to his absolutist faith in the market, I do recognize the politicization of the phenomenon of global warming, and the perils of greenwashing. However, as has been further emphasized by the oceanography class we are currently taking here, serious changes need to be made.

The other night when were meeting with our research groups, I showed everyone the Story of Stuff (seriously, click the link and take 20 minutes to watch it). The basic reality, which the video does a wonderful job of presenting, is that we have turned the world into a linear consumer-based system, which by definition cannot be sustainable. Ever since the days of Nixon's kitchen debate with Krushchev, the American economy (at least) has been based on turning resources into consumer goods into junk. Sure, it's way more complicated than that, but the fact of the matter is that the Earth survives by operating in cycles, and our use of resources is not cyclical; it's a one-way street. The global climate "crisis" is the inheritance of our generation.

This afternoon we all went to a climate change lecture with Dr. George Woodwell held by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). It was full of good science, but I think it left us all rather disappointed. We know things need to change, we just don't know how to go about it. We keep debating whether the priority should be individual or governmental action, whether fossil fuels should be replaced by more sophisticated technology or by a return to a self-sufficient small community lifestyle that doesn't require them, whether investments in carbon offset technology are helpful or simply distracting us from the root of the problem. We are not all in agreement about where to go from here, but we are all in agreement that we are fed up with the way things are.

This past Saturday we were all at Dylan's house party for most of the day. It was really fun—we chilled on the beach singing Disney songs and sea chanteys, made giant brownie sundaes, and got psyched for our sailing expedition by watching Pirates of the Caribbean. And, as is our recurrent activity, we debated how to save the world.