Yes...I've had Some Experience with Boats

It appears I’m not the only one who’s returned to Mackay, the humpbacks are beginning their movements south again to the feeding grounds. Just like me, they’ve been hanging out in the Great Barrier Reef (except many of them were successful at mating); but unlike me, instead of returning to Mackay for work, it’s all play at the moment for the humpies. Stare at the horizon long enough off of eastern Australia, from the GBR to the southern Gold Coast, and you’re likely to see massive splashes caused by 20-40 tons of blubber interacting with the water. Much of the breaching that we’ve been seeing has been from calves, which would only be a few months in age at this point. The southern migration will be in full swing by the end of next month, just in time for studying their movements during HARC. It’s nice to see blows break the boring pattern of a motionless horizon while on the job.

I received my MSIC card in the mail while I was away in the breeding grounds, which provides me access to working offshore in Australia. So today was my first boat day for this project and it was heaps of fun. I was stationed on the Adrenalin, a 14 meter twin screw party boat, as the Marine Fauna Observer. Instead of getting rained on by coal dust with bright green foam plugs in my ears, I was misted by the spray of the sea in the wake, with the unfortunate sound of Lady Gaga in my ear (almost as annoying as the noise from a coal trestle). The boat is everything the trestle is not: clean, comfortable, and independent of land.

The crew’s inability to select descent music was not their only failure, particularly the new decky, who was as green as they come. For starters, the kid was late for work on his first day, which is a huge red flag. He was noticeably uncomfortable on boats, which is expected from someone who only has 1 hour of experience. The skipper was not exactly the best teacher either, resulting in several incidents during the rest of the day. Mistake #1, don’t let the anchor chain play out to the end without saying anything. We lost a crucial piece of the winch due to this mistake by the decky, disabling its ability to pull the anchor back up to its resting position on the bow. So at the end of our marine fauna observation, during which we spotted several groups of active humpbacks, it was time to manually pull up the anchor (ironically the wench is named “strong arm” according to the skipper). We learned how appropriate this name was indeed after fighting the anchor for a good 15 minutes. The green decky nearly lost his exposed toes twice during the operation; and we all cautiously tried to keep our fingers from getting wrapped up in the chain.

Mistake #2, this time by the skipper: don’t be too aggressive on the gear shift levers. The cable that linked the operator’s brain to the engines transmission failed, immediately putting the starboard engine into a coma (it still ran, but there was no response). This really wasn’t the skippers fault though, cables break all the time. I’ve personally had at least 4 cables break on me during my 1.5 years as skipper on the whale watch, the first time being me very first day as captain. We decided to call it a day before something else went wrong, and limped our way back to Mackay harbor. On the way back we spotted at least 2 groups of humpback whales, and one pod of around 25 Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins.

Surprisingly the skipper was able to get the boat repaired in time for an afternoon blast, the second blast of the day. “Copy that Linda, 5 minutes to blast, no fauna sighted within the zone…over”. Five minutes later….boom! Actually more like a POP. Today was a long day, it looks like the weather will be deteriorating for the next few days as well, so hopefully I get put on the boats again (I like rough weather, but only when I’m not in charge of the boat. It’s a good ab workout anyway).