Aaand were off! Coming to you from United flight 2475 on my way to Puerto Rico. As I embark on this journey I thought it would be great to start with a little context for you, wonderful reader. Lets get right to it!
(PS check the links at the bottom of the page for links to the ships location, live stream, and website!)
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Who am I?
Howdy! My name is Paige and if you know me you know that I’m pretty stoked on the ocean, I love attention, I’m a pretty happy gal, and I’m pursuing a PhD in oceanography at UCLA. I could say more but I think I’ll leave it at that for now 😊 (check my cruise bio if you’re not satisfied)
What is the NOAA Explorer in Training Program?
First lets start with NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) falls under the Department of Commerce and is the body of the govt responsible for all things ocean, atmosphere, and weather (the national weather service falls under NOAA’s purview). If we need to understand something about the ocean or atmosphere, its generally NOAA that answers the call or sends out the call to institutions to figure it out.
Within NOAA there is an office devoted solely to ocean exploration. Through this office they conduct research cruises that are more focused on public engagement. Lets call it “fun” oceanography. If you’ve ever seen Blue Planet or any documentary where they discover shipwrecks, this is the kind of oceanography I’m talking about. Robots and submarines lowered off of a ship, discovering deep sea corals and spooky weird creatures. Discoveries of underwater canyons and mountains, planes downed in a dogfight in WWII, lost pirate ships. The kind of oceanography that made me decide when I was all of 3 that I needed to do just that.
The NOAA office of ocean exploration hosts an internship: the Explorer in Training (EIT) program. The internship is focused on seafloor mapping. Interns serve on board a NOAA ship, the RV Okeanos Explorer, during the cruise season, collecting acoustic and sonar data which they then convert into high resolution seafloor maps (more on this process, tools, etc. in a future issue).
I don’t know the statistics on how many people apply to this internship every year, but I do know that this year was my 6th time applying. Safe to say I was stoked to get this opportunity.
What are the main objectives of our cruise?
Our specific leg, EX 22-03 is titled “North Puerto Rico Mapping and Deep-Sea Camera Demonstration”. We have three primary areas of focus:
1. Deep-sea camera demonstration. We’re using two new cameras attached to a common oceanographic instrument, a CTD rosette, to demonstrate how cameras could better inform routine oceanographic measurements and science in real time. Its worth mentioning that a great majority of oceanography is done without fun cameras, and most of the ocean is pitch black, which is why were testing to see if wider integration of cameras would be feasible or beneficial.
2. eDNA. Marine organisms, like humans, are always shedding microscopic records of their presence: scales, poop, etc. eDNA is DNA extracted from those microscopic records in a water sample and analyzed to give a picture of the environment. This is a very new method in oceanography, and I don’t know much about it. I am excited to learn more and I hope to provide more insight in a future newsletter!
3. Mapping. We aim to collect high quality data from the regions shown in green to create higher resolution mapping products. This includes the Puerto Rico trench and the Blake Plateau.
What should I expect from this newsletter?
I’m hoping to provide insight to a lot of our science and an idea of what life is like at sea. Compared to the cruise I went on around this time last year, it seems that this trip may be a little less demanding on my time. My shifts will be 8 hours whereas last time they were 12. Additionally, we have a couple of transit days in-between Puerto Rico and Florida. I’m hoping this will give me more time to write and document, but I won’t know for certain until I’m actually on the ship. Fingers crossed I can fire off about 2 of these a week!
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(this is where I’ll put the personal stuff)
4-2-22
I haven’t really processed that this is happening. At the beginning of 2022 I had a feeling that this year was going to be full of twists and turns. So far my intuition is dead on.
February and March I didn’t really allow myself a second to slow down. I’m happy, I feel very fulfilled by my friendships and passions, but I’m also a tad melancholy at the moment. I function well in a state of borderline mania, constantly keeping my foot on the gas, but even I have to admit to myself that I cant have it all. Last year when I went on my first research cruise it was a mental reset I couldn’t compare to anything else. I hope that this is the case for this cruise as well 😊 I can’t be a million things at once. Nothing like putting yourself in the middle of the ocean to force yourself to recon with that.
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(I dont have any cruise pics yet so heres some pics from the past week!)
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