A Day in the Life of a Marine Biologist...

This morning we (me, Kylla, and Annaliese) woke up on Catalina Island at 7am. The wind was damp and the sky's were still clouded with early morning darkness. Bustling through a quick breakfast we threw on our fleece and hiked it down the hill to the waterfront. Two tanks each, buckets of equipment, hammers, nails, pencils, slates, calipers, zip-ties and flagging tape were all thrown together. Our wetsuits were still damp and cold from the previous days excursions, but we laboriously pulled them on, stopping to dunk booties and hoods in hotwater to ease the pain of the cold.

As we looked out over the water, each thinking to ourselves of what needed to be accomplished this day, an eerie white fog rolled in from far out at sea. The fog enveloped the island, quietly and quickly, as we set out to Bird Rock for out first dive of the day around 9:30. The tide was coming in and the waves were crashing violently when we arrived at the rock. We all looked at each other, knowing that this was going to be an interesting dive. We dropped anchor at about 40 feet and each of us dropped into the frigid waters (59 F) one by one. We clung to the algae and made ourselves as flat as possible against the substratum in order to keep from being caught up in the surge. After 85 minutes I was frozen, shaking from head to toe and I called the dive. Kylla was already back at the boat trying to warm up and considering the fog that had now totally enveloped us.

We took a breather hoping the fog would dissipate. It felt almost as if we had entered a new dimension. We set out in the direction of our next site, skirting along the Catalina coast. We slowly made our way, passing by a ghost ship or two. Everyone seemed a little wary to wave hello. Finally, we reached Howlands Landing and through anchor. But, in the distance there was something floating, what was it? We pulled anchor and pulled up on the ominous object. We found it to be a large piece, and 3x6 feet off the side of a boat. It begged for you to think up a heroic story of hardship and ship wrecks at sea. We tied it off to our skiff and called harbor patrol on our radio. Our radio was dead. Annaliese and Kylla jumped in and finished a second dive while I took a surface interval basking on our new found surfboard. After they surfaced we tied the giant piece of wood and plexiglas to a mooring buoy named Charcoal in Howlands, and left it for pick-up.

We headed to our third and final site, Big Geiger. Here Annaliese and I jumped in. I collected 50 Tegula snails for her and then helped clean up her site. Still waiting for her to finish I kicked a few laps back and forth trying to keep warm. Finally, we made it back to the boat and headed for home. The fog had lifted and the sun was shining. Huge flocks of Cormorants were floating. We were in site of the lab, just about 100 yards to go. We ran out of gas, just like that we stop. I grab the paddle and start paddling. We see a friend swimming laps near shore and we yell to him to get us a tow! But instead he swims to us! No, swim back we say, we need a tow. But, he's decided that he will be the tow. He pulls us, I push us, and Annaliese paddles us to shore. We're all exhausted. It's 3:30 and we've each had one powerbar and one orange, and half a box of wheat thins to share for the whole day.

What a long day.... but it was an adventure. We complain about our work all the time. We hurt ourselves and we ache, but we're not sitting in an office chair all day. We're out in nature, battling to understand it and falling in love with it at the same time. It's fantastic!

Now aren't we glad we were the ones that actually decided to become marine biologists, not just talk about it when were 9? :)