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Showing posts from February, 2010

The Nansen cruise liner

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It feels a bit unreal today not having to worry about when the next trawl is coming up. I have been doing a little bit of my regular work but generally lazing around. In fact I have just come in from the deck where I was lying on a sun lounger reading a book and looking at the occasional dolphin breaching out the water next to the ship - definitely a  déjà vu  moment from the MSC cruises to Mozambique! Our final trawls yesterday were very straight forward and were processed at speed. We also just washed up superficially and left the real clean up for this morning. Jess and I retired to the Acoustic deck and spent the afternoon lying in the sun discussing life, the universe and everything. It was a good end to the day. This morning the ship sailed near to Luderitz but didn't go into the harbour. Instead a tug came out to collect the crew member that needed to get off. In a way I am quite glad that Luderitz was only a shimmer in the distance because I slept through it all and would

Out deep one last time

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The cruise is gradually drawing to an end and we have our last full day of trawling today and we are back out in the deep water. It was a hectic start as the catch was placed on the deck exactly at breakfast time so we had to leave it as it was and go munch before picking everything up and processing it. This means we lost some time and the second trawl was in the water while we were still working on the first - which was huge just to add to everything. It seemed that some of the scientific crew got out of bed on the wrong side this morning and there was much muttering and moaning going on. In general it was not a barrel of laughs but things eased up a bit later and the grumpiness evaporated. Tomorrow we will do the last four trawls of the survey and then make our way to Luderitz to drop off a crew member on Thursday morning and then Friday we should be in Walvis Bay. There is still some doubt about whether we will be able to dock on Friday because the harbour is busy and there may no

You know you are on a Norwegian vessel when ...

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... you get served whale meat for lunch. I had been told that there was whale meat on the vessel and was actually hoping that we would get it to eat. I know that I may take some flack over this from some of you but I wanted to know why people who eat whale like it. There was some protest to the whale lunch from some of the scientific staff and some also did not know what they were eating. So what was it like? I enjoyed it a lot after I got used to the texture of the meat. It felt like I was eating liver (which I really don't like) but tasted nothing like it. The best way maybe to describe it is to say that it was very rich and heavy and my stomach took forever to digest it. Would I eat it again? Definitely! The same cannot be said for the salted lamb we got this evening! Apparently this dish is served around Christmas and, if I understood correctly, particularly on Christmas Eve. It was salted beyond edible - not great. In terms of the work, we have been hard at it and yesterday

Diamond lands

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Yesterday ended with 2 shallow water trawls that produced not much other than some horrible little crustaceans that I like to call cockroaches. The first of the two catches did not have a single fish in it and the second catch had about a basket of fish. It was an easy end to the day for us because there was minimal sorting and measuring.  The catch being sprayed off the deck - no one wanted to touch it! We were also really close to land off the Northern Cape and it was amusing to see all the South Africans out on the deck phoning home - myself included. You would think that we have been away from civilization forever but it was great to hear that everything was ok at home. Everyone was also joking about hoping to spot a diamond in the catch since we are in the area were diamonds are mined off the sea floor. Somewhere off the Northern Cape diamond area. During the night the sea picked up and we have been rocking a lot. The wind is howling and it is still freezing cold. The rocking

Who left the fridge open?

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It is a cold "winter's" day ... the sun is out but there is such a cold wind blowing and for once it is colder outside the ship than in the cabins. The sea is choppy and a really horrible browny green colour. This is so different to yesterday when the ocean was an impossibly gorgeous blue. I am told though that when we make our way back out to the deep water it will get better but that remains to be seen. A seal in the water next to the ship. Just some birds floating around. Yesterday there was almost a mutiny amongst the scientific staff as we had been told all day that there would only be 5 trawls but as number 4 came out the water, the cruise leader hinted at a 6th one and indeed this did happen. It made no difference to me though - we came here to work and that is what I am doing and having a blast despite feeling dog tired right now. I also got to do some hake biomass estimates yesterday which was interesting. This was taught on the course I attended in Mauritius

Seven is heaven ... NOT!

Yesterday we worked like Trojans to get through all seven trawls. Normally six is the maximum in a day but because of the way the transects are laid out we had to complete one whole transect so that the ship could sail the 40nm to the next line during the night instead of wasting daylight hours. Fortunately just over half of the catches were easy to process but it was still a very long day. All the hard work did result in a reprieve from my insomnia though although that nearly got me into trouble. I have been using my cellphone as my alarm clock and during the night the battery went flat so I overslept! I woke up thinking that the cabin was really bright and looked at my watch to discover that it was twenty to seven and the trawl was already on the way up! You would think that my cabin mate would have woken up too but she is really good at sleeping so maybe I should not be surprised. Anyway I did make it on deck just in time but it was not a good start to the day. Today we did the

Cape Town and other stories

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On Friday afternoon the ship docked in Cape Town and there was an exodus by the crew once all the fish had been sorted out and our work area was clean and tidy. I didn't rush off the ship but took things easy and then went to buy a pair of board shorts before returning to the ship for a rest. Kerry and I went off to the Spur for a decent steak which I was longing for before return to the ship and joining Charles up on the bridge. Kerry was really keen to find the horn and blow it but decided in the end that it would not be the best idea to disturb everyone. We then went for a tour around the ship and checked out the engine room, the trawl winches, etc. During the evening my new cabin mate arrived and moved in. Kerry moved to the next door cabin for her last night and we spent a lot of time there as Claudia arrived and went to sleep making me feel uncomfortable about hanging around my own cabin. Saturday morning was a very lazy start and I just went and did a little shopping bef

Rocking 'n Rolling

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Just a short blog tonight! We have an end of cruise leg "meeting" in a minutes. From yesterday we have been bouncing around on the sea. Today it got really hectic on the trawl deck as our bins of fish went scooting away. It was quite difficult hanging on to the measuring table to stop myself following after the bins while still trying to measure fish but it was still very funny. We also got to do only 6 trawls today instead of 7 as it is our chief scientist's birthday. It is the first day in a while that work was finished before sunset. Everyone is now looking forward to retuning to Cape Town tomorrow night. We still have to do some trawls along the way but hopefully we will dock by early afternoon. It looks like we will have most of Saturday in CT as the plan is for us to leave only at 4pm. No great photos today, just one of the ocean rushing past my cabin's porthole.

It's raining, it's pouring ...

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We woke up to thunder, lightening and rain this morning but luckily by the time the first trawl was on deck the rain had stopped. By midmorning the sun was out and we cooked on the deck sorting fish and then the clouds came back again. We are trawling in the deep again so the catches have been fairly large with lots to do and plenty of frustration to go around. I just let it all wash over me though and wait for the dust to settle and then get on with the tasks assigned to me. It is quite a nice feeling to be working on something for which I am ultimately not responsible, it makes a welcome change for a while. The great thing about these deep catches is that there are a few quite different looking fish that are in the catches. We even got orange roughy which I have read so much about but never seen. The day was very interesting but long. No matter how tired I feel right now though I am like a kid in a candy store and am having a thoroughly good time. Orange roughy that were caught at

Time for a sponge bath ...

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I struggled to choose a title for the blog today because I had two but I'm going with the sponges. This morning I watched the most gorgeous sunrise through my cabin's port  hole and then went up on deck for the start of the day. We were back in the shallows and had a fairly clean first catch. Then the West Coast fog descended! It really made me think back to my days in the air force at Langebaan when we could barely see the aircraft on the line. A foggy day! Our next catch was huge but mostly of sponges and urchins - it definitely was not a pretty sight and it was difficult to sort and we all got very frustrated as the senior scientific staff started snapping at each other about how to process everything. We would start following one set of instructions only to have them changed within minutes and then would start again. Fortunately they eventually came to an agreement on the best way forward and we got an apology for how things had happened and the catch was sorted out but it

Angels and Demons (or snoek)

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My plan for sun downers last night definitely worked and I had my first full night's sleep on the ship. Tonight will be more of the same! The day started off fairly easy with two trawls inshore that were fairly small. We are now moving back offshore and as the day progressed, so the catches have gotten bigger. There was a lot of angelfish and snoek in the midday and afternoon catches which were measured and then cut up to go in the freezer - there is no point in wasting good fish! Besides that the ocean has been kind to us and was as smooth as a mirror this morning. It was such a beautiul day and I could not resist sitting up on the deck in the the sunshine between trawls despite being sunburnt from yesterday's lazying on the deck! Our last trawl came up just after sunset so I got to sit on deck and enjoy the beauty of the end of the day before heading down to process the catch. I am in desperate need of a shower now so I will leave you with my sunset photo.

St Helena Bay

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Yesterday was long and exhausting. We were trawling in the deep and got big catches of lots of little fish that had to be sorted out and measured. By the end of the day I was finished. Dinner was really great as it was steak and I could have eaten a whole cow but did hold myself back. We had all hatched a plan to get alcohol from the ship's shop to have sundowners to relax after the hard work but were stood up by the Chief Steward so that came to nothing. I was so tired last night that I was beyond tired and hardly slept at all so getting up this morning was hard. But it is great to arrive on deck in the morning and be greeted with smiles from the crew. This is the corner I share with Oddgeir to capture data after each trawl. This morning it was overcast and cold - welcome to the West Coast. The ship had moved inshore to avoid some bad weather and we have been in sight of land in St Helena Bay all day. It has also meant that we have had small catches made up mostly of cockroache

Birds, seals and dolphins

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The crew who spent January on the Nansen were correct about us doing an extra trawl yesterday so we did six instead of the planned five. After washing up though a few of us retreated to the entertainment room and watched a DVD before heading to bed. The entertainment room has A LOT of DVDs so there is always something to watch and apparently they get six new ones every month. I feel rather spoilt on this ship - I don't have to cook any food, I don't have to wash dishes and even though I make my bed every morning, it gets remade after breakfast! Today was our first day of seven trawls and it will carry on like this (weather permitting) until the end of the cruise. I'm getting some hands on experience using the ship's data software program that I did a course on last year. This does mean that between trawls I am calculating total catches and capturing the data onto the database. I'm very sure that this experience with the program will stand me in good stead at some

Gone fishing

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The day started at around 7am waiting for the first trawl to be hauled in. This came up at breakfast time so we quickly sorted the catch into species and then left everything to go and have breakfast. Food is very important on this ship. So after munchies it was all hands on deck again and the fish were measured, sexed and genetic samples were taken. While we were doing that the next trawl was deployed (or in fishing terms shot) and before long the next lot of fish were on the deck and the process of sorting and measuring started all over. Between the second and third trawls we got a half hour break and then the third trawl came up at lunch time. It was processed first and then everyone got to have some lunch before getting back on deck for trawl four. Anyway there is now an hour and a half break before the next trawl is shot so everyone can chill out a bit. We are supposed to only be doing five trawls today but there is some doubt from those who have been on the ship for a month alrea

I am sailing ....

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Last night it felt like we were in Norway. The cabin was freezing cold and the temperature can't be adjusted so I really battled to drop off to sleep. There are really thick comfy duvets on the beds but the moment a body part sticks out from under the covers, it freezes. Today was a pretty relaxed affair. Kerry and I basically got up for breakfast and then hung about our cabin for a couple of hours before heading off to the movies. I really wanted to see Avatar but the cinema was only showing it in 2D and not 3D so we ended up seeing Invictis instead. I really enjoyed it and sometimes completely forgot that it was Morgan Freeman playing Nelson Mandela. After the movies we returned to the ship and had afternoon tea. They serve tea and cake on board at 15:00 every day - what a pleasure! Then it was time for the safety briefing. There are 4 of us new people on the ship and the First Officer showed us all the emergency gear and we had to try on the survival gear. It was all very ente

Stuck in port

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So for those who don't know, I have swapped my terrestrial life for a life at sea for a month. Well that was the plan anyway. I am on the research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen which is a Norwegian-owned vessel that operates mostly off the African continent investigating fish stocks. The vessel is 56.8m long and 12.5m wide and is actually really nice. My cabin compares rather favourably to that of the Melody (except that this time my cabin is above the water line) and there is an entertainment room, a gym and round the clock food to eat. So far the crew have been really friendly and have made me and my cabin mate feel completely at home. My cabin mate is quite nice and we have spent most of the day together. My introduction to her was rather good - she asked the Chief Steward if after vomiting up her breakfast due to seasickness could she go back for more food! I stuck it a bit lucky this afternoon because Kerry had to go to Two Oceans Aquarium so I tagged along and got to spend a