I found religion!

New Religion

by Bill Holm

This morning no sound but the loud

breathing of the sea. Suppose that

under all that salt water lived the god

that humans have spent ten thousand

years trawling the heavens for.

We caught the wrong metaphor.

Real space is wet and underneath,

the church of shark and whale and cod.

The noise of those vast lungs

exhaling: the plain chanting of monkfish choirs.

Heaven's not up but down, and hell

is to evaporate in air. Salvation,

to drown and breathe

forever with the sea.

"New Religion" by Bill Holm, from The Chain Letter of the Soul: New & Selected

Poems. © Milkweed Editions, 2009.

* * * *

Well, we are actually returning a day early.

So, if you want to meet me, just be at the Woods Hole Dock at 1630 hours (that’s 4:30 p.m.)

I will be available to sign autographs. Just kidding.

Still, I’m so glad Chief Scientist, Dr. Lloyd Keigwin gave us enough notice about the early return! I was able to prepare myself for the paparazzi

by giving myself a nice mud mask—using 250,000 old mud gathered from underneath the deep water in the Gulf of Maine.

What a luxury!

And, actually I do feel this has been a very glamorous and luxurious trip. Yes, it’s true being a ship for ten days can make for a rough and tumble environment--with all that mud and heavy equipment--but there have certainly been moments of grace and real beauty aboard the Knorr.

I met so many incredible people. And every single person I met taught me something new. For instance, this fellow, Wayne Hinkel—he’s an “ordinary seaman,” but there’s nothing ordinary about him.

Before he decided to spend his life at sea, he had planned to go to FIT in New York City to study fashion design. Yes, I actually found a fashionista on board! Oh, and he paints and he plays guitar. Yes, he’s an artiste and he certainly reminded me of that age old lesson to never judge a book by its cover!

That’s him playing chess with Joe. How intellectual. How civilized.

And speaking of civilized, I cannot leave you without telling you about the food and our magnificent chef, Bobbie Bixler.

Bobbie makes the most delectable creations. She is a culinary artist, completely devoted to her

job of feeding this hard-working group scientists and crew. She began by studying cooking in Italy and has now been all over the world.

Here's a photo of her seared tuna with garlic ginger drizzle.

That night’s menu also included:

Sesame seared tuna

Basmati rice

Butternut squash sauteed with a hint of curry

Sautéed French green beads

Braised red cabbage with sweet hot chipotle

The topper Bobbie’s black bean mango salsa

Flat iron steaks grilled the way you like them

Recipe for Bobbie’s Black Bean Mango Salsa for a Crowd

1 #10 can of black beans drained and quickly rinsed (6 lb. 10 oz)

4 large mangos peeled and diced a bit larger than the beans

1 medium red onion diced small

6 habanera peppers diced or minced 6-8 bunches of green onions finely sliced

2 cups cilantro diced

5-6 large juicy limes

Kosher or sea salt to taste, takes a bit

This salsa only needs about 3 hours to grab the flavor. To do it smaller, just use two 28 oz. cans or 2 lbs dry black beans and cut everything in half.

Safety First.

Time has a funny way of expanding and contracting when you’re at sea, and here it is my last day and suddenly the crew is talking to me. A lot! It actually began happening a few days ago. Little by little I got to know just about everyone. First the Captain (maybe that’s how it started—he gave me the seal of approval!) but then came Dee and Mike and Lee who invited me to tour the Engineer’s Room. I even finally talked to Pete, the man I was most afraid of because he does seem awfully busy and perhaps a little gruff.

I’ve come to realize that it takes time for these guys to befriend you, to trust you, but when they do-- it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world—because you can see that are completely sincere. Trust is a big deal on board of ship, because you never know and you want to make sure the person you’re with is going to be there for you, steady, calm, kind and reliable.

Because when you think about it, isn’t this a metaphor for life and for all relationships. Who do you trust? Who would you want to be in a lifeboat with?

So perhaps I would not be such a bad companion in a lifeboat. Perhaps the crew senses that I would not be the kind of gal who would forget to wear long sleeves and that I would not forget my hat.

And this brings me back to Dr. William G. Thompson.

My WHOI-Climate-Change Scientist-Man. After being on the sea for nine days, more than ever--I am glad I married him. I am glad I agreed to share a “lifeboat” with him.

And, I am so happy to know I will be seeing him in a matter of hours!

So, I must bid you adieu now, Sailors, Scientists and Sea!

xoxo

Jamie

The Canary in the Coalmine

Lattitude: 39 degrees

Longitude: 069 degrees

Sea Legs

Yes, it occurred to me today that I am really getting my “sea legs.”

Actually, that’s what my husband, (Dr. Bill Thompson of WHOI) said to me in a recent email. And I confess, I really am enjoying myself on the Knorr. Plus, I have learned so much! Cindy, the scientist who sits next to me, said that she has given me a crash course in Geology 101.

She teaches at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology and I just know she’s a fabulous professor, because she is a genius at explaining all this science to me! Plus, she’s really, really nice and always willing to talk to me, no matter how many questions I ask!

Butterflies are free.

Okay, I want to talk about Sea Butterflies today.

But before I do that, I must tell you I was given a very special invitation by the captain of The Knorr himself—to tour “The Bridge.” This is the place in the ship where you stand high above everything else and have a panoramic view of the ocean ahead of you. As we were talking a whole group of dolphins came swimming by us, leaping out of the water and waving their fins at us as if to say howdy! It was such an amazing experience that I want to devote tomorrow’s entire blog to my tour. So stay turned. You will be very surprised by what I have to tell you at The Knorr!

Early this morning I sat outside on the deck. The sun was low and bright in the sky and its reflection on the roiling ocean made the water look completely black—like a big thick piece of shiny black coal.

I began to think about these little creatures that live in the water. They’re officially called Pteropods. But, they also answer to the names Sea Butterflies and Sea Angels. The Sea Angels are referred to as the naked ones, because they don’t make a shell.

Here are two pictures of Sea Butterflies.

Aren't they beautiful? Look at the color. So blue. The French call this Provence Blue.

The Sea Butterfly is very small, but you can see her without a microscope. She’s about the size of your fingertip. And guess what—you can find these little sea creatures right here in the Gulf of Maine—floating on the surface or nestled deep in the sediments. (That would be the mud we’re been chasing. Honestly, after this trip, I will never think of mud as just mud ever again.)

Oh, and I also had to show this beautiful photo of fall fashion. You can see how the designers who create these delicate lace ensembles are obviously influenced by the patterns we find in nature.

It's the way life goes. We are all dependent on one another. That's what the food chain is all about.

All living creatures must eat, and so these little Sea Butterflies do more than just look lovely.

They provide a delicious morsel of food for the fish. And of course, bigger fish eat smaller fish and even bigger fish eat the big fish and so it goes. Humans then eat the fish and you know what—whales eat fish and seals eat fish and penguins eat fish!

Yes, we’re back to the penguins.

I guess I like to bring them up because just about everybody

loves penguins and nobody would want to make the poor penguins go hungry.

Hungry penguins: very sad.

But you know what—we’re really going to have some very hungry penguins in the near future and this is because the ocean is warming. And yes, the ocean is really warming. You can read all about that in yesterday’s blog.

But here’s what you may not know--this warming trend has already done a whole lot of damage to the Sea Butterflies!

The canary in the coal mine.

Right now, even as we speak, the sea butterflies are having a terrible struggle with producing their shells. This is because the ocean is becoming more and more acidic. The ocean is becoming more acidic because of all the CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) coming into it. So, the shells of the sea butterflies are getting thinner and lighter. This is what the WHOI scientists have discovered. This is really happening. Right now.

Why are these Sea Butterflies so vulnerable to the acidity in the ocean? It’s because their shells are made from agagonite, a form of calicium carbonate that dissolves more easily than calcite (which is what many forams are made of).

And if all this is hard to picture. Imagine what it would be like to drink the most acidic orange juice all day long for the next ten years. Imagine what that acid would do to your teeth. Not a pretty picture.

Well, consider the Sea Butterflies!

Their shells are becoming more and more fragile and they’re struggling just to survive. But more than this, we need to pay attention to these little creatures, because they are the canary in the coalmine. So many creatures are dependent on them.

If the Sea Butterflies die, then the fish that eat them will starve

and die, and the fish that eat those fish, and then the bigger fish and then the whales will die…and you see where I’m going with this, they’ll be no more penguins. And nobody wants that to happen!