When a Scientist Extends an Invitation to Cruise, Beware

GULF OF ALASKA, ABOARD THE ALPHA HELIX--The scientists on this boat refer to this trip as a "cruise." Though I'm still searching, I have yet to find the ballroom or the Fiesta Deck. Instead, this boat is full of scientific equipment, computers, and people who gather sea water and tiny creatures from the deep.

I jotted a list of images that, for me, define a scientific cruise on the Alpha Helix:

While sampling phytoplankton, an oceanographer pokes his thumb, which begins to bleed. So not to sully his samples, he dresses the wound with duct tape and works on.

A scientist's fish-finder will not work because of a software problem. After we return to Seward and he receives a remedy via Fed Ex, we go back to sea. Once 100 miles from Seward, a measuring device on his zooplankton net malfunctions on three successive attempts. When the net is mended, his fish finder breaks once again. He does not scream.

The same researcher is almost washed into the Gulf of Alaska as a wall of water breaches the stern of the Alpha Helix when he is tending his zooplankton net. Again, he does not scream, but his eyes are wide as half dollars as he calls off the netting until the sea becomes more placid.

In heaving seas, four scientists clad in orange life jackets wrestle a sea water-sampling instrument the size of a refrigerator over the rail of the Alpha Helix. They look just like fishermen gathering a net full of salmon.

With a mechanical arm, a crew member winches that same piece of equipment, worth $100,000, from 300 meters deep and sets it on the deck without bumping it. He performs the task as the boat's motion rocks the instrument like a kid on a swing set.

A scientist searching for birds who rides with the captain in the ship's steering room becomes a human metronome as swells tilt the Alpha Helix to 42 degrees on each side. Despite performing most of his work while peering through binoculars, he does not become ill.

Shower curtains open and close, open and close, with the motion of the boat. The Alpha Helix is prone to rocking, bobbing and weaving because its hull--built so the ship could squeeze through ice leads--makes the boat resemble a floating soda can. Still, few of the crew or scientists complain (at least not out loud).

On the first rocky day, a graduate student develops a regimen in which she labels samples of phytoplankton, rushes to the bathroom, vomits, returns to label more samples, then sprints back to the bathroom.

That same person vows never to become pregnant because she suspects her condition is probably just like morning sickness.

The cook displays three burn marks on her arm from moments when the ship's lurching forced her to touch the heating element of the stove.

The distinction between day and night disappears because the ship is just as likely to reach a sampling area at 2 a.m. as it is to reach a sampling area at 4 p.m. The scientists collect when they have to, sleep when they can. Any sleep-wake pattern from dry land is dashed on the first day at sea.

I develop an appreciation for why the word nausea is rooted in the Greek word "naus," meaning ship.

I've learned a few things during my week on the Alpha Helix. First, I was probably not a sailor in a former life. Second, neither were a couple of these scientists, who worked in conditions that forced me to lay on my back and count ceiling tiles because I couldn't even glance at a computer screen without feeling sick. Third, the word "cruise," with connotations of leisure and the scent of suntan oil, does not apply to a scientific mission aboard the Alpha Helix.