Microcosm

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. 26 days. 26 days with 200 mb of data per day. 26 days with no social media. 26 days without seeing land. 26 days without ever having to make a meal or clean dishes. A cruise is a marathon in which you are marveling at the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen with friends in one moment and in the next you are desperately working on an instrument at 3 a.m. equipped exclusively with the tools on hand and manuals that you brought. These are two experiences that I am intimately acquainted with, however I won’t inflict upon you an image of what I look like running on two hours of sleep!

NAAMES is the first field campaign that I have participated in and I had no idea what life would be like living on a ship for 26 days. How do you pack for it? Will they provide blankets and pillows? How can you plan to feed 60 people for 26 days? In case you were wondering, the answers are: layers, don’t forget your chargers, they do provide bedding, and I still have no idea but it is an incredible feat. While there are a myriad of practical decisions that must be made in regards to the science aspect that one can prepare for, the personal experience of living within 273 feet of 60 people for 26 days is something that is hard to accurately describe. However, I won’t let that stop me from trying.

I am on an opposite schedule of my bunk mate, so I wake up within the range of 1:45 -4:50 a.m. everyday. I set out my clothes every night so that I can quietly slip into new clothes, brush my teeth, and put on sunscreen all without ever turning a light on. There is always someone awake and working within the ship, but in the early mornings, greetings are mostly left to cordial grunts on the way to coffee. As time goes on, small rituals begin to develop due to the close proximity. This is my second NAAMES cruise and several of the graduate students have a religious attendance to two events that we created during the last cruise: coffee club and sunset sing-alongs. In addition to being fans of alliteration, we are able to have a communal time in discussing not only anecdotal stories, but about our science. There are a wide variety of fields that work together for the NAAMES cruises and it’s vital for the atmospheric scientists, biologists, ecologists, etc. to compare data and speak the same language, so to speak. These casual meetings have greatly enhanced my understanding of the complex biological interactions that are occurring, and I have helped others understand the atmospheric data that my group is analyzing.

What is life like on the ship? Generally, no one wastes data on the news, so we make our own little world that revolves around phytoplankton and food. In a world full of chaos and uncertainty, for a short 26 days, we can live in a small isolated world of friends, food, and incredible science.

Written by Savannah Lewis