I woke up around 6:30 in the morning to a gentle rocking motion of the ship. It was a very slow and soft motion that actually allowed me to return to sleep quite quickly. I was able to get ready for the day without too much trouble, but I was a little worried about how I would react as the waves increased. My anxiety helped me decide to drink some ginger tea and take a ginger pill with my lunch. Ginger is said to help alleviate minor motion sickness and help with digestion, so I wanted to try to prevent any sickness before it started. Today was the day of meetings on the ship; the meetings were on a variety of topics, like back deck safety, entire crew introductions, technology, and training to collect the specimens for the Corals Group. The Corals Group’s training was very interesting. It involves lowering different instruments, called the Otter Trawl and the Blake Trawl, to the sea floor and pulling up about 100 pounds of marine life, and then sorting it for starfish, sponges, and corals. They will start their research on Monday, the 21st at about 3 in the morning and continue through about 70 straight hours! Can you imagine working that hard for so many hours straight through? All of the people here are very dedicated to their research, and that is so awesome! I also started my watch standing duties. The duties include completing a detailed watch log at 5-minute intervals. This watch log will be filled out all 24 hours of everyday by a rotating group of people.
This is the actual paper that we fill out every 5 minutes.
Matthew and I are sitting during our shift taking data. Lauren, Alan, John, and others also help with this duty.
Finally, the answer to the teaser—did I or anybody get seasick today? A couple of people did get varying degrees of motion sickness, but I am very happy to say that I did not! I did get a little nauseous after I put my iPod in my ears, but I quickly took out the ear buds and went outside for fresh air. That helped me feel immediately better, and I have felt great for the rest of the day, which I am very excited about because the boat is rocking pretty good. It is funny to walk around because your coordination and balance are very bad due to the massive waves that make the boat sway and when you are sitting it sometimes feels like those huge pirate ship rides at amusement parks.
The first full day at sea was a good introduction to life at sea, and I am very happy that my stomach has been able to handle everything so far.