25 July 2012 -- Off to an "interesting" start.

So the ALES lab is back on the road, heading to Newport, OR for a research cruise in the Pacific Ocean with collaborators from Oregon State University and the National Marine Fisheries Service. We'll be at sea for over two weeks looking for schools of hake (a fish) and Humboldt squid (as well as any other interesting creatures we can find). We'll talk more about what and why we're doing this as the blog progresses. We should have daily updates once I get my act together and start putting up the posts.


One of the logistical issues we have in doing a cruise on the west coast (being based in NY) is that we have to get ourselves and our gear to Oregon. Moving people is easy (flights, hotels, rental minivan) and normally shipping 700 lbs of gear is pretty easy as well.


But not this time as this picture from the Billings Gazette illustrates.

Yep, guess who had all his gear (mostly scientific equipment like computers, electronics, sample jars, nets, etc  but also a good chunk of the clothing I normally wear when I'm on a ship) destroyed in a train derailment.  Not a good time. What made this particularly aggravating was that the shipping company had told me TWICE that my boxes were not involved in the accident (which thankfully didn't injure any people, just cargo) and would just be delayed.  Instead on tuesday morning I was woken up (in the hotel at the Portland Airport) by the shipping company telling me that my stuff was a "total loss".


So several months of planning, several years of gear acquisition and development, and thousands of dollars were now gone. So what do you do ?  You call your collaborators and your fellow marine scientists spring into action.  Fortunately, colleagues of Kelly Benoit-Bird (our Chief Scientist) at Oregon State University and Dezhang Chu (the other PI on the cruise) at National Marine Fisheries Service were able to assist and between the 3 of us, our contacts, the generosity of our fellow scientists (and thousands of dollars spent in 36 hours at local hardware, plumbing, electronic, and general stores), we were able to get enough stuff to leave the dock on time on thursday.


We unfortunately won't be able to do everything we were hoping to accomplish on this cruise, but we should be able to complete our primary objectives (as long as the weather and the biology cooperate).


So we've had a bit of a rough start to this trip, but as you'll see in future blog posts the science will continue!
Joe Warren