Doing a second cruise makes for a nicely familiar feeling.
It’s the same ship, I have the same cabin, we get the same routines. I knew
many of the faces; more than half of the crew we have this time was there too
last time. But the trips are profoundly different.
Last year we left when I had only been in the job for a few
months. We didn’t have any cores yet, as we wouldn’t get any until we went off
to sea. I had been looking at some potential core sites in the Celtic Sea, but
that was only a small part of the cruise. Most of my suggested sites were
dropped for reasons of time anyway. And during the first leg, which was the leg
I would work on (Louise would do the second leg), we had our transect leader on
board, and the coring team was lead by the transect leader of some of the
transects of the second leg. So there was a flurry of people higher up in the
pecking order, one of which very keen on emphasising just that. Altogether that
lead to me being little more than a deck hand. I was just there to carry things
and cut things and label things. And it’s noble work that needs to be done, but
it’s not anywhere as satisfying as being actively involved.
Forwards!
The second leg was slightly better; our coring team leader
left during the port call, so before her own transects were done. That’s a bit
of a strange situation, but it had something to do with child care. So this leg
I was coring team leader, but I had nothing to do with the transects, neither
in preparation nor processing the data, so I knew little of it and there wasn’t
as much at stake as during the first leg. Furthermore, the others in the coring
team were only involved in a small part of the project, so when their part was
done they were not particularly fascinated by the goings on anymore. Altogether
the second leg was a lot more relaxed, but it wasn’t as fascinating as a cruise
can be.
This year is different. I have been actively involved in the
planning, and of course all planning goes overboard once the data gathered in
situ comes in, but Tom, my transect leader, tries to keep me in the loop. I
know now where we go, why we go there, what we lose if we don’t go there, and
all such things. And I’ve been working on the first batch of cores, so that
makes the second batch a lot more evocative. I
can now already see the analyses I’ll do, and make sure all is ready for them.
This time I’ll hit the ground running and it feels good.
This time, I’m a coring team leader during the entire
cruise. And my team is amazing; we have Maria, a crazy and enthusiastic Basque,
and Dave and Chris, who are project bigshots. Dave is leader of a transect in
the North Sea, and Chris is the PI. They have both been involved in the project
from the beginning. They are emotionally involved in all of it! So wherever we
are sailing; they care about what cores come up. It’s nice to work with people
who have a genuine interest in what’s going on. It also means they have a
vested interest in doing all the work well. And the men are very practical
chaps; Chris, for instance, is not only an academic but also a sheep farmer. If
a router plays up, for instance, they sort it. They are all a pleasure to work
with!
Chris happily lumberjacking off with a core section
Maria and Dave enjoying the sunset after a long shift
One small thing that matters a lot is that this time, we
have music in the lab. When you’re splitting and describing piston cores with
metre after metre of homogenous mud you want some distraction. So this year I
brought a speaker! And we all have music with us, so we take turns in plugging
our iPods in and letting the lab ring with our tunes. Great!
Altogether it’s the same ship, many of the same people, but
I’m having a lot more fun! We’re almost halfway; more than two weeks of hard
but very satisfying work to do!
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