A Change in the Weather

May 30th @ 9:05 am – One of the kitchen staff remarked to me at breakfast this morning that “…now we’ve got normal open ocean weather, and it doesn’t feel like we’re just out on a lake somewhere”. The wind has picked up, the clouds make the horizon appear as a fuzzy line, and the sea swell and whitecap waves buffet the ship. As I wander out on deck to watch the water churn and roil, I have to mind where I walk lest I get a free shower from water cascading off the edge of one of the upper decks.

It has certainly changed from the idyllic flat calm and sunshine of a little over a day ago. Another great quote I heard from one of the science party, whose quarters were near the front of the ship, was that the sound of the bow thrusters constantly firing to keep the ship on station and pointing in the right direction was “…like a washing machine full of hammers”.


Photographs don’t really do justice to the way the ship gets tossed around in the open ocean, so perhaps the best way to illustrate the pitch of the ship is by watching the level of juice in the juice fountain in the cafeteria, a more familiar reference.

But, for all the changes on the surface of the ocean, down in the depths, where ROPOS is right now, it’s business as usual, as the seafloor conditions don’t change very much.

Blog post and photos by Scott Doehler 
Marine Educator, Ocean Networks Canada