Hotel internet sucks. Video and pictures will be uploaded soon

Or when I get home.

So, I found out today that if you put me on a 100 foot, 100 ton vessel in seas greater than five feet high and feed me nothing but fried food for two days, I get sea sick. Still, its better than flying on a plane.

But really, the off-shore work isn’t that bad. I’m paired off with guys from AIS, a fish observing group, and we do trawls. I pick through for oil while they pick through for different species of fish, pretty much the edible ones. Once I’m doing grabbing my samples though, I help them out, mainly with identifying the shrimp, Royal Reds and some of the fish, but we’ve found a bunch of fish I’ve never seem. Like stargazers, goose-fish, which are better known as Monk Fish, and some cool sharks. It’s a lot different than being on shore and I like and don’t like it at the same time. Something about being stuck with six guys on a small boat in the middle of the Gulf isn’t exactly the most… enticing job description? We came into port and then were sent back out, hopefully I should be back in port on Saturday, the 11^th. Just good to get back on land, see my friends before the Christmas break. Maybe get extended if they’ll have me, and try to get my next deployment.

Who knows?

Today, woke up at 9A, had no idea what time it was. The bunk on the boat is really dark. And a lot smaller than my hotel room was, mainly because its four bunks in the size of the bathroom in the hotel. But it’s an experience. My supervisor sounded jealous when I checked in that I arrived at my boat last night. And I don’t have to check in with her every day, just Danielle and Dad, but satellite service is kind of spotty, so we’ll see how well it goes.

It was nice, calm today. Maybe 1 to 2 foot seas. Clear, and there is a lot of stuff going on out at sea. Between the rigs and the other boats. Kind of interesting. The boat, is about 105 foot long, has two shrimp trawl nets, one on either side. They take about thirty minutes to get to the bottom, and we dragged for about an hour, to tug it back up it took another hour. Wow, my grammar has kind of slacked since I’ve been down here.

Anyways, our second tow, which we did around 9P to 10P we were about 40 miles from what the crew is calling “Ground Zero,” meaning the oilrig at MC252. Our first drag we found two samples, and the second was a clean drag, so I helped the NOAA people, actually, AIS Observers, separate shrimps species from each other so they could get their samples. Doesn’t seem like their purpose on the boat is about as easy as mine is. Not too bad though.

Tonight it was really dark out to sea. Normally you can tell the water from the sky, but out here it’s all the same shade of black. The back deck was also lit up so we could work, and it made it hard to see the stars. Aside from the lights of the rigs and other boats, there isn’t any other light out to sea. Especially with it being a waning moon.

Weather reports are calling for 7 foot seas and the temperature to drop. The captain is bringing us to shallow water to see if it’ll change in a day or so, if not we’re going to stay at anchor and possibly scrub the mission and go back to port. Still, being on an offshore vessel is really cool. Plus, it’s a few new tings to put on my resume, always a bonus.

Bridgeside

These are just some stills from my job today

Its pretty sweet

So, I am back in Louisiana, this time there are like, 12 of us? Yeah it makes me feel better when I’m one of the few that are left.

Anyways, I got in at 1 AM, with a wake up for 5A, luckily one of my company’s other divisions had a van and were driving all the samplers to our location, so I got to catch up on sleep… And once we got to the boat launch, they canceled us due to weather. And today was supposed to be even worse so they canceled us again. I’ve been doing some real aggressive sitting around. We also went to celebrate one of my co-worker’s birthdays last night. And by celebrate I mean, take 10 people, go to a restaurant that took a long time and then come back to sleep. I needed to catch up on it anyway.

But it looks like tomorrow I should be going out with someone I haven’t met to do some mission I haven’t done. Should be a complete blast.

I’ll let y’all know whats up.

So, I got moved to this new project, along with 8 other of the “awesome core group of samplers” that’s coming from my coordinator. We’re on a heavily oiled beach collecting samples of oil and sediment. They are doing a research project to clean up the spill and we’re doing pre- and post- clean up collection. But since we need to move fast there are nine of us, and its the crew I’ve been working in conjunction with, at different locations for three weeks. They bring out, like 15 boats, ones a bathroom boat, one’s a food boat, two are water boats, ones a medic boat, then the rest of them are carrying supplies for the teams. Its long hours but its really fun work.

Aside from the driving. Really, two hours one way, in the same state? How does that happen? Anyway, we’re doing this mission again tomorrow, we have some spots to sample before htey clean, and then I either go back to the USGS work or get to be on the team that is doing post-clean up sampling… I kind of don’t really care which team I’m on as long as I have fun partners. Not all of them are.

So, yeah. I took a rest in place. It feels like I’ve been down here forever. Between rests in place, stand down days last week and just knowing I’m like 12 days from going home. Anyway. I was doing the SWACO sand cleaning stuff, kind of B.S. if you ask me, because the sand that was being clean was already labeled as “fine for human use” by DEQ, but hey, it gave me things to do. I also did a few FRAT missions. Those are the simple ones where you go to a site, either by car or boat, and collect a sample of something that might be oil-based. You put it in jars and drop it off. Simple as cake, even if I can’t really make cake. But hey, same thing. I did a few of those and team lead a few missions where the ESI Observers, people that answer to BP observed/audited me. It happened twice at the beach cleaning, and I did “awesome” with no room for improvement.

Now to the fun stuff. I’m doing a “special assignment,” a task working with people from the United States Geological Survey (www.usgs.gov). Entrix moved mine and one of the other sampler’s rest in place days forward and shortened them so we could be put on two separate teams to lead. So, USGS went out while the oil was still spilling and in the five states, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and surveyed 70 sites. Now we’re going back to 50 of them, well 12 in Louisiana that came back as interesting, or had a bit of oil.  I lead a team yesterday that did one of these sites, and the mission was kind of thrown together at the last minute AND I had an auditor, AND had to do quality control samples. Doing the Quality Control (QC) samples pretty much triples the amount of samples we need to take and makes the time on site a lot longer.  As far as things I could control, we did fine, so that was a plus. We drove to two sites to take samples on a beach. It was easy but long, and the amount of samples was just… too many.

Then today was supposed to be a stand down day, but Rob, my coordinator, called me up and said he wanted me to come to the command center to train a new person for the job and to do head up another team. So, I came in, met the guy, helped train them, got supplies and drove out to New Iberia. We’re doing a boat trip tomorrow, so that should be fun, and unlike most boat trips I’ve done as a FRAT mission I have to collect a sample when I get there. But it shouldn’t be too many bottles, unless they make me do another quality control, but I don’t think they will. Hopefully, I mean, its what, quarter past nine and I haven’t been told that I need to or to not do it, and I’ve been told to assume to not collect them, but chances are I will have to, because I’m a good sampler and will call in the morning to double check. Awesome. I need to write in this more, it does help me organize time, and its easier to write it all out then to try to talk it at people. Yep.

I’ve got a pile of sand! And guess whats inside it!

If you guessed “More Sand” You’re right and you win a trip to Grand Isle! (see www.grand-isle.com for more details, void where prohibited, this is a one time offer, not available in Idaho, Iowa, Ohio, or Kentucky. National Residents only, must be 18 to enter, 21 to drink)

Lets clean sand!