Day 24 - LAND part 1.2

I am once again catching up on many days, so sorry this is also kind of a long one. It's coming out a little extra late because it's Monday and you know what that means. DRILLS! It's approximately the temperature of the surface of the sun here, so we all had a really good time.

We have concluded leg one of our journey, and have had a brief layover at the island of Aitutaki. It was cruel, we saw land but couldn't go. We dropped off a few people and picked a few new folks up. We didn't pull into port, we just did small boat transfers. Here's the boat coming back to the ship.

The ocean exploration community is a small one, so we were spotted from land by some ship friends who just happened to be on this remote island in the South Pacific. This included the science lead from the last time I was at sea. It was a very random and whimsical encounter. They came out to say hi.

With the new people also came shuffling rooms a bit. I'm adaptable and a good sport (read "unable to say no") so I said I didn't mind but it was pretty annoying. But my new room is actually even better so I guess it all works out. Through some conniving I got into our new room early and I still have my bottom bunk, yay! So check out the new digs:

It's so glamorous. This room even has a toilet that works, so I don't need to get anxious about pooping, the wins keep coming. Check out this star:

The only downside of this room is that the subbottom profiler is SO LOUD in this room. I can't complain too much because managing the subbottom data is my land job, but boy howdy is it annoying. It's a big SNAP every like 15 seconds right by by head all night, yay science.

Since I had to strip the bed, I washed sheets which has been a nice little refresh for my mood.

Because of the transit and transfers we haven't done many more dives, but we have been grabbing lots of shark teeth. I'm not sure why we've fixated on them but they're cool as hell and way more fun than nodules so I am HERE FOR IT. This one's from a megalodon because it's so big it literally couldn't come from anything else. Please ignore my crazy hair.

I've had requests to show a bit more of the ship and regular daily life so we'll just rapid fire some stuff. Here's more of the lab where I work so you can see the mayhem:

They got mad at us for clogging the sink with sediment, sorry

Here's some eDNA tubes for yesterdays CTD cast to show that I don't just blog out here:

Here's some storage, zoom in for fun labels

Here's my bucket where I sit and do work because it's a very full ship and it can be hard to find space or seats:

Here's some more ship, fit with curated decore like fire fighting gear for the ship crew:

And here's the library, where we watch dives if we're not working. They set it to the cozy temperature of 1 degree celsius.

Yesterday we did another CDT cast:

We're getting more efficient filtering all the water so it only took us 4.5 hours instead of 5! Which is important because I was looking forward to sundae sunday ALL WEEK and was afraid work would stop me from getting my lil treat. But crisis was avoided and I got the goods. Just one more sundae sunday before I get to go home! Time out here is marked by sundae sunday and taco tuesday and nothing else. Some people's parents never taught them how to roll a burrito, and at taco tuesday IT SHOWS.

If we're already taking about food, that's another thing people ask about. The food has been killer and look mom I'm eating lots of vegetables. I know my drink looks like beer, but there's no alcohol out here on NOAA ships. But there is a bubbly water spout and I mix it with the POG juice and apparently nobody had ever done this because I've started a movement. Blew everyone's minds with this innovation:

Following sundae sunday we had movie night in the control room, which was incredibly whimsical and extremely disorienting. I don't think I could stay here during rough seas.

I'll do my best to keep posting, but the seas state is forecasted to get pretty gnarly soon so we will see if I can stand to look at a screen. Thanks for reading along with my many disjointed thoughts. Here's a sunset:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0648b5_9b1dab08627a46c9a1bbce94cd5aac15/1080p/mp4/file.mp4