Life on Board

Well, I’ve been on board for almost two weeks, and I’m loving it. The people are really friendly, the food is fantastic and the work is really interesting (most of the time!). Every day is a different, even though the work is always basically the same. There are generally four trawls a day unless there’s a problem but the precise time of hauling varies. This means that that when I work depends on when we haul. I try and work the middle two hauls of the day which generally come in around 11am and 4pm, but sometimes I’m feeling energetic and will work the 6am haul, or work late and do the 10pm haul. The hours I work vary depending on circumstances such as the time they take to process the catch which depends on its size and the amount of bycatch. I’ll talk more about that in the next post.

The first couple of days I was sea sick, unable to keep anything down. The sea was rough which didn’t help (Beaufort 8 for a while). But eventually I got better and now it doesn’t bother me at all. One thing that no-one told me but that I’m really grateful for is that the factory deck is low down the boat so the sideways motion is much less than elsewhere, and the cool temperature is really nice when you’re not feeling too good.

I really feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world. I’m doing exactly what I want to do, and I’m getting paid for it! I get to work when I want (to a certain extent), no one cares what I wear and I get to spend my working day studying squid and fish, and my free time watching the albatrosses and dolphins, or watching DVDs. It’s amazing!