Training week 1 of 3 done! Training has been very intense
and has left very little time for writing or thinking about much else. It has
been a very difficult but rewarding process that consists of waking up @0630,
making breakfast, walking 2 miles to the NOAA facility for the 8 hour 0830 training,
then studying until midnight or later. Training during the day consists of a
wide variety of topics including but not limited to (brace yourself for a very long
run on sentence!) learning about the history and mechanics of the fisheries in Alaska,
boat/safety/fish regulations, fish identification and physiology labs, random
sampling techniques and design that are totally dependent on the vessel
configuration, fishery, and catch composition, safety protocols in the event
there is a life threatening emergency which is a very real possibility, and learning
how to don an immersion suit in under a minute and how to survive in the North
Pacific. Somebody perfectly described it as taking your favorite class 5 days a
week for 8 hours a day.
The class is 2/3 trainees from my company and 1/3 from
another observer provider. But they’re a solid group of people and we have
become friends very quickly. We all have very similar interests (or we wouldn’t
be here) and have lots to talk about. Although the nature of this job is
temporary, and we all come from diverse backgrounds and geographically distant
places, I hope to have made some lasting friendships.
Today’s training was extra awesome because we were tested on
being able to put on our immersion suit in less than a minute (we all passed)
and went in the water where we learned all sorts of survival/rescue techniques,
from throwing a life ring, to properly getting inside of a life raft and
different survival formations that maximize on heat/energy retention.
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| me in my immersion suit |
On a different and slightly less awesome note, I will not be
able to post as many pictures as I had previously thought and partially
designed this blog for. The rule is: if you took the pictures on the boat, no
matter what the picture is of, it belongs to NMFS. Because of certain confidentiality
rules, I will be unable to post pictures that I take from the boat. I will only
share them with you if you are someone I know and trust, but they must stay off
the interwebs under penalty of death. Just kidding. But I might lose my job. So
hit me up of you’re curious. I will keep updating as frequently as possible!
