The Journey West, North, West, North…

At 5:15 am, the rear suspension of the taxi to Washington, DC’s National Airport groaned alarmingly under the weight of my five heavy pieces of luggage: A duffel of dive gear, a pelican case with an underwater video housing, a duffel of warm clothing, a backpack of video and camera gear, and a roll-aboard full of hard disks, cables and other geeky accessories. Alaska Airlines Flight #1 took me west across the country to Seattle, then north to Anchorage. As we pierced the clouds on our descent, the youngster seated behind me shrieked to his parents, “It looks like a big park!” Alaska was as I had remembered it: Big, wild, and beyond beautiful. Read more

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When Everything Goes Wrong….and It’s a Good Thing

As a young teenager, I finally got my wish: Scuba lessons for my 15th birthday! My lessons were in a moldy YMCA pool in suburban Philadelphia, and my first open water dive — my checkout dive — was in a quarry in Reading, Pennsylvania in the balmy month of December. Air temperature 36 degrees F, water temperature 40 degrees. My wetsuit was too big, was full of holes, and to this day I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold. In those primitive days of the early 70s, we didn’t use buoyancy compensators (BCs), vests that you can fill with air from your tank to keep you afloat at the surface or keep you neutrally buoyant at depth. Rather, we used “horse collar” safety vests — virtually identical to what the flight attendant demonstrates the use of for the “unlikely event of a water landing.” Read more

The Sub Pilot Diet

In the 100-degree heat here in Washington, DC, the daily weather reports from Dutch Harbor, Alaska showing highs of 50 degrees seem surreal, yet in just over two weeks, that’s where I’ll be as we kick off the Bering Sea Expedition aboard Greenpeace’s magnificent ship, M/V Esperanza. In recent years, virtually all of my time aboard ships on research expeditions has been in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, so my wardrobe consisted of little more than a couple pairs of shorts and some thoughtfully-selected marine-themed T-shirts. But Alaska is different, and the Bering Sea is different still. The cool temperatures, wind, and damp chill of the fog combine to mean only one thing: Shopping. Read more