The EPR Chronicles III

Had calzones for lunch. The cooks hard work is much appreciated on board! The boat is exceptionally creaky tonight, must be high swells. Meg, Todd, Peter and I were admiring the bioluminescence tonight off the ‘pointy end’ as Jim calls it. We also sat around on deck & told scary stories. Peter told us his story of finding a freshwater eel stuck in a lamb. I manage to get shitted on, not once, but twice by red-footed boobies that were fighting for a perching spot on top the tower. At night the atmosphere is just gorgeous. The moonlight is breaking through the fluffy white clouds, the wind is warm and soft on the face and the air is fresh and invigorating. I had a conversation with Janet after dinner and I talked about my interests. She gave me a lead with Mark Westneat at U. Chicago & Bob Kier at U. North Carolina – Chapel Hill. I keep getting my ass kicked in fussball & ping pong. I better get my act together for the tournaments. I did manage to get a couple homework problems done from Chem. Oceanography. I should start thinking about my research paper for Marine Eco. It’s important to keep hydrated out at sea. I seem to lose more water here. I wonder if it’s because there are more salts in the air.

Amazing how much time humans can waste by being social. I didn’t do anything too constructive today except finish one of my problem sets for Oceanography that I have been working on for the last few days. We arrive on station thursday. I would like to get the next (and last) problem set done for that class before then. The paper for Marine Eco. I can do on the plane ride home if need be… I have the feeling it’s going to be extremely busy then.

I can’t imagine these crew that are at sea most of the year. It must be great to travel a lot, but what an unstable life it must be. Some of these people don’t have any homes to return to when they are on leave.And some have families they are away from for months at a time. I’ve only been away for 6 days now & I miss Linda terribly so. I know she is faithful to me as I know I am to her, but I am sure some men on board must wonder about any girl friends or spouses they leave behind. They probably don’t have a reassurance such as I do. Anyways, I managed to waste a good 5-6 hours playing scrabble with Jim, Beth, Meg, Todd & Peter tonight after dinner. I also managed to waste another hour or two playing a card game called “spite & malice” with Lee Hsiang, Todd, & Meg in the morning.

I worked out for a half hour & managed some laundry. It is sure nice to actually be able to dry my clothes with fabirc sheets and also to not pay for washing. My clothes smelled so good. I managed to talk to and meet Breea who is a PhD candidate at Penn State. She seemed very interested in how I wanted to use biomechanics to explain an organism’s nice in a community. She thought it would make a good dissertation topic. She had a good point about not becoming a specialist in a certain type of environ., such as hydrothermal vents. It would be interesting to compare different habitat types & see if similar niches have similar biomechanic principles. It seems painfully obvious it does, but I should search to see what kind of research has been done on the subject.