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.