Now that we are on a watchstander schedule of eight hour shifts, time aboard the Ewing seems to have changed as most of my daytime hours are spent in the main lab on watch. The chances to actually get on deck in the fresh air are limited by my 8 am - 4 pm hours.

Morning Jog

However, this morning I woke up, dressed in comfortable black sweats, and headed for the A deck to check the weather. I had 15 minutes before breakfast began at 7:30 am, just enough time for a five lap constitutional: past the forward A deck cabins with their closed curtains, past the life rafts on both starboard and port sides, past the science lab containers anchored to the ship’s deck, and past a collection of mysterious shapes covered by bright blue tarps and tightly secured by lines.

It wasn’t a long loop, and far from a regular one, unlike a lap on a field or in a gym, but after I zigzagged around the assorted equipment, I headed for the best part--the bow of the Ewing. I wasn’t really on the true bow, but on the section of A deck just below the captain’s bridge and its large plate glass windows that wrapped around the front of the vessel. Below me I could look down into the bow with its anchors. But why look down when all around me was the vast Pacific Ocean sparkling in the early morning light?

That’s all there was--just the open and empty ocean in a 180 degree arc that coincided with my turn from starboard to port. No birds, no fish, no dolphins or other marine mammals in sight, although two marine mammal observers were already in place with their binoculars high up on the flying bridge above me. If I stood still and turned in a complete circle, all that I could see beyond the Ewing was the ocean, a flat, unbroken horizon, and layer upon layer of clouds in varying shades of white and gray. High above were a few glimpses of blue sky, but the sea surface was relatively flat with only a few touches of white capped waves, although the light breeze felt refreshing on my face as I walked around and around on my irregular oval path.

Back to School

What an amazing way to observe the Pacific Ocean! And as a teacher, I felt I needed a refresher course in some basic ocean statistics before I headed for breakfast in the mess. So I stopped into one of the scientific offices on A deck to look at the collection of reference books available there and found a textbook on oceanography that gave me the following information:

1. The Pacific Ocean is the largest of all four oceans, covering 40% of all ocean surface. It has the equivalent area of all the earth’s continents.

2. In the tropics, the east-west zonal distance of the Pacific is over 20,000 kilometers.

3. Measured north to south (its meridional extent), the Pacific extends over 15,000 km from the Bering Strait to Antarctica. Impressive figures for a very impressive body of water, I thought, as I headed for fruit and hot oatmeal, figures that can be best appreciated only from a vantage point aboard a ship. I was ready to start another watch as we continued our seismic survey of the Hess Deep.