I am loving every minute of this trip so far! But daily updates from the Pacific hake survey on the Shimada might be a little repetitive. Eat, fish, eat, fish, eat, sleep, repeat.
So here’s a quick photo tour of the ship!
I’ll start at the top: the flybridge. Basically the highest point on the ship, which has the best view. Also a delightful place to spend time outside. Today we spent some time in the sun “on the steel beach” during some of the calmest seas we’ve seen in a few days. It was warm and peaceful and just what we needed after a week at sea.
The flybridge is also home to all this cool stuff. Radar, GPS, weather, satellite TV.
The bridge. The center of all activity, navigation, fishing. 360-degree windows. A great place to hang out with NOAA officers and learn just about anything you could possibly want to know about driving the ship, weather, sea state, and more! Here you can watch waves, other ships, fishing operations, marine mammals, etc.
Thankfully there’s room up here for a lot of people, it gets busy during fishing operations. (More about fishing later!)
Below the bridge are staterooms: officers, scientists, marine techs, deck crew, stewards, and engineers.
A typical two-person stateroom. Small but not impossible to share, and we don’t spend a lot of time in here unless we’re sleeping. I’m on the top bunk. My roommate for the first two weeks on board, Monica, is here studying harmful algal blooms. Bonus: each room has its own bathroom!
And plenty of immersion suits to go around.
The lounge and ship store.
Trust me, these recliners are by far the BEST place to be in rough weather.
Aft on this deck, the boat deck, you’ll find the small craft “Miss Julie”…
…and the fast rescue boat. Net reels and hydrographic winches are also back here.
The main deck. This is where all the action happens! FISHING!
Sampling! The CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) and the vertical net (zooplankton) are lowered here on the starboard side.
I spend a lot of time in here…
…the wet lab! Much more on this later!
The acoustics lab. Screens show sonar from the transducers mounted on the centerboard under the ship. This is how we find the fish we’re looking for. Amazingly accurate!
The chemistry lab. On this cruise, this space is for processing phytoplankton samples and monitoring/maintaining smaller instruments and cameras that go out with the net.
The mess deck and galley. I am so grateful for the two stewards who work long hours in crazy conditions to provide us with three meals every day! 
🙂
Below: a small gym, laundry room, engine room, generators, water treatment systems, oceanographic and trawling winches, and more!
Stay tuned for more updates on fishing, science, and the beautiful seas and skies!
Spindrift 