1st Trip

Just got back into Dutch Harbor after my first trip! It's great to be back on land and it's a beautiful day here, my body's missing the sway of the boat and I'm a bit "land sick". All in all my first trip went well. I was on a big factory trawler boat and we were out just over a week. Fortunately, I was paired with an experienced lead observer and she helped me out a lot. There were approximately 30 crew members including deck hands, factory workers, the engineer, and the cook. The first few days the weather was mild and I got the hang of taking samples of the catch. About day four the seas got rough and I experienced my first bout of seasickness. I was pretty miserable the next couple of days throwing up, eating only saltines, and trying to sleep as much as I could (I usually felt better horizontally). I gradually felt better and the rest of the trip was enjoyable: getting to know some of the crew and honing my sampling methods. Though most of the hauls were clean (low species diversity) the last few were dirty (high diversity) and I got to identify a bunch of different fish. We're here in port until tomorrow sometime as the boat offloads and has some crew changes. I looks like I'll be with this boat until early May.

Safety Week

One more day of training to go. We all passed our final written exam this morning and had our pictures takes for our observer IDs this afternoon. We had our fish identification final all of Tuesday morning and have spent the rest of the week focusing on safety and emergency situations. It's been a sobering and helpful few days preparing for the inherent dangers of the commercial fishing industry. Tuesday afternoon we went to the Univ. of Alaska pool and practiced donning survival suits within 60 secs, working as a team in the water, entering life rafts, and retrieving a man over-board. Yesterday, the Coast Guard visited and gave a lecture covering all of the vessel's safety requirements and equipment. It's impressive to learn about some of the equipment that has been developed to aid in survival and rescue missions. One of coolest is the personal locating beacon (PLB) issued to each observer. These are a small high power homing devices with GPS that are able to narrow search area to a circle of 1/2 mile diameter. Yesterday we also had an observer who was on the Alaska Ranger (the vessel that just sank a couple weeks ago) come and share his story of abandoning ship and being rescued.
While its been a ton of information the last few weeks, I feel like the pieces are starting to come together. Tomorrow we cover mid-cruise evaluations, debriefing, and then check out all of our sampling and safety gear. We did find out from our contractor that we won't be flying out to Dutch Harbor until at least Monday which thankfully allows us a weekend to rest and pack.